By Jason McKeown

If you visited the Bradford City club shop earlier this summer you would have found Sarcevic 90+6 mugs on sale. You would have spotted t-shirts, bucket hats and scarves sporting the message ‘We’re on our way’ to purchase. At one point they were flogging replica promotion medals. Pretty much everything quickly sold out. It’s business, and it’s good business. Fans wanting to buy mementos of a triumph they will lovingly remember forever, the club making a few extra quid that no one begrudges.

Nostalgia, too, is good for business. As Sarcevic 90+6 rightly takes its place in the gallery of all-time Bradford City moments, the commercial benefits will likely be harvested over the years to come by a club that has in recent years staged money-making celebratory evenings for the Chelsea game, the 1985 Champions and more recently Benito Carbone.

It does not take a great leap of imagination to picture a scene, 10 years from now, of the club holding a similar, 2025 promotion celebratory dinner. Darren Harper stood on stage with Antoni Sarcevic, asking him a jokey question along the lines of “Come on Antoni, can you admit it now, did you actually touch the ball?” Sarcevic will have rehearsed and perfected a witty response about how of course it was his goal, and it was in fact one of the best finishes of his career. And we’ll all chuckle as we munch our three courses, smiling about the great memories of 2025 and how modern football is rubbish in comparison.

But as much as a new package of nostalgia is sitting there waiting to be tapped into at the right time, sentimentality can be a dangerous emotion in the immediate aftermath of building on the legacy of jubilant promotion celebrations. It can cloud the present and the immediate future, leaving you clinging onto things that begin to have less value and fail to keep pace with the changing times.

At least that’s what it seemed we learned the hard way, the last time City were in the position of moving up to a higher division. This was in 2013/14, and the elevation back to League One after a six-year absence. The history books show that City acclimatised well to their return to the third tier, finishing 11th and not experiencing any serious relegation concerns. But scratch beneath the surface, 2013/14 was not the easiest of campaigns. One that with a large bucket of hindsight you could see was hindered by sentimentality.

Before we delve into that, let’s just agree on one universal truth – the Bradford City/Phil Parkinson recruitment during the summer of 2012 was outstanding. It laid the platform for the 2012/13 history makers, where the squad reached a major cup final and earned promotion from League Two. It was some team and one that was difficult to improve.

And that became a problem for Parkinson. Firstly, during the January transfer window of that season, where attempts to bolster the squad didn’t succeed and mid-season arrivals largely operated from the sidelines. It would prove to be a bigger problem that summer after promotion, where transfer activity was limited to a handful of arrivals who failed to raise the ceiling of the squad’s capability. Coming in that close season was Mark Yeates, trialist Rafa de Vita, Jason Kennedy, Matt Taylor and young loanee goalkeeper Connor Ripley.

The season began with just one summer recruit – Yeates – deemed worthy of a starting spot, and very soon he lost his place too. For the early part of City’s 2013/14 League One campaign, the entire starting XI was the same as the 2012/13 history makers.

All of which was fine at first, as City started well and looked like play off contenders. But from mid-October to mid-March, the Bantams slumped and famously won just one out of 21 matches. The previously brilliant Parkinson 4-4-2 was suddenly less effective and became easy for opposition sides to curb. Injuries to key players like Andrew Davies only added to the problem, as further additional recruits – Matthew Bates and Caleb Folan, who were unattached free agents – weakened rather than strengthened the team.

There was a point over Christmas that year where it felt like the History Makers had to start becoming history. That the club hadn’t moved on, keeping too much faith in players and a way of operating that was now looking tired and predictable. The likes of Garry Thompson and Nathan Doyle weren’t the force they were. Nahki Wells had half a foot out the door. Results weren’t absolutely awful, just not good enough to halt a slow slide down the table.

The January window proved huge. It gave Parkinson and City the chance to correct mistakes and move on from sentimentality. Some players came in and shifted the dial, others less so. But City got themselves out of their nosedive. And even though results were still mixed for the remainder of the campaign, they ended it pretty well and earned a top half finish.

That was cue for a summer of much bigger, substantial change – paving the way for a true new team, who played a more adventurous way, and who would go onto deliver their own unforgettable success. So happy endings all round. But for a moment there in 2013/14, it didn’t look too clever. And perhaps if Parkinson had his time again, he would have evolved his squad from the 2012/13 core much quicker.   

It’s a lesson in history. And the good news, as you survey Bradford City’s summer 2025 close season business, is that it seems the club isn’t repeating those mistakes. Ahead of pre-season friendlies starting up this coming weekend, the new arrivals counter stands at eight (as mentioned, in the summer of 2013, City signed only five players before the new campaign began). Each new 2025 face represents a level of intent and ambition from the club. They’re signing starters rather than squad members, which is a marked difference from the summer of 2013.

There is a clear effort to lift the ceiling in a way that didn’t look evident 12 years ago. Many of this summer’s new signings have spoken about how inspiring they found City’s last-gasp promotion when watching from afar, but it’s clear they’re not coming here to stand in the shadows. They are here to take first team spots and by doing so displacing our promotion heroes. To paraphrase Homer Simpson in the episode where his place in the company softball team is taken by professional player Darryl Strawberry Darryl Strawberry, you can almost picture Calum Kavanagh walking up to Stephen Humphrys in training and saying, “You’re Stephen Humphrys.” “So?” “Well, are you better than me?” “Well, I’ve never met you, but…yes”.

We now have players set to take centre stage this season who have not (at least yet) gone on the piss with Sarcevic. They don’t have the supporter credit in the bank that the players from last season have. They have not made history around these parts. And in some ways, it will be sad to see them take the place of players who were such a big part of our success. For some of the heroes that we drank and sang with on North Parade to become surplus to requirements.

This is not to write off and player from last season and indeed Graham Alexander has only today told the T&A, “I think it’s really important for us to remember the many good players we already have here. They’ve got us to where we are. I genuinely believe there are players who haven’t played at this level and can make that progress.”

But with the club’s greater ambition and the challenges ahead, a fast evolution feels necessary, and it is reassuring to see it happening. We’ve already seen the Gary Jones of the 2024/25 team – Richie Smallwood – moved on rather than given the opportunity to decline in front of our eyes (not that Jones did this, but we did begin to see signs of a slowdown that at times was a problem in 2013/14). We’ve said goodbye to peripheral heroes Jamie Walker and Romoney Crichlow. We’ve just told Tyler Smith and Adam Wilson they are free to find new clubs.

We had a moment – a truly special, never-to-be-forgotten moment – but the world keeps turning and City have to move on, rather than clinging onto what quickly becomes the past. We can see that they’re actively trying to do just that, and with it they appear better equipped for the next challenge.

Because sentimentality should never belong on the pitch. You buy it from the club shop.

Categories: Opinion

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