Bradford City's Adam Clayton 'ahead of schedule' in return from hamstring injury

The former Huddersfield Town, Leeds United, Middlesbrough and Doncaster Rovers midfielder is back in training after picking up the injury last month and although Saturday's League Two trip Rochdale is likely to come too soon, manager Hughes expects him to feature before the season is out.

The Bantams are hoping their campaign has just six games to run. Win them all – if only it were that easy – and they will win promotion without having to go through the play-offs.

Two points outside the automatic promotion places with a game in hand and unbeaten in their last 10, Bradford are in good shape physically and mentally.

"We haven't got any fallers from the weekend and a lot of the guys are coming back," said Hughes.

"Abo Eisa's back training really well, only missing out on small parts of the training and Adam Clayton joined in today (Thursday) so he's ahead of where we thought he would be.

"He'll be available before the end of the season."

Dale are bottom of the table, six points adrift of safety with only five games to claim them, but are unbeaten in three games under interim manager Jim McNulty.

"It's a difficult fixture for us," warned Hughes. "They're fighting for their Football League position.

"They've changed their manager and had a new manager bounce (two wins and a draw). They've done okay in recent weeks so we'll have to deal with that as well but I just sense we're in a really good place and we'll have a huge following as well.

"The fans have been great all year but at the weekend they really understood we were playing well and their encouragement made it a really good performance.

"No one else can match our away following in this league so it's really important we give them something to cheer.”