Saturday 15 December 2007
Coca-Cola Football League 2
Bradford City vs Rotherham United

I would like to extend a warm welcome to Mark Robins, his Rotherham United team, staff and supporters to the Coral Windows Stadium for this afternoon's game.

Mark has done an absolutely terrific job at Rotherham and has rightly just won the manager of the month award for November.

Unfortunately he then suffered from the curse against Rochdale last week after they'd had put in a really strong performance at Chesterfield. But that can happen in this division - as we saw from Stockport whipping six past Wycombe - and Rochdale were very good on the day.

So Rotherham will be looking to bounce back and we will have to be prepared for that.

They've been very impressive this season and Mark has brought some key players in down the spine of the team like big Graham Coughlin at the back from Sheffield Wednesday and Derek Holmes from Carlisle to add to the good youngsters they already have.

Mark came in at a difficult time last season after they went into administration and were bottom of the table. But he's definitely got them going in the right way and they are looking to bounce back up at the first attempt.

We've had a decent little run of late but we've drawn the last three and we need to start putting a few three-pointers together. I said that a few weeks back and we did at the time and now we need to go again.

We've had some reasonable performances but need to get on the winning track as soon as we can.

I'm sure there will be a cracking atmosphere today because Rotherham will bring a few supporters with them because they are up there and everyone's looking forward to it.

Prior to Chesterfield last week, we're now in a run of playing four of the top seven. After Rotherham today we go to Peterborough next Saturday and then we've got Hereford here just after Christmas.

But these are the game you want to be playing in and testing yourselves to the limit.

We've done okay against the top sides so far, beating Peterborough and Chester here and drawing with Darlington when we should have won. We were also unlucky not to get anything against Wycombe.

We want to continue that run although we know it will be a tough game. We've just got to concentrate on what we know we can do and then hopefully the fans can go home with something to cheer about.

Remember we're a team. We're all in it together.

Enjoy the match and shout for the lads,

Stuart