Match Thread Bradford City V Rochdale Tuesday 10 January 2023 @ 7.45

To be fair a lot of teams would have been awarded a penalty for Eisa incident last night and Henderson could well have been offside for their 2nd - not good when these things don't go for you, particularly at home.

But also saw a great photo of their penalty, at least 6 of our players were well in the box when he struck the ball but still Henderson got to the rebound first - if I was Hughes I would be livid about this. Its all about focus and switched on awareness which we lacked in a number of areas last night

 

Radio Leeds were complaining about encroachment for their penalty.

 

With the substitutions you have at your disposal under the new rules a game can be changed drastically given you make them at the correct time Walker on 3 minutes after Rochdale equilised was a substitution most would have agreed with as Chapman was poor as was Oliver yet Hughes didn't bring Cook on until the 83rd minute there must have been a reason but I'm at a loss to understand why, even against Wimbledon he introduced both Angol and Sutton in the 60th minute and brought Oliver on in the 77 minute which we know was his last throw of the dice, can someone tell me what I'm missing with regards last night fiasco with substitutions once Rochdale went 2 - 1 up ?.

 

It's a strange one for sure nobody expected Cook once called upon to score goals at the rate he did many were asking what happens when he has a lean spell, for me you have two choices play him through his lean spell or drop him and bring Oliver in in our case.
Hughes did the later and to be fair Oliver has done well although as with most last night he was average at best and caused the Rochdale defence few problems, so just why was our leading scorer left on the bench until the 83 minute, baffling once Rochdale went 2 up we had nothing to lose even going 2 big guys up top and getting crosses into the box for the last 20 or so minutes.

 

Read what I wrote. “There are words in there we were poor”
And yes too stupidly bad decisions were made.

 

No that’s Sutton

 

Fully agree and what makes it worse for me the same happened that last penalty against us at home. Lewis saved and they followed up

 

Fine …..ok , but not good enough . The Hedley lad who heads just gone back to Huddersfield should be a player type we should be aspiring to not someone who is “ fine”

 

Crap result but surely nobody was surprised? That has home defeat written all over it, City on the back of a couple of good results, Rochdale in awful form, dreadful weather/pitch conditions, etc.

Its frustrating but confirms my belief based on the season so far that we are in a chase for the playoffs rather than top 3, unless we can change it up in January and add some more quality and consistency to our game.

I will say in defence of the game last night, the pitch was dreadful and the ball barely bounced or rolled. So it made for a very low quality game where it was very difficult to pass the ball around. Same for both teams but given how we like to move the ball around it did seem to impact our approach play.

 

Rochdale must have played on a different pitch and weather conditions to city .

 

What a way to mark your 500th appearance coming off the bench in the 90th minute!

 

And the big apocalyptic puddle in front of the home dugouts prevented our subs getting on the pitch as quickly as theirs

 

Agree absolutely Dave the 2 "big guys" should have been on from the start
I think Mr Hughes showed his naivety/lack of L2 experience last night and it cost us 3 points
The pitch was soaked the ball wasn't running true, very much not conducive to playing around at the back
We were up against a keeper the whole of L2 knows won't come out for crosses and well known to be " glued" to his line
Last night was prime for firing crosses into the box for the 2 big men, had he done that from the start we could have been looking at a handsome victory so yes the players were a poor 4/10 MH am afraid a 0
Not advocating to get rid he will get us promoted maybe not this year but he has to realise it's chalk and cheese to compare the Championship to L2 in every way
Hopefully he can learn to base his tactics on more than the way the game was played whilst he was a player in a higher leag and adapt to the opposition/conditions better a learning curve am convinced he wasn't expecting

 

Don't think MH will ever get league 2.

 

Remains to be seen but at the moment I can't disagree with you
Another problem is we have a L2 squad trying to play Championship football
Cracks (not insurmountable) are beginning to show

 

Trying to play football on that pitch last night wasnt ideal. The roll and bounce caught us out several times.

 

First half in particular.

It was shocking.

I was repeatedly surprised that we would play the ball onto the wings (heading towards the TL Dallas), find that it was unplayable, then do it again. And again. And again.

And that was the better half in terms of our football lol

 

sure I copped for that certain female at Grimsby she must know that at most away games folk tend to stand but she sits right in the middle of it all and spends the game moaning ............ why the hell does she not sit at the front ????

just comes across as a right awkward bastard and I bet your not the first one to bump into it .............. I actually stood up in front of her at Grimsby one of them things you do when there attacking ..........her friend told me to sit down which I turned around and apologised to which I was met with “ don’t say sorry if you don’t mean it “ .................. think she’s one of them who goes out of way to get a reaction

 

the actual game against Northampton showed there desire the chance to go 3rd and nothing at all in that game

the Harrogate cup game same as above the chance to bring some money in and yet again nothing

Seriously this lot need to find some backbone if they want to get of this league ............. how many leaders did we have in that promotion team of 2013 ???? Loads and what have we got here ???? Nothing at all and that’s alarming

 

think it’s just a lane arse excuse ..........Rochdale are a very poor team and whatever the conditions we should be still beating them ........... Tuesday night was a battle and we didn’t have the stomach for it ..........., my god the way folk have been going on you would think with a decent pitch we would be tearing teams apart ............ am I correct that most of this season the pitch has been excellent ????? Was this the same pitch that we struggled for MONTHS to get a win ?????