The Voice - Match preview #34: Reading vs Bradford City Saturday 28th February 2026 3:00pm

It'll feel like home with 35,000 City fans in it.

 

Given myself a day to get over the disappointment of yesterday. Stayed over, driven back after lunch. I do agree with GA we looked like the home side for most of the game. Much improved performance. For all the good play and intent though we are really struggling to create chances and when they do arrive we don’t take them. Two poor goals given away. I said when the late sub was made we said here comes more pressure. Such a shame. 3 points would have made a huge difference. Heaps pressure on the home games remaining. I left ground yesterday saying we are going to have to get 18 more home points and that is a real ask even with the outstanding home record we have. Sadly, I think that leaves us touch and go for play-off places. It doesn’t make it feel great despite thinking it was huge improbability at start of season.

 

Quite possible he is this years "Smallwood".

Expected to receive a new deal however surprisingly released at last minute

 

Real pressure now. If we'd held on the picture would look so different. I honestly think if we fail to win both of our next two games we might be on our way out of play off contention. If we don't win against Orient then we simply have to beat Vale. If we win either game we are in the same boat as we are now and if we win both we are looking certs for play offs.

 

Those are winnable games, and due to the defeats at Wimbledon and Reading, nothing less than 6 points will be acceptable IMO.

Problem is, Orient already beat us, and Port Vale are thrashing around trying to delay what feels inevitable. Unbeaten in 3 I believe.

 

The problem was that all the departed players felt that they should have been starting games if fit but in reality they weren’t / aren’t good enough to be regular starters in a top end L1 team.
The players I’m referring to are:
Cook
Pattison
Kavannah
Halliday
Smallwood
Leigh
Byrne

if all those players had played most games this season we’d be where Port Vale are now. Fact.

 

I agree, which is why I said I didnt have a problem with the departures. The issue though is that based on current evidence, the incomings haven't really improved us.
Our first choice 11 is more than competitive in this league, but when we go beyond that we are lacking. Apart from perhaps Jackson, all of the January recruits are basically squad fillers and there lies the problem.

 

Yep, that was my point.

 

Not sure Reading could be described pre game as winnable they have good players and are on form. I think city played decent for most of the match and over the whole gamw should have won

 

I'm talking Orient and Vale.

But we should have beaten Reading too, they didn't show up.

 

You can’t have it both ways . If you agree with Loyals comment and then suggest they haven’t improved us yet we sit fourth and not bottom like Port Vale . Make your mind up ?

 

I don’t think there is any point in pointing the finger at the recruitment team. All of the ones that have come in are 6 months loan except Jacko who I believe is an upgrade. Now that is good management of resources ie if they do not perform then we are not keeping them for 2 years. It will definitely be down to how much money we had to spend in January, and or we are keeping our money in the bank for summer recruitment. It is a risk though, as we could fail to gain promotion but at least we won’t be skint.

Unless the manager and team start to acknowledge we have a problem, not just with away games but also and perhaps more importantly with creativity in midfield to generate more attempts on goal. Now Jacko is out for a few weeks, we have to plan how we are going to achieve this. In my view we need to play three in Midfield, yes our wing backs have done well, but we don’t seem to have an alternative if they are marked out of the game which is increasingly happening.

 

Two in the middle , no matter how good they are sees us swamped against 442 or 433 because our wing backs never come into midfield , or likewise our 8 or 10 ?

 

Fully behind a change of approach in scenarios like last Saturday. I know it sounds weird, but going from a back 5 to a back 4 and having another body in midfield might help us with control, and that seems to be our problem. It's a downside of the back 5 system, that you cant really go much more defensive when you have a lead, you just drop your back line even further and invite pressure.

Our problem away from home in recent months when we had a run of playing good sides way, we were jut penned into a flat back 5, then Power & Metcalfe cant control the game or the ball long enough to get us moving either against a good side in their own back yard. Saturday was different as we were in control until the sub, then we just reverted to sitting back deep and hoping we can hold on. Plan A worked really well for a few months, but Plan A has been figured out to have it's problems in the last 3 or 4 months now and we should really have an alternative approach, especially if we have the play offs to think about.

 

Every team we play is in form according to
LWWDD is hardly great form and one of them draws was at the stone cold last team.

 

The incomings just show where the club is at

 

Ok to clarify my viewpoint. I do agree that we needed to improve the squad in order to kick on, hence I did not have a problem with the outgoings. Based on what we've seen so far though, the incomings do not appear to have improved us from what we had before, so it is the quality of the incomings that Im questioning not the fact that we moved those individuals on. As Loyal suggested, none of the outgoing players were regular starters, but the exact same thing can be said about the January recruits (with perhaps the exception of Jackson pre injury), hence my point that we are in no better position now than we were pre January.

 

I understand your viewpoint that the January recruits are probably not any better than what we had but the main point I made was we couldn’t keep those players happy sitting on the bench so there really wasn’t an option to retain them.
The starting XI is probably just about good enough to get into the top 6 and possibly with a slice of luck get promotion. Any major injuries in the last 10 games and sadly we’ll drop off because like you say, the replacements aren’t good enough.

 

Reading are fifth in the form table at the moment so I’m right

 

Doubt we would take that. I cant remember how many against Millwall, but felt a lot less.