ANTHONY O’Connor admits he never expected to be fighting at the foot of League One with City.

The straight-talking defender, who has regained the captain’s armband, anticipated a promotion push when he made the summer switch from Aberdeen.

So it has come as a culture shock to see the Bantams currently just three points off bottom spot ahead of another crucial home game with Coventry tonight.

O’Connor said: “It’s something different for me. The last few seasons I’ve been up in Scotland and always been at the top end of the table and in cup finals.

“I knew Bradford was a massive club and I wanted to come here. I don’t regret that decision.

“But when I came here, I was thinking we’d be challenging at the top end. It’s Bradford City, an ex-Premier League club.

“The last few seasons, Bradford have always been up and around there. For the first six months of last season anyway they were obviously up there before falling away.

“But that was my intention again this year.

“Lots of new players came in, people I’d played against before and I was thinking ‘he’s a good player, he’ll do well’. But for one reason or another, it’s just not happening.

“But that’s football. Some teams go through these patches and only us can turn it round.”

O’Connor thought City were on the up after back-to-back clean sheets against Bristol Rovers and Wimbledon before running title favourites Sunderland close. But the last two defeats have dropped them “back to square one”.

He added: “We play Sunderland, a massive club, and we should have come away with something. We miss a penalty and it wasn’t a bad performance.

“Then we go to Accrington and play poorly – and then we have Rochdale and another poor performance.

“But we did have chances. The most important thing is putting the ball in the back of the net.

“Rochdale didn’t have the chances we did on Saturday. They got two penalties while we had blatant one v ones.

“That’s not me picking on anybody. It’s a collective thing – we should be scoring goals.

“They are the fine moments in games that are hurting us at the minute.

“I can’t really put my finger on why results have been poor.

“Some games the luck has gone against us but in others we’ve not shown up. If I’m honest, there are some games when we were probably better off not being there.

“It’s a great club to play for but it’s a difficult place to be at the minute results-wise.”

Confidence has inevitably suffered and O’Connor senses the frustration in the stands filtering through to the players.

“You can sense it on the pitch that there’s a bit of a negativity around the place,” he said.

“But fans want to see their team winning. They are what makes the football club and you can understand their frustration.

“We’re working so hard on the pitch to try and put it right.

“But I don’t want to sound like a broken record. It’s got to start at some point and hopefully that’s tonight.”