Bradford cautioned by former Bantam

Speaking to the Telegraph and Argus prior to tomorrow evening's pre-season friendly at Throstle Nest (still looking for a volunteer to provide a match report...), former Bradford City defender Lee Sinnott today issued a warning to those Bradford City fans who believe that we will walk League Two.

As one of the names of the shortlist to take the Valley Parade hotseat, he was one of the losers in Staurt McCall's appointment as Bradford City manager but he firmly believes that Stuart is the man to revive our fortunes.

But that may not happen overnight. Speaking of his own success with Farsley Celtic, they are now in the Blue Square Premier League (just one rung on the ladder below us), Sinnott said 'it took us four years to get where we are and to expect him to come in and straight away achieve success would be unfair...It's important that the public are patient'.

As we're well aware we could well be seen as something of a scalp next season and Sinnott believes that we should avoid the danger of complacency noting that 'opposition teams will fancy playing in that stadium and Bradford will have to be ready for that and combat it.' He went on to identify the fluidity of the squad at Valley Parade in the last few seasons and point out that at Farsley Celtic 'the core of my squad has been together for a long time but Stuart hasn't got that liberty...not many players have been there that long and you need to establish some stability'.

I couldn't agree more with what Lee Sinnott has said. Whilst anything less than promotion will obviously be very disappointing we have to trust Stuart to build a squad that can rise through the footballing hierarchy over time. For that reason I am not concerned that we haven't signed 'names' (Rotherham with Coughlan, Darlington with Abbott) because the squad, according to Stuart himself, is now beginning to gel together. He scored last night's performance at a 6/10 and knows what needs to be done in training but never one to dwell on the negatives, Stuart today said 'I thought there were some good signs on Monday' before reiterating that the start of the season is still three weeks away. In his words, 'we've got plenty of time to do it'.

Admission for tomorrow evening's game at Throstle Nest is £10 standing/£12 seats for adults and £5/£6 for under-16s and senior citizens. If anyone is going and wants to write a report for the site, please either post to the forum or email me on bradford@vitalfootball.co.uk