Rochdale 1 v Bradford City 3 - an entirely partial view.

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Liam, me and Muffy on Late Kick Off haha

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Going into this game, Bradford City had not won a game in the league since the trip to Torquay at the end of January, and even that was City's only win in 9 games, so a trip over the Pennines to the league leaders Rochdale wouldn't be most football fans idea of an easy tie. 

So it comes as rather a pleasant surprise to say that this game was easily City's best performance in a very long time, and one of our easiest wins of the season too. 

Before I go into the game in any detail, a few points need to be made by your scribe. Firstly, I am not impartial when it comes to my beloved City. I have followed this team for over 25 years through thick and thin, most of those years being the latter. Ten years ago, we were in the Premier League, beating the likes of Newcastle Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool. In the years since then I have watched my team on a long and far too quick descent down the leagues. It's been upsetting, depressing and downright embarrassing sometimes. We've nearly gone out of business twice, had a host of managers and far too many below average players. So, here we are ten years later languishing near the bottom of the country's bottom league, with a new man in charge and not much hope in our hearts. The second point I need to make is, I wasn't there. I'd decided a few weeks ago that I'd just stick to wasting my money at home games. I listened on the local radio station. I now wish I'd gone.

We sounded brilliant. Our only slip up in the whole game really was entirely of our own making, and Rochdale scored as a result of it. Peter Taylor's second game in charge ushered in one new face - Danny Threlfall at left back - and a decent shuffle of the rest of the pack. City opened the scoring early on and never looked back for the rest of the half, or most of the rest of the half. A lapse by Simon Williams allowed Chris Dagnall in to level things up just as the ref blew for half time.

City didn't start the second half very well, but as the game progressed we came back into the match, and once Danny Threlfall's free kick went in off the back of the Dale keeper the points were wrapped up. Gareth Evans added a thumper of a goal for City's third, and our first win in what seemed like an eternity was in the bag. 

I hope we've bottomed out after ten years of downward misery, as Red said in Shawshank - I hope.