Bantams Scramble!

BEN ROBINSON believes it’s time for Bradford City to take another step back up the Football League ladder…

BRADFORD: A gritty northern industrial city with a population of over half a million. A city with a club which, last season, had the second highest attendance in their league.

But a city which has not seen top-flight football since 2001 and a club which currently presides in the third-tier.

Will the Bantams ever come home to roost? It is well within living memory that Bradford

City were in the Premier League. At the turn of the century, the club were battling it out at the top table of English football with the likes of Leeds United, Derby County, Ipswich Town and Coventry City (and we all know how their tales have ended up).

But, unlike the clubs previously mentioned, the sad plight of Bradford City is not as well-told.

If you fast forward six years from their relegation from the Premier League in 2001, the club had dropped down to League Two, the Football League basement.

The mighty Bantams had been boiled down to a flappy bird in less than a decade, completing one of the biggest falls from grace, at least on a par with Blackpool and Portsmouth.

In the case of Bradford, it would not be till they beat Northampton Town 3-0 in the 201213 League Two play-off final that they could manage to fly out of the basement of English football (albeit still only into League One).