By Jason McKeown

The problem with adopting a simplified approach is that you also make it easy for your opponents to thwart you. Graham Alexander had found commendable initial success from pressing the reset button on Bradford City. In taking them back to basics. But the competitive nature of football means opposition clubs will eventually work you out, and this chaotic defeat to Crawley was the clearest evidence yet that Alexander’s not-so-subtle plan has been rumbled.

From City’s best run of results in 29 years, the club has suddenly slumped to its joint longest winless run of the season. Promise has given way to frustration. The gap to the play off chasers had been clawed back of late, but now seems wider than ever. The club is back in the mud bath of mediocrity. The mid-table swamp it just cannot escape from.

They were objectively awful here. Humbled at home, after conceding three goals post the 84th minute. In a topsy-turvy game, victory had somewhat fortuitously fallen into their lap, and yet they managed to throw it away. The lowest point so far of the Alexander reign, at least since the last 4-2 Bantams’ defeat he oversaw.

City paid the price for starting awfully and ending shambolically. And what underpinned their failings was an opposition that was wise to City’s methods and primed to exploit their weaknesses. Five days short of his first anniversary in charge, Crawley head coach Scott Lindsey displayed a shrewd tactical approach and emphatically demonstrated he’d done his homework on his former team mate Alexander.

But City are not exactly hard to figure out these days. The 3-5-2 relies on direct punts forwards and overlapping full backs, with Richie Smallwood and Alex Gilliead providing cover for others to bomb forward in support of Andy Cook and Tyler Smith. Crawley identified and found gaps in-between Smallwood/Gilliead and the three centre backs who are not blessed with great pace to push out, with the impressive central midfield two of Adam Campbell and Liam Kelly able to initially dictate the game by operating inside this City chasm.

Lindsey’s 3-4-3 meant wide forwards Ronan Darcy and Jack Roles were able to push and stretch Brad Halliday and Liam Ridehalgh. And when the City wing backs went forward, Darcey and Roles were ready to run in behind, aided by linking up with their excellent wing backs – Nicholas Tsaroulla and Will Wright – who ably supported them. Crawley created effective overloads just inside the City half, often ending in effective through balls played for mint green shirts to run in behind the home side’s ponderous defence.

Crawley’s opening goal demonstrated all of this. Kelly had plenty of time with the ball as no City player engaged him, Tsaroulla ran behind Halliday and was picked out. He crossed for Danilo Orsi, who was somehow left unmarked in the centre of the goal to head Crawley in front.

A few stats for you before we continue. This was the 15th time in City’s 26 league matches, so far, that they have conceded the opening goal. And it’s the 10th time they have gone 1-0 down within the first 15 minutes. That particular trend has become worryingly more prevalent of late. Going back to the 4-1 MK Dons thumping in late October, in eight of City’s last 12 league games, they’ve gone a goal behind inside the opening quarter of an hour.

City are routinely starting matches badly, and this self-destructive habit is only getting worse.

Crawley were good value for their goal. They were well on top for 30 minutes, and if anything will be frustrated by their failure to make the most of several promising passing moves that saw them get into decent positions. A bit more quality and they could have extended their lead. When they didn’t have the ball, they sat back. They did as much as possible to slow the tempo, making sure that City struggled to mount any head of steam.

Towards half time it did get better and Smith and Clarke Oduor wasted presentable opportunities. It really wasn’t a good day for Smith, who aside from his one-on-one chance struggled to get into the game. In the first half he touched the ball just 13 times – by far the lowest out of all 22 players on the pitch. Service to the striker is important – and limited when City are so one-dimensional – but Smith also needs to do more to help his team by making better off the ball runs.

Smith was not the only player well below par. At times in the first half, it was difficult to understand what City’s plan actually was. The centre halves would boot the ball long down the pitch without seemingly giving any thought towards actually aiming for anyone. Oduor operated on the fringes and just couldn’t find space to make anything happen. And those Smallwood set pieces…grim. The half time whistle was not surprisingly met with Valley Parade boos.  

The green shoots of recovery seen just before the break did bloom in the second half. Aided no doubt by some strong half time words from Alexander, City re-emerged with much greater intensity and purpose. They played more on the front foot. Chasing, pressing and working much harder. The whole 10 outfield players seemed to be positioned a few more yards forward up the pitch. That did leave a big gap at the back that at one point Crawley threatened to take advantage of on the counter attack, but it was largely one way traffic. Cook, Oduor and Jon Tomkinson all came close.

No one exhibited the playing-higher-up-the-pitch more than Ridehalgh. The 32-year-old struggles to get up and down like Halliday, and so remained higher up the pitch to contribute more to City’s attacks. Remarkably, Ridehalgh got the equaliser – his first goal for the club, two-and-a-half years after joining – when his cross attempt looped over Corey Addai and dropped into the net. Ridehalgh’s embarrassed celebrations made it clear he hadn’t meant it, but no matter, City were level and in the ascendency.

Though the pressure was punctured by increasing time-wasting antics from a Crawley side who now seemed in full on retreat, the huffing and puffing paid off. Substitute Vadaine Oliver latched onto Dion Conroy taking a poor touch with the ball in his own box, and was tripped by the Crawley defender for a clear penalty.

Cook stepped up, saw his spot kick expertly saved by Addai, but as the loose ball rolled along the goal, and as City’s top scorer charged in to score the rebound, the panicked Crawley keeper inadvertently nudged the ball into his own net.

City inexplicably stopped playing from the moment they went in front. It was as though they thought the job was done. That they hadn’t looked at the Valley Parade clock that showed there was still plenty of time left. They sat back, defended deep, and invited Crawley to end the game as they had started it – on the front foot.

With five minutes to play, Campbell bundled home the equaliser after Wright got in behind Ridehalgh and sent in a low cross that Matty Platt could not clear. And worse was to come in the lengthy injury time that was largely the result of Crawley’s time-wasting. Another Crawley overload saw Tsaroulla get in and he was tripped by Halliday for a clear penalty. Orsi made no mistake for his second, and Valley Parade began to empty.

Those who stayed on were ‘rewarded’ with a Crawley fourth three minutes later, when on the counter attack the ball was worked by Liam Kelly to Klaidi Lolos, who fired home with the aid of a Ciaran Kelly deflection. From 2-1 up with five minutes of normal time to play, to an embarrassing 4-2 home defeat.

City remain stuck in the bottom half of the table. Some distance off the play off spots. Pretty much where they were when they sacked Mark Hughes almost exactly three months ago. Pretty much where they were when Alexander was first appointed. Whatever City have tried so far this season, the trajectory has remained the same.

But watching this muddled, messy and miserable defeat, it was evident that much has changed. Alexander’s long ball style is a world away from the idealism of Hughes. Despite the loud concerns that many of us raised about flip-flopping in style when changing managers, the club has fallen into that trap again. Hughes’ focus on playing attractive football might have ultimately failed, but this pragmatic style is difficult to watch. As Derek Adams, Gary Bowyer and Peter Taylor can attest, you can only be popular playing this way if you’re winning games.

And it’s more stark than just the style of football. Hughes downfall was ultimately his doomed attempts to get City to control games of football by dominating possession, when his players just didn’t know how to handle actually being in control. Alexander is the opposite – he doesn’t seem to want his players to control the game. The direct style means accepting possession will often be lost as quickly as it was won in the first place.

But the problem with never being in control is you don’t get to force your will enough on the outcomes of matches. When City got in front, they had no game management to see it out. When they were pegged back late on and eventually fell behind, they had limited means to wrestle back the game. Crawley took control of the tempo. They could find the gaps and they could park the bus and they could time waste and they could do everything legally possible to neuter City’s one-dimensional approach. I hate to use the cliché of No Plan B but there really isn’t one here, beyond going big man-big man and becoming even more direct.

The big question now is – what next? And here, the answers right now seem depressing.

Alexander has so far showed he only trusts in a small inner circle of players. Since the 1-0 victory over Accrington in November, eight of the starting XI have started the last 10 Bradford City games – Harry Lewis, Halliday, Platt, Kelly, Smallwood, Gilliead, Cook and Smith. The other three positions in the team have only seen change along the way because of injury (Lewis Richards and Jamie Walker) or suspension (Ash Taylor). That has seen Ridehalgh, Oduor and Tomkinson brought into the circle – making a total of 14 trusted players.

Everyone else is largely frozen out.

In the 90th minute here Matty Derbyshire was summoned from the bench and ended up playing just behind the front two of Cook and Oliver. He was almost operating as a number 10, when on the bench sat more obvious number 10s Harry Chapman and Bobby Pointon. This development does not say much about their prospects under Alexander. They’re in good company.

It’s well-known Alexander doesn’t like the size of the squad – one that, let’s not forget, was recruited for a completely different style of play. He wants to trim it. And the fact he only really trusts 14 players to start means a lot of overlooked players must be happy to head through the exit door. The question is – can Alexander move on enough of them, so he can bring in players that he does have confidence in, to bolster the 14?

And that leaves us onto Jake Young. Few people will have fallen off their chairs in shock when at 2pm it was announced Young was not in the City matchday squad. For all the bold talk that Young has been recalled from his successful loan at Swindon to play a part at City, the suggestion he is injured isn’t convincing anyone. Any minute of action in claret and amber for Young means he can’t be sold. And so not including him in the squad – with Alexander later claiming he got injured five minutes into training – seemingly makes City’s intentions clear.   

Credible sources have suggested to WOAP that there are no deals done. That Alexander does genuinely want to keep Young and play him. But it doesn’t look good does it? And the way the club and local media raised expectations earlier this week – only for ‘injury’ to flare up – is only serving to further alienate fans. A club that has an increasingly terrible record of communicating to its supporters is once again failing. Questions about ambition are returning and the answers don’t seem too encouraging.

If Young is to leave, it’s better it happens sooner rather than later so Alexander can be given funds to strengthen. He clearly needs it. Because whether this bulky squad is truly good enough to do better than be languishing in 14th in League Two, the manager clearly doesn’t have faith in more than half of them to do so.

As results drift, the team cannot remain unchanged each week. Alexander cannot keep playing the same, increasingly predictable way. He did so well to press reset on City’s season, and build something positive from the mess he walked into, but now he needs to show he can take it further than this simple but ultimately limited approach.

Categories: Match Reviews, Uncategorized

Tags: 2023/24, BCAFC, Crawley Town, League Two