GARY Bowyer is happy to play the numbers game as City head towards the Christmas rush.

Saturday’s home clash with Salford kicks off a run of four matches in 11 days over the holiday period and the Bantams boss is delighted to see plenty of bodies available in the squad.

Shay McCartan and Matty Palmer both returned from injury to come off the bench at Leyton Orient and Bowyer admits there is plenty of choice for the hectic spell to come.

“If there’s a time where you want selection problems when near-enough everybody is fit then it’s around this period,” he said.

“It’s raised the standard of training again. People know there are no guarantees and they’ve got to go out and perform.

“The group is driving each other which is eventually what you want to get to. I’m delighted with how they’ve gone about it.”

Palmer’s late appearance in the weekend draw was his first since damaging a knee at Scunthorpe at the end of September. Bowyer withdrew Jake Reeves as a precaution in his third game back.

The City boss added: “We had to take Reevesy off because the pitch was very heavy. That’s the first time he has played on that type of surface and he just felt a bit of cramp.

“We had to be sensible with it but we’re delighted we could bring on Matty to replace him.”

Bowyer had kept the same formation that beat Newport in the last home game with three at the back. He again left out wingers Zeli Ismail and Dylan Connolly, who did not come off the bench.

He said: “We’d only had a short time with the formation. If I had changed it and it didn’t work, people would have asked why I’d done that when you won the week before.

“We got Shay McCartan on there because we thought he might be a little bit different.

“The delightful thing for us now is that we do have options, not just in personnel but formations.

“We’ve played two games with this one and picked up four points out of six.

“If you said before that we’d get two clean sheets, one win and a draw it would not be too bad.

“This period coming up is an exciting time, we need to recover now because our home form is the best of the league and we want to continue that.”