By Thomas Whitford-Bartle

For some background context, I originally wrote this article, about the upcoming League Cup tie with Peterborough, on 21 September. We’d just won 1-0 away at Luton and were gearing up for the match against Newcastle U21s.

I finished that original draft with this thought:

“Anyway, October half-term is over a month away and a lot can change between then and now, injuries and form being the two most prominent.”

How wrong I was to state injuries and form were the two most prominent… but how correct to muse that a lot can change in a just over a month, I just didn’t know how much.

Three days on, the club had released an official statement about reluctantly granting permission to Graham Alexander to speak to Preston North End; three weeks on and we’ve now got Michael Duff in the hotseat, and he’s just had his first experience on the Valley Parade touchline.

It has been all change at Peterborough too, although during the original writing of this article, we were already aware that they had parted company with Luke Williams but now we know it’s Savage who is leading them and they’ve just won 3-1 away Leicester City in his first match. Not that scoring lots of goals against Leicester is the challenge many of us thought it may be, but a very impressive debut win for a team down at the bottom of League One.

So, given there is a full three weeks between when I first wrote this article, how much has changed and how the landscape has shifted somewhat, I’ve gone through this original draft, chronologically updated parts, rewrote others completely and added some sections. This is my caveat to say, I hope it makes sense, given it has marinated/slow cooked for three weeks.

I also appreciate that for some, the mentality towards this League Cup match has changed. Back on the 21st September we were flying high, top of the league, with a manager we trusted and everything felt right in the world… Whereas now, the priority for many, I imagine, is to establish whether we will have the same continuity of results and stability in the league.

Of course, I’m not downplaying the importance of this last 16 cup match, to the contrary my article highlights how exciting an opportunity this could be for us, I’m merely highlighting that before we had this self-assurance that we were on an upward trajectory, whereas now, we have a lot more unknowns.

Anyway, that’s enough preamble and context setting.

***

On Wednesday 16th September, at around 10:20pm, you can imagine most Bradford City fans, the playing/coaching staff and club staff were sat around their TVs, phones or tablets with bated breath. 

We found ourselves in the last 16 draw of the league cup, the first time since our legendary 2012/13 cup run, and had the chance to be drawn against one of thirteen Premier League teams, one League One team and one League Two team. In other words, at the beginning of the night, we had an 86.67% chance of getting a draw against a Premier League side. 

Now, the reality is, would most City fans, aside from those with personal links, have wanted to play one of Bournemouth, Brentford, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Fulham? Probably not. Also, you could argue it was debatable with Newcastle, given we played them last year, and Sunderland, given they’ve been a League One and Championship team for most of the last 10 years.

But that meant there were still six teams that should have appealed to most City fans, or in other words 40% of those 15 teams we could have been drawn against.

So we all sat there, fans, players, coaches and club staff, with bated breath, dreaming of a glamour tie. Liverpool away for the first time since 19th August 2000; Chelsea at home for the first since 22nd August 2000; the chance to welcome the Premier League Champions, Arsenal, back to Valley Parade and dream of another penalty shoot out win, like we witnessed in December 2012. 

We watched the live draw in anticipation, firstly, Fleetwood were pulled out, to which you could probably hear the collective prayers or fingers being crossed to wish ball 3 would not follow.

Fortunately, it wasn’t us, but unfortunately, it was Arsenal. Well, never mind still some decent draws in there.

Next home team drawn, Manchester City or Norwich (but we all knew it would be Man City), probably not as exciting to most fans, especially those who got into football pre-2008, but wouldn’t be the worst draw…

Never mind, again, Brighton, well, at least we won’t have to play them.

So the draw rumbled on, Everton got Newcastle, Sunderland got Brentford and then one of the big remaining ones, Liverpool drawn at home, could this be our opportunity, only seven teams left…

Nope, it was Chelsea, and with that, there was only Villa left which would have been an appealing bigger team left.

So, the next ball was pulled out and it was us. Ball number 3

So at that point we could have got Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Peterborough, and the aforementioned, Villa. None of the ties, us as the fans, the players, the coaching staff and other club staff would have dreamed about. A 20% chance of a tasty tie vs Villa, perhaps allowing us to relive that incredible night on 8th January 2013.

An 80% chance to get a Premier League team at home…

Or, a 20% chance to get Peterborough, the only other League One team in the draw and a team we’ve already played at home twice this year, back in February and just over a month ago… 

You could feel the disappointment coming from lots of different areas… the club hierarchy dreaming of a big gate receipts payment by playing Arsenal, Man Utd or Liverpool away, were now having to think of ways to boost the crowd for an all League-One tie; due to the fact that there is no prize money until the semi-finals, the only financial incentives for clubs are gate sales, which are split 50/50.

For example, if City had played at a stadium where there had been 50,000 ticket sales, at £20 each, this would have given us £500,000. For us fans, particularly those who may watch a lot of Premier League or even support/have a soft spot for a PL side (controversial, I know but more and more common), it was a disappointment, and the players and coaches, who would have wanted a spotlight match against the best of the best. 

Of course, we now know the club have delivered with £5 tickets for the match vs Peterborough and it should be a decent sized crowd again for a Tuesday night. The club reported on the 30th September that more than 10,000 tickets had been sold, so perhaps we can expect 13,000-15,000 on the night? But, a disappointment given the sell-out we’d have got with a tasty Premier League tie at home.

However, the initial disappointment aside, this is a massive opportunity for the club. Now, I will tread carefully by setting out my position; I’m not claiming this is a game we have a divine right to win. I’m not saying we will beat Peterborough and I’m not saying we will replicate 12/13 by going to the final.

However, the facts are, this is a much more winnable game than any other draw, arguably, except Fleetwood. To flip the bad luck into good luck, this was the 2nd most winnable game out of the draw, and we only had a 13.23% of getting a game against a side lower than us in the 4 top leagues.

Furthermore, reflecting on the 12/13 cup draw, which I remember well, by going to every game from the 3rd round onwards and working as part of the ground staff at the time, we were disappointed when we got Burton at home and then very disappointed when our last 16 tie was Wigan away, a Premier League team yes, but hardly a glamour tie.

But, imagine an alternate reality, where we got our dream tie in the 3rd round, a Liverpool or Manchester Utd, chances are very likely we’d have lost, been knocked out and then we’d have never had Arsenal at home, Villa in the semi-finals and our dream day out (result aside) at Wembley.

We’d have never made international news, never repaid a large part of our debt, perhaps even we wouldn’t have got promoted in the play-offs? The staff and players did say how going to Wembley in the league cup helped keep them calm for the play-off final… But, I’m just indulging in hypotheticals and a bit of ‘what-iffery?’.

The point remains, getting a tasty draw in the earlier rounds is fun but you never know what could have been. Look at last season, a great draw away at Newcastle Utd, a horde of City fans there to roar us on and that Andy Cook goal, but, we got massively outclassed and what if we’d got a much more winnable game at home, could we have gone onto the last 16 or quarter finals? 

We will play Peterborough in the last 16, not a dream tie but a tie that presents an opportunity to us, an opportunity to win and reach the quarter finals of the league cup for the only 5th time; previous times being in 64/65, 87/88, 88/89 and 12/13.

Our previous major cup quarter final was in the FA Cup in 14/15 and before that you had to go back to 75/76 in the FA Cup, So, excluding the Johnny Paint/EFL Trophy and focusing on the two major domestic cups, we’ve only had four quarter-finals in 51 years.

We are a team starved of cup successes and highlights, so I do believe we got one of the best draws on offer. 

Of course, I don’t have a crystal ball, I have no idea how our match vs Peterborough will pan out but I do know it’s a much better tie than Brentford, Brighton or Bournemouth at home. If you aren’t going to be playing in a glamour tie you may as well have the best chance to progress. 

This tie, and how it may go, is muddied by Peterborough dismissing Luke Williams and now appointing Robbie Savage, who got an impressive aforementioned win on his debut. But, they are a club that like to play out from the back and pass it around, which does suit us to a tee.

You look at our three previous matches against them, home and away, and you can see how their style allows us to create lots of opportunities. I won’t pretend to have any knowledge on Savage’s style of play, but a quick search suggests the following “high-intensity, relentless, and emotional style focused on high-sprint runs, continuous pressing, and a proactive, attacking mindset”. So probably, we will see a very different Peterborough to the team we faced in the first league meeting.

However, I managed to view the Hard Truth Podcast, which was made just after the draw and co-hosted by Posh owner Darragh MacAnthony and his City fan co-host, Philip Ideson, which made for an interesting watch.

MacAnthony was understandably gutted, having a self-confessed tantrum at the draw, as he stated he wanted his players to get rewarded with a big opportunity; highlighting it’s not about the money in the EFL Cup. He then discussed coming up against us again, MacAnthony stated that we have had their number the last couple of times at Valley Parade, but, he believes if his players showed more… “plums”… and played with more “plums” (his actual language, was ironically, more fruitful) they would have a greater chance of winning.

This may be why Savage has appealed to him as an emotional and intense manager. He went on to say it presents an opportunity for his side, stating the challenge is to beat another League One team to get in the quarter finals. Interestingly though, he did complain that his side went long against us and didn’t play to their fullest on their last visit.

This would suggest he felt they betrayed their identity and cared too much about stopping us pressing them high, whereas Luke Williams had perhaps reflected on their visit back in February, last season; albeit, the result and score stayed the same.

This podcast came out before Williams was sacked and you feel MacAnthony will have “tasked Savage with getting his team back to being true to their identity and style. Which would suggest Savage will have his team playing out from the back, delivering their possession focused and passing style. This could be a positive for us as we all know how well we do against heavy possession teams and those who like to keep the ball on the ground and pass it around the back. Thus, why we struggle against teams who play in the way Orient did on the weekend, who take away our ability to press and let us keep the ball.

So we could see two contrasting styles of play, a team that prefers not to have the majority of possession vs a team that wants to keep the ball. Although, there isn’t a massive difference in the overall possession stats here, Peterborough have got 57.6% on average across their league games, whereas City have got 51.8%. This does put Peterborough fourth, only behind Oxford (59%), Stockport (65.7%) and Leicester (71%) whereas City are in 10th.

The match also represents a stark difference in age and experience between the two teams, looking at the line-ups from the most recent league games, Peterborough fielded a team with an average age of 22.8 years old, whereas City’s starting line-up vs Leyton Orient had an average age of 27.7 years old.

Of course, being older doesn’t always equal more experienced but there is a stark difference here too. Peterborough’s starting line-up vs Leicester had a combined 792 league appearances between them, whereas City’s starting line-up vs Orient had a combined 2,684 appearances between them.

You could see our last-16 team being a contrasting clash between possession vs directness and experience vs youthful vigour.

***

When I wrote this article I did put my cards on the table and say I’d have us favourites and I still would put us down as favourites but there are some big unknowns for us as well as them now:

– How will the new managerial appointments impact both teams league fortunes?

– Will there be any significant changes in formation and style of play?

– Will Savage be able to convince MacAnthony they need to be more pragmatic in certain games or is he fully bought into their style and identity?

– Can Savage help the Peterborough players find their plums (MacAnthony’s words) and play how he believes they can?

All the unknowns aside, we know we do well against teams that want the ball and want to pass it around the back and through us. Duff wants us to be a high-pressing, high-energy team too and, based on what I’ve read about Savage and MacAnthony’s comments, Peterborough are unlikely to divert too much from their approach. So, there has been a lot of change but both teams seem to have opted for continuity with their club identities.

Hopefully, all being well, we will all be sat with bated breath again watching a former footballer pull balls out of a bowl…

Categories: Opinion

Tags: BCAFC