The Voice - Match preview #14: Bradford City vs Lincoln City Tuesday 28th October 2025 7:45pm

No prematch presser?
That's unusual cards close to chest maybe.

 

I'm really hoping some of our missing players have made a recovery and put in an appearance tonight.

 

Parker not predicting any injured men returning to the squad tonight and no start for Cook.
Hope he's wrong.

 

Time to start figuring out why we're getting so many injuries.

 

I’ll give Meg a call

 

I think we can already question certain things.

Of the top seven oldest players at the club (Cook, Walker, Tilt, Sarc, Byrne, Power and Powell) more than half of them are unfit to start, two of them are injured for quite a while, and Sarc has been in and out ever since he joined us.

I'd suggest our style and training methods might not suit older players and yet we're the oldest squad in the division and signed a bunch of over 30's in the Summer.

As bad as things are, though, we have to thank our lucky stars lads like Power and Touray haven't picked up injuries because we look badly short in CDM and LWB even if we have "some" options.

But behind the scenes I'd like to think some investigations are ongoing as to why we've got 7 or 8 players injured. For once, it doesn't seem like blind bad luck to me, if your 24 year olds start dropping like flies I think you can be forgiven for that somewhat, but yeah. I'm not sure we're getting it quite right in terms of fitness and that's a big worry.

 

Injuries are just part of the game. We play a high energy style with the press, which is the reason for the huge squad we have. Players will come in and out of the side. Also, I think injuries are the same as they’ve always been, it’s just players don’t play with injuries as much these days as they used to so they can prolong their careers

 

You might be right in some cases.

Missing players for multiple games for getting a ball in the face is a new one on me.

I don't think signing old injury prone players is unavoidable though.

 

Well I for one am quite glad we signed Sarcevic and Cook in particular. Tilt's injury was the result of a poor challenge and had nothing to do with our training regime. Cook's ACL was not predictable, he has always been a pretty fit player. In fact I did wonder if the state of Barrow's pitch might have contributed to it.

 

Not sure if anyone else mentioned it yet this season but I’m happy the starting 11 is published earlier than it used to be

 

Team news:

 

Parker in “getting something wrong” shocker.

 

I can understand why Kelly has remained in the side because he didn’t play badly last weekend but McIntyre will surely get his spot back

 

Blind bad luck . I watched a Lincoln interview earlier and they have six or seven injured from memory .

 

I don’t read anything into it , we can’t say it’s old players when Power hasn’t missed anything due to injury etc etc. I do believe the sports scientists have different regimes per player . Of course there’s general fitness training for the squad , but more specialised per individual as well Jon.

 

And they have Street so like Sat Kelly may handle the big opponent better?

 

Street played really well from memory for Donny at their place last season. He had Baldwin man marking him all first half until his sending off and he really gave him worries.

Byrne, Wright and Kelly probably is our most physical back 3 we can field I'd say? Until Tilt comes back and try rough the world up again.

 

that back line against Stevenage made sense, we were away from home, up against a physical side, backs to the wall performance

but Lincoln are different, were playing at home, with a high line. I can see us getting turned over

 

Patto, Baldwin and Tilt just been outside club shop. Asked when they were back but didn’t get a proper answer!