Bradford City look for common cause after run of injuries

The Bantams have been hit hard at centre half and in midfield with absentees.

Neill Byrne is back in training after a weekend illness interrupted his comeback and Aden Baldwin is getting closer to a return.

But they are still missing Alex Pattison, Antoni Sarcevic, Ciaran Kelly and Callum Johnson.

Graham Alexander revealed the club are looking to identify any common link with the number of casualties they have suffered.

“We’ve looked into them all because it’s important when you’ve had that many,” he said.

“I don’t think you can just put it down to bad luck. We have to question things that we do, how we prepare, how we recover, how we train.

“The only pattern we’ve been able to try to look into are the Byrne, Baldwin and Pattison injuries because they all happened early on.

“Patto first felt his in the warm-up at Harrogate. Aden was nine minutes in and Byrner maybe 17 minutes, all at away games.

“They are the only three that we can see a connection with. We’ve looked at how we prepare for away games to see if there’s anything and we go back to the Friday as well with the little bits we do and that.

“But the others are contacts or past injuries that have resurfaced. These things do happen.”

City have missed Baldwin since the end of August when he damaged his hamstring against Grimsby.

They are treading carefully with the former Notts County defender but hope he could be ready to feature again in the next few games.

Alexander added: “He had a real surge of improvement to get on the training pitch then he plateaued out a little bit.

“We just took him back a couple of days just to make sure we get that progression. We don’t want any setbacks.

“I’m not sure he will be ready for the weekend. We’ve obviously got a midweek game coming up so we’re looking at the next two or three games when he should be back in contention for a place in the squad.

“He’s had a broken time with us so far. He missed the first part of preseason, he actually picked up something just before we returned to training, and came back when we got to Austria.

Antoni Sarcevic is expected to be out for a couple of months (Image: Thomas Gadd)

“He’s put the injury down to the pitch giving way under him at Grimsby.

“Fingers crossed, he’s had a good playing record the last couple of seasons especially.

“Like I always say, we won’t take a massive risk with players if we can help it. But hopefully he’s back soon.”

Meanwhile, Alexander feels it is important to investigate their methods to see if City could do any more to limit the injury count.

“I think it’s important that we’re always reviewing and looking at what we do. We ‘ve looked to see if there’s anything we could improve on or slightly tweak.

“We did it in February last season to try and find an improvement in certain aspects and we’re doing that again.

“We want to keep everyone fit but we also understand that the best teams in the world with all the money in the world have injuries as well.

“You’ve got to take them on the chin while making sure you’re also doing everything the best you can.”