Bradford City boss on welcome upturn of Josh Neufville as side prepares for Huddersfield Town and Lincoln City
IN the first few months of the League One season, Josh Neufville was one of the revelations at third-tier level for Bradford City.
Coming off the back of a splendid promotion campaign at former club AFC Wimbledon, which earned him a plethora of club accolades, the Luton-born wing-back hit the ground running at his new place of work in West Yorkshire.
His first goals arrived in an outstanding September when City secured statement wins over Huddersfield Town and Cardiff City – a month when Neufville, inset, was named as League One's player of the month.
After blazing a trail in late summer and early autumn, Neufville has felt victim to the fact that several rival clubs have cottoned onto his prowess and endeavoured to stymie his adventure down the right.
Over the Christmas period, he dropped down to the bench, but recently returned to the side and was more like his old self against Cardiff on Saturday, according to Graham Alexander.
It's timely ahead of this weekend's return derby with Town, with City then following up with a similarly seismic trip to fellow high-fliers Lincoln City next Tuesday. They will need their big players.
On Neufville, who set up Jenson Metcalfe's goal, Alexander said: “I think he had a little spell where he struggled a little bit, so we took him out of the team and obviously Brad (Halliday) came into the team.
“But we saw signs of him recovering that early season form in training and that positivity that he has to have in his mentality to take people on.
“I think once he's gone past one or two, you can just see him rise in stature and get more confident, and he can be a real thorn in the side for the opponents.
“And I thought he actually showed great composure on the goal, where he could have tried to take on one or two players, but actually recognised Jenson was in a better position and just rolled it to him.
“So that's great maturity and learning from Josh.”
Despite his side's reverse to Cardiff, Alexander's glass remains steadfastly half-full and why wouldn’t it in fairness.
Their record in terms of bouncing back from setbacks so far in 2025-26 has been particularly impressive as well. They have yet to lose back-to-back league games this term.
The last time that it happened at league level was last March.
He added: “When we played Newcastle, we had to hold our heads up and say: 'they're at a different level'.
“But any other team or any game we've played (this season), we've always looked at what we could have done better to win a game.
“I believe in this group of players so much that when I go into any game, I know what our game plan is and I know how we defend – and how we attack, the quality we have, the character and personality we have – that we can beat anyone on any given day.
“You don't set a standard of: 'Can we win the next 46 games? But if you take those 46 games in isolation, it's 'Can we win this game?' 100 per cent we can, and that's how we set our standard.”