The Voice - Match preview #21: Bradford City vs Wigan Athletic Friday 26th December 2025 15:00

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Defence probably has enough when everyone fit. Tilt is back, Pennington will be back and I suppose Richards will be with us until the summer. I dont mind our options....but fitness the issue.

 

What was it that Halliday did wrong?

 

How so?

 

He did his usual thing, only this time when he and a Wigan player were sprinting towards the ball, their lad pumped the brakes. Halliday still went down as if he'd been shoved in the back by an onrushing player, when it was pretty clear he hadn't been.

Players do that all the time, though, especially in the corners, it's not that bad.

The Metcalfe dive was embarrassing.

 

Kelly was not the one to blame. Thought he had an excellent game overall.

 

Good win.. roll on Monday.. Get another 3 points and we should all be thinking anything less than the play offs & we have failed

 

CBs...in and out due to knocks and long term injuries. Thats why we have 8 on the books.

 

Diving. And messed it up and gave a corner.

 

Enjoyed the game today (obviously the win helps). Good atmosphere and great reaction by the crowd when they scored. It's pretty obvious we need to bring in 2 or 3 quality players who are comfortable with the ball at their feet. We can't seem to get hold of the ball in midfield and build any meaningful periods of possession. Humps is getting better but I've a feeling we'd be more successful if we could forge a partnership with him and Swan who seem to be on a similar wavelength.

 

Oh it was.

I won't complain about scraping out wins but Christ on a bike we have become an awful watch all of a sudden

 

Not as awful as Town… not many bothered yesterday according to the BBC

 

Will Bruno be in charge on Monday?

 

I like this “awful” football.. as long as it results in 3 points at the end long may it continue!

 

Just reading The Voice - tend to agree with the summary. I guess it depends who’s in charge upstairs at Vale ? They’ve got Fleetwood in the Cup, I’d give him until then and assess after that with still time to act for transfers - there’s only Vale adrift, table is tight above them so loads of teams will be in the relegation mix.

 

Yes, but I'm not a doctor and don't know the names of other bones in the feet to list them out!

 

We would all take the 3pts all day long but it is only going to last so long.

We have Cardiff, Town, Lincoln, Doncaster (banana skin), Luton, Posh (form team), Stockport coming up in a 4 week period. Continue to play like this and we wont pick up many points from those 7 games.

 

Wimbledon away just after those is no easy match either, and in fact none of them are easy matches. Let's keep taking one at a time and do what we can to get the points.

I'm confident we'll see some arrivals in Jamuary, we'll just have to see if they can make the impact needed.

 

I get what you are saying but didn’t we say this in the first four months in the division and look what happened?

 

You dismiss his distribution but even if you think he's a poor defender (I think you're wrong to do so, but regardless) his play is integral to the way we approach matches... when he was injured this year and last we struggled but when he came back we started grinding out wins again.

This season:

Starting - 11 games, wins 8, win percentage - 73%
Not starting - 10 games, wins 3, win percentage - 30%

Last season:

Starting - 30 games, wins 17, win percentage - 57%
Not starting - 16 games, wins 5, win percentage - 31%

Even if he does make the odd defensive lapse (and it is actually quite rare - though often memorable!) and misplace overly ambitious passes a few times a game, what he brings to the team far outways them

 

cant understand why the manager is not giving swan a start 10 15 minutes here and there will do more harm than good
he needs a full game to get a goal to bring confidence back. hump is good so is swan.