Bradford City ready for first league game in 17 days tonight

The Bantams finally hope to step back on the Valley Parade pitch tonight against Doncaster.

It will be their first league outing for 17 days since beating Sutton for a third straight win.

Alexander is backing his side to rekindle that momentum and not get caught up by what has happened since.

City are currently eight points adrift of the play-offs in 15th following successive postponements – although they bizarrely moved up a place at the weekend.

“It’s a bit crazy,” said Alexander. “Trying to make head or tail of it at the moment is impossible.

“All we’ve got to do is make sure we keep racking up the points on our tally. Then nearer the end of the season we’ll have an idea whether we’ve done enough or not.

“Trying to gauge what each result will mean at this stage is nearly impossible.

“It’s not like targeting a couple of teams. There are probably eight to 10 clubs who are all having the same conversations that we’re having.

“The only things we can control are our results and performances. That’s all we have to focus on.”

City have games in hand on all above them in the frantic play-off chase, barring Barrow and Crawley.

But six of their next seven games are against teams currently sat lower in the table and effectively out of contention.

Boss Alexander added: “We need to ignore the drama going on around us as much as we can.

“I know I will and I said that to the staff.

“We finished training on Saturday and one of our staff started talking about what was happening in the half-time scores. I told him to shut up.

“Trying to second-guess what the league table will look like at this stage is really difficult.

“It’s the points tally we’re concentrating on. Do what we can to ours and the rest will look after itself.

“Try to get three points as often as possible and everything else will fall into place after that.

“We can’t affect anyone else’s results, just our own.”

City have already beaten Doncaster twice this season – most recently in the Bristol Street Motors Trophy quarter-final in January.

Graham Alexander watching the win over Doncaster in January (Image: Thomas Gadd)

The 20th-placed visitors have picked up in form with the weekend defeat at Walsall their first in five games since last playing at Valley Parade.

The City boss said: “We’ve obviously played them a couple of times already and analysed them. We’ll have a bit of an idea – but they will about us as well so there’s no advantage for either team.

“We’ll prepare the lads right to be ready to go at it again.

“I think with League Two and League One where there are so many Saturday and Tuesday weeks, you put four or five results together and you can suddenly put a better picture on what the season looks like.

“We’ve done the same in February. That’s given us a brighter outlook, even though these call-offs make the league table look a little bit bleaker than it did a couple of weeks ago when we were a few points off the play-offs.

“The missed games have knocked us back. But we know we’ve obviously got them to play which will hopefully make it look brighter again.

“What we’ve got to do is make sure we focus on our run of results and keep the momentum going that we’ve built up in the league and give it our best shot.”