Reaction to the Bradford City game

It seems a long time ago since I came on here and was heavily criticising the club, the management and the players, but six weeks is a long time in football and now we're moving increasingly closer to Football League safety thanks to a great win over Bradford City.

I think back to December 12^th and it's about 4:55pm, City have just lost 3-1 to Rochdale and I can't see a way forward for this club, but strangely it might turn out to have been the best thing that could have happened to us this season. I think it took a proper mullering for us to change and the fact we've won all our League games since then goes to prove that point.

It does seem strange how a side that used to be so bad and couldn't create shots, now look likely to score for fun and our performances are starting to resemble the football that we saw at the beginning of the Schofield era, which in my opinion was the best football City have played in recent times. However, we must make sure that we don't get overly cocky. We are far from any kind of finished article and just as we've seen how quickly we can get three wins, Grimsby could just as easily do the same.

I know I keep saying it but Chris Herd is the best player I've seen down here in a long time. He is the only player I've seen here....well, ever, that performs well in every game he plays. You had your Jamie Forrester who although good, would sometimes go anonymous in games, you had Simon "I only performed for 3 months in three and a half years" Yeo, but neither of them get anywhere near Chris Herd. He's opened the door to a permanent move to Sincil Bank saying that he would be open to joining, and I think he would be defined as a MUST buy.

Hopefully when players such as Brown, Clucas, Butcher and Kovacs do leave, we'll be able to bring in better players and that's one thing you can't argue about, Sutton has bought in better players than. were here than when he arrived. People can moan about Kovacs being treated badly, but the FACT is that our results have improved since he went out of the squad. There is not one player that is in the first team now that is worse than the person they've replaced.

The most pleasing aspect in recent weeks is that we finally seem to be playing as a team and everyone seemingly wants to play their part, hell, even Lenell John-Lewis has started trying recently. It's because of this that a lot of players may never get a look in again. Chris Fagan, Jamie Clarke, Aaron Brown, Richard Butcher, Sam Clucas, Danny Hone and various others might as well start looking for new clubs. Even Paul Connor will be fortunate to get a chance at this rate if he does actually ever return from injury.

As for the Bradford game, I think that based on the entire game, we just about deserved the victory. The difference between us and Bradford is that we took advantage of our good chances with both goals being excellent finishes and I'm delighted for Gilmour that he got his first goal, although what the Bradford defence were doing is anyone's guess.

I think we were still fortunate sometimes during the game as Bradford wasted several good opportunities to equalise and that is a bit of a worrying trend as it's not the first time it's happened. I think Sutton's tactics are get as many goals in the first half as possible and then seemingly sit on the lead in the second half. The fact we usually attack the Stacey West in the first half and we have only ever scored at that end during Sutton's reign at the club. Infact, the only game in which we've scored at the Imps Stand end of the ground was against Darlington.......and before that....Notts County on March 28^th....see...I'm full of useless facts.

Looking at the table and our upcoming fixtures compared to Grimsby, I don't think there's a chance we'll go down now. 9 points clear with two games in hand, it's hard to see where Grimsby are going to catch up on at least 9 points on us. Then again, you can never be too careful, as long as we match or better Grimsby's scores for the rest of the season then we're fine.