Michael Flynn insists City can stop punishing themselves over the Rochdale fiasco.

Saturday’s 1-0 win at bottom club Darlington got the Bantams back on track following last week’s 3-0 home trouncing.

With four tough games coming up against sides above them, midfielder Flynn stresses the focus must be on the future and not what went wrong a week ago.

He said: “We know we’ve got a difficult month ahead and December started badly against Rochdale. But that’s gone now, so forget it. We’ve got to go on and try to make amends for the rest of the season.

“We know the performance last week wasn’t good enough so the most important thing on Saturday was to get three points, which we did.”

Steve Williams headed his fourth goal of the season but City kept the home side interested by failing to convert pressure into a second goal.

Flynn said: “We should have had enough quality to score a second goal and if we’d done that I’m sure that a third would have followed.

“Darlington are fighting for their lives so they are going to be chasing everything and they had a go second half.

“But we dug in, didn’t concede and limited their chances. They had a lot of long balls but didn’t really create anything.”

Stuart McCall admitted there was a bit of anxiety because of the number of draws where City have coughed up the lead. But he was pleased to see his side cope with the pressure caused by their home setback.

“If we’re going to be able to get to where we want to be at the end of the season, we have to come to the teams at the bottom and win,” he said.

“Last year we went to Chester needing a win and drew 0-0. But we’ve now gone to the bottom two in the last two away games and beaten them both.

“In an ideal world it would have been nice to have killed Darlington off but I felt we defended stoutly. The lads have shown a good resolve without playing scintillating soccer.

“We can look at plenty of away games this season where we’ve taken a point but played really well. We deserved to win this game but never reached the standards we’re capable of.”

Zesh Rehman was sidelined by a tight hamstring but hopes to rejoin training later in the week.