By Jason McKeown

It’s the toughest of starts at home – an opening day visit from play off semi finalists Wycombe Wanderers, well backed by billionaire owner Mikheil Lomtadze. The following Valley Parade opponents are Luton Town, two years ago a Premier League side, who are still benefiting from parachute payments said to total £40 million this season.

But in-between those two extremely difficult-looking games, the Bantams go to a Northampton Town side who finished 19th in League One last season. And that doesn’t seem too scary.

On consecutive Saturdays in November, City are due to travel to Plymouth Argyle – unluckily relegated from the Championship last season, with significant takeover talk raging this summer and a stated ambition of reaching the Premier League in five years – before they go to a Bolton Wanderers side widely tipped to be up there.

But after those two tricky away trips, they entertain Exeter City at Valley Parade. And that doesn’t seem too scary.

Over a two-month period starting mid-January, the Bantams will travel to Huddersfield Town, Luton, Reading and Wigan – all teams with relatively recent tenures in the Championship and the Premier League.

But during the same winter spell, they go to Lincoln, AFC Wimbledon and Burton. And that doesn’t seem too scary.

This is our new existence. This is League One. Some tasty and slightly daunting-looking opponents, who represent a real step-up in challenge (apart from the teams we’ve already mentioned, there’s also Cardiff, Barnsley and Stockport to fret about). But there are other games that – on paper, and on paper only – don’t exactly strike fear into the heart (Stevenage, Mansfield and Port Vale). There are reasons to be fearful, but also reasons to not be fearful at all. We’re going to wade into deeper, more challenging waters for sure, but our feet can still touch the bottom.

And we all know that this is Bradford City and life is never straightforward. Over the coming months, expect to revel in days where we give a so-called bigger club a bloody nose by beating them up and winning. Equally, prepare yourself for occasions where we lost pitifully to a quote unquote lesser team. Why worry about Cardiff away? When it comes to the Bantams – we all know the trip to Stevenage is the real fixture to feel trepidation over.

The adaption into this new, uneven-looking environment is bound to lead to difficult days as well as good. We return to the third tier very much a newbie, but hardly with a stature that looks out of its depth at this level. There’s a feeling of novelty right now – which is nice and something to enjoy, but it won’t exactly last long.

After all, and I don’t quite know how to put this, but we’re kind of a big deal. A large fish even in this larger pond. Based on attendances (and boy do we love talking about attendances – just ask Doncaster fans!) of the 24 teams lining up in League One this season, only Bolton (21,325), Cardiff (19,344) and Huddersfield (18,817) achieved higher average crowds than City’s 17,762 last season. We are straightaway a big League One club. A grim battle to finish above 21st is not going to be the height of our ambitions.

It is an ambition demonstrated by an impressive summer recruitment drive. We’ve reacquainted ourselves to League One by snatching players from under the noses of our rivals – Barnsley, Stockport, AFC Wimbledon and Blackpool, we’re looking at you here. Chairman Stefan Rupp has talked about providing a budget that “might get us a play off position”, and on his own YouTube channel Josh Neufville has uttered the phrase “back to back”.

Can we dream that big? No idea to be honest. Moving to a higher division is always filled with unknowns over just how well you measure up to different competition. The Bantams have 20 new opponents on their fixture list compared to the teams they played in the league last season. Some we have recent history with, others we’ve not crossed paths with in years. We could emerge as one of the best teams in the division, we could turn out to be one of the worst. Educated guesses are still just guesses.

In such an environment it’s hard to set any real targets. It could be that those trickier looking opponents proved to be just that, and we cannot realistically compete with those operating on mega budgets. Or it might be that we can make a real impact and follow the path of a Wrexham or Stockport in really pushing on. For now, we have to go in without any tangible expectations and test the lay of the land. Discover how tough the tougher fixtures prove, and how easy the easier fixtures actually are.

You can absolutely imagine City beating Wycome and Luton in those first two home games, yet losing to Northampton in-between. Not just because that is our defected character trait of doing things the hard way, but because it would continue last season’s trends.

City ended last season with by some distance the best home League Two record in the division – 55 points picked up, a whopping 11 more than anyone else – but just the 16th-best away record (23 points from 23 games, including 10 losses). It’s fair to predict that City will not be as successful on their own patch this season (we won 17 out of 23 in 2024/25), but can they afford for their away record to remain as mediocre or perhaps get even worse?

There is no question this is an area that has weighed on Graham Alexander’s mind over the summer, as can arguably be seen in the reinforcement of defensive options. City have even more depth than before, especially in the wing back roles, and we can expect to see even more rotation after the success of this strategy last season. That means lining City up to neuter the strengths of different opponents, especially on the road. City have to be tougher to beat away from Valley Parade. A repeat of winning only five away games doesn’t sound great but perhaps is okay(ish) at this level, if they can reduce the number of games they lose on their travels.

To be successful overall, City need to have a strong plan for what they do out of possession and how they win back the ball. We’ve talked a lot this summer about the decision to let their specialist defensive midfielder, Richie Smallwood, leave the club. How this works out is going to be a big determiner in City’s success. It wasn’t just that Smallwood did the defensive duties very well, he was never injured or looked like he needed a rest.

Max Power appears to be the Smallwood replacement and has an impressive track record, but the 31-year-old has barely played over the last two seasons and certainly hasn’t got the recent minutes to match what Smallwood provided. Of course, the reckless Smallwood red card at Swindon and the considerable impact that his three-match ban had on the team will have left Alexander cautious about relying too much on one player. So maybe he doesn’t get Smallwood-level minutes out of Power this season, but can rotate the former Wigan man successfully with another new arrival, Jenson Metcalfe, so that he gets what he needs over the season from a couple of trusted players who share the defensive midfield position.

The third key question is the goal output from City’s forward line. It’s well documented just how much the Bantams have relied on Andy Cook since 2021, and the ACL injury their talisman picked up on New Year’s Day put the club in a position where it had to cast away the support crutch and find a way to succeed without him. They did just that of course. Performances and goal output was as good if not better than when Cook had been leading the line. They will start the season without Cook. There are plenty of unknowns over when he will be fit, and if he will be the same player. So the evolution needs to continue.

Like at the back, Alexander has recruited to have options and to be able to rotate. He has a strong-looking roster of forwards to play in the front three, many of whom look fairly interchangeable in terms of whether they can play central or wide. It all looks really promising, and hopefully a glut of goals emerge from an area where there seems to be huge competition for places. And whilst we all look forward to Cook’s return, the best scenario is that we’re not in a position where we’re putting too much pressure on him to hurry back and be the answer. Ideally we can say take your time Andy, because we’re thriving without you.

So many unknowns lie ahead. So much theory and counter theory is waiting to be tested. But on Saturday, it all begins, and for only the second time in 26 years City kick off the campaign with the tag “newly promoted club”. We need to enjoy this of course, because every awful League Two experience of the past six years left us longing for this moment. And we don’t need to go into the new season with trepidation and fear.

We are a club on the rise, not yet in danger of banging our head against a glass ceiling. We need to revel in this next chapter – and the wide, contrasting challenges that lie ahead.  

Categories: Opinion, Previews

Tags: 2025/26, BCAFC