Bradford City players have 'a difficulty and cloud in their minds' after losing first goal admits Graham Alexander after painful League Two loss to Harrogate Town

Reeling after three successive home defeats, things are going from bad to worse for City, whose supporters directed chants against owner Stefan Rupp and chief executive Ryan Sparks during the second half of the latest setback at Wetherby Road.

Josh March’s first goal in 25 games for Harrogate put the hosts ahead on 21 minutes.

A penalty from George Thomson, after Brad Halliday was penalised for handball, doubled the Sulphurites’ advantage on 73 minutes and a Daniel Oyegoke own goal sealed City’s misery.

Alexander said: “The first goal seems to bring all the previous games on top of us into our minds.

"Then, a little bit of our composure goes and we make strange decisions in and out of possession. We just don’t have the quality at the moment to overcome those issues.

"We had chances to equalise and didn’t take that spark. But in one, two, three games we can speak about that and it feels like a recurring theme in the past few months.

"The data and the league table tell you we haven’t scored enough goals to win enough games or relieve the pressure on anything we give away.

"That’s what we have to be better at. Like I said on Tuesday, our defensive structure over the course of the season has been really good but that seems to have deserted us over the last three or four games.

"There’s obviously mitigating circumstances with missing players at important times.

"But the lack of real constant cutting edge in the front areas has been apparent for a while.

"There's a difficulty and cloud in their minds at the moment when we go a goal down.

"We are looking for responses from individuals and the group. There is responses from certain individuals, but as a group, I don’t think it’s been good enough to overcome that in the last couple of games.”