Stalemate

[RedUn]

Fair result, neither goalkeeper seriously tested. Yet it wasn't a dull game.

City started 3-5-2 and looked bright enough for the first 20 mins before the passes started going astray (Bell and Coles the worst culprits) to let Bradford into it. The one thing the formation failed to provide was what we were led to expect, i.e. Luke Wilkshire getting on the ball behind the forward pair; he actually spent more time supporting Bell out wide and in some case got too far forward instead of hanging on the 'D' ready for the cut back.

The other glaring shortfall was the habitually poor standard of crosses and corners from both flanks. Has anyone on our training ground ever pointed out the benefit of putting some pace on a cross instead of just floating them in hopefully?

Bell did his usual trick of showing well a couple of times early on before fading to anonymity as his full-back just held off realising he wasn't going to be outpaced. On the other flank, Smith was doing as well as I've seen him play going forward until the red mist took over on 40 mins to see him booked for retaliation - he could well have walked, much good that would have done us.

The tackle he was reacting to was typical of some half-a-dozen late and/or heavy challenges Bradford players had previously put in without seeing yellow. Summerbee was spoken to three times before being booked and then abused the lino when caught deliberately handling the ball; Bower (6) was still being spoken to and putting in clumsy challenges in added time; when will refs ever wise-up to spoiling tactics?

The formation switched to 4-3-3 on the arrival of Scoot but this created more problems than it solved as Summerbee started to find acres of space on their right flank. The sacrifice of Orr (who had a splendid game) saw the introduction of Mark Goodfellow and he brought some much needed pace to the left flank as well as finding that space in the 'D' to make probably our best goalscoring effort.

All in all, a match that was a fair reflection of our current strengths and weaknesses - confirming that the play-offs are the limit of this season's ambitons and that the player we miss by far the most is Aaron Brown.