Dean Windass sealed his return home to Hull but revealed: I'd still be at City if they had stayed up.

Windass finally completed his move to the KC Stadium today in a £150,000 move which could rise to £200,000 depending on appearances.

The striker notched eight goals on loan there last season to keep them in the Championship.

But the 38-year-old admitted that things could have been very different had City managed to avoid slipping into the basement division.

"I said to Stuart McCall that if Bradford had been in League One I'd have stayed," Windass told the T&A. "But I felt I had a lot more to offer than League Two.

"I always thought I could play at Championship level and maybe even in the Premier League as Paul Jewell used to tell me but I wanted to play as high as I can for as long as I can.

"I got that opportunity with Hull and Stuart understands my decision. I've never played in the bottom division before and it's a big drop.

"Who knows, I might come back to the club for a third time one day but I know for a fact that if Bradford had still been in League One I'd probably still be there."

Windass is their first capture since Paul Duffen's southern-based consortium took control of the club.

"To go back to my home town is special. I would never leave Bradford City for anybody else and that's why I didn't go to Wigan.

"Of course I was happy to go to Hull last season but I also did it to help the club. Julian (Rhodes) wanted to pay the wages for January and February and the loan was a way of doing that.

"I went to Hull with my eyes open and knew it would be tough. I was looking forward to the challenge and couldn't envisage how well it would go.

"But seeing Bradford get relegated was a massive disappointment. When I left they were 12th in the league and Julian said to me that they couldn't get in the play-offs and couldn't go down.

"The big decision for me was sacking Colin Todd. If they had kept him to the end of the season it might have been different."

Windass scored 87 goals in 243 appearances during his two spells with City to put him third in the club's all-time list behind Bobby Campbell and Frank O'Rourke.

He finished joint leading hitman in League One in 2005 and was City's top scorer for the past four seasons after returning to the club from Sheffield United.

But there were also fall-outs with the fans over his disciplinary record. He was sent-off three times and was famously banned for five games for mouthing off at a referee in the Valley Parade car park.

Windass also claimed he received death threats following his red card against Bournemouth in November.

"I'm leaving the club with mixed emotions. I got a lot of bad press after Bournemouth and people were telling the club to get rid of me.

"But they say you don't realise what you've got until it's gone and my record speaks for itself.

"I've never been a big-headed person but my job was to go out and score goals for Bradford City. My record over the six years I was there was very good and, as I've said before, without my goals the team would have been relegated a lot earlier.

"It was just a pity that we couldn't get back to the Championship where the club belongs. We should have done in that first year under Colin because we had a decent enough squad but we underachieved and then the financial situation got a bit difficult.

"But you look forward now and it's a new era for Stuart. I know the supporters will turn out in numbers and hopefully the club can be successful again."

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