‘Well, Saturday was alright wasn’t it?’

Well, Saturday was alright wasn’t it? Bradford, boasting the division’s best away record, showed up at the Mem to confront a Rovers side with their tails up, having remembered how to defend in recent weeks.

As predicted on this page a week ago, the Yorkshire side’s main man, Charlie Wyke, achieved a Lazarus-esque recovery from the unspecified injury that Stuart McCall had said would keep him out of the game. Not that you’d need to be a detective to have seen that coming.

Wyke endeared himself to the North Terrace by ‘cupping the ear’ (goal celebrations for beginners, page 2) after opening the scoring with a penalty. Players goading opposition fans is strange when there’s no known issue between said player and the opposition club. But it’s funny when that player ends up on the losing side.

Speaking of the penalty, how about that for a talking point! Ollie Clarke slipped and fell on the ball, resulting in many cries of “unintentional”. And the Laws of the Game do state that handling the ball is “a deliberate act of a player making contact with the ball with the hand or arm”. Well done, referee.

That bit of injustice seemed to spur the boys on. From that moment onwards, Rovers were on top. Defensively, the rejuvenated Tom Lockyer and the continuously improving Tom Broadbent bossed it. Darrell Clarke’s choice of a diamond midfield may have been pushed upon him by Billy Bodin’s exit but it’s working; Chris Lines was notionally meant to be playing at the base of the diamond, but he didn’t struggle to find space to move into going forward. The four positions in the middle seemed to be interchangeable. Stuart Sinclair, playing in the number 10 role, worked his socks off and proved his doubters wrong yet again. Liam Sercombe was top drawer as usual.

Even Joe Partington managed to score! Having been robbed of a first Football League strike in several months of Sundays at Blackpool, I think we can all be pleased for Parts.

Lines followed up his solid performance with an ic-cool penalty (copyright L Mansell, 2015) to put us ahead. Some might say the award of that spot-kick was soft, and that the official wanted to even things up after his earlier gaffe, but Ellis Harrison was fouled. Knight-Percival, the Bradford defender, was stuck out in the striker’s path. Harrison didn’t dive, nor was he “looking for contact”.

Speaking of Ellis, neither he nor Rory Gaffney troubled the scorers this week, but their work rate and physicality – “putting themselves about a bit” in Proper Football Speak™ – played a massive part in the turnaround. Harrison especially shone, as usual this season. Fouled for the penalty, as stated, he started the move that ended in out third goal, scored by Sercombe after an incredible bit of movement by the former Oxford man. Plus, he managed to get his laces tangled with an opposition player.

All in all, it was an almost complete team performance. In a crowded field, where half the team could’ve got the Man of the Match bubbly (do they still get bubbly), Sercombe took the plaudits for another dominating display. That’s ten goals in just over 20 games for him now, an incredible haul for a central midfielder. I could wax lyrical about him, as I do most weeks, but this tweet sums it up best:

Onto the next one, then – a long trip to Doncaster on Saturday. Our fellow Rovers are, of course, best known in these parts for pipping us to the post in that epic JPT final in Cardiff a decade back. These days, they’re better known on the national landscape for having a manager, Darren Ferguson, who insults referees. He’s unlikely to be on the touchline at the Keepmoat Stadium on Saturday after his latest display of petulance, where he made a comment about shooting referees. Classy guy.

On the pitch, this is going to be tight. Doncaster have no major attacking threat in their ranks, scoring just over a goal a game, but can defend. They showed that at the Mem just before Christmas, taking one chance and winning 1-0 to take maximum points back up north.

We’ve sorted out the leaky back line, and, if Bradford was anything to go on, we’ve adapted to the loss of Bodin’s creativity. But can we do it away from home?