Bantams v Bluebirds. Match preview

Last updated : 16 January 2004 By Michael Morris
Cardiff City head north tomorrow to Bradford City FC. It's been nearly 10 years since Cardiff played at Valley Parade and on that day they left as winners.

Paul Millar (2) and Phil Stant with the goals in a 3 - 2 victory.

Bradford inflicted City's first defeat of this season with a 2 - 0 smash and grab raid at Ninian Park in August. To be fair both Bradford goals were superb. (Report here).

Bradford fans have respect for Cardiff City. Their big rivals are Leeds Utd and City's 2 - 1 FA Cup win in Jan 2002 was much appreciated in Bradford.

Bradford now have a big name manager to try and save them from relegation to Division 2. Bryan Robson recently took over and has had a mixed bag of results. His first game in charge saw Bradford beat Millwall in a live Sky game but then they lost the next 5 in a row. That run was halted with a win in the last game of 2003 at Valley Parade over Coventry.

2004 started abysmally with a 2 - 1 home defeat in the FA Cup by Luton but then a shock as big as Wimbledon winning at West Brom came with Bradford beating Norwich at Carrow Rd last weekend.

Bradford are currently 5 points adrift of the last safe place in Division. Ironically that place is held by Nottingham Forest, our next opponents. Even more ironically the team between Bradford and Forest in the table is Derby. We play them after Forest.

Thats's three games in the next few weeks against three of the four bottom teams. Matches where Cardiff must look to earn points because the next three games after that are against West Brom, Sunderland and West Ham.

Cardiff could move as high as 8th depending on other results and of course if they win. Bradford could be starting to look into the relegation abyss if they do not win.

Team news will follow but Cardiff will be unchanged if Spencer Prior is fit. Prior has a rib problem. If he fails to make the trip then it's likely that Tony Vidmar will move to centre half to partner Daniel Gabbidon with Gary Croft off the bench to start at left back. The place on the bench will go to James Collins or more likely Chris Barker.

Bradford are without Welshman Paul Evans who is suspended. Out injured are Gareth Farrelly and probably Nicky Sumerbee.

Dean Windass is also reported to be out. Bradford are trying to bring in a loan player.

Kick off tomorrow is at 3:00pm. The last time we kicked off at 3:00pm away from home was on Dec 13th at Norwich. The next time is on Feb 28th (providing West Ham do not change it).

Bradford City v Cardiff City
3:00pm, Saturday January 17th.