The Voice - Match preview Bradford City v Hartlepool United Sat 18 March 2023 1pm

I don’t think Gilliead has done much wrong in the last few games.
The issues are with the other 2 midfielders.
I just don’t think you need to have Smallwood and Clayton in the same team at home to a team 3rd bottom.
Smallwood should have been nowhere near that starting 11 today.
Took the free kick for Cook’s goal but offered absolutely nothing else in the whole game.
As was pointed out at HT,he looked disinterested and as captain that’s simply not good enough.

 

The issue with this Bradford City team and previous teams and managers is that they don’t seem to understand that the opposing teams treat it as their cup final when they come to Valley Parade. Unless we raise our game by at least 20% consistently at home we will struggle to get out of this league.
We have brought in managers who have gained promotion with other teams but unless they realise this basic fact of raising our game consistently we will always have results like this.
Today we never raised the tempo when we had the chance, 3-1 and we could have controlled that game

 

Walker was very poor today. Lethargic and lacking his usual passionate play. Felt sorry for Costelloe. After his last miss (the header) he must have wanted to crawl into a hole. I did point out a few weeks ago that he’s not very good, and got pelted due to the fact that @he makes good off the ball runs”. If he’s up top, he’s got to be scoring goals. End of.

Ridiculous substitutions by Hughes. Why wait so long.

Also, how come nearly every team we play, seem to have at least one player who’d walk into our team? Todays was goal scorer Kemp. Busy little player, and was everything Walker was not.

 

Look how many chances we created second half when we changed formation.

Bloody frustrating again. We keep getting mugged like that at home. Likely to cost us in the grand scheme of things I am afraid.

Home fans are seeing a far different Bradford City than away fans are.

Tuesday night now has so much riding on it.

 

Well, if we're gonna pick up only 4 points from these two games it's better this way round and with a win v Carlisle....

 

Defend like we did today and miss chances we will not be beating Carlisle

 

I've watched us play the bottom 3 sides at home and seen us take 2 points from the 3 matches. It's only a stoppage time winner against 4th from bottom that prevents it looking even worse.

Todays first half was just like 90% of the seasons home performances. Slow, boring and devoid of any intent.

 

Weirdly enough that's probably the most creative we've been at home all season. I thought Hartlepool were very poor, especially at the back but we let them off through a mixture of dreadful finishing and a failure by Hughes to bring our creative players on the pitch much earlier.

The second goal we conceded infuriated me. Not only because the defending was school boy like but there were several players flagging in the run up and as usual there was no movement in the dugout. The timing of the changes, as per usual, was a joke and reactionary. The less said about Costelloe the better but he's surely had his chance now. He's utterly woeful and constantly makes the wrong decisions. Scandalous how Chapman isn't even getting a minute of game time and Costelloe gets near enough a full game.

I think that's us done for automatics. We can't drop points like this and hope to keep getting away with it. All of the last three draws are poor results against poor sides and not results in keeping with a side aiming for automatic promotion.

 

That is really poor, we have not done much better against the other teams at VP either, it would be interesting to see how many matches we have won at home, since our return to league 2 , something like 80 home game , have we won a third.

 

Massive must win game on Tuesday.
Then we need favours from Donny and Gills when we don’t play next week which will set it up nicely for us to beat Grimsby in the early kickoff to take our place in the top 3, whilst later, Orient beat Carlisle and Stevenage beat Northampton.
From that point it’s in our own hands

 

Spot on, simply not good enough but certainly better than most games at home this season which isn’t saying a great deal but it doesn’t make it less true.

 

Agree with your post. That second goal was a total defensive mess. I don’t understand why we look so lethargic. Their first goal was a very good strike. However, they had run down the right wing earlier and we would have hoped that we would make sure we didn’t do that again.
It doesn’t really matter what other teams do, we don’t have the metal to dig in and play. I just don’t understand why we bought a big squad, when we have a manager who doesn’t like to change.

 

No what?

 

Their no 2 ran down the right side, in acres of space 4 times before he finally crossed for Cook's goal. You could see it coming a mile off and I'm assuming it was why MH changed the shape at half time.

For me though, he should see that after the first 3 and change the shape 20 minutes in when it was clear we were far too open in the wide areas and Smallwood simply doesn't have the legs to play the role he's being asked.

 

I thought Hartlepools gave us a good game today when they broke forward they usually had 4/5 players in and around our goal area unlike poor Cook once again battling alone, just what doesn't Hughes see in that inept first half performance.

 

He was injured for about 30 mins and Hughes for whatever reason kept him on.

 

Which, when we have a striker of the quality we have as our manager is, quite frightening.

 

What makes todays result more disappointing is looking at the other scores things have gone very nicely, what a waste.

 

Ridehalgh poor today - think he was carrying a knock but he certainly didn't look fit. Should have brought Crichlow on sooner (or not parted with Matty Foulds)!

 

Most of that creativity came after the substitutions. Hartlepool are notorious for being weak at the back yet we choose to go safety first for 60 minutes. Thank goodness we have Andy Cook on fire because without him this team mid table mediocrity at best.