The Voice - Match preview #22: Bradford City vs Port Vale Monday 29th December 2025 7.45pm

In what way? We kept a clean sheet, something we've failed to achieve for the last couple of games.

 

It's not just on Humphrys to work the keeper so I wasn't criticising him alone. Pleased Metcalfe took his shot. He's been having a few efforts recently. We need more shots from others. It's just weird how we've changed from having plenty of shots at the start of the season to almost none.

 

Incredibly tight relegation battle and delighted we aren’t involved in it but Wycombe are in 9th place and just 3 points clear of the bottom 4. It’s a very competitive league and teams near the bottom capable of beating anyone. All credit to City for this incredible first half of the season where we are almost at 2 points per game.

 

Little gap opening between top 8 and rest of the league mind.

 

Not at all read my comments. My question to the poster was what and how many chances did PV have for one to draw the conclusion he made.?
Cardiff are scraping wins and draws like us if you watch some of their games. The only side playing well is Lincoln and you failed to even mention them yet included Huddersfield who haven’t beaten anyone in the top six from memory? …I really don’t understand. .

Despite the fact we weren’t playing Bolton , who scraped another defeat , this time at home to a lowly side in Mansfield they are a team to fear?
All teams go through bad spells , all teams look jaded despite their position at times , all players ditto. Yet to do so and carry on avoiding defeats and even winning isn’t too shabby.

Remember Lincoln!

 

It looks like a few who were thought to be top half teams but didn't start well are now finding form e.g. Peterborough, Blackpool, Reading. By mid-Jan we'll probably see a top eight, middle eight and bottom eight in clear chunks. The bottom three are struggling for form. Just depends if Burton and Wimbledon keep dropping. It could be fairly clear cut by February.

 

Nothing but a bunch of wage stesling gutless shower that lot was ............i know Powell has come in for a bit of shit but compare him to Josh Wright my god them to players aline show the gulf in both sides ..........one up for the battle the other pointing stuff out and doing nothing xx

 

I am finding this an unusual League. City are third. It is reasonable to assume we will some some sparks of brilliance when we watch them. We see odd bits but mostly it is just a battle. Every ball is hard thought for, no one has any space and the games do not flow. Each game is tight and all Citys games have super tense endings.

The thing is City have become really good at this. We battle best. It is extremely likely this will continue for the rest of the season. Maybe we will have to accept this if City are to have a chance of promotion. Let's get really behind them and cheer every challenge, every tackle. Skill on its own will not win this league. City can battle their way out of it.

 

I hope the powers that be had a good conversation over their after game steiners with Herr Rupp.
Stefan must have seen first hand that we need to get a goalscorer and playmaker next month and if we don't we are gonna get many more games like last night... and we won't win them all.

 

GA has made us very difficult to beat which gives us a great platform to go and scrap out this sort of ugly win. We had a number of turgid 1-0 wins in our great run last season-it's all about accumulating points over a long hard season. In September when we were flying I was concerned at how we would cope on heavier pitches given the energy levels needed to maintain that style of play. We are now showing we also have the ability to scrap and wont be bullied by anyone. Of course it's not pretty but in so many ways, last night's game shows how far we've come. It's the sort of game we've come a cropper in on countless times over the years.

 

I loved how the fans cheered every block, tackle and clearance in that 10 minutes of added time last night, me included as I was on my feet for those last 10 minutes.

 

Realistic and on the money. Over the 60+ years these are the games we generally lose. We can all name them over and over again …yet in 25/26 we still find a way to avoid defeat and pull off “ scraping” another 3points . The measure is nobody is pulling away from us, so the issue here is all the top sides are being as inconsistent as each other if truth be known.

 

We have become hard to beat, which is something not said very often about city
Last night was a poor watch for good football, but we got the three points
Vale never looked like scoring in the whole 100 minutes
Finishing definitely needs to improve, but Humpries did have one cleared of the line and hit the post and if the ref had any balls , he should have awarded a penalty first half for the keeper bundling over Tilt
As for their no 9 dirty two hat
The one thing that did really annoy me, was our lack of subs, with two more games in quick time
He flogged that starting eleven to death
Mansfield will be really tough for recovery time and they have just had two good wins, so seem to be finding form.

 

Thought the officials were the only folk in the ground not watching the game..
No one yet mentioned Power seemed to be channelling Smallwood most of the time.
Thought GA was very diplomatic in his post match interview..
And I think there could be a few players in the squad that he will be having a difficult discussion with in the coming days...

 

I think GA was struggling to find words that wouldn't have to be bleeped out on the radio at the beginning of that interview.

 

A win is a win is a win... Don't care about the performance that much. Ok we all want a Brazil 1970 esk team on the VP pitch but sometimes you just gave to dig in and battle. I bet GA thinks that was one of best wins this season.

Tip my hat to all the team for full on bruising display that matched the dirty PV fekers.
Special mention to Jenson. Excellent midfield shift and a fantastic goal. Reminded me of how Lampard used to wrap his foot round those type of goals from the edge of the penalty area...
and...

We Tilt this City on rock and roll

 

Absolutely. An exasperated ‘flipping heck’ at the start of the interview. I think we all know which words he would have liked to say instead.
Port Vale seemed to be on a mission to beat Wigan as the ugliest, most physical team at VP this season. Especially that animal Stockley. Every single aerial duel with our CBs involved him using his elbows. He was eventually booked but could and should have been booked several times before that and got his marching orders. Once or twice can be accidental. But this was every time - a clearly deliberate tactic to intimidate our defenders which, to their credit, they stood up to. Shocking refereeing to let it go on for so long.

 

I agree. We had to match them but it was a sorry state of affairs from a refereeing point of view. At one point we had both Halliday and Kelly on the deck both were free kicks and he does nothing about it giving the signal that elbowing your opponent is ok. For me that assault on Wright in the box was a stone wall penalty.

That match last night was sheer agony to watch, and a reminder of why we wanted out of lg2. The lads pulled through and we just had enough quality to win the game but we must invest this January in order to continue our progress.