Bradford City legend is revered but his success was seriously inconsistent: View | OneFootball

Stuart McCall is a name well-known to football fans of a certain age due to his success throughout his playing career with the likes of Everton and north of the border at Rangers. However, many supporters would say that McCall is Mr Bradford City.

McCall joined the Bantams as an apprentice on his 16th birthday from local youth side Farsley Celtic before breaking into the first team during the 1982-83 season.

The box-to-box midfielder made 238 appearances for the Bantams from the 1982-83 season to the 1987-88 season. He rejoined the club for the 1998-99 season, helping the club be promoted to the Premier League, and made 157 more appearances.

McCall

McCall’s first stint as Bradford manager

McCall was still a player when he first stepped into temporary management for the Bantams.

After Chris Hutchings was sacked, McCall was appointed as the caretaker-player manager, managing only two games, one of those defeats coming against his former club Everton.

Bradford quickly brought in manager Jim Jefferies, which saw McCall return to playing duty with coaching responsibilities.

McCall was appointed the manager of the club after relegation to League Two at the end of the 2006-07 season.

At the start of pre-season, McCall had just 13 players in the squad and had to oversee the incomings of many transfers, most notably prolific striker Peter Thorne from Norwich City, who ultimately was a good signing for the club.

Despite being one of the favourites for promotion, the Bantams only finished 10th in McCalls's first season in charge, which saw the club fail even to reach the play-offs. After being one of the favourites for promotion once again the following season, the club again missed out on promotion, finishing 14th in the league.

McCall resigned as manager

Known as McCall's most successful period in charge of the club, the Scot returned to the Bantams after Phil Parkinson left the managerial job at Bradford for Bolton Wanderers.

During the 2016-17 season, McCall managed a fifth-place finish in EFL League One. He ultimately took the Bantams to the EFL League One play-off final, where the club lost 1-0 to Millwall in front of 53,000 at Wembley.

Unfortunately, after a string of poor results, controversial former owner Edin Rahic ultimately sacked McCall. The club was sitting in the final playoff place during the 2017-18 season when McCall left, which was arguably the decision that started the club's recent decline.

McCall started his fourth stint in charge of the club, taking over from Gary Bowyer in an odd season that ended after only 37 league games for the club due to the start of the global pandemic.

The 2020-21 season started with a 0-0 draw at home to Colchester United. During this season, zero fans were in the stands of stadiums across the football leagues.

After a couple of early-season wins, the club went on a disastrous run of one win, one draw, and eight losses during a ten-game period. With this poor run of form, McCall was dismissed on the 13th December 2020.

Although McCall had some successes, most notably taking Bradford City to one win away from the Championship while playing easy-on-the-eye football.

However, the failure to lead Bradford City to promotion in the first couple of seasons of his first full-time spell as manager, plus his most recent spell, which at best could be described as average, it’s unknown if the Bradford legend will ever return to the club for a fifth time and try and iron out some of the inconsistent success he had at Valley Parade.