Saturday 3 November 2007
Coca-Cola Football League 2
Bradford City vs Brentford

I would like to extend a warm welcome to Terry Butcher, his Brentford players, staff and supporters to the Coral Windows Stadium.

I've come across Terry a lot of times in football and he was obviously a terrific player for club and country. I just missed his time at Ibrox but I know he helped to change the fortunes of Rangers around.

Like myself, this division will be new to him although he obviously has managerial experience with Motherwell. He's been there and done it but not in this league so he will be trying to learn this level as fast as I am.

Brentford have got a couple of away victories and won last week so their confidence will be up. I'm sure Terry will have them organised and fired up but we've got to concentrate on our own performance.

I felt we definitely deserved a draw at Grimsby last week even if the penalty we were awarded was harsh from their point of view. I think things evened themselves up after we had a goal disallowed.

But we still need to do better and can do better.

We were asking for consistency on the back of the Darlington performance here which was excellent. But unfortunately more than one or two didn't perform to the level they had the week before.

It was a case of sod's law what happened with the goalkeeper. Donovan got off the coach at 1.40pm and was unable to move his neck - we had put him on the bench at every away game but we couldn't this time.

So when Rhys went off injured we had no choice but to put Mark Bower in goal.

But I was delighted with the reaction from the moment Bowser took over. We finished the first half very strongly and there was a real positive feeling that we could push on.

Unfortunately we then gifted them a goal which has been symbolic of our season.

But once again the reaction was excellent. Rather than leading our heads drop, we came back very strongly and their keeper was certainly far busier.

The Grimsby fans may not have been too happy with the penalty decision but you could not argue that we were worthy of a draw. But there's also no doubt we've got to do a lot better consistency wise.

Now we've got three home games coming up and although I'm looking no further than this afternoon, it's an opportunity for us which we must try to take.

Hopefully we can perform like we did in the last match here and I'm sure your backing will be fantastic again. I can't ask for any more than that.

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

Enjoy the game and shout for the lads,

Stuart.