BRADFORD CITY AFC

Bantams boss Phil Parkinson has revealed that City adopted a 'safety first' stance when deciding to leave James Hanson out of Saturday's match-day squad for the game with Crewe Alexandra.

After stepping up his progress from a recent thigh injury, Hanson had been an outside bet to feature in some part against Crewe at the weekend but he wasn't even named among the Bantams' substitutes.

Given the 'touch and go' nature of Hanson's situation going into the game and with players of the calibre of Aaron Mclean and Billy Clarke in line to start up front instead, Parkinson felt there was no need at all to take any risks with his top scorer.

Having sat out the Crewe game, Hanson is now expected to be in contention for this Sunday's televised game at Barnsley.

Parkinson said: "We had confidence in our squad that we had the ability to win the game without James.

"He hadn't really trained properly leading up to the match and we didn't want to throw him in and risk further injury.

"It was a close call but we didn't want to push him out there for the sake of one extra week.

"We wanted to play him only when he is right."