Written by Milo Chadowe (images by John Dewhirst)

Bradford City beat a stubborn Port Vale side in the final game of a remarkable year of football at Valley Parade which has seen the club change from a middling League Two club to one competing for a place in The Championship, sitting third in League One as 2025 closes.

And it is a change which coloured the linguistics of tonight’s victory over Port Vale, a side who had not won in a long time and sacked manager Darren Moore since a 5-0 defeat at Huddersfield three days ago.

Enjoying the change, struggles with wide-eyes at the awe of the last twelve months, and calculating the costs of City’s progress. 2025 was Bradford City speed running change, and it might have been the best year to be a Bradford City fan there has ever been.

Year

The agent of the change in Bradford City’s fortunes is manager Graham Alexander who when faced with losing Andy Cook, the totemic forward snapped his anterior cruciate ligament on New Year’s Day, changing to a new way of playing recreating Cook’s goals around the team. 

Young replacement Calum Kavanagh’s importance in City’s rise should not be understated. His high energy approach replaced Cook’s static goalpoaching by opening angles of attack. Tonight at the last home game of 2025 neither Cook nor Kavanagh feature in Alexander’s starting eleven. Kavanagh made the bench and there is talk of him going, Cook seems to be about to leave to Barrow, and other names like Alex Pattison are also expected to find a new place to play. 

Graham Alexander’s ruthlessness drives the momentum that carries City forward. Harry Lewis exited. Sam Stubbs exited. The drive North Alexander took to tell Richie Smallwood that the contract he had been offered would be withdrawn was hard-hearted, but the distance between City and struggling Port Vale, who finished a place above the Bantams last year, justifies the change.

Colourful

Not changed was Aden Baldwin, who colourful people on The Facebook wanted to be dismissed from the club for speaking out of turn to a Referee at Doncaster Rovers last season, with the central defender’s ability to move the ball forward at pace increasingly important in League One, but an injury in the warm-up saw City reshuffle around his absence.

The impact of Baldwin’s absence seems negligible as the evening progresses. City will be frustrated not by the inability to play the ball forward but for the lack of space in the Port Vale half. For the second, perhaps third, time this season a League One team had arrived at Valley Parade in awe of a City team who will end the night with almost three times their points tally.

Ambition for the visitors was limited to trying to hang on to a clean sheet. When both these teams got over the line for promotion in League Two in April, that seemed an unlikely scenario, but so it was. Everything changes, but for the linguistics, where there is a struggle with verbalising the frustrations which City suffer.

Tentative

The Bantams have the best of the tentative early exchanges, as Port Vale bolster a wall of five across the back, three in a midfield, and Devante Cole and Jayden Stockley up front. Stockley’s angular approach to heading seemed to continue from the Nine Man Wigan Athletic school of ball winning, while former Bantam Cole remains a player whose talent is dwarfed by his capacity to be discouraged by minor setbacks.

The visitors numbers made space tight, and the solution was obvious to some, because the solution always seems to be either playing Andy Cook, or one of the other players playing more like Andy Cook. Cook is a fine player, and should he move on when the transfer window opens in days then he should be lionised, but if Alexander does not point out the absurdities of trying to break into the second tier of English football with a player like Cook, then football itself will.

Cook is a blunderbuss, and a joy to watch in more simple games, but Stephen Humphrys is a different proposition opening the game for other players, moving to make space, creating on the flank as City apply a pressure which will ultimately result in a goal. When City fail in their approach play and the ball is lofted over Antoni Sarcevic and Tyreik Wright there is a bellow behind me for Humphrys to challenge for a high ball, making a virtue out of the furthest forward man heading the ball to no one, or giving away a free kick with such a luckless leap.

These are the transactions at the top of League One. Alexander and City are adapting, the disgruntled feeling that came from watching a Referee giving too many free kicks against Cook replaced by the screw turning pressure of Humphrys and his more targeted pressing. Port Vale would love a minute to take a defensive free kick, but they do not get it, and they do not get it because Humphrys will not give it away.

The closest either team comes to a breakthrough in the first half comes from Port Vale keeper Ben Amos losing a high ball in a cross and then chasing it as Curtis Tilt, returning to the team after a lengthy absence, only to flop down on the City defender. The referee is unmoved, or unmoving at least, and one is forced to wonder if we are breeding a class of Referee who are waiting for VAR to make the hard calls they no longer are prepared to do, or at least will not do unless they are blatantly observable.

Measured

The second half Cole manages to get a chance, but not unsurprisingly his reward equals his effort, and Stockley is booked for jumping with Ciaran Kelly and leaving the defender on the floor. Stockley would struggle if Premier League VAR watched over his actions, but Stockley will never have that problem.

Port Vale’s problems mounted as Humphrys cut in after a move down the right-hand side and fired at goal only for Ben Heneghan to impressively head off the line robbing the striker of his third goal in three games. City’s pressure showed a few moments later when a corner was played to Jensen Metcalfe on the edge of the box who sent a low lob over Amos into the goal.

Metcalfe’s goal continued his impressive progress, having established himself in the role alongside Max Power in City’s midfield and as Patterson exits and Tommy Leigh’s experimental role in deep midfield seems to have come to an end, it seems that much of the success of the side this year is down to how those two players continue to perform.

Humphrys hit the post with a header later on, and Port Vale had ten minutes of injury time when they largely did very little to suggest that Darren Moore was the problem. City took the win, and Curtis Tilt fist pumped to the Kop – sort of – as people wandered away mumbling about Lincoln City having also won, keeping City third.

This was always going to be the case. City wrestled with internal demons tonight. The pressure was always going to tell against a limited Port Vale side as long as the player’s stuck to Alexander’s way of playing, and the unity in the team has more often than not ensure that that is the case.

This does not change, of course, the general feeling that, as with any year, that things could be better. As we go into 2026 City are five points clear of Stockport in fourth, and one behind Lincoln City in second with a game in hand. There is opportunity here, and this has been a year of opportunities not being spurned.

Taking those opportunities though has been based on a ruthlessness in Graham Alexander, and a willingness to imagine solutions. Solutions like Kavanagh for Cook which worked, solutions like Tommy Leigh in midfield that worked for a while, and solutions like George Lapslie at right back that got us through an afternoon at Bolton.

Andy Cook might be a victim of this ruthlessness, as might others, and the balance between who Alexander brings in as he changes a League Two also ran into a Championship contender, and the destructive effect of changing a team which thrive on each other will define how 2026 will be.

But take a pause and recall 2025. Walsall at home, Colchester United, Swindon Away. Wycombe, Huddersfield, Luton and Cardiff all bested. The curious twists that brought those moments about.

And 90+6, and Sarcevic, and the ball creeping towards the line, and how much they were about Graham Alexander, and indefatigability.

Categories: Match Reviews

Tags: 2025/26, BCAFC, League One, Port Vale