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

I quite enjoyed yesterday's game at times it looked like we were playing Wigan Warriors, then listening to Lowes post match interview he sounded like a manager under pressure and possibly rightly so with the brass they've spent.
I thought they were poor and by far the most physical side weve played this season and got exactly what they deserved from the game, let's make sure the Port Vale game isn't a banana skin.

 

Yeah of course. In an ideal world it doesn't matter who's scoring the goals but it's much more likely that a striker finishes as top scorer as essentially that's his job.

If Humphry's finished on 10/11 which is about his best tally then it leaves a hell of a lot of work for the rest of the squad to do given is a 1 up front system. For me he needs to be 15+ to give us half a chance.

 

I thought the first looked worse than the second at first look as the foot was higher but from where the referee was stood on the second he'll have seen the momentum of Wright suddenly stop and it probably looked like a very heavy contact.

 

Seen the first one again on X this morning and it looks awful.

Very high up Pointon’s leg.

 

Yeah, I had the benefit of watch on the TV so it was a bit clearer than seeing it live and that looked bad enough but the replay was even worse.

 

What bothers me is that a situation could arise where he's a huge contributing factor to us being in and around the automatic places come March but he'll be dismissed as not good enough because he's only scored 10 goals.

 

We did at first glimpse and even moreso in the replay …an out of control wreckless tackle . The position of Pointons leg becomes irrelevant because the player didn’t have a clue of the outcome , so wreckless imho.

 

That's always the tell tale sign that it's dangerous. When a player lunges and stops dead on opponent with the impact you know a red card is coming. I didn't anticipate a red card for one second on the first one.

 

Lowe should be under pressure. When your red tally to games ratio is 30%+, the manager needs looking at.

 

It's worth pointng out Cook isn't particularly outstanding at the target man stuff, plenty of times we've pumped the ball up to him all day long and he's got nowhere near it, or if he does it goes nowhere near one of our players. Not many I'd rather have in the box if the ball drops or is being swung in but traditional target man isn't his game

 

Saydee did quite well for them but apart from him, I cant remember thinking "he'd be good in our team" or something similar.

They looked workmanlike really. Solid defensively, could be a threat on the counter but nothing special.

 

Saydee's ball for their goal was class.

 

I know it's only a still but it's a straight leg, very high, studs showing and he's out of control.

It can't really be anything else if we're honest.

 

Can anyone tell me why when we have two more players than the opposition, they are awarded a free kick and we pull everybody back into our penalty area? They then put all their players there as well.
If we put one player (or even two) then they would surely put a player, or more than one, back to cover them and make them less likely to trouble us?

 

Credit to Pointon for not rolling around likes been shot as is the modern day footballer despite having a nasty foot injury. Proper footballer that.

 

The challenge is on the extended highlights on YouTube, at the time I thought the player caught Pointon's left leg and it was only glancing contact and I thought yellow card but seeing the replay the contact is on the right leg and Pointon is lucky that he's just starting to jump out of the way so his foot wasn't fully planted in the ground or that could have been a serious injury. The 2nd yellow card doesn't look at bad as it looked at the time as I thought he jumped in 2 footed but it's more 1 foot then the other naturally follows but still not a nice challenge

 

Think I've seen this discussed before, the stats tend to show its more beneficial to have everyone back than leave players out of the box.

 

Seeing it back it's a red card all day long in today's football, there's no real mitigating factor.

 

Made exactly the same comment yesterday at thd game, leave someone in your own half near the halfway line they have to have at least one player marking him.

 

Bobbys foot after that tackle , if you enlarge the picture you can clearly see the stud has ripped into Bobby's left boot and punctured his skin.