Bradford City Association Football Club (also known as The Bantams, and previously The Paraders) is an English association football club based in Bradford, West Yorkshire, playing in League Two.

The club was founded in 1903. It was immediately elected into Division Two of the Football League despite not having played a previous game. Promotion to the top tier followed in 1908 and the club won the FA Cup in 1911, its only major honour. After relegation in 1922 from Division One, the club spent 77 years outside the top flight until promotion to the Premier League in 1999. City stayed up, with a then record low of 36 points, in the first season in the Premier League. Relegation followed the following season. Since then a series of financial crises have pushed the club to the brink of closure. The financial pressures have resulted in two more relegations to its current position in League Two. They are the lowest-ranked of all former Premier League clubs.

The club's colours are claret and amber and they play their home games at Valley Parade. The ground was the site of a fire on 11 May 1985, which took the lives of 56 supporters.

Coordinates: 53°48′00″N 1°45′07″W / 53.8000°N 1.75206°W / 53.8000; -1.75206

Bradford (ⁱ/ˈbrædfəd/) lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, 8.6 miles (13.8 km) west of Leeds, and 16 miles (25.7 km) northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897. Following local government reform in 1974, city status was bestowed upon the wider metropolitan borough.

Bradford has a population of 293,717, making it the fourteenth-most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. Bradford forms part of the West Yorkshire Urban Area conurbation which in 2001 had a population of 1.5 million and is part of the Leeds-Bradford Larger Urban Zone (LUZ), the third largest in the UK after London and Manchester, with an estimated population in the 2004 Urban Audit of 2.4 million.

Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bradford rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture, particularly wool. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the earliest industrialised settlements, rapidly becoming the "wool capital of the world". The area's access to a supply of coal, iron ore and soft water facilitated the growth of Bradford's manufacturing base, which, as textile manufacture grew, led to an explosion in population and was a stimulus to civic investment; Bradford has fine Victorian architecture including the grand Italianate City Hall.

Aaron McLean (born 25 May 1983) is an English footballer who plays for Hull City as a striker.

Born in Hammersmith, London, McLean attended Robert Clack School in Dagenham. He started his career with the Leyton Orient youth system in 1998. He then played for Aldershot Town.

He then played for Grays Athletic before joining League Two side, Peterborough on loan, on 31 October 2006. McLean then joined Peterborough permanently, for £150,000, when the transfer window opened on 1 January 2007.

McLean was initially signed by Peterborough on loan from Grays Athletic, however was then signed permanently for £150,000 in the following January transfer window. During this period he made 20 appearances and scored 10 times in both the FA Cup and League Two.

McLean had his best statistical year in Peterborough's 2007–08 campaign,^{[citation needed]} which resulted in promotion to League One. McLean scored 29 goals in the league in 45 appearances that season, which made him the League's leading scorer and earned him the League Two Golden Boot. He also scored three goals in four FA Cup appearances that year.

Philip John "Phil" Parkinson (born 1 December 1967) is an English football manager and former player who currently manages Bradford City.

Parkinson, a former Southampton trainee, made his Football League debut in 1988 with Bury, and later joined Reading for £50,000 in July 1992.

A fearsome tackler who always led by example, he was named player of the season two years in a row (1997–98 and 1998–99) and was also a key member of the 1993–94 Football League Second Division championship-winning team. He captained the team to promotion from the Second Division in 2001–02 and soon after promotion success, Parkinson celebrated his testimonial year with a memorable night at Madejski Stadium, where 20,000 fans watched former Reading team-mates such as Shaka Hislop, Michael Gilkes and Jeff Hopkins take on an England XI including the likes of Paul Gascoigne, John Barnes and Chris Waddle.^{[citation needed]}

Although Parkinson rarely featured on the field in his final season as Reading returned to the First Division, he remained a hugely respected member of the squad until his departure to Layer Road.