SKIPPER Stephen Darby stressed City must be more ruthless against struggling teams after coming a cropper at bottom club Yeovil.

Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at Huish Park saw the Bantams drop a place in the play-off race to sixth – but they are now only three points above 14th-placed Walsall in the congested League One table. It was Yeovil’s first home win since September and they had not scored in the previous five games.

City have already won at high-flying MK Dons and Preston and held leaders Bristol City, so tripping up against the out-of-form basement side hit Darby hard.

He said: “It can’t be like that. You’ve got to able to perform against any side, whether they are in the top four or bottom four.

“You’ve got to be right on it week in, week out in this league. We know how tight it is and you can’t afford to switch off in any game or you will get punished.

“We knew Yeovil would be scrapping for every point but we started slowly.

“It probably took us 20 minutes or so to get into the game. I thought we played better football in the second half but couldn’t find that cutting edge to recover.

“Going to Chelsea next week will be a great occasion for the club and the fans. It would have been nice to go there on the back of another good result.

“The positive thing was our performance second half but it was obviously frustrating to concede the goal.”

With the anticipated FA Cup windfall, back-up keeper Ben Williams is set to commit his future to Valley Parade on an 18-month deal. Phil Parkinson is also keen to extend the loans of both Andy Halliday and Francois Zoko. The City boss defended the decision not to shuffle his pack after the gruelling home games against Rochdale and Millwall. Jordan Pickford’s return in goal was the only change from the midweek replay.

Parkinson said: “We thought about it but just felt the lads were in such a good place in terms of confidence and the balance of the side. When you get beaten, you always think maybe you should have changed it but the way we played from the end of the first half didn’t show any legginess.”

He denied that next week’s trip to Stamford Bridge had been a distraction.

“It’s going to be there (in the minds) but I can’t fault the attitude of the lads. We started slowly but it wasn’t a horrific start by any stretch of the imagination.

“The ref didn’t help when he gave the free-kick against Andrew Davies when he clearly won the ball.

“But the way we responded, I thought we gave absolutely everything for the shirt again.

“Look at the week we had, playing with ten men for 80 minutes on the heaviest pitch in the league and then Wednesday – it’s going to have some kind of effect.

“Unfortunately we didn’t make the keeper work enough with all the crosses we got in. We lacked that bit of quality we’ve had of late.”

Yeovil v City pictures