A rather dour and soulless match televised live in Sky Sports saw City once again fail in front of the cameras as Bradford came for a point and were surprised to claim three thanks to a single wonder strike.

Well, that was surprisingly bloody awful. After all the optimism rightly engendered by our encouraging start, we reverted to a type that I rather hoped we had put behind us. And all on national TV as well. Except that, of course, Sky is a national channel in the same way that tracking down Ordnance Survey triangulation points is a national passion; just because it's open to people all over the country doesn't mean that more than a few assorted saddos have any dealings with it, so I think we are safer from mockery than many have gloomily predicted. No, there are two national TV channels, handily called BBC1 and BBC2, everything else is just sex and baseball; nothing wrong with them in their place, but they're not football, are they?

Sadly, neither for the most part was last night. Last night was a curiously passionless occasion, about as far removed as could be from the jaw-dropping last encounter with Bradford at the Ark when we got the wrong end of a five goal thriller and they went to the playoffs and ultimately to the Premiership and you know where we went, and the malice and thrill in the air at the tatty old place that day with the South stand faithful crammed into the North stand for the day as their huge travelling support on 'police advice' was jammed into Bunkers and swelled there like a suppurating boil, well, it left you with everything that is good and bad about the game on one pissing wet afternoon. Last night we were outfought and outplayed, and this was surprising and disappointing given that we'd been told how they were a club on the brink of collapse and shite to boot. Perhaps Bradford have got the sort of dead cat bounce that we ourselves have benefited from in the past, most notably in the Brian Little playoff season. Whatever the cause, without being fantastic they were well-organised and hungry on a night when we were neither. They got what they deserved and so did we.

We started out so;

Myhill
Joseph Cort Delaney Dawson
Green Ashbee Lewis Elliott
Wilbraham Barmby

Normally you say at this point that we were attacking the end containing the Bradford support. Except that we didn't do any attacking. And Bradford didn't bring any support. There were maybe 400 folks wearing their silly favours sat huddled together in the North Stand, but they weren't doing any supporting. A pitiful turnout and one that puts into relief our marvellous following at Barnsley at the weekend. If Bradford go bust, it will be because no-one cares, worth remembering if we start seeing the begging buckets later in the season. Whatever criticisms have been levelled at our fans, at least that has never been the case. And anyone who thinks a crowd of 16000 for an evening game in the third division is anything other than an excellent turnout does not understand third division football.

The first 15 minutes were quite stultifyingly dull, but Wilbrahim had already made enough of an impression for me to have written 'ineffective' in my note book, though why I thought I needed to be reminded of that, God knows. He's looked awful in the two games I've seen him and has appeared lazy and uncommitted, but I may be being unfair here, it could just be that he is desperately unfit and has appalling control. Whilst we amused ourselves with Frank Worthington's remarks about players whose second touch is a tackle and who were able to trap the ball further than he could kick it, some began to wonder whether he could trap the proverbial bag of sand. Hard to tell as yet, but it conjured a soothing image of a JCB hurling bags of sand repeatedly at the hapless striker in training. When he was eventually substituted he seemed to take an age to get of the pitch, but on reflection it took him no longer than it had taken him to get anywhere else all night. Too early to judge, I know, but the early evidence is that Taylor is going to have to do another Delaney-style miracle to produce the player we need.

In truth, none of our strikers did well. In truth, Barmby apart I don't think they've done well all season. I don't exclude Allsop from that. He still doesn't look anything like the player he was a year ago and I'm starting to worry about that. Barmby has done well but we're clearly still working out how to use him, and Walters struggled with his goalophobia. The simultaneous replacement of Barmby and Wilbrahim with Allsop and Walters made us not a whit more threatening up front. For most of this season we relied on threats from elsewhere, which is why Elliott is our top scorer and why, given that he had a bad night too, we never looked like scoring.

This looked worse because Bradford currently have a very useful strikeforce who knew what they were doing, knew where to find the ball and knew where to find each other. Dele Adebola hasn't reached the heights that I thought he might when we first saw him a lot of years ago in a cup tie against Crewe at the Ark when his second half introduction transformed a 1-1 score into 1-5, but he is still big, fast and awkward. For the most part I thought Cort handled him well, but on at least 3 occasions he allowed himself to be sucked in and then simultaneously turned and dumped on his backside by the big striker who then departed rapidly with the ball.

And there was Dean. I thought he looked great. Chanting 'You fat bastard' at him made us look stupid as well as ungracious, as fat he is not. I don't mean he looks thin compared to genuine porkers such as Rick Waller or Michael Keane; he genuinely looked very fit, kept going well all night, might have scored as he repeatedly outjumped Delaney, showed constantly for the ball, used it effectively and skilfully and got carded for a nasty foul on Elliott that so surprised our man that he forgot to dive. Yep, if last night's performance is at all representative, we maybe should have signed him after all.

Most of the good stuff came from Bradford. Muirhead was lively and fast, attacking well into the inside right channel, and an early run nearly filleted us. He had an even better chance later as Windass set up Adebola who put Muirhead behind our defence but he snatched at the ball and it was gone. We never really got anything like that going. We forced a number of corners throughout the night and then either Dawson or Green lofted them to the back post for us to put behind. Suddenly, not only can we not put in corners, even worse, the Taylor retreat method is not working when we try to defend them, either. On 77 minutes, just as nilnil thoughts were entering heads, they forced a corner after Summerbee had made space on the right with Dawson AWOL as he was more than once. We cleared the corner but only as far as one of theirs - inevitably, as our method of defending corners means that clearances to one of theirs are our only options - but unfortunately for us the one of theirs turned out to be Holloway who waited for the bouncing ball and then hit it with the sweetness and power of an Amir Khan right cross, lashing it in from over 24 yards. Actually he hit it it with his left, and it was with his foot not his hand, but you get the idea and so had a number of our fans who immediately headed for the exits. You can criticise their support, but not their ability to predict the future. We didn't look like getting it back, getting up a head of steam enough to make custodian of the leather Ricketts look as if he might make one as he pawed ineffectively at a couple of crosses. But thought we lumped it forward hopefully from throws in and corners there never looked like being an end product, and there wasn't.

Positives? Now you're asking. Green and Barmby combined well in the first half at times, before Greeny did his Incredible Disappearing Man trick in the second half. The second half change of playing Elliott up the middle in a 4-3-3 sacrificed the possibility of width but produced no more thrust. Lewis was tidy, but Ashbee had a shocker, repeatedly giving the ball away and looking devoid of attacking ideas apart from one good shot that the keeper clawed away. Myhill had little to do as the Bradford strikers had more possession and used it better but were no better at getting the ball on target. Joseph was reasonably effective, but whenever he advances wide on the right you can see his conscience screaming that he should be in the middle and further back. Consequently we didn't seem him advancing down the right often enough to help us.

The main reason for optimism is that we are better than this, honestly we are. Just about everyone seemed to have a bad night at the same time and surely that isn't going to happen too often, although personally I could do without Huddersfield next up with memories of our defensive nadir of last season. But we can do a lot better than this and I'm sure we will. It's just such a pity that if we had to pick one team who we would like to have impressed as well as beaten, for many of us this would have been the team. But we didn't, so we forget it and we move on, back to even further West Yorkshire on Sunday.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; Joseph, Cort, Delaney, Dawson; Green, Ashbee, Lewis, Elliott; Wilbraham, Barmby.  Subs: Walters (for Wilbraham, 57), Allsopp (for Barmby, 57), France (for Green, 74), Keane, Duke.

Goals: None

Booked: None

Sent Off: None

BRADFORD CITY: Henderson, Holloway, Wetherall, Bower, Jacobs, Muirhead, Crooks, Kearney, Emanuel, Windass, Adebola.  Subs: Summerbee (for Emanuel, 61), Ricketts, Penford, Symes, Gavin.

Goals: Holloway 77

Booked: Kearney, Windass

Sent Off: None

REFEREE: B Curson

ATTENDANCE: 16,865