Bradford City

Also written as Bradford.

The club

Bradford City Association Football Club were founded on 29 May 1903, when the committee of Manningham Football Club, a Northern Union rugby club formed in 1880, voted at its annual meeting to abandon rugby and take up association football under the new name. The club was elected to the Football League before it had played a single competitive match. They are nicknamed the Bantams, and have also been known as the Paraders and the Citizens. They play in claret and amber, and are described in the sources read here as the only professional club in England to wear that combination.

This is not Bradford (Park Avenue), which is a separate and entirely distinct Bradford club. Park Avenue were formed in 1907, when the city's other rugby club switched codes in response to Manningham's success, and took the bracketed suffix to distinguish themselves from Bradford City. Park Avenue were in the Football League from 1908 to 1970, folded, and were revived as a phoenix club in 1987; they now play at the Horsfall Stadium in the Northern Premier League Division One East, the eighth tier. The two meet in what is called the Bradford derby. Anything in a feed labelled simply "Bradford" in the English Football League means Bradford City, the subject of this file.

The ground is Valley Parade, in the Manningham district of the city. It grew from a quarry site bought by Manningham RFC in 1886, and the current capacity is 24,840. The present main stand opened in December 1986, after the fire of the previous year destroyed its predecessor.

The manager is Graham Alexander, appointed on 6 November 2023, with Chris Lucketti as his assistant.

Recent seasons

Bradford were relegated from League One in 2018/19, finishing 24th with 41 points, and then spent six seasons in the fourth tier. They were ninth in 2019/20 with 54 points, 15th in 2020/21 with 59, 14th in 2021/22 with 58, sixth in 2022/23 with 76 and ninth in 2023/24 with 69.

The promotion came in 2024/25. Under Alexander they finished third in League Two with 78 points from 46 matches, 22 wins, 12 draws and 12 defeats, behind Doncaster Rovers and Port Vale, going up automatically on the last day of the season with a win over Fleetwood Town. Andy Cook was the top scorer with 12 league goals and 15 in all competitions. The average home league attendance was 17,762.

Back in the third tier in 2025/26 they finished fourth with 77 points, 22 wins, 11 draws and 13 defeats, 58 scored and 51 conceded, a much stronger home record (15 wins, 5 draws, 3 defeats) than away (7, 6, 10). They took fourth place on the final day and lost the play-off semi-final to fifth-placed Bolton Wanderers, 2-0 on aggregate. Antoni Sarcevic was top scorer with 11. They went out of the FA Cup in the first round and the EFL Trophy in the round of 32, and reached the third round of the EFL Cup, losing 4-1 away to Newcastle United. The average home league attendance was 20,444 and the highest was 24,075 against Huddersfield Town on 13 September 2025.

Honours and landmarks

Bradford City won the FA Cup in 1911, which remains their only major honour. They were Second Division champions in 1907/08, Third Division North champions in 1928/29, Third Division North Cup winners in 1939, Third Division champions in 1984/85 and League Two play-off winners in 2013.

Three things beyond the trophy cabinet define the club.

The first is the 1911 FA Cup. The final against Newcastle United was played at Crystal Palace on 22 April 1911 in front of 69,068 and finished goalless. The replay four days later at Old Trafford, before 66,646, was won 1-0 by a 15th-minute goal from the captain Jimmy Speirs, following a mistake by the Newcastle goalkeeper Lawrence. John Pearson refereed both matches. The trophy Speirs lifted was a brand new one, and had been made by the Bradford jewellers Fattorini's.

The second is the fire. On 11 May 1985, during the Third Division match against Lincoln City on the last day of a season in which Bradford had just won the championship, the wooden main stand at Valley Parade caught fire and was destroyed within minutes; the sources read here give the figure variously as four minutes and as nine. Fifty-six spectators died, 54 of them Bradford supporters and two Lincoln, and at least 265 were injured. The oldest of the dead was Sam Firth, a former chairman of the club, aged 86. The fire began when a visitor from Australia trod on a lit cigarette and it fell through the floorboards into rubbish that had accumulated beneath the stand. The inquiry led by Sir Oliver Popplewell produced new safety law, including a ban on new wooden grandstands at British sports grounds and the immediate closure of unsafe existing ones. Valley Parade was rebuilt and reopened in December 1986. There are several memorials, among them a marble fascia carrying the names of the dead, the club plays with black trim on its shirt sleeves as a permanent tribute, and the Bradford Burns Unit is the club's official charity.

The third is the League Cup run of 2012/13, made from the fourth tier. Bradford became the first club from the fourth tier since Rochdale in 1962 to reach the final, beating three Premier League sides on the way. In the final they lost 5-0 to Swansea City. They won promotion through the League Two play-offs the same season.

The Premier League spell sits alongside those. Paul Jewell took Bradford up as runners-up in 1998/99, ending an absence of 77 years from the top flight. In 1999/2000, after the Sky Sports pundit Rodney Marsh had predicted their relegation, they stayed up on the final day on a then record-low 36 points, beating Liverpool 1-0 with a goal from David Wetherall. The following season was the reverse: Chris Hutchings was dismissed after twelve games, Stuart McCall took caretaker charge and Jim Jefferies came in on 20 November, and Bradford went down 20th with 26 points from 38 matches, 5 wins, 11 draws and 22 defeats, 30 scored and 70 conceded.

Then came the collapse. The club went into administration in May 2002 with debts of close to £13 million, the ITV Digital collapse and the chairman Geoffrey Richmond's own spending both cited, and into administration a second time in 2004, under the management of Bryan Robson. By 2007 they were in the fourth tier for the first time in 25 years, and stayed there until 2013.

Notable scorelines

The record win is 11-1 against Rotherham United in 1928/29. The record defeat is 9-1 away to Colchester United on 30 December 1961. The record attendance at Valley Parade is 39,146, for a 1-0 FA Cup fourth-round win over Burnley in 1911. In the modern reduced ground the club's League Two attendance records were set twice in one season, 20,383 against Colchester United on 4 March 2023 and then 22,576 against Leyton Orient on 8 May 2023.

The 2012/13 League Cup scorelines are worth setting out in full. Bradford beat Notts County 1-0 after extra time away in the first round on 11 August 2012, James Hanson scoring in the 95th minute; Watford 2-1 away in the second; Burton Albion 3-2 after extra time at home in the third; Wigan Athletic away in the fourth, 0-0 and 4-2 on penalties; Arsenal at home in the fifth, 1-1 and 3-2 on penalties; and Aston Villa 3-1 at home and 1-2 away in the semi-final, going through 4-3 on aggregate. The final was at Wembley on 24 February 2013 before 82,597, refereed by Kevin Friend, and Swansea won 5-0 through Nathan Dyer on 16 and 48 minutes, Michu on 40 and Jonathan de Guzmán with a penalty on 59 and a fifth in stoppage time at the end of the match.

European record

Bradford City have played in Europe once, in the 2000 UEFA Intertoto Cup. They beat Atlantas of Lithuania 7-2 on aggregate in the second round, 3-1 away and 4-1 at home, then RKC Waalwijk 3-0 on aggregate in the third, 2-0 at home and 1-0 away. They lost the semi-final to Zenit Saint Petersburg, 1-0 away and 3-0 at home.

Quotes

Geoffrey Richmond, the chairman under whom the club overspent its way into the 2002 administration, described the episode as his "six weeks of madness". No other directly quoted material was confirmed from the sources read here.

Right now (2026/27)

Graham Alexander is in his second season in League One with the club, with Chris Lucketti as assistant. The summer signings include Jake Beesley from Burton Albion, Adam Phillips from Barnsley, Macaulay Gillesphey from Charlton Athletic, Jon McCracken from Dundee and Cameron Dawson from Rotherham United. Zac Hadi is on loan at Spennymoor Town until 6 September and Tommy Leigh is at Bristol Rovers for the season.

The league campaign has started with two wins. Bradford beat Peterborough United 2-0 at Valley Parade on 15 August 2026, Macaulay Gillesphey and Powell scoring, then won 1-0 away at Hillsborough against Sheffield Wednesday on 20 August 2026, Aden Baldwin scoring early in the second half. That left them first in League One on six points from two matches. The next fixture is away to Plymouth Argyle on 29 August 2026.

In the EFL Cup they beat Rochdale 2-0 in the first round and knocked out Burnley in the second, 0-0 and 4-2 on penalties. The third round is away to Leyton Orient. The date of that tie, the full current League One table, and any first-name detail for the scorer recorded as Powell were not established from the sources read here.

Sources

Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.