Tuesday 1 December 2009
Coca-Cola League 2
Bradford City vs Rochdale
A warm welcome to Keith Hill, his staff, the players and fans from Rochdale for this evening's game. We always have a good match against them and we know it will be one of the toughest.
We played Rochdale at home very early last season and beat them and it was a big result for us. I fancied them to be up there even then and right enough they were. I think it's the same this season.
They are a cert for the top seven and probably even the top three. They are definitely play-off material and this is a yardstick for us tonight if we can beat them. We had a good game at their place in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy. I know people will say it's not the league and both sides made changes but we left only two out and they did the same. It was good to go there and get a result after a couple of disappointments previously and we put in a solid performance.
Rochdale have some good attacking options middle to front and several exciting prospects. I'm sure Keith would like to keep hold of them in January after losing Adam Le Fondre early on. The management team there have done a really good job in the last couple of seasons and will no doubt be desperate to go that one step further this time with promotion. Certainly if we finish above them this season I will be well pleased.
It will be a special game for Simon Ramsden up against his old club and Simon Whaley also had two good months with them on loan. He has started well with us and we hope his form stays as consistent throughout his time here. We go into tonight's game with a real lift from our last outing at Grimsby. It was a really strong team performance and that's what we will aim for again. Home and away we aim to go out and win every game. Out of the eight draws we've had, in five of them it could have been three points where we've dominated games enough to win them.
It should be an entertaining game tonight although it's a shame we couldn't have played on Saturday. Both clubs were happy to do that after being knocked out of the FA Cup but the police bill was going to be far too high.
Enjoy the game and get behind the lads
