Saturday 29 December 2007
Coca-Cola Football League 2
Bradford City vs Hereford United

A warm welcome to Graham Turner, his players and officials and the supporters from Hereford to this afternoon's game.

Looking back over the second half of this year since I came in, we've wanted to do better here than we have done.

I remember the first home game against Macclesfield when we really wanted the three points and had to settle for one. As much as we wanted to win that one, at least we didn't come out with nothing.

Then we got the first win against Wrexham, which was a great feeling, before those back-to-back defeats against Wycombe and Accrington knocked us back.

That Accrington game was a complete disaster. You get those once or twice in a season and that was ours - a night we really want to forget.

We would have liked more points at home but our record against the top sides is pretty good.

We managed to beat Peterborough here and Chester, did ever so well against Darlington and Wycombe, who are all up there.

I'm not saying we've been brilliant, because we haven't, but I don't think we've got the home points the performances have probably deserved.

I've been reasonably satisfied with the way we've played but we just need to score more goals at home. We've had a lot of good chances and not taken them.

I'm sure it will be a good game this afternoon after we had a decent one down there earlier in the season.

I actually thought we played quite well going forward that day, creating a lot of chances and scoring twice, but we definitely let ourselves down in terms of the goals we conceded. There were more individual errors that day than any other - we gave them three of the goals.

I've seen Hereford a couple of times now and been impressed.

Graham is obviously doing everything there - managing director, manager, physio, kitman, centre forward, the lot - and he's done a terrific job.

He's done well in the loan market with the two lads in from Watford, Diagouraga and Robinson. I actually enquired about Robinson, though I didn't know too much about him at the time, but I was a day too late and he'd already gone to Hereford.

He's only a young kid but he looks very good up front.

Graham has got a couple of lads in from Liverpool as well and he's also got the experience with the likes of Guinan and big Trevor Benjamin. There's a good mix there with a bit of everything.

I saw them the other week at Bury and left before they scored in the last minute. It looked like finishing in a draw after a really tight game but Robinson turned it on its head with a great goal.

That's probably the difference between ourselves and teams up there like Hereford. We went to Mansfield in a similarly tight game and felt we might just have nicked it; Hereford have the same sort of game at Bury and they do nick it.

Teams at the top do that and fair play to them. They are having a terrific season and they'll be disappointed if they are not at least in the play-off positions come the end.

Shout for the lads and enjoy the game,

Stuart