Preview written Thursday May 16th

Most of us are on City to win this, on May 1st I wrote a League 2 playoff preview ....

I am very keen on the chances of Bradford City, I saw the Bantams play at Wycombe in early/mid February and told you afterwards that I did not believe there were three better teams in League 2 than City ( they were outside the top half before than game, albeit with matches in hand), they made it into the playoffs and I think most neutrals will have viewed that as justice. Three deep cup runs, including a  trip to Wembley in the Captial One Cup (15 matches in total) took a heavy toll on their league ambitions, but that knockout experience should serve them very well now, as will the recent outing at the National stadium, if they progress to the Playoff Final.

My thoughts on City are unchanged and I feel they are at least as good as the three promoted teams, as a club, they are the biggest by far in the fourth tier, with an average home league attendance 2,500 bigger than any other club and four times that of the six lowest. Infact, only three League 1 clubs averaged more this season and in terms of size, they are a Championship level club. They lost just one of their last nine starts and played all three playoff rivals in that sequence, winning the two home games and drawing on the road to Cheltenham, keeping a cleansheet in all three, so, positive and recent mental memories against the other contenders.

City will have had automatic promotion aims early season, but since the turn of the year have been playing catch up and will be hugely pleased to have secured a top 7 finish, for the others it is a very different story, all three have blown an automatic promotion spot. Cheltenham have spent 16 weeks in the top three and both Northampton and Burton have been third and with matters in their own control, at some time in the last month, with both performing poorly under pressure. That augurs badly for the post season and all three will surely have thoughts of what might have been somewhere at the back of their minds, maybe at the forefront !

City's last home game was against Burton less than two weeks ago and a crowd of over 13,000 saw them secure a place in the playoffs and end Burton's top 3 ambitions, the atmosphere was said to be electric and there are likely to be a couple of thousand more for the first leg. Boss Phil Parkinson is well aware of how much the home support has helped them in big wins here over Aston Villa and Arsenal and said yesterday "The more intense we can make the atmosphere on Thursday, the more it is going to help our players."The vast majority of opposition managers, certainly in recent weeks, who come to the ground always comment about the atmosphere and how difficult it can make it for the opposition to play.

"We have to generate that sort of atmosphere again on Thursday. "The closer we can get to getting the stadium full, the better it is going to be for us."

Parkinson added: "We have a group of players who have played this season in front of full houses and when the t.v cameras have been there, and relished it all. I fully expect us to do the same again."As I said throughout our cup run, the whole experience of playing in the big games and dealing with the big occasions will help our younger players in their careers.
"We now have another opportunity to play in game of a similar magnitude to our cup matches."

"It has been an enormous achievement by all of the lads to only lose two games since our Capital One Cup Final appearance. It shows a lot of hard work has gone in to putting us in these Play-Offs."However, the pats on the backs are firmly behind us now because we have got to make that hard work we have put in so far worthwhile. We have to finish the job off.
"We are going to ask the players for one almighty effort on Thursday night to produce a performance that will give us the best chance possible to go into the second leg in good spirits."Preparations have been going well, everyone has trained well today and is in a good frame of mind."

City have actually lost the fewest away games and scored the most on the road of the four contenders and whilst they lost the away league game with Burton 1-0, it is hard to believe that as much can go wrong for the Bantams this time round, when they travel to the Pirelli Stadium on Sunday. In that game they were reduced to ten men and had two defenders go off injured inside 40 minutes, it was their 10th start in 35 days and they had one eye on a trip to Premier League Wigan, just a couple of days later. No distractions now and much better rested ahead of the game, I strongly favour them to see off Albion over the two legs and give them a big edge at Wembley with their recent appearance and general big match experience this season, with City highly unlikely to freeze on the day. Burton will miss suspended midfielder Lee Bell( 43-4-2) for the playoffs, they have conceded eight goals in the three matches he has sat out this season, including half of those in the only away game, a 4-2 defeat at relegated Barnet. He has just been voted Albion's POTY and they will miss his energy and drive, especially with City having huge experience and Championship level quality in midfield through Thompson, Reid, Doyle, Jones and Ravenhill. I priced City at circa 2.80-2.90 to win promotion, so see really good value in their current odds. 1.75 units Bradford City to win the League 2 playoffs 3.25-3.50

They made mistakes in the first leg, which I spoke about ahead of the return and boss Phil Parkinson brought both Reid and Doyle back into the starting eleven, he must have been reading my notes ! Forget the 14 points which champions Gillingham finished ahead of City, if the Bantams were not the best team in League 2, then I am a Dutchman ( where did that saying come from ?) ! Nu zaken...... City have no real problems, Kyel Reid has not been asked to do too much in training ,with Parkinson seeing the midfielder as his potential match winner, but he will be fit to play. This classy squad can make their Wembley experience count and Parkinson feels his men could hardly be in better shape, saying yesterday "We aren't going to get the players much fitter at this stage so it was important to give them those few days off to rest physically and mentally. They've come back looking really sharp."I feel this team have still got a lot of running and enthusiasm left in them. You see that every day at training, even this late in the season."Sometimes you still have to drag the players off the training pitch because they want to keep going that little bit extra. They've still got the energy and the enthusiasm."

This was in response to questions about this being their 64th game of the season, but winning produces it's own adrenaline and the team were fired up by the win and performance at Burton, you know I like a striker in form and City have two with Nahki Wells (53-25-7 all comps) and James Hanson ( 57-14-11) scoring three between them and looking unplayable at times at the Pirelli Stadium. I think they will win, we already have a big bet at very nice odds, so no need for further involvement, but if you are not already on Bradford City -0.25 ball 2.13 asian line/Ibramarket is a very nice quote IMO.