The Voice - Match preview Bradford City vs Sutton United Saturday 17th February 2024 3:00pm

Oh great. They tried it once.

Proper professional training then...

 

Smallwood got his 2 match ban on Tuesday night. Wednesday is the players' day off.
That leaves Thursday and Friday to assess what to play on Saturday. We won. Seems OK to me.

 

Yep. We won.

 

Well whatever it worked by anybody’s standard Stubs did a decent job

 

Pointon is joint second with 3 assists in his 18 appearances many from the bench, Chapman has offered little but only just got back after a long time out injured and not being in a position to challenge for a starting place, he can't even make the bench and I believe without another horrendous run of injuries I can't see him making the 18 pre-game squad.

 

Smart selection in the end. I thought the set up looked negative but GA got it right, a more attacking line up could have come unstuck as usually happens after 2 in 2 wins.

 

How about we back the manager's judgement. In the past we would have lost that game, Sutton are a big physical team.

 

But we won. End of.

 

Exactly. Neither have done anything to make them certainties for the starting XI.

 

It's a good job we won because there's absolutely no way on earth everyone would be saying similar things had we absolutely dominated but conceded and lost to a sucker punch.

It's certainly a funny old game.

 

It's just an opinion on the game. Don't let it worry you.

 

I'm not intent on criticising but it hardly seems like a well thought out plan does it? It worked this time....Tried it out once in a non match like scenario and then thought he'd give it a go on the Saturday....as others have alluded to, the bottom team in the division, now only 4 wins and conceded 63 goals had 16% more possession, more shots.....it doesn't sound like a formula for success....we played the bottom of the league and had 6 defenders starting!! Imagine if we hadn't won and we'd kept the most experienced midfielder at the club on the bench and played a centre half instead....Let's excite the fans....

Not gone back through the thread but I'm sure there was a lot of head scratching at 2.00 when the team was announced and a lot thinking wtf!!

 

I won't.

 

I'd imagine Patrick will be looking for a new agent shortly. Promoted to league one last season, then relegated to the national league the next. Oh dear, oh dear.

 

Had we lost, the head scratching and the thinking wtf would have been justified but we didn't lose, we won. Sutton may be bottom but it isn't because they are getting trounced week in week out. Yes they got hammered by Stockport but generally, they lose by one goal or on the odd occasion they are victorious, they win by that margin too, just like they did against us in October. As for it not being a well thought out plan, we played on Tuesday night and Smallwood got suspended which threw a spanner in the works. The players day off is Wednesday so that only leaves Thursday and Friday to work on the new plan, minus Smallwood. For all we know, GA might have tried a couple of different options in training on Thursday that didn't quite work so he decided to have a look at Stubbs in midfield on Friday. It was never going to result in a brilliant game of football but we ended up with 3 points and more importantly, we didn't let Morrison get one over us again, so win win imo.

 

Sutton had drawn three of the four away fixtures before playing us including a draw at Mansfield the form team of the division. They were very physical and putting Stubbs in the there worked in combating that. I questioned the line up when it was announced but it was justified

 

Smallwood, Walker and Pattison were all unavailable.

McDonald clearly wasn't able to play 90 minutes.

Stubbs was likely 5th choice to play in midfield alongside Gilliead, no team in the world would have had extensive preparations for such a scenario was a contingency plan and it did the trick.

 

Cant agree with this, Morison had Sutton set up to try and play football, the games you mention they've had more or equal possession in all those games.Stubbs wasn't a disaster but the bottom team in the division controlled the centre of the park for long periods, I know a lot on here can't see.any further than the result but if you analyse the game Sutton were.more than worthy of a draw..
And for those who get their knickers in a twist at anything they seem negative toward the club, this is merely a observation on Saturdays game, has Smallwood not been ridiculously booked the previous game I think we would have dominated the midfield.

 

For me Rogered we did what Bradford City have been doing for far too long on the whole.
Go one up then sit back and let the opponents come at us.
You, probably like us, were sat there thinking "it's coming, the equaliser" and hoping and praying that we could see the game out.
Why don't we go for the jugular (or juggler as Chris Kiwomya would say!) when going one up and go for the second to kill off the game, instead of making the opponents look good?

 

I disagree that we didn't go for it. We could easily have won it 2 or 3 nil if Cook had converted his chances.