Tuesday 2 October 2007
Coca-Cola Football League 2
Bradford City vs Accrington Stanley

I would like to extend a warm welcome to Accrington manager John Coleman, his players, staff and supporters who are here this evening.

We were all disappointed to lose our first home game on Saturday. But the good thing is that we've got another game straight away to bounce back.

There are a lot of determined players in that dressing room and there's not too much wrong with the way we are playing.

We paid the price against Wycombe for two bits of indiscipline. It was a silly free-kick to give away in a dangerous area and then you've got to be able to defend the set-piece better than that.

At every level, but this one especially, a lot of goals are scored from set-pieces. We managed to do that ourselves in the previous home game against Peterborough.

We've got to be able to deal with a basic free-kick. The ball wasn't whipped in, it wasn't a clever routine, we just didn't pick up our men - that's the most disappointing thing.

If we'd come off beaten because Wycombe had scored a really good goal then you accept that as one of those things. But to lose a stupid goal like that is a lot harder to take.

What made it even more frustrating is that we had started the game well with a good tempo and the crowd were right behind us. But their goal was like putting a pin in a balloon.

You've got to give credit to the opponents and they defended well as a unit. When you go away and get given a goal like that, they had something to protect.

Wycombe looked a decent side but I still felt we were good enough to have got something out of the game. If we had played the second half as we had done in the first I'd have been confident of winning.

I thought we were excellent in the first half and deserved to go in two goals up, not one behind. I hoped we could carry that on into the second half but that wasn't the case.

We had little bits of attacking play but obviously not as much as we were looking for. We stopped moving the ball about quickly and started taking too many touches and over-dwelling on the ball.

But I look back to that set-piece and if we'd defended it properly then I certainly wouldn't be talking about a defeat.

But that's gone now and we can concentrate on tonight and looking for the points that will help us to start climbing back up the table.

Remember, we're all one team. Together we can be successful.

Enjoy the game and shout for the lads,