Football Season Review

Bradford entered the season with high hopes and expectations, having retained all of their key players as well as their boss Phil Parkinson, as well as completing several promising signings during the summer. However, things did not go smoothly for the Bantams early in the season, as they struggled to find any consistency and spent the majority of the first half of the campaign in the middle of the table and the bottom half, with long-term injuries of two talented players in Filipe Morais and Paul Anderson certainly not helping things. However, Parkinson remained active in trying to bring in quality players and made two excellent loan captures in Reece Burke, Kyel Reid Lee Evans, who all ended up staying with the club until the end of the season, while the Bantams' overall fortunes started to change, and they were pretty much a team reborn in the second half of the season. Parkinson was never a manager known for getting his teams to play attractive football, and Bradford's late season run-in was a demonstration of his footballing philosophy, as they became known as 1:0 specialists in the late stages of the season and ended their campaign with a run of seven consecutive home wins during which they conceded only one goal. Their efforts were enough for them to finish fifth, just below Millwall, who they faced in the play-offs, but the Lions were too strong and reached the final after beating them with a 4:2 aggregate score. The Bantams have been taken over by a German consortium at the end of the season and now have a summer of uncertainty ahead of them. If Parkinson is allowed to continue his project and bring in a couple more quality signings, Bradford will certainly aim for direct promotion next time around.

Player of the Season: Reece Burke