League 2: Bradford City v Torquay United 09/04/2011
Posted: 07 Apr 2011, 22:29
Coral Windows Stadium (for the love of God!)
Saturday April 9th 2011
KO: 1500.
Off we go to Bradford then, in search of three points to keep us firmly in the hunt for an oh-so-unlikely automatic promotion place. Bradford, unlike some other teams in L2, do genuinely qualify for sleeping giant status. They have 10,000 season ticket holders and the only thing keeping them in this league are the repayments on a ground, built for the Premier League, but now, despite the impressive attendances, vastly under populated come a Saturday 3pm.
GULLS NEWS.
Well, we all know the news from our point of view. The bemusing decision by the football league to punish us considerably more harshly than they have Hereford for committing the same offence in the same manner in the same match, has left us above Gillingham on goal difference alone. With any luck, the sheer injustice of this whole situation will spur on the boys to a fantastic end of season run, starting with Saturday.
Should probably mention also that the excellent Craig Stanley is missing, a blow for sure, but PB has a dozen or so options to shuffle the pack to cover, time will tell which he chooses.
CONSEQUENCES.
I ll start with our hosts, who are in the unfortunate position of not being able to move up so much as a single place with a win, but stand, with an unlikely, but possible, series of results occurring to drop as low as 20th place. For Torquay, we can go as high as fifth should we win and Accrington and Stevenage both fail to do so. Conversely, victories for Rotherham, Port Vale and Gillingham could see us as low as 10th come 1700.
HEAD TO HEAD.
Bradford wins – 21
Draws – 6
Torquay wins – 14
So, we have a losing record overall against this lot, although we don t appear to have played all that many matches against one another. Not a single cup meeting between the sides, so no anomalies there either. Sadly, despite these 41 matches being spread over exactly 50 years, our recent record against the Bantams is equally unsavoury: we have won only one of our meetings with Bradford since 1992. Fortunately, that was at Plainmoor, earlier this season, when we were already a goal up through Danny Stevens by the time Threlfall (the visitors greatest asset) was given his marching orders in the 12th minute. A Chris Zebro(w)ski goal on 66 sealed the result.
There are no real results of any great note throughout the history of this fixture, but the match at Plainmoor last season will live long in the memory of those who were there, since we were a goal up and ought to have been cruising going into second half injury time, and we somehow managed to find the time to concede twice to gift a poor Bradford side three wholly undeserved points.
FORM (LAST 6 GAMES).
Home: W L W W D L
Collated: W W D L L W
My my, isn t this a mixed bag? Bradford don t seem to be able to work out of they re any good or not. The one thing they don t do is draw 0-0, they haven t for 30 matches now. Recent results include just two wins against the better sides in the league, and a fair number of defeats, but they beat the teams around and below them, so I think it s fair to suggest that they are just about the best of the bad (for desperate want of a better phrase) teams in the division
PROBABLE LINE UP.
This is the team which beat Macclesfield 1-0 on Tuesday night.
01 McLaughlin
• 06 Oliver
• 12 Williams
• 15 Hunt
• 28 Threlfall
• 09 Evans
• 19 Worthington
• 20 Adeyemi
• 23 Syers
• 04 Flynn
• 17 Hanson (Dobie 63)
Substitutes
• 40 Pidgeley,
• 03 O'Brien,
• 14 Osborne,
• 22 Bullock,
• 10 Speight,
• 11 Dobie,
• 25 Chilaka
PLAYERS TO WATCH.
For me, it s Lenny Pidgeley, just for his name. For those who don t know, he s a goalkeeper who has been around a bit, but started life as understudy to Petr Cech at newly monied Chelsea. On a more serious note, Threlfall is their main man, a fans favourite, he is a defender who started his career at no less a club than Liverpool. Going forward, they have some familiar names, Jake Speight and Scott Dobie are their strikeforce. In terms of loanees, they have Kevin Ellison from Rotherham and Tom Adeyemi from Norwich, and if he s anything like the other Norwich loanee we have faced this season (Cody McDonald of Gillingham) he ll be a bloody nightmare to defend against.
PREDICTION
There will be goals. It remains to be seen what effect the FL decision will have on the spirit of the team.
Shall we say 2-0 TUFC.
Matt.
Saturday April 9th 2011
KO: 1500.
Off we go to Bradford then, in search of three points to keep us firmly in the hunt for an oh-so-unlikely automatic promotion place. Bradford, unlike some other teams in L2, do genuinely qualify for sleeping giant status. They have 10,000 season ticket holders and the only thing keeping them in this league are the repayments on a ground, built for the Premier League, but now, despite the impressive attendances, vastly under populated come a Saturday 3pm.
GULLS NEWS.
Well, we all know the news from our point of view. The bemusing decision by the football league to punish us considerably more harshly than they have Hereford for committing the same offence in the same manner in the same match, has left us above Gillingham on goal difference alone. With any luck, the sheer injustice of this whole situation will spur on the boys to a fantastic end of season run, starting with Saturday.
Should probably mention also that the excellent Craig Stanley is missing, a blow for sure, but PB has a dozen or so options to shuffle the pack to cover, time will tell which he chooses.
CONSEQUENCES.
I ll start with our hosts, who are in the unfortunate position of not being able to move up so much as a single place with a win, but stand, with an unlikely, but possible, series of results occurring to drop as low as 20th place. For Torquay, we can go as high as fifth should we win and Accrington and Stevenage both fail to do so. Conversely, victories for Rotherham, Port Vale and Gillingham could see us as low as 10th come 1700.
HEAD TO HEAD.
Bradford wins – 21
Draws – 6
Torquay wins – 14
So, we have a losing record overall against this lot, although we don t appear to have played all that many matches against one another. Not a single cup meeting between the sides, so no anomalies there either. Sadly, despite these 41 matches being spread over exactly 50 years, our recent record against the Bantams is equally unsavoury: we have won only one of our meetings with Bradford since 1992. Fortunately, that was at Plainmoor, earlier this season, when we were already a goal up through Danny Stevens by the time Threlfall (the visitors greatest asset) was given his marching orders in the 12th minute. A Chris Zebro(w)ski goal on 66 sealed the result.
There are no real results of any great note throughout the history of this fixture, but the match at Plainmoor last season will live long in the memory of those who were there, since we were a goal up and ought to have been cruising going into second half injury time, and we somehow managed to find the time to concede twice to gift a poor Bradford side three wholly undeserved points.
FORM (LAST 6 GAMES).
Home: W L W W D L
Collated: W W D L L W
My my, isn t this a mixed bag? Bradford don t seem to be able to work out of they re any good or not. The one thing they don t do is draw 0-0, they haven t for 30 matches now. Recent results include just two wins against the better sides in the league, and a fair number of defeats, but they beat the teams around and below them, so I think it s fair to suggest that they are just about the best of the bad (for desperate want of a better phrase) teams in the division
PROBABLE LINE UP.
This is the team which beat Macclesfield 1-0 on Tuesday night.
01 McLaughlin
• 06 Oliver
• 12 Williams
• 15 Hunt
• 28 Threlfall
• 09 Evans
• 19 Worthington
• 20 Adeyemi
• 23 Syers
• 04 Flynn
• 17 Hanson (Dobie 63)
Substitutes
• 40 Pidgeley,
• 03 O'Brien,
• 14 Osborne,
• 22 Bullock,
• 10 Speight,
• 11 Dobie,
• 25 Chilaka
PLAYERS TO WATCH.
For me, it s Lenny Pidgeley, just for his name. For those who don t know, he s a goalkeeper who has been around a bit, but started life as understudy to Petr Cech at newly monied Chelsea. On a more serious note, Threlfall is their main man, a fans favourite, he is a defender who started his career at no less a club than Liverpool. Going forward, they have some familiar names, Jake Speight and Scott Dobie are their strikeforce. In terms of loanees, they have Kevin Ellison from Rotherham and Tom Adeyemi from Norwich, and if he s anything like the other Norwich loanee we have faced this season (Cody McDonald of Gillingham) he ll be a bloody nightmare to defend against.
PREDICTION
There will be goals. It remains to be seen what effect the FL decision will have on the spirit of the team.
Shall we say 2-0 TUFC.
Matt.