Phil Parkinson reckons City’s biggest signings of the summer were the players they already had.

The Bantams chief has added Mark Yeates and Jason Kennedy to the promotion-winning squad – with trialists Raffaele De Vita and Gary Woods hoping to follow.

While the new arrivals have slotted in well, Parkinson belie-ves that keeping the established names on board was a crucial bit of business.

Andrew Davies, Nathan Doyle and skipper Gary Jones played a huge role in finally dragging City out of the basement division and the club made it a priority to keep them for League One.

Parkinson said: “It was really important to keep the core of the squad together. We looked at the spirit of the group and who were integral to that. Those type of players like Davies, Doyle and Jones were key ingredients and we had to keep them.

“Even with Gary at his age, there were other clubs looking at him because of the run we’d had. The exposure those lads had in the big games was always going to attract attention.

“You saw Davies’ performance in the play-off final for instance. That’s why we had to make sure the chairmen were 100 per cent behind us to keep that core.

“If we hadn’t gone up, a few players would have moved on. Players ultimately want to perform at the highest level they can. It would have proved harder to keep them, not from the finances but from where we would have been. They are big signings.

“We know these players inside out as characters and know how much another year working with them would help us.”