"Remember us in Cups full-crowned, And let our City-health go round"
(Herrick)
We welcome the Bantams to Fortress Bescot (largely consisting of jelly at present) as we look to build on our solitary League 2 win so far this season - and doesn’t that seem a long time ago? City are currently hovering in the play-off area, being one of six teams on 11 points although that position may be misleading, as they have demonstrated a degree of frailty in losing at home to Forest Green Rovers, and away at Crewe Alexandra. There are a few names that emerge when looking for connections between the two clubs, and the current ones are, of course, Richard O’Donnell and Zeli Ismail. It’s unlikely that we will see Zeli on Saturday though - he came on as a substitute in City’s most recent game in the 68th minute and managed to get 2 yellow cards with the inevitable red within the space of 8 minutes!! A player connection from the past is Lee Sinnott, and in the managerial stakes there’s our old friend Chris Hutchings … are there any clubs dog-face hasn’t been sacked from? Anyway, League 2 current form for Bradford City looks like this:-
Aug 10 Grimsby Town (A) Drew 1-1
Aug 17 Oldham Athletic (H) Won 3-0
Aug 20 Stevenage (A) Won 0-1
Aug 24 Forest Green Rovers (H) Lost 0-1
Aug 31 Crewe Alexandra (A) Lost 2-1
Sep 7 Northampton Town (H) Won 2-1
There are two consistent factors associated with The Saddlers at present - one is the number of squad players coming out with quotes like “It’s all coming together” … “Great team spirit” … “Positive outlook from everyone” (etc.), and the other is the consistent inconsistency in the composition of our starting XI (if you follow). The second factor is the main reason why there’s no point in guessing what team we will see at 3pm on Saturday - Darrell Clarke himself doesn’t seem to know, and if he does know then he’s keeping his cards very close to his chest…
Prediction? Come on, we are due for a win, and Bradford City won’t be bringing umpteen thousand season ticket holders with them for support. If we can keep tabs on the likes of James Vaughan let’s see if we can nick this … 1-0 will do !!
Ordered my tickets earlier - seemed to be a lot more ‘non-sold’ seats than previous home games. Hope we click soon, or at least score, because any who are thinking of staying giving it a miss may do so more frequently if something doesn’t change.
Bradford also haven’t started as well as other predicted them too and I can see them winning this one quite comfortably based on current form. 2-0 to our friends from up north.
I’ve read somewhere from a pretty reliable source, that we have never beaten Bradford in the history of our club and so will predict the usual tatoring.
0-18 with James Hanson making a guest appearance for Bradford and scoring all of them.
Heart tells me things are going to click for us 2-0 win, head tells me more of the same repeated rhetoric from DC and co about what we need to do and ultimately nothing will change and a 0-1 defeat.
Don’t care how we win just need a win desperately to save the team and supporters from becoming totally depleted and depressed. . 2-1 to the saddlers. 5654 in attendance.
Battling 2-2, with several home fans committing ritual suicide by sepuko as Bradford extraordinarily and rudely win an early throw-in, footage to be aired on Japanese tv for the next decade, inspiring a 9 hour 2 string dirge called ‘falling leaves’ or somesuch crap.
