“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bradford City have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Nobody at Bradford City will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Bradford City can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Bradford City told George Pratt something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Lincoln City next, and one man in the Bradford City dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Bradford City. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
The terraces29 Mar 2027
Supporters make their feelings known about Josh Neufville
The speculation has reached the stands, and the stands have answered. Bradford City would like this settled before it becomes the only thing anybody asks about.
The language has come, the shrug has gone, and he argues in training like a man who expects to be here next year. None of it shows up on a fee and all of it shows up on the pitch.
Somebody from Norwich City has seen every one of Josh Neufville’s last few games. Nobody travels that far that often out of curiosity, and everybody at Bradford City knows it.
In brief
Looking aheadLooking ahead: the trip to Lincoln City
At 20 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Kevin Salazar will call it something else in private.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Andy Cook, and the manager let it.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Jack Simmons was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Bradford City dressing room was either.
One yellow too many, and a match watched from the stand. The most avoidable absence in football, and Bradford City will feel it on Saturday.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting George Pratt's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Mansfield Town? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Bradford City know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Successful dribbles: 11. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The words a physio says slowly. 18 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
9 combined actions and 7.12. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Ciarán Kelly was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
93 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Bradford City lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Bobby Pointon and Bradford City agree another 4 years.
The dugout7 Dec 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Jack Simmons left the room before anybody could ask which.
He used to be one of the options. He is now one of the men the options are picked around, and the change happened quietly enough that only the dressing room noticed on the day.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Jack Simmons after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Successful dribbles: 13. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Cardiff City in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
7 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑0, Jack Simmons could afford to be generous.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Luton Town in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
At 27 he has made the position his own, and the man he took it from has to find something to say about it. Bradford City have a decision that made itself.