By Jason McKeown

From delivering one of Valley Parade’s greatest-ever days to achieving the highest-ever placing as a newly promoted club, Graham Alexander has certainly made plenty of Bradford City history over the past couple of years. But for obvious personal reasons, there’s another precedent the Bantams boss will be especially keen to accomplish over the next 12 months – surviving in the hotseat. 

May’s heartbreaking semi-final defeat to Bolton was the fifth time City have lost a play-off campaign. And in the previous four, a change in the dugout took place the following season.

Terry Dolan was sacked midway through 1988/89, as City struggled to recover from losing to Middlesbrough in the play-offs. Phil Parkinson elected to leave in the summer of 2016, weeks after Millwall bested the Bantams. In 2018, Stuart McCall was controversially fired only eight months on from another play-off campaign being ended by Millwall. And more recently Mark Hughes paid the price for a slow start to the 2023/24 season that followed the play-off collapse at Carlisle.

Will Alexander face a similar fate? Hopefully not. And it’s certainly worth contextualising the mood after last season’s Bolton triumph against the atmosphere around Middlesbrough ’88, Millwall ’16 and ’17, and Carlisle ’23. Blame, to varying degrees, was directed at Dolan, Parkinson, McCall and especially Hughes for coming up short in those play-off games.

Dolan was then a victim of his own success, unable to swim with the rising tide of expectation. Parkinson quit with no one wanting to see him go, but with a nagging suspicion City had meekly rolled over to Millwall. McCall was wrongly made the scapegoat by chairman the following season, but like Dolan the tide had also risen. Hughes had begun banging nails into his own coffin after a lacklustre managerial showing in that Carlisle second leg.

Against Bolton, no one blamed Alexander. No one blamed the players or the club for that matter. A sold out Valley Parade clapped their defeated club off the field, with immense pride swirling over a terrific season and the comfort of knowing City gave it their all. The failings felt honest rather than deserving of blame. It’s never nice to lose, but at the same time it was the nicest of ways to lose.

So Alexander emerged from those Bolton tussles with reputation enhanced rather than damaged. He remains in high regard. And he’s built up huge levels of credit in the bank.

All of which leaves Alexander in an enviable position heading into the new season. Right now, the idea of him coming under pressure feels almost unimaginable.

But then there’s Bradford City’s history. It’s a small sample size, but it’s a grim record nonetheless.

Where might headwinds appear for Alexander? The answer, as ever, lies in results and the league table. Like under Dolan in 88/89 and McCall in 17/18, that tide is naturally rising. This time a year ago, we didn’t know what to expect – and many of us declared we’d be happy simply to avoid relegation. The 2025/26 season proved to be so much more than a modest struggle to stay up. It was exciting, it was enthralling and it was a joyous experience.

More of the same? Yes please.

But is that realistic?

Yes and no.  

The head of football operations, David Sharpe, recently appeared on the BBC Radio Leeds podcast Take Me Home, where he described last season’s fourth-place finish as an overachievement. He also revealed City’s playing budget ranked only around 13th or 14th in League One.

It was a fair assessment, and one that only enhanced what Alexander and his players achieved. But it also serves as a reminder that last season shouldn’t automatically become the benchmark.

We don’t yet know how much the budget has increased, if at all. Even with further investment, it’s difficult to imagine City suddenly possessing one of the division’s six strongest squads on paper, particularly given the financial muscle of several clubs arriving in League One this summer.

That means if City are to match or improve on last season, they’ll almost certainly have to overachieve again. That’s far from impossible – football has always had room for teams who outperform their resources – but it shouldn’t simply be expected.

And that’s where Alexander could face his biggest test. If City’s results begin to reflect their financial reality rather than last season’s extraordinary standards, they may look more like a mid-table side than genuine promotion challengers. However unfairly, a step backwards in league position might prompt questions about whether Alexander was still taking the club forward.

Those are the moments that test everyone.

It’s that sort of environment that in the past did for Dolan and McCall. And even though both sackings aged horribly in terms of City’s subsequent trajectory – on each occasion they ended up getting relegated 18 months later – in the pressurised here and now of declining results and supporter frustration, the club was put into a position where it faced the sort of stick or twist decision that hasn’t been on the radar at Valley Parade for over two years. The point is we’ve yet to face the conditions that led to previous Bradford City powerbrokers making questionable managerial decisions. But those conditions may arise this season.

And that’s where calm heads and long-term thinking might well be needed. The club have rightly made a great deal of positive noise about the fact the key position holders at Valley Parade have all been in their roles for at least two seasons. Stefan Rupp, Ryan Sparks, Stephen Gent, David Sharpe and of course Alexander have collectively represented stability, and each has grown in their roles because of the continuity around them.

At some stage, those foundations will be pressure tested. It might come this season, or it might come further down the line. It almost certainly will arise if and when the considerable progress since Spring 2024 slows down or levels off. And given City’s overachievement last season, a slowing down or levelling off certainly shouldn’t be ruled out.

All of this sounds negative. It’s not meant to be. City have every chance of repeating if not bettering what they accomplished last season. We should certainly make it our target. They’ve already shown they have little to fear from League One. But if they do indeed have a season as special as the last, we should keep in mind just what that is – an overachievement, again.

You can never predict the future, but my huge hope is that Alexander is still the Bradford City manager in 12 months’ time. That he breaks the play-off defeat curse. That he carves out another slice of club history. And as supporters, I think we have to let him make the most of that huge credit in the bank, if for any reason he needs to call upon it.

Alexander has built something very special. Something that absolutely could take Bradford City into the Championship one day. But the path is rarely smooth. And any steps back should be tolerated if those foundations remain in place. The story of Lincoln City’s triumph is one of staying the course, building and ultimately making hay. The odd backwards step before huge strides forward.

If Alexander isn’t Bradford City manager in 12 months’ time, it should be because he chose to leave – or because something has gone spectacularly wrong.

Because for Bradford City to break that cycle, and resist discarding another manager after play-off heartbreak, probably means learning from the many painful episodes of the past: how easy it is to lose a good Bradford City manager, and how hard it is to find another.

Categories: Opinion

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