Bradford City AFC: A brief look into the now, the past, and the future
Bradford City commenced their 2020/21 campaign in the English Football League Two at the start of September in a home fixture against Colchester United, in which both sides were forced to settle for a point. After a further draw against Forest Green Rovers, the Bantams ended the opening month of post-lockdown football on a high as they overturned a one-nil deficit to see victory against Stevenage. Despite making a relatively positive start to the season, Bradford managed to gain just 4 points from a possible 18 over the course of October’s league games. An encouraging 3-0 win to Southend United at the beginning of November brought a temporary end to this miserable run of form until, that is, Bradford collected another draw and two losses against Exeter City, Salford City and Leyton Orient, respectively. This turbulent form and mixed bag of results has left Bradford at 20th in the league table at present, 11 places below the 9thposition achieved by the end of the previous 19/20 season.
There may be some consolation to the supporters in knowing – as I’m sure they already do – that the sizeable accumulation of injuries is accountable, at least in part, for a good portion of this poor form. Bradford are heading into the busy December schedule without key first-team players including Callum Cooke, Reece Staunton, Billy Clarke, Kurtis Guthrie, Lee Novak, and Bryce Hosannah. The abnormally large injury list is not entirely unique to Bradford City however; teams from across England’s top flight divisions have endured a disproportionately large number of injuries to players, particularly to soft tissues, due to the heavily congested fixture schedule that arrives following the postponement of the 2019/20 season amid the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Bradford manager Stuart McCall has declared that he does not intend to recruit fresh free-agent talent into the club and will opt instead to call upon younger academy players to plug the gaps. Bradford’s poor string of results represents the latest phase of what has been an extremely challenging few years for the club. All but 3 years ago the Bantams were challenging for promotion into the Championship (the second-to-top English division). Yet in such a small space of time they now find themselves struggling for form in the bottom division of English professional football after suffering relegation in the 2018/19 season.
There is reason for Bradford City supporters to remain hopeful, however. Senior figures at the club have clearly taken a firm approach in recent years to combat further decline. I primarily refer to the coerced resignation of the club’s previous executive chairman, Edin Rahic, in 2018. By the end of Rahic’s time at Bradford City he had become an immensely unpopular figure and was heavily criticised for his assertive and authoritarian approach to conducting business and decision-making (it in fact only takes a google search of ‘Bradford City and Edin Rahic’ to find a series of fan-site articles describing him as a “dictator”). The decision to dismiss Rahic showcases the club’s unwillingness to invite complacently and manifests their intentions and desires for success. Similarly, when Gary Bowyer was brought in as manager after David Hopkin’s hugely disappointing 2018/19 relegation season, he was shortly sacked because he failed to secure a win in seven games in league 2 - simply not good enough for the aims of the club. Organisational and structural change is a sign of better things to come but, it should be said, does not represent the golden solution for Bradford City - rather it is just one half of the puzzle…
A great pity of modern football, and I do see it as a pity, is that the correlation between club success and financial backing seems to be ever-strengthening. The ability to recruit footballing talent, for one, is an affair that rests more upon the depths of the club’s pockets rather than on history or reputation or anything else that once may have had a greater deal of influence. And, accordingly, it is becoming increasingly clear that the right management throughout a football club is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for success. If that management isn’t supplied with a certain degree of financial firepower by the owners, the ability for it to perform effectively – to achieve good results on matchdays – is hindered. To pick out an example of this, take a glance at West Ham United. Between the years of 2011 and 2019, the London-based club employed and cycled through a collection of some of football’s most highly respectable, experienced and successful managers - including Sam Allardyce, Slaven Bilić, David Moyes, and Manual Pellegrini. After years of managerial change and no significant or sustained change in performance, the fans eventually turned to the club’s owners for answers instead. In 2020, this has since evolved into persistent fan protests and a largely resentful and bitter relationship between supporters and West Ham’s co-owners, David Sullivan and David Gold. The lack of money and investment is a core underpinning reason for fans’ demands for Sullivan and Gold to resign from their positions at the club. I return to my previous point: if managers aren’t supplied with a certain degree of financial firepower by owners, the ability for management to perform effectively is restricted.
Sharing some resemblance with West Ham United here, the Bantams perhaps have not had the financial investment proportional to what they’d like to achieve and this is, at least partly, accountable for their recent failings. As discussed in quite a good and very detailed financial assessment of Bradford City by John Dewhirst, Bradford City AFC is a small business with limited financial resources and a record of slim profitability, and their historical context through the 20th century helps to explain this. For instance, Bradford City were established relatively late on (in 1903) with very small funding; for a long period of time they lived in the shadows of local rivals Bradford Park Avenue (established earlier in 1892); they were significantly damaged by the First World War; they endured the 1985 Valley Parade Fire Disaster, and so on. Beyond the financial setbacks imposed by these factors and events, Bradford City have simply always lacked capitalisation and affluent ownership. In short, if Bradford City are to achieve their current goals and ambitions (presumably the centrepiece of which will be to gain promotion back into the third English division), they will need to match said goals and ambitions with a proportionate level of investment. This opens up to a rather large and complex question, namely ‘how can Bradford transform their finances?’. If you are interested in this, I would recommend reading the previously discussed article by Dewhirst for he is much more qualified to comment on the matter than I am.
The departure of Rahic in 2018 created great optimism around Valley Parade - it had signified the end of his miserable tenure and the starting point of a fresh start for Bradford City. Whilst results over the past two years haven’t suggested any real signs of progress here, it is vitally important to remember that the damage done by Rahic continues to be felt and will do so for some time, and this is completely normal; no transition can occur instantaneously. With this said, I must re-emphasize the crucial role that further sums of money and investment will play in this quest. The Bantams have made a far-from-ideal start to the current 2020/21 season, but there is still a long way to go and with the right mentality they can certainly persevere through the remainder of the season, where they will then have the opportunity to think about implementing measures towards their long-term rebuilding job.
Theo Walsh Assistant Researcher & Recent Graduate of the University of Liverpool in Philosophy & Business Studies
theo17walsh@gmail.com | 07584433587 | @theowa1sh