Bradford City are now searching for the 38th permanent manager in the club’s history following the resignation of David Hopkin on Monday morning.

Hopkin leaves City following a difficult 174-day reign, with a win ratio which, unfortunately, has created an unwanted piece of Bantams history.

Excluding caretaker managers such as David Wetherall over the club’s history, none of the 36 incumbents of the manager’s position before Hopkin recorded a win ratio lower than Hopkin’s 20%. From his 35 games in charge, Hopkin’s final record in all competitions was:

Played: 35
Won: 7
Drawn: 11
Lost: 17
Win ratio: 20%

Hopkin’s low win ratio is marginally worse than Peter Jackson, who managed 4 wins from his 19 games in charge, a win ratio of 21.05%.

However, there was perhaps an argument that Hopkin was beginning to turn Bradford City’s fortunes around, irrespective of the result at Walsall on Saturday afternoon. Splitting his 28 league game-reign in charge down the middle, the first 14 league games under Hopkin yielded a woefully-low eight points. Contrast that with the 14 league games thereafter, and City registered 19 points.

But more telling than that is the fact that City are now on the lookout for their fifth permanent manager (sixth if you include Greg Abbott’s interim game in charge, but we won’t) in just 13 months.

This is comfortably the biggest turnover of managers in the club’s history. The closest comparison you can find is around the turn of the century, when there were three permanent managers (Paul Jewell, Chris Hutchings, and Jim Jeffries) in charge between June 2000 and December 2001, an 18-month period. Never before have three successive permanent managers failed to occupy the post for less than a year.

Having created unwanted Bradford City history earlier in his reign (CLICK), unfortunately, David Hopkin departs BD8 with more unwanted statistical records to his name.