By Jason McKeown, Tim Penfold and Alex Scott

See the first, second and third parts of our Bradford City squad assessment.

Onto midfield then.

It was a small change but a significant one. Out of form in March, and as the protests played out at Valley Parade on Good Friday, City faced a crunch game with Tranmere, where Graham Alexander switched his midfield three from two holding and one number 10, to one holder and two attacking midfielders. He inverted the triangle. And succeeded in making City more effective.

Will Alexander continue that approach this season? The summer recruitment in this area hasn’t been considerable, and a clutch of familiar faces will be tasked with delivering in the middle of the park. But there is at least one significant arrival that could alter the dynamic.

Richie Smallwood

By Tim

Richie Smallwood has been, shall we say, a divisive player in his two seasons at Bradford City.

Signed by Mark Hughes to replace Elliot Watt at the base of the midfield, Smallwood has generally not hit the heights expected of him in his time at the club. He was woefully miscast as a deep playmaker when he’s spent much of his career as a ball-winner, and his partnership with Alex Gilliead was high on industry but low in quality, particularly when City dominated possession and had to break down teams that were sitting in. He was captain, but that seemed to give him the right to take every set piece, and while his corners often beat the first man, they also often beat every single other man and sailed out of play.

Yet under Graham Alexander he has shown some better form. Alexander’s teams don’t want the ball as much, and that plays into Smallwood’s strengths, although sometimes this has meant that he’s gone from endless sideways passes to endless hoofs into the corner.

At the end of the season though, the midfield really clicked. Smallwood’s role was simple – win the ball back and give it to either Pointon or Walker to progress it forward. With Halliday and Wright as attacking wing backs carrying the ball from back to front too, it was no longer all on him to get the ball up the pitch, and Smallwood’s performances improved no end as a result.

This is a key season now for the City skipper. He’s still the obvious choice for the deepest midfielder unless we play Sarcevic deeper, and he’s got one year left on his contract without an extension clause this time. If he can play like he finished last season, and is in a role that suits his strengths and weaknesses, then he may end up remembered quite fondly, but if the squad he leads continues to flounder then his City career will remain a disappointment.

What a good season looks like: Plays well and regularly in defensive midfield, breaking up play and generally being an asset to the team. Lee Bullock 2009/10.

What a great season looks like: His leadership and performances drive the team on to new heights and, hopefully, promotion. Stuart McCall 1998/99.

Alex Gilliead

By Jason

There were eyebrows raised by some when Alex Gilliead polled second in the WOAP writers’ player of the season award for 2023/24. A player who never lets anyone down, but who rarely seems to be the standout difference. Gilliead scored brownie points for playing reasonably well in a team that was not always playing coherently.

Gilliead was fine. Not the problem, if not exactly looking like the long-term solution for a team that stuttered for most of last season.  

The club’s longest serving player, Gilliead goes into a fourth straight season at Valley Parade with long-standing concerns about his end product still lingering, and an uncomfortable truth that the team ended last season in excellent form, with the North East native on the sidelines. Injury had struck in March, and in Gilliead’s absence Alexander unearthed a new formula of playing only one defensive midfielder – six wins from seven the impressive result.

And so Gilliead will find the competition for places tougher this time around. No longer Richie Smallwood’s midfield wingman, but a direct opponent for the only holding role. With Alexander going to great lengths to keep Smallwood over the summer, Gilliead’s prospects have diminished. Especially with suggestions close season arrival Antoni Sarcevic could end up playing deeper.

In some ways, Gilliead is now in a position where most of us would ideally like him to be. A squad player who can make an impact. Filling in different positions when needed. Fresh legs off the bench, when others are tiring. Gilliead could easily play 30 games this season without being first choice, making an important contribution that the team can’t do without. A much-needed Plan B.

It’s not necessarily great for Gilliead himself, but with City needing to raise the bar to raise the table, it might not be a bad thing if overall standards leave him more on the fringes.

Alternatively, Alexander might abandon last season’s late boldness of playing two attacking midfielders behind a front two and decide he needs another holder. Or Smallwood doesn’t hit the heights we need him to, and is dropped.

We’ve all seen enough of Gilliead to know what he is good at – and so what his ceiling probably is. You can’t not love the guy for the many great things he embodies. You wouldn’t want to lose his positive influence. But the harsh truth is that if Gilliead’s polling second in our player of the season poll come next May, it’s probably because something has gone wrong at the club again.

What a good season looks like: He produces another 12 months of whole-hearted, committed performances and scoops plenty of man of the match awards along the way. Alex Gilliead in 2023/24.  

What a great season looks like: He becomes the driver of the team. Playing as a deep midfielder with a good eye for a pass and inspiring others, attracting adoration from fans who sing his name all season. Josh Cullen in 2016/17.

Kevin McDonald

By Alex

Ooft. What is there to say, really? Coming to join Mark Hughes’s ball playing squad, set on a promotion push in the summer of 2023, the move up north seemed a potentially great one for McDonald, coming off a serious illness and a kidney transplant. A former Premier League player, no longer capable of competing at the level, the Scot will have found kinship with Hughes at Valley Parade, and this will have seemed as safe a landing zone as any to get back into football. 

Fast forward three months, Hughes was out and McDonald was managing the team for an extended period, losing all the fitness he had previously built up. Then a new manager comes in, imposing a completely different style, decides he doesn’t fancy McDonald, and leaves him to atrophy on the bench from January with another 18 months to run on his contract.

At least he had a preseason to get back up to fitness this summer. Except he’s been banished again out of the first team squad, refused a place on the squad’s summer trip to Austria, with the club repeatedly leaking to the T&A how he doesn’t have a future with the squad. Antoni Sarcevic has seemingly taken his place in the squad and midfield rotation and that is probably all she wrote for Kev in a City shirt. 

Save for injury and illness, it’s hard to think how his year long spell at Valley Parade could have gone worse. He now has seemingly no market after now essentially four years without a decent run in a team. 

Especially given the service he gave the club late last year, stepping into the lurch after the leadership completely bungled the start of the season, at the cost of one of the final seasons of his career, the way he’s been treated by the club over the past six months has been really poor. The rawest of raw deals.

What a good season looks like: He finds somewhere where he can play somewhere he is valued.

What a great season looks like. We’ll settle for a good one, ta. 

Antoni Sarcevic

By Jason

It’s fair to say that Antoni Sarcevic is the most exciting capture of the summer so far. A distinctive name and a distinctive playing style, the Manchester Messi is a well-known lower league player, with a CV that features seven promotions (five from League Two). The Bantams are looking for serial winners. Looking for people like Sarcevic to spread his magic dust over a club weighed down by failure.

On paper it’s a great signing. Sarcevic has just helped Stockport win the league with 15 goal involvements along the way. He’s 32, so far from over the hill. Vice-captain at Edgeley Park, he brings leadership and knows this level incredibly well. His experience and know-how could be huge. He’s also worked with Alexander before at Fleetwood, so there seems to be little risk of a bad manager-player relationship.

All really good stuff. Genuinely, this could be a lot of fun. But there’s a but. This is a good signing…yet the more you think about it, the less sense it really makes. Especially after a close season where the club has told us they are restricted on signing players because of a need to move on others. Sarcevic is bolstering a part of the team that was arguably least in need of strengthening.

Where he will play is the big question. He is known as an attack-minded midfielder but has played deeper in recent years. Billed as a “deep-lying playmaker” he is arguably the player City spent 18 months wanting Richie Smallwood to be, before accepting defeat and letting the captain concentrate on being a holding midfielder who wins and gives the ball to more talented players.

On the surface, Sarcevic could be Smallwood’s replacement – but why retain the (supposedly) well-paid captain if you’re going to move him to the sidelines? There is every chance Sarcevic could end up in a more advanced role, playing with Jamie Walker, and ahead of Bobby Pointon and Alex Pattison. Again not the biggest priority you’d think. Sarcevic could be many things for City this season – including career staller of the club’s most exciting emerging talent in 20 years.

Ultimately, Sarcevic’s biggest problem might be fitting into a City midfield that ended last season looking hugely effective. If he claims a high-performing team-mate’s place and elevates the team, that’s got to be good of course. (We are Bradford City AFC, not Bobby Pointon AFC.) But the worry is that the resources spent bringing Sarcevic might – whisper it – have been better used elsewhere.

Put it this way, if Sarcevic doesn’t significantly shift the dial, and the current suspicions that City are defensively weaker prove to be the reality, the Manchester Messi might not prove to be the winner we thought we lacked after all.

What a good season looks like: He fits in effectively, producing a series of strong displays and memorable goals, but the team as a whole just falls short of promotion. Billy Knott in 2014/15.  

What a great season looks like: He proves to be the inspirational leader who transforms the culture of the dressing room, bringing a winning mentality to the club through a series of inspirational displays that invite hero-worshipping status from the Bradford public. Gary Jones in 2012/13.  

Tomorrow, we move onto the attacking part of the midfield.

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