By Jason McKeown
During his darker moments he must surely have regretted leaving. Almost a year to the day since swapping Valley Parade for Home Park, Tyreik Wright is once again a Bradford City player. Back at the place that – so far in his fledgling career – has proven to be his happiest home. Looking to kickstart a career that has gone awry.
12 months ago, Wright was midway through a hugely successful loan spell at the Bantams when Plymouth Argyle had a transfer bid accepted by his parent club, Aston Villa. It was said City had some sort of first refusal option to buy Wright, but were not exactly in a position to stand in the way of the young winger’s opportunity to move to a club at the top of League One. Wright’s impressive displays in a Bantams shirt strongly suggested he could play at a higher level. And Plymouth wanted to test that theory out.
But with just six league starts in 12 months for the Pilgrims, a promising opportunity has turned into a major disappointment for the player. He’s started only three times for the now-Championship club this campaign, the last of which was a 2-1 loss at Preston all the way back in September. Wright’s last appearance for Argyle was as a sub in a 1-0 loss to Coventry in late November. Since then, Plymouth have changed managers, but there has been no change in Wright’s prospects.
And so Wright returns to City on loan for the rest of the season. The Bantams are said to be paying a sizeable portion of his hefty Plymouth wages. He is contracted to Argyle for another 18 months, with the option of another year, meaning it remains ambitious to hope City can make the deal permanent. But if all goes well, who knows?
We know how much he enjoyed his last spell here.
Signed at the end of the summer 2022 transfer window, Wright quickly proved an instant hit with supporters. Direct, fast and skilful on the ball, Wright was full of Premier League coaching quality and displayed a remarkably high standard of intelligent decision making for someone so young.
He quickly became a regular under Mark Hughes, impressing greatly for his consistency and bravery. He was good for the odd goal too. Thriving from playing in front of such a big, positive crowd. Everything fit so well.
Just before he sadly left, Wright was the benefit of a tactical reshuffle when, after three straight league defeats, Hughes ditched the 4-2-3-1 for a diamond, pushing Wright up front alongside Vadaine Oliver. Two City victories followed against Harrogate and Salford – Wright earned the sponsors man of the match for both games. They were to be his last in claret and amber.
Indeed, one of the great what-ifs of last season is just how much better City might have fared if Wright had continued to lead the line over the second half of the campaign, instead of leaving for Plymouth. City certainly struggled without him, eventually returning to one up front (Andy Cook) because they could not find a decent partner for Oliver/Cook to play off.
Wright was missed, and must surely have missed us too. It didn’t go well for him at Argyle, and he was out in the cold as they clinched promotion. A player who had experienced less than successful loan spells at Northampton, Walsall and Salford – plus a failure to get near the Aston Villa first team – was once again stuck on the sidelines. His stuttering career had finally got lift off at City, and yet in Devon it once again stalled.
Now, he has a chance to pick up where he left off.
With City’s recent success at Derby County the result of moving to a 3-4-3, the opportunity is there for Wright to return and thrive. Wright would ideally suit the wide forward role that Bobby Pointon and Harry Chapman performed so well. Or, if Alexander wants to return to 3-5-2, Wright could replace Tyler Smith and play up top alongside Cook.
This signing, albeit a loan, is certainly a welcome statement of intent by the club. With so much gloom and worry following the shock departure of Harry Lewis, this could once again lift the mood and give fans reasons to retain some semblance of faith in the club. It shows they can still attract decent players who want to be here, and that they are prepared to make some level of financial commitment to fund their intentions.
In what is proving to be a typically topsy-turvy transfer window, this is a moment to enjoy. Wright’s second Valley Parade coming begins against Doncaster on Saturday. It suddenly feels like we’ll have good reason to turn up with a spring in our step, just at the point where going to home games was beginning to feel like a chore.
In the 1980s soap opera Dallas, a high profile storyline that involved killing off a popular character – J.R. – was followed by a steep decline in the show’s popularity. In desperation, the producers engineered a storyline that another character, Bobby, had dreamt the last few months’ worth of events in the shower, and that J.R. was actually still alive. They erased the rubbish bit, and tried to start again at the point before it went wrong.
After a difficult period for Wright, his gets to have his own ‘Bobby’ moment and pretend that the last 12 months was all a bad dream. He’s back home.
Categories: Opinion
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Good news indeed. So that is one loan player that will turn out well and one hopes may blossom into a permanent signing. However, the question is where do we intend to play him? In our current formation it would possibly be as a left wingback, which might well negate his attacking strengths. Presumably now Wilson is going to have to go out on loan for his own development. We are pretty well stocked with wingers for a team that doesn’t play them.
Something big was needed and this is exactly the sort of signing we should be making. Well done to all involved.
Possibly one of the best attackers in the league and adds some much needed pace & directness up-front; or out on the wing.
It might also give Alexander the chance to try some new formations beyond the ones you mention – especially if we recruit one or two more players. It might be that he actually doesn’t want to employ either 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 and has just felt they best reflect the squad we have at the minute.
Also means if Young is going, we’ve made a more than adequate replacement.
On a related comment, I would like to see us try and follow this up by signing some emerging talent from the National League. We do often tend to bring players back who have performed well in the past (Billy Clarke, Josh Cullen, Dion Pereira) which is fine and has worked on occasions, but shouldn’t be our sole focus (particularly given this could be viewed as an attempt to get fans back on-side after a rocky spell).
As we have with Lewis and potentially Young, it’d be good bring in a new asset who is performing well perhaps a tier below and give them a platform to build on. There’s plenty of good options too who I’m sure would relish coming up a league and playing at VP, rather than those already on their way down from L1 where we’re seen as just another club.
Still think there’s a lot of understandable frustration and this doesn’t fully ameliorate that, but it’s a good start and shows ambition. Few more signings of this quality and we might have a chance of competing for the play-offs.
Last Saturday a fellow city supporting with me of over 55 years and best friend asked “when does it all end”. The answer very sadly is when we die.
None of this is intended to be personal, just my observations. It is not a response to Jake.
How we watch a game of football matters to us all too much. Our prior knowledge and experiences and biases feed into how we interpret and communicate the action that unfolds: one man’s crunching tackle is another’s reckless foul; your laboured possession may be my patient build-up play. You say sweeper keeper, I say goalie. Do we benefit from opening our minds and allowing a variety of opinions to percolate in our football pot, opinions that may often be at odds with our preconceptions? The more source material we’re exposed to, the more chance we hope we have of locating the most appropriate nugget of enlightenment to convert what can often appear uncertainly haphazard into something meaningful. Then we spout it as if we are all Alf Ramsey. Or in other words, we know what’s for the best.
Yet here we are speaking bollocks again. Not just me. Yes, you as well. None of us have run or managed a football club. Least of all, one with over 15,000 season tickets this season and one failing to live up to expectations. Yet we all know best don’t we? All of us do and that is an emotive issue naturally.
Yet I’m getting fed up listening to people talk bullshit about tactics and formations and too much football science. Get to the ball first and you’ve got a chance. Don’t get first to the ball, you’ve got no chance. Simple. Tackle, run, cross, pass, put it in the net. Simple as! No, I am not an old man shaking his fist at a cloud.
To a glaring lack of quality presents the barrier one day following a dismal home defeat underlining the limitations of Bradford City’s football. Sandwiched in the middle, impressive Bradford City performance sees exciting cup progression. Confusing WOAP but possibly correct and definitely expressed as if correct and knowing best it seems.
Our conversation pre and post games are dominated, usually by systems and management. Systems none of us really or genuinely understand but believe we do because we played for the under 11’s at school albeit years ago. Perhaps some of us rose to dizzy heights of hung over Sunday leagues. I am certain some of us will boast higher levels attained but really most of us are out of our depth.
We all know best. For christ’s sake, McCall, Adams, Trueman with Sellers, Grayson, Hughes, Hopkins, Bowyer et al, now Alexander, they all know jack shit. I go back much further than that but I’ll dial it in for those youngsters who come later to the after Parkinson party – not those with the flares, they can F off for good! I am certain some will disagree or you will tell me otherwise or click thumbs down if I’m wrong. Perhaps that would be more of a comment upon you than of me though.
Hey, but Tyreik’s here now so we’re going for promotion (again). I see that for you Jason “it suddenly feels like we’ll have good reason to turn up with a spring in our step, just at the point where going to home games was beginning to feel like a chore.” I realise that yours is a flippant and throw away comment but actually it is nonsense isn’t it? If you don’t want to go, then don’t go. ‘If’ he’s as good is a massive ‘if’ in “his fledgling career………… a career that has gone awry” and hanging targets and expectations upon such a young inexperienced player, who don’t forget has only 15 City and a further six appearances in over a year and none since, quote “all the way back in September…..Wright’s last appearance for Argyle was as a sub in a 1-0 loss to Coventry in late November, ….. a player who had experienced less than successful loan spells at Northampton, Walsall and Salford – plus a failure to get near the Aston Villa first team” really is too much to hang your hat on.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed those few games he played really well in and got match point. I genuinely hope he can live up to all the hype, his own promises, and his playing promise from a year ago. That’s right though. A year ago! It really does not necessarily mean if Young is going, we’ve made a more than adequate replacement. Only time will tell if he’s the messiah. That is not negative spin but bigger news would be keeping Young.
Because we all know Young has already proved himself elsewhere despite the shameful way he was treated, verging on constructive dismissal, at our club. Why, on this earth of fullers, are we not trying (really hard and actually trying) to hold on to the top scorer in the league to play him alongside last year’s top scorer in the league? And he would be like a new player for us. Some crap written on here has been vindictive about the feigning of an injury. So what? Well – tell me why you wouldn’t after the way this club treated him? I hope that you have an answer Mr Sparks and one you might care to share with us? Thought not.
At least have a debate about it!! There should really be no pressure to sell him unless an offer is made so high it will fund a better top league two striker with recent goals in the bank. Oh, hang on, we have already got one. Nor ought his wages be very high under his existing 18 months under contract with a club year option on top. You do well when you have a Mills and Blake, Hanson and Wells, Campbell and Hawley/Futcher. Why would this club throw that ‘baby’ out with the bath water? Seriously, if not this season, then maybe next and with an actual planned future with reasoned purpose? With Wright’s loan we now also potentially have a Hendrie, a Beagrie, a Reed.
Lewis going was business. I get that one. It seems he wanted out. I do not know. What I do know is he was not the form goalie who played last season. Be honest, he really was not, “Up the chickens or not”. BCFC have had many better No 1’s than him.
And yet, here’s the thing, Gent has taken no end of flack on this website and it has also been inferred by its editors, and been much more and too vitriolic elsewhere. Now, I have no clue if he’s any good at his job, if Gent was at logger heads with Hughes or what happened there. Maybe Sparks couldn’t join two footballing dots together? But, Gent brought Wright to the club on loan in the first place, who is now our saviour it seems, he brought Lewis here too and he brought Young didn’t he?
Football’s growing culture and social media war of alternative opinions should carry warnings. Off-field disputes now involve a breed of football watcher comfortable with data analysis and abstract concepts, every formation under the sun, sponsored corner kicks, all of it encouraged by the Premier League, replay upon replay and its own personal pathetic VAR and involve an older generation, once distilled to the moniker of “proper football men” (or women).
So my conclusion is somewhat clichéd: that the tactical discipline and physical exertion of both sides in a League two game usually cancels each other out but it is odd individual brilliance, a mistake we would never make, a missed pass or tackle we would never let happen, a deflection we might have avoided, the run of the ball we would have avoided or always a cheating refereeing decision naturally always against us that make the difference. A brilliance we never possessed and could never have ever attained, opportunities we never could ever have hoped to be part of, deflections that would probably bounce in off our shin.
Actually I am an old man shaking his fist at a cloud. It is a very simple game at City’s level , and for me does not need wide right hand defensive restrictors covering a counter attack aka a right sided defensive occasionally offensive outside half, inside half, wing half, inverted wing back or inverted full back, right of centre mid line hugging forward, pressing supplementary width proponent, transitional independent right sided zonal advocate playing in the slot, restricting narrow or wide even lateral right sided dribbling wizard roaming the channels between the lines. It’s an overlapping full back who can tackle, head a ball, run and cross a football accurately as and when required. The other day, I heard of a “regressive regenerating phase” operating with opportunism dropping deep within zones 9, 12 or (god forbid) going high in zone 15. Or I am I an old-school beacon of common sense?
Amazing stuff. I don’t know what a ‘transitional independent right sided zonal advocate playing in the slot’ is, but I definitely want one. Maybe Tyreik Wright can play an inverted hybrid version of that for us. Yes what happened in football, everyone is a tactical wizard now. Is it the rise of Football Manager? Data science? Foreign coaches? Or just the inevitable next phase of our beautiful game? Personally I enjoy the new technical revolution, the patterns of football are things I haven’t seen before, but I haven’t the foggiest what’s really going on.
You lost me at Saturday
I enjoyed reading that post Ces and a lot of that resonates with me as I try my best to understand all the formations trying to keep up but football in L2 really is a simple game! Hoping Tyreik can get back to his best when he was in a City shirt from the start! Still hoping for a decent finish this season!
I’m with Cloughie on this one, football is a simple game complicated by coaches. Eleven v Eleven with a ball on a rectangle.
It was Bobby who’d died and his wife Pam who woke from her dream to find Bobby in the shower, alive. Wright will be a disappointment, like Pereira was when he came back. Okay, maybe not that big a disappointment.
Hallelujah with bells on. My 15 year old son bounced into the room to tell me this- the most positive he’s been in weeks. Fingers crossed this isn’t a Dion Pereira moment. He will have the fanbase willing him on and, when firing towards the Kop, sucking the ball into the back of the net….
Argyle fan here in peace.
This move has been rumoured around the club for a while. Like a few of our squad I think Wright has been a victim of our promotion last season. I think he would have got game time if we’d stayed in League 1, but the jump from League 1 to the Championship is pretty steep (much bigger than I remember when we were last up there) and it’s just been too much for him. He’s also suffered because we have an ambundence of attacking wingers, partly due to how our last manager likely to set up the team.
I actually think there’s a chance you could sign him at the end of the season. We seem to be shedding players this transfer window in order (hopefully) to make space for some Championship quality players, and if we stay up I suspect we wouldn’t turn down a modest bid for him. If he’s successful on loan your biggest risk is a league 1 club getting wind of him and nabbing him instead.
Great perspective, thanks for sharing and good luck for the rest of the season!
Might turn out to be an even better day if the strong rumours of Oliver’s departure are true. It’s sadly not worked out for him with City.
Oliver reminds me of my rugby playing days, always just behind the play, just too late to make the tackle! He clearly can play but I agree it hasn’t worked out.
Yes but he’s only had a handful of chances. People have written off many players, including Smith, Halliday, Gilliead, Cook. He could well come good given a run in the team and the right role or formation.
Come on lad share the rumour at least!?
Good comparison with Dallas Jason though I must point out JR was shot,survived and not actually killed off, it led to a National TV whodunnit with “Who shot JR”that gripped the nation. Bobby was killed off and then revived in the Shower scene but nothing to do with JR shooting. Pleased Wright is back by the way.
Thanks Keith, I’d like to think I’m showing my age with my Dallas inaccuracies – I was too young to watch it 😉
Typical
Just when I’d given up.
It’s the hope that kills you.
Sadly I’m getting old remembering programs like Dallas
Great signing, really enjoyed watching Wright last season. All the doom mongers won’t be happy now, surely they can’t put a negative spin on this news!
Can’t wait for Bobby Pointon to link up with Wright, imagine the precision passing triangles with pace we can now create, this is a massive loan signing and could now springboard our season, let’s hope another striker is on the way on the back of the Jake Young fund, I think that ankle niggle injury Jake is carrying has another 16 days left to heal 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
Great news! At last positive news coming out of Valley Parade. He featured a fair amount at Plymouth in their 1st division promotion side and did OK imo. Let’s hope he plays in his preferred position.
Just imagine Cook, Wright and Young upfront together- goals galore. Play a back 4 as the two full backs prefer it. I don’t think GA has had any say in transfers in or out since arriving. The goalkeeper was Doyle’s mate, Wright was here before. Lewis was sold under GA and so will Young. The manager did say when he arrived back that he was looking forward to integrating Young into the squad and he would be like a new player.
Was thinking the same. Add walker into that, with our 4231 and that’s a good front 4. Young played wider when he was first here if I remember, put in a shift and scored some goals.
Add Pattison, Chapman, Bobby and Vadine, that is a good enough 4 from 8 surely to be a threat each game?
Yes JBB he (Jake) played a few games in the EFL Trophy early last season and scored some good goals from distance and acute angles. If My memory is correct scored 2 in one home win. He deserved first team action even if only as sub. However once you cross / challenge the Manager your time is limited so Hughes loaned him out non league.
Other rumours were he was a bit lazy in training however those older fans like me remember our Number 9 legend Bobby Campbell who had six pints on a Friday night and would score a hat trick the following afternoon!!! Those good old days
The thing is he has a great work ethic, so I don’t think he is going to have any issues with fitting in.
Good signing.
I really hope this signing works out for player and club. I cringe when I think of the fanfare around pereira’s return and the damp squib it turned out to be. I can’t claim to know anything about pereira or that he didn’t have the right mindset but the noises so far about the wright signing really sound like he is here and is all business. Motivated to prove a point to everyone including himself and is chomping at the bit to get his head down and work hard. I really hope this is the master stroke we all need. Good luck to all.
Pereira has returned to Luton today!