Graham Alexander interview: Bradford’s riding manager challenges to enter the league headline for entry

“No, not really.”

Graham Alexander offers a sincere answer when asked if he would miss Sky Bet League two playoffs last season is starting an automatic promotion in this term.

Bradford won six of his last seven league matches in 2023/24, and finished ninth, but missed in the first seven places with only one point. They were 17 in the table after a 3-0 defeat of Harrogate on March 2, 2024.

Instead, he sees it as the basic phase of pressure to complete Bantams’s six -season stay in the fourth level of English football.

“What did that had shown the potential in what we were trying to do,” says Alexander Sky Sports.

“We entered the summer with a real positive energy that we knew we had a good band and we could keep the job we did in the last six or seven games. We had a really difficult period before that, a difficult month in which the results were terrible. We drew a line in the sand and made the decisions we had to make forward.

“These results gave us the belief that we could basically enter the next season.”

And that they did it. Three wins and draws in the top five took Bradford to the place for play-offs in early September-all, while non-tour injuries began to decline their first choice of 11.

They won in just three of the next 13 games and slid into the middle table. Another season of mediocrity seemed to be a real possibility.

“Unfortunately, we gained about six, maybe seven, injuries to that initial team for about three weeks,” Alexander says.

“We lost most of these guys for two to three months, so there was a period of adjustment in which we tried to find the right balance in the team. We had to change the shape, because we were simply so short on veterans – we especially lost three in two weeks. We were still relatively good, but we just couldn’t find that winning edge.

“The players slowly started returning to fitness and when we returned to the team full of strength and had the opportunity to influence the bench games, it was a turning point for us.

“We tried to keep the same principles because all summer we worked by recruiting ourselves in a certain way of playing. To change it all, knowing that we would bring these players back, I thought, would destabilize us during this period.

“We had to try to get consistency. It’s hard to beat us, but we couldn’t turn those margins on the road until we had a complete complement to the players. Once we did it, the results turned.”

Alexander’s side returned on a trip with seven points from four games during the Christmas period, but he caused them another shot – and heavy in it – when the star Andy Cook was off during the season after suffering an ACL injury to 2-2 with Barrow to the New Year.

Cook, 34, has scored 15 goals in 29 games in all competitions before injury and 85 since joining the Mansfield 2021 club – a third most of any Bradford player in the club’s history.

The injury gave Alexander an important problem for solving.

“I used to talk about that I wasn’t perceived with one man,” he adds. “It is never a team with one man, because one man can’t do anything alone in a football match. But the perception may have been overly relying on Andy Cook for goals.

“We didn’t really have, probably for maybe two or three seasons, not even before my time, anyone to get half a level to score. Ultimately, it probably cost the team because you need to score goals to win games, but if you are exaggerated on one player, if he is out of shape or injured or suspended, you are in trouble.

“So, we spent a lot of time and energy trying to find other players who can add goals from different positions and, when we lost cooking, we were relatively sure that there were other players in our squad who could not only replace it, but to keep the goal score for the goal.

“This was the case, but it was supported by the defense force of the team, if nothing else, because our defense structure, our discipline, our will not to win, really consistent until the season.

“It helps players, then deprives the pressure from the amount of goals you have to score. If you admit, there is a greater pressure on scoring. If you do not admit, there is less stress on players who think to take the opportunity to find them.”

From the crossing of the year, Bradford played 15 games in the league two, won 10 and retained nine clean leaves. Between March 14 and 4, they won 10 games in a row at Valley Paradi for the first time ever.

Automatically promotion, he slowed down defeats from 1-0 Gillingham and Tramere, but with nine games he will go, the fall in the form of former Walsall leaders means they are right in the crowds. They follow Sedlare with only three points.

Alexander knows fans – who have seen only one promotion and three outages since they gave up the 2000/01 Premier League. – They are excited about the glory that has been potentially lying over a month. He actively encourages that excitement.

But inside “one game per single mantra” will remain until the very end.

“If the fans are led, I will not stop it. I want them to be excited. We want them to have hope and anticipation to watch their team. I don’t want to muffle any of these emotions. But nothing has been done yet, nothing has been achieved.

“Everyone knows about the expectation in Bradford. It is unnecessary, so we don’t have to remind players and staff on our ambitions; it’s for us to see us in front of our eyes.

“But we have to focus on the details and the process of winning the football games. This is the only thing that will lead us to where we want to go. Many other things are things that players can’t control, staff cannot control, so we don’t have to focus on it.

“We had our temptations and troubles and we had disappointments this season, nothing more than losing in the semifinals of Vertu Trophy in the last few weeks, but then we won the next four league games, which shows that the players built a really good thinking about harmony, focus and disciplines.

And Alexander should know. It is a man who has played nearly 1000 games in his career, has succeeded in over 500 to date and won four promotions. The opinion of promotion is now his second nature.

“These are four promotions, but I would probably say 12, 13, 14 promotions and pushes. As a player, I think I competed in seven playoffs and as a manager, I think there are three, maybe four.

“You have to find out about the tops and troughs that come during the football season, how to manage them, but you cannot do it yourself and that is why we have intentionally sought players, especially who have gone through this trip in clubs because of their careers. Learn by their experiences, but it is important that they do not affect negatively on the future in the future.”

When Alexander arrived at the club as a permanent successor to Mark Hughes in November 2023, he said that “the scope here is endless.” This view has only been reinforced since then.

“The potential with our support is top -notch. But, with expectations, we had to try and reverse the mind of the player to enjoy it. This is part of the reason I came to the club, because it was a big challenge.

“It’s still a big challenge, but the rewards are really, really high, and emotions you think are top notch. When you win the game, the fans just go crazy. These feelings are fantastic.

“One thing I said when we came here was that when people talk about Bradford in the league two, they say it’s a big club – and we wanted to say” Big Club, a good team “.

“I believe we were able to do this, where people talk about the team as well as the size of the club, the support base, the good team. Then I feel that we have a good chance of competing at a good level.”

Watch Bradford City play promotional promotions of Colchester United Live Live on Sky Sports+ (beginning 15:00) this Saturday.