Bradford City floored by 'three swift punches' from Notts County
BRADFORD CITY manager Graham Alexander was left to rue a costly four minutes after his team’s short unbeaten run came to an end at Meadow Lane.
The Magpies lifted themselves into the play-off places, while denting the Bantams’ own hopes of being in the top seven at Christmas, with Alexander’s team dropping to 12th as a result of their first loss in five games.
The hosts’ took the lead through Alassana Jatta in the 28th minute with the Gambian forward then turning provider shortly afterwards as he headed Dan Crowley’s far-post cross back across the six-yard box for David McGoldrick to score.
County had a third a minute later. McGoldrick and Jatta combined again, with the latter lofting the ball over Bradford goalkeeper Sam Walker.
Bradford now have failed to win away since October 12 in the league, and manager Graham Alexander insisted it was “three swift punches” that cost his side.
“I'm devastated with the five-minute period, it cost us the result because from the start to the first goal, we were in the contest as much as them,” said Alexander.
“We had opportunities on the turnover to try and get that opening goal, we didn't take them and didn't have the final bit of quality,
“Apart from that five-minute period, there was some good stuff in there, but ultimately, we set ourselves too much of a challenge to overcome and we didn't have that edge in the final third to take advantage of the amount of times we got in there.
“We created some good chances today, we turned the ball over a lot but then we had that three or four-minute spell where we conceded three terrible goals and I’ve seen them again, we miss a tackle in each one and that spell overall made it extremely difficult.
“I told the players to go back out there and make sure that bad body language didn’t set in and it didn’t. We even had the same amount of box entries as them but they were just more clinical than us.
“It was three swift punches that cost us and that isn’t like us at all.”
Notts County: Bass, Ness, Platt, Bedeau, Austin, Abbott, Palmer, Tsaroulla, Crowley (Macari 68), Jatta (Brown 83), McGoldrick. Unused substitutes: Slocombe, Gordon, Madou Cisse, Hinchy, Martin.
Bradford City: S Walker, Baldwin, Huntington, Shepherd (Kelly 85), Benn (Halliday 85), Smallwood, Sarcevic (J Walker 72), Richards, Pointon (Oduor 72), Kavanagh (Sanderson 72), Cook. Unused substitutes: Doyle,Byrne.
Referee: James Durkin (Dorset).