Written by Jason McKeown (images by John Dewhirst)

Winning convinces you that past scars have healed. Losing forces you to check. As Bradford City went down to this most un-Graham Alexander of home defeats to an enthusiastic-but-limited Cambridge United, the manner in which they kept losing their way pointed to worrying signs about their resilience – and whether some of their character has gone missing in the post-play-off defeat rebuild.  

This was not the Bradford City we have known and loved over the past two seasons. A poorly directed Macaulay Gillesphey back header allowed Sullay Kaikai to open the scoring on the hour, and late on the U’s substitute Ben Knight was given criminal levels of time and space to run into the box and strike the winner. City dominated possession and mustered three times as many shots on goal, yet couldn’t really assume their usual level of control.

In the last two full seasons on home soil, City have lost just five league games and conceded only 30 times. It was troubling to see the fortress crumble in this way.

Perhaps some early season bumps should be expected. This game took place under the heavy shadow of transfer deadline day and a frantic final few days of ins and outs that rumbled on well into the Bradford night. With the transfer window now closed, a different-looking City emerge with the tally of new faces rising to 12 and some gelling to be done.

But still, there was plenty of squad upheaval last season, and they went all the way to November before losing at home. In the promotion campaign the year before, they remained unbeaten at Valley Parade until late October.

And as City struggled from kick off here, and certainly in the wake of going 1-0 and then 2-1 behind, it is those spells of timidness that will surely trouble Alexander as much as the slipshod defending. Signs of a play-off hangover only tend to show up when further adversity tests team spirit. And though the pace of change, which meant six of the starting XI here only joined the club this summer, might suggest last season’s heartbreak has limited bearing on this side, the courage levels of new faces and old was ultimately found wanting.

And that is not what we’re used to.

Indeed, the reaction to Knight’s late goal exposed a fragmented relationship between the new-look City and its public. As Cambridge fans celebrated wildly in the corner, Valley Parade home sections began to empty. There were still two minutes plus injury time to play, but supporter faith in City’s capacity to come back again was evidently lacking. Many of those who stayed booed at full time. We’ve quickly come a long way from the Bantams getting clapped off the field when losing their play-off tie with Bolton in May.

Alexander might feel aggrieved with the supporter reaction and has every right to be. He and the team deserve a lot better. But the truth is we’re all used to much higher standards than what was offered up here. Something just doesn’t quite feel right about the team, and they’ll have to unpick what that is, without the option of transfer surgery until January.

It certainly isn’t a desperate picture. City dominated large spells of the game. They played well in patches. They were wasteful in front of goal, missing chances when they were on top that would come back to bite. Another night they’re winning this and no one is getting twitchy. Still, the crumbs of comfort don’t add up to a much of a feast.

Fair to say this night won’t be looked back as one of the season’s highlights. Cambridge rocked up with some early ambition to press and caused some discomfort, with Aden Baldwin making one important early intervention to keep out a dangerous Liam Bennett effort.

The visitors matched City’s 3-4-3 and eventually reverted to a low block that the hosts struggled to get round. The pace of the City attack was too ponderous, with endless long passes offering low percentage returns of joy. Even if a City forward won their duel, the space around them was quickly closed down. We’ve seen this sort of game so often over the years.

It took 22 minutes for City to muster a shot on goal, when Ibou Touray’s long range effort deflected just wide. That was at least the catalyst for some improvement, with City getting out of first gear to force some pressure. They dominated up to the break, and given they’ve started previous games slowly before taking control, there was not a huge amount to cause concern.

Especially when they really upped it after half time. For 13 minutes they pinned Cambridge back, switching the play well, with the wing backs Touray and Josh Neufville successfully getting higher up the pitch. When Cambridge suddenly scored out of nothing – a long goal kick forward, a Gillesphey mistake, giving Kaikai the chance to poke the ball beyond Jon McCracken – it came against the run of play.

The trouble is that the blow affected them more than you’d like. Maybe it is in these moments that big characters like Max Power and Curtis Tilt are missed. Antoni Sarcevic is a solid choice as captain, but is less the guy cajoling others and setting his side’s tempo. The midfield approach of Callum Connolly deep and Sarcevic pushing on is starting to look like the problem we feared it might be, and it was gleefully exploited by a packed Cambridge midfield who isolated the pair.

It took a couple of rounds of subs, and a formation change, for City to get going again. On came Nick Powell for a slightly underwhelming Adam Phillips, then Will Swan for Jake Beesley (we’ll come back to him) and Kayden Jackson for Gillesphey, who had comfortably his worst game in a City shirt after a series of mistakes. They went 3-5-2 with Jackson as left wing back (he was brilliant), Touray going to left-sided centre back, Bobby Pointon down the middle and Powell and Swan up top.

Alexander will be so encouraged that his bench and squad depth offers him the tools to change match situations like this, and it looked like it had worked. Pointon was completely on the fringes as a wide forward in the 3-4-3, but came more to life as a number 8, whilst Powell’s physical menace and skill on the ball opened up a previously stubborn Cambridge defence.

Both played a major part in the equaliser, with Powell’s diving header from Neufville’s cross crashing off the bar and Pointon scrambling home the rebound. And given the sticky situations City had struggled with for much of the evening, a point in the circumstances felt like a decent outcome.

Not that City settled for that. They pushed for a winner late on, with Sarcevic and Powell going close. Then came the sucker punch of Cambridge’s late second. Swan gave the ball away cheaply, and City just did not close down the space for Louis Appere to find Knight to find the back of the net. And in the space of four days, the Bantams flying start to the season has come crashing down.

The post-mortem will attempt to understand why.

The first question – is the pace of change a little too much? City spent the final hours of the window letting Joe Wright move to Dundee, apparently not standing in George Lapslie’s way in going to Colchester (the midfielder reportedly turned down the move and stays) and then allowing Stephen Humphrys to exit to Wigan. In the end, the Latics could not muster up the money to afford City’s number 11, and probably left it too late. But it doesn’t undo the fact City were prepared to let Humphrys leave. Some tricky but important training ground conversations lie ahead.

A word on Humphrys. This time a year ago, he was the big idea – and Alexander had put a lot of faith in talking the Barnsley man into signing for City as a central striker. There were times last season that it worked, but bubbling promise never exploded into a flurry of Humphrys goals. At some point after Christmas, Alexander seemed to give up on the idea and Humphrys became a bit part player, finally given a go as a wide forward but not exactly excelling. Humphrys has looked on the fringes all summer and Alexander’s recent comments about waiting for the forward to get up to full fitness before he’d be selected seemed dubious at best.

Humphrys has rarely stuck around anywhere for long, and it remains hard to see a long-term future in a team that does not play wingers, and where the central striker role demands a style of play Humphrys himself publicly admitted he finds “boring”. If he comes back from this moment of being nowhere near the squad and seemingly packing his bags, it will be some redemption act.   

As we wrote last season, the central striker in Alexander’s highly effective 3-4-3 has been a problem the club hasn’t found a satisfactory answer for. Like Humphrys a year ago, a lot is now invested in Jake Beesley providing a goalscoring solution. And in this game, the robustness of that idea came into sharp focus.

Beesley toiled hard here – initially with absolutely no service – before chances came and went that inevitably shone the spotlight on his struggle to get off the mark in a City shirt. Beesley was certainly unlucky when he produced a powerful header from Pointon’s cross that Jake Eastwood brilliantly saved. But when moments later Zak Bradshaw’s weak back header saw Beesley unexpectedly through one-on-one against Eastwood, his low effort was timid and easily kept out.

As if the confidence was draining from him right in front of our eyes, another decent City attack saw the ball land at Beesley’s feet right in front of goal. He hesitated, and it was cleared. A fully confident striker is hitting that first time and finding the back of the net.

As stark as it is to say – if Beesley had taken one of these three chances, the Bantams would not have lost this game.

Beesley was taken off two minutes before City struck their equaliser. It’s not quite worked for the player so far, despite strong promise in his performances. Supporter patience is beginning to stretch. But for better or worse, this is the plan. Seemingly allowing Humphrys to leave hints at a strong commitment to it too. We must get behind it. And hope that, unlike with Humphrys, it does eventually fall into place.

There’s also the exit of Joe Wright to Scotland. It’s sad to see him go and it’s difficult to conclude he did much wrong – there’s no particular bad game or mistake to point to. Wright was a victim of extremely high standards in City’s back three last season and this, and is too good a player to leave on the sidelines. Especially with his likely decent wages and the fact he could earn City the money Dundee have just paid for his services.

Reece Welch made his full league debut for City here in the right-sided centre back slot that Wright mainly played. The former Everton defender’s potential is evident, and will have helped to speed up the departure of Wright, although Welch will need to use the ball better than he did at times here. Matt Pennington sat this one out and was badly missed.

We’ll wait to see what impact new signings Corey O’Keeffe, Hayden Matthews and Kieran Morgan will have at the club, with this game coming too soon for them to be in contention. But their arrivals all add to that pace of change. A lot of good people have left the building since the end of last season. Some by the club’s choice, others like Power, Tilt, Jenson Metcalfe and Sam Walker, less so.

The worry is that more has been lost than just ability, which is often easier to replace. Character, leadership and some of the successful DNA built over the past two years may prove harder to replicate than individual performances.

Let’s quickly go back to City’s final game of 2025 – a 1-0 home success over Port Vale. Seven of the starting XI that night have now left the Bantams (it would have been eight had Humphrys completed the Wigan move) plus five of the seven players named on the bench. Only six of the XI who began the Bolton play-off second leg defeat in May are still at the club.

It’s a similar pattern to what happened 12 months ago, when the promotion-winning squad was quickly revamped. There are just five senior members of the 2024/25 squad still at the club. City’s impressive progress over the past couple of years certainly isn’t down to continuity. And sentimentality certainly isn’t a weakness that can be attributed to Alexander.

The substantial changes of a year ago paid off handsomely, and the big unknown now is whether this strategy can do so again. This certainly wasn’t a convincing case that the rebuild approach is the right one, but many of the surface problems like terrible defending can be quickly fixed. Equally, though the midfield might not be working quite right, the positive impact of going 3-5-2 here offers interesting food for thought. This night need not define City’s season, and can quickly be moved on from.

(Though the last time we faced our next opponents, Mansfield, on a Saturday afternoon, straight after a poor midweek home defeat, it did not go well.)

There is no need to panic. No reason to write off City and the new array of tools at Alexander’s disposal. But if winning convinces you past scars have healed, losing forces you to check. Over the coming weeks, City must demonstrate that this was a painful aberration rather than evidence that old wounds remain closer to the surface than anyone realised.

Categories: Match Reviews

Tags: 2026/27, BCAFC, Cambridge United, League One