Bradford said the decision to terminate Stuart McCall’s contract had “not been taken lightly”.

The 53-year-old’s departure brings an end to his second spell in charge of the Bantams, with whom he also started his career as a player. Stuart spent 10 years playing with Bradford over two separate spells before he was named as their new manager in May 2007.

McCall took over at the Coral Windows Stadium in June 2016 for the 2nd time in his career and was an immediate success when taking Bradford to the League One play-off final last season. Unfortunately, they were unlucky to lose the game 1-0 to a very good Millwall team at Wembley Stadium.

However, a run of six straight defeats in 2018 has seen Bradford slip 13 points behind the top promotion places, and this run included being knocked out of the FA Cup when they lost 2-0 against League Two side Yeovil.

Stuart McCall knows that any manager nowadays that loses 6 games on the trot can unfortunately lose his job. When he received a text to come in early for a chat, he knew that in all probability, he was losing his, and he was bang on!

McCall has revealed that he was left very disappointed at the club for breaking the news before he got the opportunity to inform his players first.

Bradford are still sixth in the table despite those losses and believe that the current squad is capable of performing to a much higher standard than they have been showing recently. The board knows that everybody is responsible for the recent run of poor form, especially the players who now have the opportunity to start getting the right results again – and quickly.

“As such, we believe that a change is in the best interests of the club at this time in order to give us the best chance of finishing the season strongly.”

McCall’s last game in charge was Saturday’s 2-1 defeat at relegation-threatened Oldham, while the Bantams’ previous home game saw them thrashed 4-0 by struggling AFC Wimbledon. This was too much for the former Rangers legend to keep his job.

McCall, who also managed Rangers for a short spell as well as Motherwell, leaves Bradford still with a slim chance of making a play-off place in League One after guiding the club to the play-off final last year.

Stuart believes he probably deserves a medal for his previous 17 months, with all the trials and tribulations at Bradford. When he left last time, he left with a real despondency. But now he genuinely feels that he can leave this time with his head held high.

He wishes all the players, the staff and the fans all the luck in the world and thanks them for all their fantastic support. Everyone at the club has got to unite to get a real positive result for this Saturday.

Ibrox Noise would not be surprised if Stuart McCall’s name starts to be mentioned as one of the managers to take over from Graeme Murty this summer if Rangers don’t continue to make real progress this season but equally we would be happy to see our former player and manager having some sort of role at Ibrox.