Match Thread Bradford City vs. Coventry City Match Thread - Tuesday 23rd Oct (1 Viewer)

On the basis of recent form and talent in abundance I’d be very disappointed if we didn’t at least reach the play offs. Need to watch out for shoddy defending when we are in front but zI love the steel we are showing at last.

One for the future. Our fixture list is lob sided towards playing other contenders for play off places or top teams at home in the first half of the season: Pompey, Posh, Donny, Barnsley, Stanley, Sunderland. Luton are played in December. Away we have played Blackpool, Charlton, Southend and will play Walsall and Fleetwood. If we are contending we will have a tough second half of the season

correction, we haven't played Posh, but I think the principle still holds

If we are contending we will have a tough second half of the season[/QUOTE]
So will our opponents !

Nick said:

Still not getting my hopes up too much just yet, enjoying the wins and think unless something major happens we won't be in a relegation battle!

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Yeah, same here.

Not buying the top 6 promotion vibe just yet.

Easy to get carried away, but we could just as easily lose the next 3 or 4 games.

One match at a time and let's see if we are still in the mix at Christmas.

Lovely run at the moment, but I'm not getting carried away just yet. The middle of the park is still a concern for me right now.

jordan210 said:

I feel sorry for bakayoko. scores a brace and then can't get in the team. I would have chucked him on in the last 10 to hold up balls

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But that’s a great thing, for years when have we had a queue of inform strikers!

Well now you know.................that was our 1st/2nd best performance of the season, for a few parts we were ok, but for larger parts, utterly shambolic, we didn't need to be told that we are going down.......if you had taken your chances it could have been a horrific scoreline. To think we never gave Hiwula enough game time, McNulty too!

Top 2 and 4 top 6 spots will go to Sunderland, Barnsley, Posh or Pompey, from last night I can't see why Coventry City can't end in the top 6.

saltaire bantam said:

Well now you know.................that was our 1st/2nd best performance of the season, for a few parts we were ok, but for larger parts, utterly shambolic, we didn't need to be told that we are going down.......if you had taken your chances it could have been a horrific scoreline. To think we never gave Hiwula enough game time, McNulty too!

Top 2 and 4 top 6 spots will go to Sunderland, Barnsley, Posh or Pompey, from last night I can't see why Coventry City can't end in the top 6.

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Change of manager and you’ll be ok. Some bad teams in this division. It’s tricky when the 3 that come up start so well in Luton and Stanley and dare I say us. Keeper made some good saves too. You’re honesty and love for your club is great

Never really minded Bradford, always good numbers and noise at our place. Like us, you have to go down, restructure the whole team and come back up.

What a game, thought we was excellent. JCH has great game, could have had a hat trick. Keeper made 2 decent saves, but think his header second half should have gone in, seemed to rise to early so not enough power on it. Baylis was only worry, seemed lost and not that interested tbh. Some of our passing play was superb, though we do get ourselves in a pickle being to clever though on occasions. The fact Baka and jones are on the bench shows how good a team we are. They were awful but we were at them from the off. Cracking game noisy support.

fellatio_Martinez said:

Just got home from a day down the mine, booted up teletext to see we only won by two and conceded two! The wife's locked herself in the kitchen cos I'm that fuming.

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hope you didn't take it out on your canary.

covcity4life said:

@WhaleOilBeefHooked do you think mark robins should get a grip for agreeing with me? Do you want to tell him a win is a win? Our manager must be an idiot eh?

Sad to see.

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Get a grip.

Second time I've said it now. I won't say it again.

David O'Day said:

No Robins is a professional giving a measured response, he's hardly going to go be like "up ya you northern pricks" is he.

Also Robins doesn't shout a low flying plahes like you

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Egg on your face LMAO

But thanks for telling me I give measured responses

WhaleOilBeefHooked said:

Get a grip.

Second time I've said it now. I won't say it again.

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I know you won't say it again. You have been schooled. Checkmate!

covcity4life said:

I know you won't say it again. You have been schooled. Checkmate!

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jordan210 said:

We need to cut out waisting free kicks and sloppy atmpted clearances.a lot of swing and misses.

Thomas really needs to get a goal. He has all the skills and the ball just sticks to him. But hasn’t found his shooting boots yet.

Sterling is coming on leaps and bounds each match and growing in to a great player.

JCH is showing a lot more than before just needs a bit more composure in front of goal.

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we've had more joy from set pieces already this season than in the previous two seasons combined.

17 league goals this season and 10 different scorers in the process. Good to see a number of players chipping in. It was nice to see McNulty firing on all cylinders last season but there was always a concern that if he got injured or lost form our goals would dry up pretty quickly.

Edit: for comparison, we had 13 different scorers in the entirety of last season. Only 4 players scored 5 goals or more.

Nick said:

I think Bayliss is doing some more of the dirty work. He isn't standing out because he isn't going on runs trying to take on about 7 players (which mostly lead to us being in the shit).

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He seems yo have got the message that if he plays centrally then he has to defend more.

As a team we seemed to ‘click’ last night. People are starting to get used to each other by the look of it.

clint van damme said:

we've had more joy from set pieces already this season than in the previous two seasons combined.

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So even more reason to cut out shit training ground routines that don’t work

Sky_Blue_Dreamer said:

I tend to find that over the last few year it's teams that score lots of goals that win titles. They also tend to not concede that many due to not letting the other team get a look in but (Leicester aside) it's not teams scraping 1-0 wins like with Arsenal that get the silverware. It generates a fear factor that clean sheets just don't.

You also tend to find teams that don't score many at the bottom end of the table, even if they don't concede that many either. We've had seasons where our defensive record wasn't that bad but were close to going down because we weren't putting the ball in the net.

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You again are talking about relegation, which is nothing to do with Titles.

It's really no surprise that last season Manchester City invested £200+ million on 5 defenders over the last 2 seasons. Liverpool, who for many have played ome of the best attacking football, were not contenders until they signed a Goalkeeper and CB, and Manchester United, have struggled this season due to what Jose has said is an inability to sign defensive reinforcements.

I am not suggesting it has to be the BEST defense in the league I agree with that, it is very rare a team have both the best defense and attack, but the fact is, we are not a team that will score 4 goals a game, I think our defense in general has been solid just need to learn how to manage games.

theferret said:

We need to work on our game management, but aside from that it was pretty dominant. Four goals, 2 sitters missed and a series of half chances. Bradford's goals came out of nothing, and for a team playing at home throwing everything at us to get back into the game they didn't create much. Can't see many negatives at all from tonight and we seemed to have another gear. Great result.

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Summed up perfect, great performance, just need to manage game better is all.

Great win and a great run. Things are going in the right direction. Nice to see four different names on the score sheet.

covcity4life said:

@Magwitch @covmark

Mark robins:

“I don’t want to put a dampener on it but I just want the players to understand that to concede two goals like we have done against better teams will cost us.

“So it’s just a case of wanting them to learn and defend.

“The goals, the corners, the set plays were good but it was a bit nail biting at the end.

So mark robin's said exactly what I did. Is he a negative assehole? Does he have no clue about the game? Is that what you think of our manager?

COVCITY4LIFE PROVEN RIGHT AGAIN AHAHHAHAHAH

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Woahhhh don't miss me out here!

jordan210 said:

So even more reason to cut out shit training ground routines that don’t work

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they're not going to work every time.
But we've already scored directly from free kicks twice as well as from corners. (not sure exactly how may).

I'm fairly sure at this stage last season we only had Grimmers goal against Grimsby to show from our set pieces.
I think there's been massive improvement.

TewkesburySkyBlue said:

On the basis of recent form and talent in abundance I’d be very disappointed if we didn’t at least reach the play offs. Need to watch out for shoddy defending when we are in front but zI love the steel we are showing at last.

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It's a long season yet so I wouldn't run before we can walk. We haven't had any significant injuries yet, which if history tells us anything is an area where we rarely have much luck. Plus, although in comparison to last season our strength in depth is much improved not all areas are covered as much as I'd like. For instance, if we lose the likes of Chaplin or any of our back line (especially CB) to long term injuries then realistically we'll probably struggle.

jordan210 said:

So even more reason to cut out shit training ground routines that don’t work

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Well no it's the training ground routines that tend to work, it's just everything has to be perfect, but only has to be perfect once.

JamesCCFC said:

It's a long season yet so I wouldn't run before we can walk. We haven't had any significant injuries yet, which if history tells us anything is an area where we rarely have much luck. Plus, although in comparison to last season our strength in depth is much improved not all areas are covered as much as I'd like. For instance, if we lose the likes of Chaplin or any of our back line (especially CB) to long term injuries then realistically we'll probably struggle.

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we've got Hiwula or Bakayoko as striker cover and we lost a CB last night but had Hyam as cover.
I've also been pleased with Thompson when he's played so I don't think the situation is as dire as you suggest.
Robins has also stated that he has funds available for the January window.

skybluegod said:

Woahhhh don't miss me out here!

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You were respectful and acknowledged the point I was making

skybluegod said:

Well no it's the training ground routines that tend to work, it's just everything has to be perfect, but only has to be perfect once.

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We waisted two good free kicks position yesterday from complex ideas that dint work. One resulted in brandford breaking with most of our team in the box.

We have come a long way in free kicks this season. But we need to stop buggering about with ones that have been easily read by defenders or just don’t work.

Nick said:

We lost our number 9 for the season didn't we and have recovered OK?

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True, but essentially we have three No.9's at the club anyway though so the loss of Biamou didn't particularly phase me at the time in the grand scheme of things. IMO Biamou shouldn't have been starting ahead of JCH anyway so I wouldn't really class him as our No.9 - but then again that's subjective and depends which camp you sit in. We also have Baka in the wings waiting for his chance as MR clearly has his heart set on converting him to a traditional No.9. So, all in all although it's never nice to see a CCFC player suffer serious injury, you can argue we were already overloaded in that position anyway.

What's most concerning to me is the lack of support we have at CB or if we lose the likes of Chaplin as I previously mentioned. Albeit, Thompson is getting rave reviews, but realistically the question of how capable he is starting week in week out at League One level is another matter. Similarly, who fills the 'creative striker' number 10 role if Chaplin gets injured? If it weren't for his injury I would've suggested Andreu as he's previously found success as a No.10, but judging from what I've seen so far from him this season his legs are gone and is probably likely to be moved on in January to make room for others to come in.