Football Season Review

The season that is now behind us will give Bradford City fans mixed feelings, as they saw their side come from behind to beat Chelsea in the FA Cup to record one of the biggest upsets in the history of competition, but also saw them narrowly fail to make the play-offs. The Bantams were widely seen as one of the biggest unknowns of League One early in the season, as their squad has changed a lot during the summer, and was rather small in terms of numbers. However, Phil Parkinson has managed to get the most out of what he had at his disposal and his men were inside or near the play-off places throughout their campaign. Without doubt, the thing that the majority of their fans will remember the season by is their FA Cup run, as they eliminated Chelsea and Sunderland to reach the quarter-finals of the competition, only to fail to make Wembley after falling to an away defeat at Reading after holding the Royals to a goalless draw in their first match, which was played at Valley Parade. They were sixth in the table at the time of facing the Royals, but were unable to display the late season form that was required to make the top six, with one of the reasons for this being the fact that key players such as Filipe Morais, Mark Yeates and Andrew Davies suffered injuries during their FA Cup heroics, and subsequently missed a lot of playing time in the final two months of the season. Parkinson will ultimately be pleased with the season that his side have had, and will certainly look to increase his number of options during the summer and have another play-off charge next time around.

Player of the Season: Gary Liddle