Phil Parkinson has admitted he will pick his team for tomorrow’s Capital One Cup clash at Notts County with next week’s trip to Gillingham in mind.
The City boss is missing a clutch of players through injury in Ricky Ravenhill, Andrew Davies, Ritchie Jones and new recruit Nathan Doyle.
And he will not gamble on players working their way towards full fitness ahead of the League Two opener at Gillingham.
Parkinson said: “Everybody in Bradford knows that the priority for us this year is the league. We certainly won’t play anyone tomorrow who we feel isn’t quite ready to play and will detract from what they could do the following week.
“The team is being selected with one eye on the Gillingham game and I think people will expect that.”
Parkinson could hand debuts to a number of new recruits at Meadow Lane, with Stephen Darby, Rory McArdle, James Meredith, Gary Jones, Garry Thompson and Alan Connell all in contention to feature.
Yet the City boss remains keen to add more new faces to his squad and will step up his efforts in the coming days.
Former West Ham and Burnley winger Zavon Hines, Marc Gallego, Jack Mills and Gavin Hoolahan have all been on trial and played in Tuesday’s friendly defeat at Park Avenue.
Of that quartet, only Hines trained with the Bantams yesterday but Parkinson did not completely write off the remaining trio’s hopes.
He added: “Zavon was in this morning and he’s the only out of the four who played the other night who were in today.
“We’re looking to arrange another game next week.
“We haven’t finalised that yet but it’s another option we’ve got.
“There is still the possibility that a couple of them could play again or we could be bringing a couple of others in to have a look at.
“We’ve still got a bit more to do because we’re still a bit light on numbers.
“I think we’ve got quality but we need a bit more quantity to bulk the squad out.”
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