Saturday 16 February 2008
Coca-Cola Football League 2
Bradford City vs Rochdale

A warm welcome to Keith Hill, the players, staff and supporters from Rochdale to this afternoon's game.

I saw Rochdale at Chesterfield and they probably play the same away as they do at home. They play without fear and attack teams so I would expect today will be an open event.

They've been having a go and you can see how well that has worked for them. It's going to be entertaining this afternoon and we know it will be difficult but I'm looking for us to respond to the Bury disappointment.

I'm still in a state of bewilderment about our second-half performance last week because there was no reason for it.

Give credit to Bury who came out and gave it a real go but our players had been warned to expect that.

I was fairly pleased with the first half because we'd played some good stuff. We had got the lead and could have gone in two up which I'm sure would have set us up for another victory.

But there was no reason to perform like that in the second half. It's inexcusable and I am angry about it.

We had got ourselves in a good position against a team who had gone a long time without a win and so you would expect their confidence to be a little low. We were playing with belief because of our good run up to then which is why it was so mystifying.

It was another reminder that this division is so open. We came in after the game to see that Morecambe, who have been going so well, have lost at home to Macclesfield; Wrexham have held Peterborough and Mansfield got a great win at Wycombe. You've got to be at it all the time.

You also need that little bit of luck that perhaps we have had in recent games.

Watching the Bury game again in the cold light of day, I think it was a penalty but their free-kick definitely shouldn't have been given. As soon as the referee gave it, you just knew what was coming.

The free-kick also took a deflection off Nixy which just took it out the way of Scott, who was confident that he would have got it.

But maybe Bury deserved that bit of luck for their second-half efforts. We certainly got what we deserved from a very poor 45 minutes.

If we had come away with a point it wouldn't have been a bad one given the other results and it would have kept our run going.

But it's now about how we react to that setback. We bounced back well from our last defeat against Hereford and it's down to the group to do the same.

It was a shame that we didn't have a game midweek because after a result like that, you want to get straight back out there.

But we've had a game between ourselves in training and hopefully we can push on again and forget last week as a one-off.

Remember we are all one team so shout for the lads.

Finally a special welcome to Michael, Stephen, Henry and George from Rochdale. Enjoy the game but not the result!!

Enjoy the game,