By Luke Lockwood
Last season was by no means the worst year to be a Bradford City fan. We’ve nearly gone out of business on multiple occasions, almost exited the Football League and experienced relegations where we’ve gone down without a fight.
However, it definitely felt like one of the most difficult seasons to be a Bradford City fan. Growing frustration at not being able to get out of the division, lingering disappointment from the failed play off attempt that never really threatened to be successful, and a failure to embrace the positives that season left us underprepared after a haphazard offseason.
By November, it was all change again. Another plan discarded, a frustrating style of football that failed to improve despite another change in the dugout, and growing discontent that resulted in a fractious supporter base. Fans jumped to action against the club’s continued failings through letters and protests.
Our owner spoke, made promises, and offered a reset. A final flourish of a new brand of attack-minded, attractive football, alongside the appointment of David Sharpe, offered some hope.
However, fast forward to July, and there’s a growing feeling that with a lack of investment on the pitch, those promises have been broken. We approach the 2024/25 season with less optimism and more negativity than ever before.
As with any pre-season, there is still optimism in some sections of the fan base. To lift the mood, let’s try and put forward that point of view.
1) Questions remain over the defence – but we should no longer have liabilities
The jury is out on whether we will be stronger or weaker, but this is understandably the main cause for concern among detractors, having seen two highly regarded defenders exit.
Callum Johnson looks the most impressive signing. While there are questions over injuries, he has an impressive CV. We’ve definitely taken a risk, and from reports, he seems only available to League Two clubs because of these risks. It’s a similar situation to when we signed Brad Halliday. Promotions with Accrington Stanley and Mansfield are on his CV.
Aden Baldwin was part of Notts County’s defence that shamefully conceded more goals than anyone else last season. Reports from County’s fan base suggest he has the abilities of a great ball-playing centre back, but was responsible for many individual errors.
Finally, Neil Byrne feels the most underwhelming, having struggled to be consistently first choice in the last couple of seasons, but he has potentially been brought in as backup. These three are seemingly brought in as the replacements for Jon Tomkinson, Matty Platt, and Ash Taylor.
Tomkinson impressed many, although he was also more than ably replaced by Daniel Oyegoke in our final impressive run. Are Callum Johnson and Aden Baldwin better centre halves than Jon Tomkinson? Having not seen much of either player, I’ll hold my opinion on that one but take a different angle.
Tomkinson only started 17 games for Bradford City last year, while Ash Taylor had 10 starts and Liam Ridehalgh played six times at centre back. When Ridehalgh or Taylor played, we averaged less than a point a game. Therefore, this season I would suggest and hope we won’t have 16 games with such a liability in defence, we will have a more settled back five, and therefore be defensively stronger over a 46-game season.
That said, losing Matty Platt, who has been a central figure in one of the best defences in League Two for the past two seasons, is a big blow. I’m not sure any of the signings can replace his presence and consistency. However, I’m not sure that matters…
2) Because of Sam ‘Phoenix” Stubbs
Sam Stubbs had a subpar season in 2023/24, but let’s not forget what has gone before in his short career.
He was a big part of the Exeter side that got promoted in 2022/23 after becoming a fixture in the team halfway through. In the first half of the season, Exeter kept four clean sheets in their first 21 games. In the 21 games Stubbs started, they kept 13 clean sheets. He missed 3 games in the second half of that season, in which Exeter only kept one clean sheet.
After getting injured at Exeter, he joined us for the second half of the 2022/23 season. Alongside Matty Platt, they created a formidable partnership, keeping seven clean sheets in the first 12 games he played. Romoney Critchlow’s return brought a more expansive style of football, and we only kept one clean sheet in the next seven, but Stubbs was key to an improved second half of the season.
I would like to believe last season can be written off as the anomaly rather than the norm, and there’s enough evidence to suggest that to be true. Stubbs never got a chance to play in a settled back three or four and had to switch between systems and partners.
Most of his games at Exeter were played in a back three, so he has shown he can be part of a solid unit in the system we are likely to play. Graham Alexander has also spoken positively about how he has returned for pre-season in terms of his condition.
The question at the start of last season was not, will Stubbs play?, but who will play alongside Stubbs? If Sam Stubbs, who started last season as vice-captain to Richie Smallwood, features prominently for Bradford City this season, our Platt replacement is already in the house.
3) We rectified two of our biggest problems in January and it showed
The 2022/23 season fell short as everyone could see we were being carried by Andy Cook and Harry Lewis. At the beginning of 2023-24, we were still unable to find a partner for Cook, and an out-of-sorts Harry Lewis was throwing them into his own net. I’m sure Lewis will come back to form for Carlisle, but while not as likely to make weekly Gordon Banks-esque saves and friendly, heart-winning videos, Sam Walker looked generally more assured, and his experience seemingly helped an inexperienced defence.
At the end of the window, Calum Kavanagh also joined Bradford City. Heavily ridiculed for being another Stephen Gent, ex-Boro special, and somehow not having scored hundreds of senior career goals at the age of 20.
Raw, determined, and once seemingly capturing heavy interest from Arsenal and Chelsea, Kavanagh took some of the burden from Cook. No longer lonely up front, having to do it all on his own, Cook had a partner seemingly willing to chase every endless lost cause.
In the 17 games post-January, we picked up 32 of our 69 points. This included the injury crisis in March, producing four defeats and 13 goals shipped. It is now suggested we shouldn’t be blinded by the final seven-game run, but perhaps we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the four-game losing streak when the team was filled with players who won’t get near the starting XI this season.
4) They really are like new signings
I know many fans hate to hear it, but they are options that weren’t available to Alexander last season and therefore they are new options for the squad.
Imagine the scenario where we had signed a young centre forward who scored 16 league goals for a poor Swindon side in just 23 games.
While a small sample size, Jake Young’s goal-per-minute ratio before joining Barrow was also very good. He scored his 11 league Two goals at a rate of 1 every 185 minutes. Add in all competitions, and his 16 goals have been scored at a rate of 1 every 194 minutes.
Yes, we shouldn’t ignore Barrow, but he was a player low on confidence, sat on the bench, and only started five games. We have a player who clearly knows where the back of the net is, and, competing with Kavanagh, a genuine partner for Cook, which we didn’t have for all of the first half of last season.
Cook won’t score 28 league goals next season, but he should get somewhere in the region of his 17 from this season. We can be confident Kavanagh and Young will make up the difference and more.
Imagine, that same summer, we signed a central midfield player who had 18 league goals in his previous two seasons for his previous club, but he wasn’t even guaranteed a game because we’d also signed serial promotion winner Antoni Sarcevic. Alex Pattison looked a phenomenal signing pre-injury, and there’s no denying that both he and Sarcevic are a significant upgrade on Gilliead, who played three-quarters of last season in central midfield.
Pattison scored as many goals in his 13 appearances as Gilliead has in his 98 for us in the last two seasons. Gilliead hasn’t let anyone down, but he was a limiting factor in 2022/23 and 2023/24. Pattison was signed to rectify that last season and looked like inspired business before his injury.
Yes, I hear the concerns over his injury, and the risk with the type of muscle injury that could flare up again, but he clearly looks after himself and has never missed many games previously. Should Pattison be first choice and he does break down, he won’t be replaced by Gilliead but by Sarcevic or even Walker, who proved a capable central midfielder at the end of last season.
5) We also don’t need Walker to be fit all season
We know how important Jamie Walker has been to this Bradford City side, but we just haven’t been able to keep him on the pitch. Alas, looking at his record, it would appear to be a problem his whole career.
When Walker couldn’t play last season, we had Pattison on the sidelines and Bobby Pointon was criminally not trusted. This meant we played the vast majority of the season trying numerous options behind Cook, but for too long, that involved Clarke Oduor or Emmanuel Osadebe. Fans pulled their hair out as Oduor and Osadebe were favoured above ‘one of our own’ and also Harry Chapman, who’d been reasonably important to our better performances the season before.
This season, there is a genuine battle between Pointon and Walker to start at 10. We only need Walker to be fit for half a season because this season we won’t spend the other half fumbling around for his replacement – we will go to Bobby.
With Sarcevic and Pattison also options in that role, should one of them be playing at 8, but for an injury crisis, Oduor – who had a handful of great games but was anonymous in the majority of his 20 starts – also shouldn’t get near the starting XI.
So, with these options in the squad, we should offer more threat all over the pitch. The past two seasons, outside of Cook, we simply haven’t scored enough goals. Last season, only six teams scored fewer than us. Whether it’s Gilliead upgraded to Pattison/Sarcevic, Oduor/Osadebe upgraded to Pointon, or Tyler Smith to Kavanagh/Young, we have to be confident we will score more goals this season.
To summarise
There was enough ability in our squad to make the play offs last season and, while slightly unfortunate with injuries, we did not make the most of the quality within our squad. Alexander is not without blame, but his record since joining holds up with the top of the division.
We shouldn’t be blinded by the final seven games when the pressure was off, but there is a case to say we actually started to pick the best players available. Our record from January onwards, following the addition of Kavanagh and Walker, also holds up against the better teams.
It’s quite possible that our defence this season is a regression on our best defence last season. However, last season we saw that defence far too infrequently together. Defensively, we will net out at a similar position to last season over 46 games.
Going forward, we undoubtedly are much stronger and have more depth in our available options. We should see an increase in our goal output. We should therefore kill off more games, turning draws into wins and defeats into draws.
I might be trying too hard to convince myself, but what’s the point in football without hope and expectation? Let’s be confident we can increase our points total to secure a play off place as a minimum, let’s believe we have a squad capable of achieving better.
Hope 
This means more 
Assessing the 2025/26 Bradford City squad #3: The frontline of the 3-4-3 
Assessing the 2025/26 Bradford City squad #2: The middle part of the 3-4-3 
widthofapost.com 
Excellent article.
You’ve presented the facts and the facts show that we have a reason to be cautiously optimistic, as the squad stands at the minute.
I am though puzzled at this “lack of investment on the pitch” theme, that so many Bantams have.
It’s puzzling, because;-
1 – We were never given a figure of how much they were going to invest.
2 – We already had a good squad, with not many potential departures. Certainly, as good as any ending a season that I can remember in League 2. So we didn’t need lots of signings – we needed some quality ones plus crucially making sure that the likes of Walker etc stayed.
3 – Money will have been spent keeping Halliday and giving Pointon a new deal etc
4 – With the exception of perhaps Byrne, all of the signings so far have L2 quality, in areas where we needed. If Baldwin is a ball playing defender, then that’s great. He’ll have the likes of Stubbs, who for me on form is the best in L2, as a partner. Plus if you look on the Notts County forums, they say he was often made the scapegoat as nobody, during last season for them, to defensive responsibility.
5. The squad was already too big anyway. So a net reduction in players, i.e. fewer signings than normal was always going to happen.
6. Not certain we should be buying ‘star’ players for the sake of it. Let’s have cash in hand, to use right up to the deadline and then in January.
I’ve not been this optimistic since Parky’s first full season. Probably because I think GA is a very good manager at this level and L1 – as Scunthorpe and Fleetwood fans will attest to.
No predictions though!!
Completely agree. I don’t see any broken promises!
Good summary of points here.
I think the fact the club has had trialists from non-league and the latest talk of signing a new player was on loan shows that the majority of the playing budget is being used on current players and there probably isn’t much left to bring on a new squad member on decent wages. We’ve kept players who are probably our highest earners through both choice (e.g. Walker) or seemingly lack of choice (e.g. Oliver, McDonald?). On paper we have a decent squad and it’s clear we won’t bring in any new players on decent money until we can offload some of the current squad who aren’t in Alexander’s plans.
I wouldn’t be adverse to keeping Oliver, he showed in glimpses in 22/23 that he can be a useful alternative and there’s clearly a good goalscorer in there if he can get in form and his teammates play to his strength.
An accurate summary of last season and some interesting speculations on what the new signings might do for us. An excellent article striking a nicely optimistic tone.
One point about next season that has struck me, and I’ve not seen expressed elsewhere, is how we will manage aerially in both boxes if we happen on occasions, as seems likely, to have Kavanagh, Pointon and Pattison on the field at the same time. They are all around 5’6”! If for no other reason than this, I hope the lad from Fylde, on trial, Sam Graham, meets Alexander’s expectations and adds height to the squad. He looks to be a big unit, dominant in the air.
The weak point in the squad, however, seems to me to be the lack of cover for central defensive midfield. If Smallwood, now well into his thirties, is injured or loses form, there’s no obvious replacement. Gilliead’s skill is in running, closing down and pressing, not tackling, breaking up play and distributing. (I wonder if Baldwin has ever played there because from what I’ve seen of him, he looks as though he might do a job for us.)
Fielding a trialist keeper at Chorley suggests we’re open to signing a backup in this position which makes perfect sense given Doyle’s age and lack of game time over the last few seasons.
My feeling is that Oliver might well stay. The management may have come to the conclusion the cost of paying him off and signing a decent replacement who is yet willing to come as an understudy to Cook is too great. Therefore if he can’t engineer a move for himself and understands his playing opportunities may be limited, he’s not the worst option to have as target man. Maybe in the last year of his contract he might put himself about a bit more and punch his weight. He’d be a formidable presence if he did.
Let’s see what today’s match brings.
Totally agree particularly in regards Oliver. Most likely have to pay him up, then are we really going to find someone better who’s willing to be backup? I make the same argument about Smith, he’ll be 4th / 5th choice so by that measure yes he’s good enough.
Agreed Joe. Tyler Smith has that priceless knack – rather like the young Michael Owen – of getting himself into fantastic positions. He’s right-footed (though left-handed) but what an exquisite chip with his left foot it was for one of his league goals, the more remarkable in that he was falling backwards. He certainly never hides. I think there is every chance he will come good. I hope it’s for us.
it’s all down to getting a good start
patience with Rupp has pretty much worn out
get a good start to the season and that won’t matter
But a bad start will see a toxic atmosphere pretty soon
home to Carlisle in particular looks a difficult weekend if we haven’t started well
Charlie Wyke hat trick?
Has Wyke ever scored a hat trick? Give me Cook everyday twice on Sundays
Well, I remember watching Wyke scoring a hat trick against Bristol Rovers. All, headed, as I recall. Surely, as a City fan, you remember that game?
History has shown it’s generally a folly to spend time fantasising in the close season about the forthcoming campaign’s prospects. How we ended last season is irrelevant. Every other club has recruited in the summer. Sixty years ago, the players lapped the Valley Parade pitch to get fit, trained on the shale car park and, pre-season, spent a few days “toughening up” at an army camp. Now, we have training facilities at Woodhouse Grove and, part of pre-season is spent taking in the beautiful landscape of Austria, with early morning bike rides and a cool dip in the river.
The only thing that hasn’t changed is the fact we’re still in the basement league.
Therefore, let’s all spend brief moments of optimism in dreaming what might be, Sadly, when the real business starts, it’s probably going to be a case of “as you were”.
It’s been a strange summer so far, in terms of how I’m viewing next year. I went into the summer more full of positivity (maybe naively), which probably peaked when we signed Sarcevic but then the lack of signings since Wright, increased scepticism from the online fan base on increased investment, pre-season performances (not that I put too much stock in them) and odd choice of trialists has led to my expectations being dulled a bit. I was chatting to a fellow City fan and did say the same line that Pattison and Young will be like new signings although I did cringe a little when I said it, albeit true.
However, this article does capture some good points and has given me some slightly renewed optimism namely that we have got good options and in Stubbs, Young and Pattison we do have three players who didn’t feature regularly due to injuries, loans and form but they have all shown they can be excellent performers at league two level. I was fortunate enough to watch Pattison score his 3 goals in 3 games for us (Away at Accy, home to Colchester and then on iFollow at Stockport) and he showed what we’d been missing for years, a midfielder who could run in behind onto flick ons and make well-timed runs into the box and finish confidently. He reminds me of Dave Syers in some respects although probably has a bit more polish to his game.
Do love the point in the final paragraph about football and hope/expectation, although as they say it’s the hope that kills you!
Thanks for this. Good to see a “glass half full” case made- and a reasoned one at that. I agree that we didn’t end the season expecting a major rebuild. It was about optimising and improving here and there.
i like several of the new signings. Sarcevic; Tyrek Wright, for example, can hopefully fit the right system and give us what we’ve seen him capable of. The big question mark is always injuries- which can make or break performance as a whole.
i predict…upward, downward, sideways, backwards, forwards, through the season….and who knows where that will ultimately take us. But I AM hopeful we COULD do it…
I think a lot will depend on Young. If he hits form everything could fall into place 🤞.
Not to be the lone negative voice in sea of positivity, but I’m going to be, because the jury is still out for me and the record of those at the top of the club does not warrant me giving them much benefit of the doubt.
The problem with saying that Pattison and Young are like new signings is keeping them fit to be like new signings – if they could stay fit then they would have been like new signings last season (when Pattison actually was). Johnson is already not fit, we expect Walker to only play 25 games a season, and so what is going to be different about this season’s fitness setup and injury list compared to last.
Signing Wright for left wing back seems to me more like a way of justifying signing Wright rather than getting the best player we can for that position. With such a problem position we should be making a dependable signing.
The defence is a worry – I can’t really guess who will be our starting back 3 against MK Dons. I agree that people have very quickly forgotten how good Stubbs was under Hughes and there is definately the defender we need is in there somewhere, but again I would have expected the kind of signing here that we can point to and say “Yep, he’s our new starting centre back, the one that we build the defence around”.
We were probably three top starting players away at the end of last season; a left back/wing back, a central midfielder and a centre back. I think we’ve only ticked off one of those (Sarcevic).
And in terms of broken promises, I can’t see where any extra funding for squad investment has gone. I’d say the budget is about the same if you swap out Chapman, Taylor, Platt, Odusina, Ridehalgh and Derbyshire for Sarcevic, Baldwin, Byrne, Wright and Johnson. If we really do have to shift players on before we can add any more, then I don’t see the evidence of an increase (not that past budgets have been a big problem for me, the past problems have been more how we’ve spent it).
I think there is a lot riding on any loan players ; if we bring in one or two top loan players – players who you would expect to start – then a lot of the above is irrelevant.
is everyone forgetting that our defence is now worse than last season without Platt and the lad from Brentford?
Bradford City should be in the top 3 next season with their resources and it’s only due to poor recruitment which lacks imagination that we will not be.
The signing of older substandard players who only play half a season doesn’t bear well.
Let’s hope Cook and Young can strike up a partnership it’s not guaranteed.
Defence does seem to be a bit of a poor relation with regards to investment and is a concern. In an ideal world we would have fewer players for the attacking midfield positions and more quality in defence. Admittedly I don’t know any of the new defensive players signed, so maybe we do have. I just hope that there is some pace somewhere. I also have high hopes for Kelly. He has improved quite a bit since his arrival, and since he is still a young player I hope he can continue with his development.
Yes I think this is the point. The main concern is we are perceiving us to be weaker defensively and not without reason, but we don’t know.
Undoubtedly Platt is a top class centre half at this level but in pre-season a year ago the vast majority would have opted for Stubbs over Platt. He too has shown himself to be top class in L2
Last year Brentford’s Oyegoke started 15 games for us. 5 at RWB – where I’m sure we can all agree he is a downgrade on Halliday – 3 in defensive midfield and 7 at centre back where he put in his best displays.
He performed well there but out of him and Tomkinson combined we only got half a season of football at CB. If we get 46 games out of Baldwin/Johnson in a settled defence that feels preferable. My understanding is that they (and Johnson particularly) are no slouches and replace the pace Oyegoke/Tomkinson offered in defence.
Is Kelly, Stubbs, Johnson/Baldwin weaker than Kelly, Platt, Tomkinson/Oyegoke? Possibly/probably
Is Kelly, Stubbs, Johnson/Baldwin weaker than Kelly, Stubbs, Taylor or Kelly, Ridehalgh, Tomkinson/Oyegoke, or a back 4 of Ridehalgh, Stubbs, Taylor, Halliday? There were 15 leagues games where we played these variations in defence last season and that is ultimately where we dropped our points.
In the 10 games Ash Taylor started at CB we conceded 15 goals. In the 5 games Ridehalgh started at centre back we conceded 13 goals. So for the third of a season where they were included our defensive record was on par with the bottom 6. The three quarters where they weren’t included at CB our defensive record was on par with the top 3. Even taking RIdehalgh out of the equation it is a bottom half record.
Baldwin has of course come from a defence that shipped the most goal in League 2 but the season before was part of the best defence in the National League. I don’t know why Notts County were so poor defensively last season maybe it was the incompetence of Baldwin.
I can be confident that we when we were poor the stats correlated to the eye test which both seemingly related to the selection of Ridehalgh and Taylor.