Stuart McCall has unfinished business in third stint at Bradford City – Leon Wobschall

For a select group of people in the game, their ties to one particular football club equate to that of the bonds of family.

When family is in trouble, you rally around and come to its assistance.

It is why when contacted about returning to his beloved Bradford City for a third spell, McCall – a passionate man with claret and amber coursing through his veins – was never likely to resist.

When manager at Manchester City at the start of the Nineties, the late Howard Kendall – whom McCall worked under at Goodison Park – said that while managing City was a ‘love affair’, Everton was a ‘marriage’ when the Merseysiders came calling.

Those are sentiments that McCall more than anyone will be able to concur with. He, like Kendall, will again manage the club he adores, is a supporter of and has a duty of care towards like no other. For a third time.

For McCall, there will be a justified sense of unfinished business as he returns to his spiritual home of Valley Parade.

It came almost exactly two years to the day since he was sacked by City during a troubled and dysfunctional spell off the field when Edin Rahic held court and called the shots.

It was on February 5, 2018 that McCall exited the club in the wake of Bradford losing a fifth successive league match for the first time since October, 2007, a 2-1 Roses reverse at Oldham.

Despite the poor sequence, City were still in the League One play-offs at the time, with McCall – in the first difficult run of his ‘second coming’ at Valley Parade – entitled to feel hard done by. He deserved better. Much better.

Such is football’s predilection for fate that Boundary Park was the venue for McCall’s predecessor Gary Bowyer’s final game in charge, a miserable 3-0 weekend reverse.

Thankfully, for McCall and City’s sake, the harmony in the corridors of power at Valley Parade has been restored with a ‘City man’ in interim chief-executive Julian Rhodes in situ.

The sense of angst is nothing to do with office politics and one man’s ego in the reign of Edin Rahic – which increasingly drained and depressed many at Valley Parade.

Granted, there is a current sense of unease, yes. But it is solely to do with the frustration at City’s recent malaise on the pitch – and nothing else.

Frustration, but a healthy sort, comparatively and something that can be fixed with the immediate sugar-rush of a few wins and a unifying figure at the helm in McCall, whose infectious enthusiasm will lift spirits.

McCall will know that while the Bantams drastically need to improve their performance levels on the pitch if they are to salvage something this season, at least the background music is changed from the tail-end of his last spell there when there were clear tensions with Rahic.

McCall can be his own man, without interference from above as he aims to get a tune out of an under-performing but able group of footballers for League Two level who have lost their mojo.

It is something that Bowyer never truly managed in a stodgy 2019-20 campaign when City have largely played with the handbrake on.

Having been denied the chance to finish the job at a City side in the play-off mix after 31 matches in 2017-18, McCall finds himself in the exact same position, albeit in a division below – with the current Bradford side having one point more.

But with one subtle difference. No back-seat driver behind him.