So what if Stuart McCall didn’t get named as League Two manager of the month.
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be – and you know what they say about the curse!
Rochdale’s Keith Hill got the nod and good luck to him. Anyone who can get ’Dale in with a shout of their second promotion in 100 years of trying deserves some kind of recognition.
Here in Bradford, we’ll quietly toast a mini-renaissance in Bantam fortunes since the new year rang in.
Three wins and two draws may not be the stuff of legend but by Valley Parade standards, that is Champions’ League-winning form.
McCall, ever the pragmatist, knows there is still plenty of room for improvement. His team is still a work in motion.
But he also knows as well as anyone the grim fare that the City public have suffered in recent years and the many disappointments both on and off the field.
Victories over the likes of Accrington, Notts County and Shrewsbury won’t wipe out that hurt in an instant but maybe they are a little glint of brighter times.
Let’s face it, when was the last time City went through a whole month unbeaten?
Even when Colin Todd got the manager’s mantle in October 2004 after a five-game winning run, City still signed off the month with a 4-0 drubbing at Luton – otherwise known as Joe Ross Day!
You have to go back to August 2001 for the last unspoiled month.
City, newly relegated from the Premiership, began life back in the real world by seeing off Barnsley, Portsmouth and Coventry. That league hat-trick was backed up by a nervy cup win over today’s opponents Macclesfield.
Anyone standing in the rain on the open terrace at Moss Rose that night must have felt they had landed on another world. Six seasons later, this is the world that City now live in.
Jim Jefferies and City never pushed on from that unbeaten start. The gruff Scot was gone four months later and the season drifted into lower mid-table nothingness, which was as good as it has got since.
January 2008 could prove to be another false dawn – but is it too unrealistic to think otherwise?
Time will tell but, for now, optimism should be flavour of the month.