Despite it only being early February you have to say that some of these games against fellow play-off candidates that are coming up over the next month or so are now becoming must win fixtures for the Bantams.
This includes our match this Saturday as we head down south to Peterborough, the team currently sitting in eighth place in League One, the team that have scored 54 times this season already compared to our miserable total of 29. I remember listening to Graham Westley’s first press conference after he became manager at Posh back in September last year and thinking something along the lines of ‘wow, this guy is deluded.’ This was due in no small part to the fact that when joining Peterborough he stated that as manager he would strive for his team to complete 600+ passes and have 25+ attempts on goal a game and even though his team fall short of those very high standards regularly, he has got them scoring plenty and winning often. Despite losing top scorer Conor Washington to QPR during the January transfer window, Peterborough still possess some fantastic players including young winger Martin Samuelsen who is one to certainly watch.
The last time we lined up against Peterborough United in late September at Valley Parade it was in fact Westley’s first game in charge and to be honest, the opposition dominated us. Scoring two goals in two second half minutes, Peterborough were one of the better teams that have visited us on Midland Road so far this season.
As for the Bantams well it has been rather up and down of late. After that last minute win at home to Fleetwood courtesy of Steven Davies’ 90th minute strike, the fans and players alike seemed much more confident after the match and there was almost a sense of turning the page and our back on our recent poor form. That didn’t last long though as it went up in flames away at Burton on Saturday. We once again failed to create that many clear cut chances during the match and the whole team looked very low on confidence once again. The team is still looking for a spark in the centre of midfield and in Josh Cullen, who we’ve signed on an initial one month loan from West Ham; Parky could have finally found that.
Something worrying to think about though; against teams currently above us in League One we have won once, drawn six and lost seven. For a team with promotion ambitions it’s simply not good enough and you have to wonder if we make the play-offs would we manage to grab any kind of result against some of the other teams involved. A result, whether that’s in the form of a win or draw, tomorrow and against Southend at home on Tuesday night would be fantastic as with winnable ties coming up against Rochdale, Blackpool, Colchester & Bury within the next few weeks, the team needs to start performing and needs to start finding some consistency in terms of form.
To finish with a stand out statistic regarding this match up. We have never managed to win away at Peterborough, playing them 14 times in the league and cup at London Road we have lost nine times and drawn on five occasions.
Records are there to be broken though.