Following Saturday’s 5-1 loss to Mansfield Town, Bradford City’s manager Graham Alexander provided justification for his decision to bench two important players.
The league leaders destroyed the Bantams’ hopes of making the playoffs, jumping out to a 3-0 lead at Valley Parade in just 20 minutes and adding another through Will Swan just before halftime.
Replace The home team’s Andy Cook opened the score before Aaron Lewis wrapped up the match and moved The Stags five points clear of Stockport County, who still have two games remaining.
After the match, former MK Dons manager Graham Alexander was questioned about his decision to bench Brad Halliday, the full-back, and start Cook on the bench.
Explaining the decision, he said: [Quotes via Telegraph and Argus]: “I just go on performance. It’s not like I’m going, ‘I haven’t left him out for 10 weeks so I will do to prove a point’.
“If the team’s performing and winning games, why am I going to change it around? But if it’s not, I have to try and find solutions to make it win.
“I look at the performances, I look at stats, data, I look at training performances and the performances and attributes of other players.
“We have a game every three days and it’s physically sapping doing that. We have to make sure that we use the squad as well as we can.”
The Bantams boss opted to start Tyler Smith in place of Cook and move midfielder Alex Gillead to wing-back, with both seeing a full 90 minutes on the pitch
It was 25-year-old Smith’s first start since playing Swindon Town on January 27, where he was substituted at half-time with City trailing 2-0.
Elaborating further on his selection, Alexander added: “I’m not going to come out and criticise any individual player to prove my point or to justify why I’d do that.
“I will sit down with a player and speak about what they have to do to improve. But that’s how it is. I’ll just make decisions honestly and without prejudice and for the better of the team.
“Sometimes I get them wrong. I’m not going to say I’m perfect and kid myself. But I feel over the course of my career I’ve got more decisions right than wrong and that’s why I’m here.”
It is a very short turnaround for Bradford as they welcome Notts County to West Yorkshire on Tuesday, now seven points behind 7th-placed AFC Wimbledon.
Writer’s View
Graham Alexander has been questioned multiple times for his selection decisions in his tenure at Bradford, and this latest error has cost his side a humiliating loss. Andy Cook, whilst being the talisman up front, has been off the mark in recent weeks so a switch to Tyler Smith was understandable. Brad Halliday has probably been City’s best player this season, so completely dropping the defender and replacing him with a midfielder in Alex Gillead was certainly a left-field choice that did not pay off.
The Bantams need to recapture the form that saw his team trounce Accrington Stanley 3-0 soon to keep a chance of play-off football. They face an off-colour Notts County that has slid down the table in recent months. The Magpies are winless in six, and if they can avoid conceding early again, they could get three points and still have games in hand on most of the play-off contenders with the end of the season in sight.
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