As unbelievable as it may sound, it really shouldn’t come as a shock but Bradford City really do seem to play worse based on how many City supporters are in the ground. This instantly makes sense when you look at our dire home form, but a recent statistic showed that if our season was based on away form, we’d be 8th in League Two, and only a few points off of the play-off’s. This statistic may have surprised quite a few Bradford City supporters, so I decided to dig into those stats, as I suspected there might be a trend to this, and indeed there is.
In the table below we can see that the larger the away following that Bradford City take, the less likely it is that the Bantams will win.
As you can see from the approximate away fans, based on the number of tickets confirmed sold by Bradford City (which is the safest way to keep the statistics realistic), Bradford City amassed a sizeable points haul when there was less than 1,000 Bradford City supporters in the ground. But what is fascinating is how the only win away from home is back in August for matches where Bradford City have taken 1000 fans or more. But what is the significance of August?
August is important because the stats point to an issue with the mentality of the Bradford City squad, and in August everything was positive and there was the new manager boost, and a new season. It isn’t uncommon for teams to get off to a great start in the first month, only to come unstuck at the first sign of difficulty. Consider August the honeymoon period of the season, and so, we see the lonely green statistic that is the exception to the rule in these statistics being the 3-2 win at Mansfield Town, where not only did we take 1,650 supporters, but it made up a comparatively hefty 26% of the total attendance of 6,058. Exactly the same occurrence happens with our home form, with our highest attendance of 17,624 at home to date being against Oldham Athletic, where again, in August, it is an exception to the rule of number of Bradford City supporters in attendance vs Bradford City results.
To put the total travelling support into numbers, Bradford City have played 19 matches. We have picked up a total of 26 points (I will return to this again after the next table). If I were to go down the middle and choose only the 9 games with the lowest away followings (from Stevenage to Crawley), in order to give the advantage AGAINST my statistic being proven right (higher attendances are being given 10 matches – or a possible 30 points, and supporting my argument only has to opportunity to gain 27 points), it is still clear as day what is happening.
Bradford City have amassed 19 points out of a possible 27 and only managed a further 7 points as the away following gets larger. If I was to take out the August bounce, City would only have 3 points!
In order to really prove this theory it wasn’t good enough for me to simply look at the total number of Bradford City supporters that have travelled to each away match, because that could be a bit misleading, because if a ground has say 2000 supporters in it, and 1500 of them are Bradford City supporters, the noise and feedback they are going to notice out on the pitch in reality would be more akin to a home match, rather than an away match. But if there was only 50 Bradford City supporters in an attendance of 2000, the players would barely notice any noise at all from City fans. So the following table gives you an idea of how much of the away attendance was made up of Bradford City supporters, which gives you a better indication of the matches that would have the most audible effect on those on the pitch.
This again tells the same story, in those matches with Bradford City fans making up the lowest percentage of the attendance, Bradford City are winning matches. The top of this table shows the matches where Bradford City fans made up the highest percentage of fans, with the bottom showing where we were the lowest. Remember that shock result when we beat in form Swindon Town? Only 5% of the total attendance was made up of Bradford City supporters, push that percentage up past 20% and we include poor results against poor teams, like the two relegation favourites Scunthorpe United (draw) and Oldham Athletic (lost). Rochdale currently sit in 19th position.
I should choose 20% as my starting point for where I’m going to take the points ratio from on this table. But I will first work from the 10 games vs 9 games since we don’t have an even number. I don’t want to be accused of trying to paint a negative picture, so I will look at both scenario’s and let you decide which of the two it more realistically should be based on. You could even decide to break these stats up using 25% or 15% as your starting point, but it still tells the same story. And I will let you do the maths on those at your leisure should you want to.
I’m going to use 20% because it is more of an average kind of make up of support, and also in terms of the table it is more fairly distributed to give the weight in favour against my theory, rather than for it.
To avoid too much confusion, if I’m to use the 10 games vs 9 games approach again, it has to be done slightly slanted in favour of my theory, because Leyton Orient and Forest Green both have the same percentage of away fans at them. There has to be something that distinguishes the two starting or finishing points (I hope that makes sense). In this case, I will be looking at the 9 games with 27 points available from the top 9 on the table, and the 10 games with 30 points available from the bottom of the table.
Bradford City only managed to pick up 8 points from the games where there was more 19% or more Bradford City fans in the total attendance. This is compared to 21 points from 30 available when there 18% or fewer of the supporters in the ground were Bradford City supporters.
Using the 20% mark as a starting point Bradford City picked up only 5 points on the road, compared to 21 points when there was less than 20% of the attendance made up of Bradford City supporters in the crowd.
Whichever way you choose to look at it, these statistics reveal a clear pattern than the fewer Bradford City fans that are supporting our players, the better they play. I would subscribe to the suggestion that this is because we haven’t a squad that is mentally cut out for playing for a football club where there are high expectations and a certain amount of pressure that comes with it.
This is no fault of our supporters, this issue lies at the feet of the players. Many clubs have high expectations, we are a club that compared to others in League 2 are one of the bigger ones, we are a big City as well, and we have a comparatively large ground and are comparitively well supported. But like so many football managers have pointed out in the past, if you can’t make it at Bradford City, you aren’t going to make it.
This is because success takes a certain type of personality and dedication, and of course work rate. Bradford City being in League Two is the first step on that ladder to testing yourself at a big club, if you fail at Bradford City, you aren’t ever going to end up playing in the Premier League, because you’re just not cut out for the pressure, regardless of how technically gifted you may be.
And that is why almost every player who has failed at Bradford City in the last 5 years either is playing in the lower echelons of League Two or below. Very few, if any, have gone on to bigger and better things without first impressing at Valley Parade.