By Jason McKeown

For a player who has only ever started nine games for Bradford City, an awful lot has been written, said and debated about Jake Young. A player with more transfer sagas than actual goals in claret and amber ends an eventful two-and-a-bit years at Valley Parade by signing for League One Stevenage. He won’t be forgotten around these parts in a hurry, but it would be nice if we could finally talk about someone else.

The club – and Graham Alexander – will certainly hope to change the subject, but recent history suggests that might not be so easy. Half an eye of every Bradford City supporter will suddenly be directed at Stevenage starting line ups. Stevenage results. Stevenage goalscorers. If you want another stick to beat the club with, you’ll seize on any strong form Young produces in Hertfordshire. If you want a measurement of competency from the Bradford City brains trust, Young’s minutes per goal record will be a useful Key Performance Indicator (KPI).

At Valley Parade of late Young has been overlooked. Not involved. Not in Alexander’s immediate plans. So we’ve chosen to let him go. Taken the money. Opened the exit door, and helped him pack his bags. The club had already accepted an offer from League Two Fleetwood that the player clearly didn’t fancy. Young does not leave feeling wanted. Choosing to move on won’t have been a gut-wrenching decision.

Right now, it’s hard for anyone to say that selling Young is a good or a bad decision. But make no mistake, it will be judged retrospectively. In some ways this is the biggest call Graham Alexander has made as Bradford City manager. In time, he might prove to be a shrewd operator for allowing Young to leave after not playing him this season, or we might look back and conclude that this was the point he picked up the shovel and began digging his own grave.

Young has already helped one Bradford City manager – Mark Hughes – get the sack. He could ultimately prove a fly in the ointment to Alexander too. That will be the case if Young flourishes at Stevenage. If he does and City struggle at the same time, the wisdom of selling Young might be heavily scrutinised.

For Young at least, you do hope he can find a happy home. Signed two years ago as a 21-year-old forward with real promise, he departs Valley Parade as a 23-year-old forward with real promise. For the player himself, it will be hard to look back on his time as a Bantam without feeling frustration over the constant stalling of his career. A bumpy path, leaving question marks over Young as much as the City managers who have failed to unlock the player’s potential. Stevenage are already Young’s sixth different club. And he’s yet to start more than 25 games for anyone. The player moves on with much to prove still. By no means have Stevenage signed a sure-fire bet.

Young’s best spell occurred this time a year ago, where a very productive loan at Swindon Town saw him make national headlines and cause severe embarrassment for his parent club City. A considerable 16 goals from 22 starts (and 3 sub appearances). A pair of League Two player of the month awards. Michael Flynn, his then-manager, beamed at the time. “For me, he has been a joy to work with, you can see that he wants to improve and I am glad that he is taking on the information that we have been giving him.”

Young’s time in Wiltshire showed what he can do when given a proper opportunity. Had he remained fit and at the County Ground for the second half of last season, he probably would have bagged 30 goals. Such potential is huge, and one that City could surely have benefited from.

And that’s where the debates rage and rage. Was that Swindon form flash in the pan? Can he do it consistently? Why did Hughes not fancy Young? Why has Alexander elected to let him depart, not even giving him a start over City’s first four games of the season? Is there a side to Young that we, the public, have not seen which makes him difficult to trust? Or are we just churning over so many players that we’re making hasty decisions we’ll rue down the line?

Young was signed by Stephen Gent/Mark Hughes in the summer of 2022 having just won promotion from League Two with Forest Green. But he had largely operated on the fringes. Only 12 league starts for the Green Devils, 39 sub appearances. He was a good example of the Gent transfer philosophy of picking unfancied players and turning rough diamonds into gems. “This is a self-sufficient football club,” declared Gent two years ago. “It generates its own income. One way to do that is bring in players who are assets. Hopefully they’ll come on the journey with us but if that’s not the case, you can move them on and reinvest that money back into the squad.”

He wasn’t talking specifically about Young, but clearly Jake fits the bill as an example of his thinking in action. The fact City have ended two years of the Jake Young soap opera with a profit on the player will be cheered internally at least. No one quite envisaged the ups and downs that Young has gone through, but it does show the strengths of the recruitment model. To a point at least.

The ideal would have been that Young would thrive at City. Under Hughes in 2022/23, he did briefly threaten to establish himself against some strong competition. It’s almost two years to the day since an impressive start against Sheffield Wednesday in the Football League trophy, where Young scored two superb goals and ran the League One backline ragged. Four days later, Young started in a home game against Walsall and netted a stunning long range strike in front of the Kop. Find me a better Bradford City goal since the summer of 2022. I’ll wait.  

Just like his two predecessors in the Valley Parade hotseat, Hughes was playing a 4-2-3-1 formation that relied on wide forwards running at defenders, getting in the box to support the lone frontman Andy Cook, contribute goals and assists, and provide defensive cover. The quest to find such players had not gone brilliantly for Mark Trueman or Derek Adams. Young briefly threatened to be the solution for Hughes. He ran the channels well, and was a genuine goal threat.

Alas for Young, the Tuesday after his Walsall wonder goal saw the Bantams travel to Tranmere, where he struggled to hit the same heights. Young was rightly subbed on the hour with the score 1-1 and Tranmere in the ascendancy. City went onto win. Young was rumoured to be less than impressed at being taken off and was soon knocking on the door to the manager’s office. Hughes – who it is claimed is not a manager who likes confrontation – did not start Young in a league match again. Clearly the relationship between player and manager broke down and was never fixed.

For fans, who had liked the glimpses of Young we’d seen, the freezing out of the forward was curious. Especially after Tyriek Wright – who thrived as a wide forward – was recalled and sold by Aston Villa the following January. Hughes struggled to find suitable replacements to keep the 4-2-3-1 functioning. Other forward players arrived in that window and did not fare well, while at the same time Young was loaned out to Barrow. He didn’t pull up any trees at Holker Street, but neither did Dara Costelleo, Abo Eisa, Thierry Nevers and Emmanuel Osadebe back at Valley Parade. City ultimately fell short in the play offs. Just not enough of a goal threat when it really mattered.

But as Hughes and City picked up the pieces in the summer of 2023, a returning Young continued to be frozen out. Famously Young did not travel with the squad on the club’s pre-season trip to Spain, turning out instead alongside the kids at Bradford Park Avenue. He turned down a permanent transfer offer from Crawley because he wanted to prove himself at City and believed he could outlast Hughes. But with the door shut until the Welshman left at least, Young reluctantly had a trial at Swindon and a loan move was agreed. That’s where it all came together.

Young absolutely flourished at the County Ground. Soon the top scorer in League Two, whilst back in West Yorkshire City stuttered and just couldn’t get going under Hughes. For a time, Young had more goals for Swindon than the entire Bradford City squad had netted. It was seriously embarrassing for an increasingly under pressure Hughes. It was seriously embarrassing for the club too, with the memories of Eion Doyle’s loan move from City to Swindon still raw. Somewhat poetically for Young, Hughes’ last game in charge was at Tranmere Rovers – the apparent scene of the demise in their relationship. City were 18th at the time, with Swindon nestling nicely in the play offs.

Cue the drawn out appointment of Alexander and eventual return of Young. The will-he-won’t-he stay or leave rumbled on, with an increasingly cynical fanbase fully expecting City to cash in over January. Perhaps they would have done, had the Bantams not just made a tidy profit on Harry Lewis. Despite all the transfer rumours, and the fact Young was conveniently injured for most of the transfer window, he did eventually figure for Alexander. Improbably, the window closed with Young a Bantam. And with the biggest opportunity yet to establish himself as a City first team regular – or impress enough to force through a move to a higher league club during the summer.

But then injury struck at the wrong time. Young’s last outing was as a sub in the February hammering of MK Dons. With Young stuck on the sidelines, City ended the season well. Cook and Calum Kavanagh flourished as a partnership, and Tyler Smith come off the bench to net important goals. Young has continued to be linked with clubs this summer, but the buzz around him has faded somewhat. The moment passed, and he was back to square one – trying to force his way into the Bradford City first team.  

Young figured in the early pre-season games, but when the friendlies started to get more serious he has not been at the forefront of Alexander’s plans. Just 24 minutes game time in the first four matches of the season (and that was as a sub against Grimsby in the league cup). Young was not even on the bench for the last two games. Whatever might be said in future, Young was clearly not hugely significant in Alexander’s thinking. The competition for places up front is huge, especially with Vadaine Oliver returning from Stevenage this summer and Oliver Sanderson arriving on loan from Fulham. With Alexander’s clear preference for a smaller squad well known, one if not two forwards have to move on. Young is let go. We will soon find out if Alexander has made the right call.

Hindsight would suggest City would have been better selling Young last January after all – even though the accusations of lacking ambition would have been fair to make. A bit similar to how City turned down a Barnsley offer for Lewis in the summer of 2023 – when he was at the peak of his powers – only to ultimately sell him for a smaller fee. City have failed to capitalise on Young’s peak transfer value, or seen the best of him. Lose-lose.

And because of that, Alexander’s decision-making will remain in focus over this move. City haven’t received a life-changing sum of money for Young’s services. The club in for him is not so prestigious that Alexander could not stand in his way from joining them. If there was one person who could relate to Hughes’ awkward embarrassment over what Young did last season, it will have been Alexander, who as MK Dons boss allowed Dan Kemp to join Swindon on loan, and was similarly made to look foolish. He will hope history does not repeat itself. The fact Young is linking up with Kemp again (he signed for Stevenage this summer) adds to the intrigue.

You can see why they’ve done this. City do have some excellent striker options without Young. They are well equipped for success this season. They did need to trim the fat. And if you’re going to make money out of moving someone on, it does makes sense to sacrifice Young over someone else.

It’s a risk. A big risk. But if Bantams fans have little reason to spend the next few months talking about Jake Young, this might just prove to be a sensible piece of Bradford City business.

Categories: Opinion

Tags: BCAFC, Jake Young