Graham Alexander interview: Bradford manager on riding challenges to enter League Two title hunt | Football News happymamay

“No, not really.”

Graham Alexander offers an explicit response when he is asked if he lacks Sky Bet League Two Playsphs last season leading payment for automatic promotion this term.

Bradford won six from the last seven league matches in 2023/24 and ranked ninth, but he was absent from first place in the first place in only one point. They were in the seventeenth place in the table after a 3-0 defeat against Harugate on March 23, 2024.

Instead, he sees it as a basic phase of a batch to end the six -seasons of Panams in the fourth layer of English football.

Alexander says to Sky Sports.

“We went to the summer with real positive energy. We knew that we have a good team and we can maintain the work we did in the last six or seven games. We had a real difficult period before that, a difficult month where the results were horrific. We drew a line in the sand and took specific decisions to make it to go forward.

“These results have given us our belief that we can face this season.”

And they did. He took three victories and a draw in the first five Bradford to the qualifying sites in early September-until the bad injuries began to get rid of the first option 11.

They won only three games from 13 games and retreated to the middle of the table. Another season of mediocrity seemed to be a real possibility.

“Unfortunately, we were about six, perhaps seven, injuries to the starting team within about three weeks,” Alexander says.

“We lost the majority of these men for two to three months, so there was a period of modification as we were trying to find the right balance in the team. We had to change the shape because we were very short on the defenders, especially – we lost our three backs in a period of two weeks. We were not relatively good, but we could not find the edge of the lineage.

“Slowly, the players started to return to fitness, and when we went back to the full power team and we had the ability to be able to influence games from the bench, this was a turning point for us.

“We have tried to preserve the same principles because we have worked throughout the summer employment of a certain way to play. To go and change everything, knowing that we will return these players, I think, to destabilize us during that period.

“We had to try to get some consistency. It was difficult to overcome, but we were unable to turn those margins on our way until we got a complete supplement for the players. Once we did, the results turned.”

The Alexander team returned to the right track with seven points from four games during the Christmas period, but they were dealt with with another blow – and a heavy charge in that – when the star striker Andy Cook was excluded for the season after suffering an AFC Champions League injury at 2-2 with Barrow on New Year’s Day.

Cook, 34, scored 15 goals in 29 games in all competitions before being injured and 85 games since joining the club from Mansfield in 2021 – the third most than any player in Bradford in the club’s history.

Alexander gave an important problem to solve it.

“I have previously talked about not being a perceived individual team,” he added. “He is never a team of one man, because a man cannot do anything alone in a football match. But our perception may have been that we were relying on Andy Cook to achieve goals.

“We did not really have, perhaps for two or three seasons, even before my time, any person gets even half of the level in which he scored goals. In the end it costs the team, because you need to score goals to win the matches, but if you suffer from his admiration for one player, if he is outside the shape or puts it in trouble.

“So we spent a lot of time and energy in an attempt to find other players who can add goals from different sites, and when we lost the cookie, we were relatively confident in the presence of other players in our team not only able to replace it, but also maintain the goal score element for the team.

“This was the case, but it was supported by the team’s defensive force, if any, because our defensive structure, our discipline, was not our will to overcome real constant throughout the season.

“It helps the players, then gets rid of the amount of goals that you should score. If you waive, there is more pressure on the scoring. If you don’t give up, there are less pressure on the players who are thinking about thinking about seizing the opportunity to reach their path.”

Since the beginning of the year, Bradford played 15 games in the second league, won 10 and maintained nine clean papers. Between December 14 and March 4, they won 10 consecutive games at Valley Parade for the first time ever.

The automatic promotion batch was 1-0 to Gillingham and Tranmeer, but with nine games to go, a decline in the form of former leaders in Walsall means that they are right to hunt the title. They are trained on saddles, just three points.

Alexander knows that the fans – who watched only one and three declines since they left the Premier League in 2000/2001 – are enthusiastic about glory that is likely to lie after more than a month. It encourages this excitement activity.

But internally, a “one game in time mines” will remain to the end.

“If the fans are implementing, you will not stop it. I want them to be excited. We want them to have hope and expect to watch their team. I don’t want to hide any of these feelings. But this has not yet been done, nothing has been achieved.

“Everyone knows the expectations in Bradford. It goes without saying, so we do not have to remind players and employees about our ambitions; it is in front of our eyes.

“But we have to focus on the details and the process of winning football games. This is the only thing that will get to where we want to go. Many other things are things that players cannot control, and employees cannot control, so we do not have to focus on.

“We have conducted our experiences and composers, and we have experienced our disappointment this season, nothing more than losing in the semi -finals of the Vertu Trophy in the past two weeks, but then we won the following four league games, which shows me that the players have built in each of the games.

Alexander should know. This is a man who played nearly 1,000 games in his career, and he has managed more than 500 so far and won four promotional offers in total. The mentality of promotion is his second nature now.

“It is four promotional offers, but I will likely say 12, 13, 14 promotional hunts and pay them. As a player, I think I competed in seven failed matches and as a manager, I think it is three, maybe four as well.

“You have to learn about the peaks and ponds that come during the football season, and how to manage them, but you cannot do this on your own, and that is why we have intentionally searched the players, especially those who have passed this journey in clubs during their career. You learn through your experiences, but it is important that they do not negatively affect what you do in the future.”

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

“The capabilities in our support are great. However, with expectations, we had to try to reformulate the minds of players to enjoy this. It is part of the reason I came to the club, because it was a great challenge.

“This is still a big challenge, but the rewards are really high and the emotions that you feel are great. When you win a game, the fans feel crazy. These feelings are great.

“The only thing I said when we came here is that when people talk about Bradford in the second league, they say it is a big club – and we wanted to say” a big club, a good team. “

“I think we are able to do this, as people talk about the team as much as the club size, the support base, and the good team. Then I feel that we have a good opportunity to compete at a good level.”

Watch the Bradford City game playing a coach in the second league for the Colicter United Live on Sky SPORTS+ (starting 3 pm) on Saturday.