McCall’s kindness inspires Bantams

STUART McCALL would have been forgiven for losing his cool after his Bradford side’s poor first half, but a gentler approach paid off as they overturned winless Coventry to make it 10 points from four games.

Coventry’s excellent tight-knit performance completely unravelled after the otherwise superb Jordan Turnbull was sent off midway through the second half, and a rejuvenated Bradford scored three times in eight minutes to overcome Daniel Agyei’s debut strike.

McCall said: “Coventry were terrific in the first half. They were all over us and stopped us playing.

“We’ve got to realise that in certain parts of games that we’ve got to change things.

“The sending-off was a turning point for us, but we got in better areas.

“It wasn’t a rant and rave at half-time. It was more a sort of, ‘Listen, let’s learn from it’.

“I was really disappointed with the first half, not because we were poor – which we were in possession of the ball – but just in terms of the way we kept trying to play the same way and it wasn’t bringing success.”

Agyei, on loan from Burnley, bagged Coventry’s first league goal of the season with his first senior strike, dinking the ball over Colin Doyle in the 13th minute. And the Sky Blues were in control until Turnbull denied Billy Clarke’s clear scoring opportunity on 66 minutes, and referee Nigel Miller decided to use discretion and show a red rather than a yellow card allowed by the updated laws.

Tony McMahon converted from the spot, and with Coventry still reeling Mark Marshall fired a long-range effort into the bottom corner two minutes later.

From there it looked as though Bradford could run riot with their newfound verve, but they were content to settle for 3-1 from another McMahon penalty after Vladimir Gadzhev felled Josh Cullen.

Coventry boss Tony Mowbray said: “Bradford had one chance in the first half.

“We controlled the game with and without the ball. When they had it we felt pretty comfortable and they were struggling to get through.

“The sending-off makes that more difficult to do, there’s more space on the pitch for them, and I’m a bit frustrated at the end that we didn’t manage to keep the ball better with 10 men.

“There were plenty of positives and for a long time the team applied themselves pretty well. We’ll take the positives and move forwards.”