Marcus Braddock gives his take on tonight's game against Bradford City
With most of League On playing on Saturday and on Tuesday night, we're playing catch up and have a chance to close the gap on Blackburn who dropped a couple of points against Gillingham. The team we face is Bradford City who started the season well but have found things particularly difficult since the start of 2018. The first few months up to January saw the Bantams win fourteen times in twenty five games in League One but since then they've won just twice in fourteen games. The form cost previous manager Stuart McCall his job and ex-Leeds and Sunderland manager Simon Grayson took the reins. His first game finished with a decent draw at Charlton but since then Bradford have won once at home to Gillingham and lost five every other game without scoring.
Top Scorers
Charlie Wyke 13
Dominic Poleon 6
Paul Taylor 6
Tony McMahon 8
Charlie Wyke 6
Nicky Law 4
Clean Sheets
Seven. Last clean sheet: Saturday 24th March. Bradford 1-0 Gillingham.
Stats
Bradford are currently the 22nd best home team in League One with seven wins, nine defeats and two draws. They've scored 22 and conceded 26 giving them a goal difference of -6.
The Bantams have the 20th best defence in League One with 61 goals against. They have conceded 1.56 goals per game this season.
They have the seventh highest amount of yellow cards in League One with 65 and the eight highest amount of red cards with four.
Referee
David Webb from Lancashire. Games: 38. Yellow cards: 84. Red cards: 2.
Squad News
Junior Brown is the only man missing for Town with Alex Rodman and Toto Nsiala now fully fit.
Simon Grayson could make a host of changes after Bradford’s 5-0 defeat to Blackpool last weekend.
Summary
This looks like a foregone conclusion on first inspection but there are several factors that could influence the result. The game is live on T.V. So although they are in a sticky patch of form and are pretty comfortable in League One, there is personal pride to play for in front of a large audience. Another factor is how we respond to the result at the weekend and having watched this team come back from disappointment rather well this season, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a great performance.