The Voice - Match preview Bradford City vs Salford City Sunday January 1 2023 @ 3:00pm

Great to see it from a different angle.

 

the ref allowed a Salford player to almost tear off Platts shirt in the penalty area first half. And whilst Cook is often clumsy and gives away free kicks but he gets absolutely nothing from refs including the one yesterday

 

Yes spot on , I noticed the same. More of a blocker than anything else.

 

He was clean through, wasn't he?

Also should have had an assist.

 

Cooky just trying to make himself easier to spot in the box for the wingers!

 

Sutton stronger in the hair.

 

Dreadlocks or quiff?

 

Well I think it’s Romoney with the dreads - albeit tied behind his head. But I don’t think it was Sutton with the quiff, are you mistaking him for Bronco?

 

Think I've definitely given it a good go over Christmas Dave!!

 

Agree Dave. It sounded like McAleny was reciting the same script that Wood had given the team!!

There was also Smallwood's shot that hit the post as well as Walker's chance.

An even game that could have gone either way....but bloody enjoyable!!

 

I agree he let the game flow but there were some very blatant dives from Salford that were awarded as free kicks and then some very blatant dives from them that he didn't give either. Some soft free kicks that he gave them but didn't reciprocate with us so a level of inconsistency!! Thought their 10 Bailey could have been booked, 2 blatant dives, a petulant act of dissent by smacking the ground culminating in a sarcastic clap right in front of the ref's eyes!! Perhaps his hair got in his eyes?

 

all I am saying he was nothing near as bad than what’s gone before this season

 

Bit late but what an entertaining game that was. Look much better in the new formation although we definitely should have been smarter with the ball for the last 10 mins or so. Gilliead looks much better in a 3 and I thought he had a great game.

I think their goals only came from the individual excellence of Connor McAleny, and ours from great teamwork.
Of course now we're 5th and aren't a pain to watch we have to wait 9 days til the next one, but at least that buys more time to overcome injuries...

 

Northampton winning yesterday didn’t help but I cannot see all 3 keeping the top 3 places come the end of the season ............ surly one of them has to have a poor spell ?????

 

We’ve played them all and they all looked average.
Orient was a freak result caused by poor officials.
We battered Stevenage and Northampton although they beat us didn’t look anything special.
I bet if we played them next week we’d beat them.

Salford are the best team we’ve played and we’ve beat them twice

 

Orient and Northampton were miles better than us - as soon as they'd scored the first, that is.

 

Like I say, if we played either of those games again with the players we have back and the new formation I think we’d win.
That said, I think Orient would need to have a serious collapse in 2nd half of season not to go up automatically.
We just need to focus on catching one of the others.
Would be amazing to get to the Northampton away game knowing if we win we go up.

 

Orient collapsed last season when they were in a very good position at Christmas,then they went on a losing run and lost 8 games out of 10. One of the games they didn’t lose was a drab 1-1 draw against us at the end of Derek Adams reign. They look to be in too good a position to blow it this season though they only took 2 points from their three Christmas and New year games so you never know.

 

Watched Neil Wood's self-delusionary interview after the game (BTW Salford were wonderful!) and he was asked about that by a club-friendly interviewer - most amusing! He reckoned that when you bring on players to change a game it can take a good while for them to get up to speed and can spoil the pattern of players who are playing well. Er, and this after seeing Cooky come on to assist Abo in scoring a full 30 seconds of being on the pitch. Case closed, Neil!

 

That was under a different manager, after boxing day last season they were 10th with cracks showing with so many draws. After Wellens took over they took 23 points from 13 which is automatic form. To not get automatics this year they would probably have to get less than 30 points from the 2nd half of the season which is very unlikely, they might have only got 2 points from 3 over Christmas but 2 of them games were against 2nd and 3rd and the other was against Newport who had already beaten them this season. They had a 3 game blip earlier this season and followed it up with 7 wins in 8.