Simon Grayson targets late flurry of goals for frustrated Bradford City

On a rare positive evening for City in 2018, the sight of the centre-forward ending his five-match barren streak with a late goal – his 15th of the season – in the 3-1 win over Portsmouth was among the major substantives.

It was also a noteworthy occasion for Matthew Lund too, with the loan midfielder netting his first goal since joining from Burton, scoring seven minutes after entering the fray in the second half to put City 2-1 ahead.

On a key contribution from the duo, who helped City move up to 10th in League One and secure just their second win in 16 games in all competitions, Grayson said: “Hopefully the goal will spark Charlie. Let us hope so. He is another player who had not trained since last Thursday. He had a fitness test on Tuesday morning. He had a bad hip.

“It was good for Matthew and great for Charlie to get a goal.

“Charlie led the line extremely well. Him and (Kai) Bruenker were a real handful in the 50-60 minutes they worked together.”

On Lund’s goal, he added: “He is probably like us as a football club and me as a manager. We are all frustrated because it has been a stop-start time.

“We have always mentioned if we can get a run of games and training sessions going, you can get some momentum and fluidity in what you try to do.

“We have not been able to do that with the games being called off and training sessions not being easy to do.

“I wanted to have an immediate impact, but that stop-start nature of the games being on and off probably worked against us.

“But we have said all along, regardless of if we are going to get in the play-offs or not, the players have to play for their futures and give the supporters something.”