Bradford City able to fulfil fixture at Barrow as things stand says Derek Adams

The Bantams have been hit hard by the Covid-19 spike which at one point reduced them to just six available players as others were forced into isolation by positive tests or being close contacts of people with the virus.

Under Football League rules only belatedly laid out this month, teams can request a postponement if they have fewer than 13 outfield players and a goalkeeper available. League Two sides can name up to seven substitutes in a match, although only three can take to the field.

Bradford only reopened their training ground this week after 12 days, and not everyone returned immediately.

“We’re still assessing the squad at this moment in time,” revealed manager Adams. “We’ve been in for a few days now and looked at them and their health. We had a staggered start coming back (to training).

“We’ve got more than the 14 we require, we’ve got to test them in the morning but at this moment we’ve got more than the 14.

“(As for a full seven-man bench?) That’s up in the air at this moment in time.”

Bradford have not played since December 11, whereas Saturday is due to be hosts Barrow’s third match since Christmas.

Having players available is not the same as them being ready to play 90 minutes of intense English football and Adams must now judge how well each has recovered from the respiratory disease.

“We’ve had three or four days to look at them and see where we are,” he said. “It’s up to myself to try and (identify) the ones that I feel have recovered quickly enough from the virus. I know some have had positive tests, some have been close contacts, some have had the virus worse than others so I’ve got to analyse that and that will probably go into my team selection.

“We’ve had players that came back on Wednesday and we had to look at them yesterday as well. That’s much shorter notice than everyone else. The ones that have come back at the start of the week are the ones that have the best possibility of playing.

“We had a normal Thursday session because we’ve had to find out where the players are from an energy point of view, from a breathing point of view. It’s important we now see where they are going into Saturday’s game because come Saturday, you can’t be 50, 60, 70 per cent ready to go, you need to be up there at 90-100.

“We’re trying to get players to the level where they feel fit enough.”

The enforced lay-off has given players such as forwards Andy Cooke and Charles Vernam extra time to recover from injury, although it has had its downsides too.

“They’ve missed a good period of time where they haven’t been able to get treatment or training time,” pointed out Adams. “The positive thing is the healing process is healing their injuries. They are progressing well.

“Another positive is we’ve come through the virus and haven’t had anybody seriously ill, that’s a huge positive. We had a huge problem because the outbreak had moved very quickly through the squad and we all knew, because the Government told us, the virus was going to move quickly and it certainly did.”

Just because Bradford have enough players now does not mean that could not change after today’s testing, and there will be a nervous wait to hear if Barrow are in condition to play too.

As Adams warned: “Barrow have played the last couple of games and they might have had positive cases and they’ve got injuries at this moment in time so we’re probably not going to find out until Friday afternoon if the game’s going to go ahead or not.”