Graham Alexander happy to see Bantams sharing goals around

The Bantams made it three victories on the spin with Neill Byrne and a screamer from Jack Shepherd seeing off Gillingham at Valley Parade.

The come-from-behind win lifted Alexander’s men into fifth spot – and the City boss was happy to see their goals coming from a different source than the League Two top scorer.

“I’ve been saying it for a long time,” he said. “We can’t be Andy Cook FC.

“We love Cooky and what he gives us. But we can’t just rely on him to be a goal threat.

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“I think our eights can give us that, our wing-backs can give us that and obviously the centre halves at set-pieces. We have to be more than Andy Cook.

“We know there are games like last week (at Tranmere) when Cooky wins it for us.

“But we can’t just rely on one player, whoever that is, whether it’s a goalkeeper, centre half, the captain, striker – we can’t be that team.

“I’m delighted for the players that we’re showing we’re stronger as a group than we are as individuals.”

Cook’s strike partner Calum Kavanagh is still waiting to open his account for the season. He had an effort chalked off for offside when he got the last touch on a ball that was already going in.

“I’m not sure if he was offside because there’s a defender with Jack Shepherd who’s really deep as well,” added Alexander.

“It’s a hard one for a striker not to just put his toe out to knock it over the line. I think it’s a natural thing.

“Sometimes it will go against you but if you keep getting in those positions and getting toes on it, you’ll probably get five or six goals out of that a season.

“It was disappointing because we didn’t score that and then they scored. It was a bit of a double whammy.

“But Kav didn’t let it affect him. I thought it inspired him to work even harder and that’s more like the Kavanagh of last year.

“He looks lively and threatening and we’ve got good players competing for both spots as well.

“I was delighted for Vadaine (Oliver) and Tyler (Smith) to get on and we’ve got Olly (Sanderson) fighting to get back into the group.

Graham Alexander keeping things calm on the touchline (Image: Thomas Gadd)

“You have to keep pushing each other. But I said to Kav it wasn’t totally dependent on him scoring that he stayed in the team.

“It was all the other stuff we need from him and I think he gave us that overall.”

Alexander also had words of praise for the fans for creating a good atmosphere as City recovered from going behind to make it nine games unbeaten at home.

“The support is a mirror image of what they are seeing in front of them.

“They are seeing a team 1-0 down but still going, still being positive and creative and they can buy into that and jump on board.

“Gillingham brought in a lot of physicality which we had to deal with and I thought the defensive side was really good.

“For us to score off two set-pieces was really good because we were a little bit smaller than them as a group. We showed both sides of the game.”