Hughes confident in Bradford City's promotion chances at halfway stage

Back-to-back home wins over the holiday weekend cut the gap to third spot to four.

But Northampton restored their previous advantage the following night by toppling Leyton Orient.

Another victory at Salford tomorrow would leave the inactive Bantams facing a double-figure disadvantage - albeit with two games in hand.

I doubt Mark Hughes will be losing any sleep about that, though, as he looks to extend the long-overdue Valley Parade winning streak by spoiling Richard O’Donnell’s return with struggling Rochdale on Tuesday.

A challenge certainly for City as they head into the business side of the campaign. But there is a whole lot of football to be played.

Northampton, more than anyone, know how the tables can turn after their heartbreak on the final day of last season when Bristol Rovers incredibly stole into the final promotion spot on goals scored after rattling seven past a hopeless Scunthorpe.

The picture - and mood - around Valley Parade looks much brighter for those recent victories but Hughes is fairly comfortable about the first half of the season as a whole.

“It’s a marked improvement from last year,” he said. “We’ve got 11 wins and I think it took us 30 odd games last season to get that many.

“We’re trending in the right direction.

“This group has only really been together for half a season. The vast majority of them arrived in the summer.

“Given that, I think we’re doing okay.

“Obviously the teams ahead of us are playing exceptionally well and are very consistent at the moment.

“But we feel we’ve just got to be ready when they do stumble because almost without fail teams at the top will have a spell when they’re not as accomplished. We are only halfway through."

In fact it took City 37 league games last season to rack up an 11th win - a 2-0 success under Hughes at Hartlepool on March 15.

A quick glance at the table at the corresponding stage for the last two years shows the folly of thinking that any current league positions are set in stone.

On January 6, 2022, Bristol Rovers were lagging in 18th and the knives were being sharpened for boss Joey Barton. They were 14 points behind Northampton - few would have given them any chance of hauling that back on previous evidence.

Forest Green were top and would stay there but they were the only occupants of an automatic spot going into the new year who lasted the distance.

Northampton in second, of course, were dumped into the play-offs at the last minute and never got over the shock.

Northampton celebrate their 3-1 win at Valley Parade (Image: Thomas Gadd)

Sutton were third and would finish a point adrift of the top seven.

Interestingly, Matt Gray’s side were on 39 points at the time - the same tally that City have mustered up to now.

Twelve months earlier during the Covid campaign, it was Bolton’s turn to come bursting out the pack like Bristol Rovers.

Ahead of the first weekend of 2021, they were down in 17th - 11 points from third but having played two games more.

Cambridge, leaders at the time, would maintain their form throughout. But again, they were the only side in the top three at the start of January to go up.

Newport, who were second, would lose at Wembley in extra-time to Derek Adams’ Morecambe.

Carlisle, meanwhile, having gone on to briefly top the table later that month would drop away to finish in 10th - seven points from the play-offs.

There have been few chinks in the armour of the current top three as they blaze a pretty formidable trail. Certainly, nothing suggests that two of them will slip by the wayside as has happened for the last couple of seasons.

But their predecessors, no doubt, were thinking the same as the action reached half-time.

In City’s case, those recent defeats to Northampton and Leyton Orient sting - missed chances to claw back some of the points deficit.

But they’ve still got to play both again as well as Steve Evans’ Stevenage, whose serene progress has demonstrated no ill-effects from the 3-0 loss inflicted by the Bantams in September.

Hughes, who has already claimed that his sides traditionally get stronger as the season wears on, added: “There’s a big group of teams, ourselves included, just waiting for those ahead of us to slip up.

“We’ve got to take advantage when we come up head-to-head with them, which we obviously haven’t done against Orient and Northampton.

“We’ve still got opportunities to address that when some of those teams come to our place.

“You always want to hurt the teams around you and don’t want to pass up that opportunity.”

In the words of Bradley Walsh, the chase is on.