Town can be pleased with first point

Town can be pleased with their first point of the New Year after a battling performance saw them come away from one of their promotion rivals with a point, writes blogger James Pugh.

The players worked their socks off and fully deserved the 0-0 they got against Bradford. They defended well, looked organised, and the performances of Leslie and Moss really stood out.

It means we start the New Year still well-placed. Although goals have dried up recently we have had a tough run of games and need to make sure we grab maximum points against the other teams in the division.

A lot of credit must go to Moss, who has looked like his old self in his first spell at the club. He has lost weight and to keep Herd out of the side is some achievement.

A negative to come from the game was the yellow card picked up by Holt. This means he will now face a two-game suspension.

It is frustrating and you could easily be critical of the player, but a lot of yellow cards that he has picked up have been unlucky and he works so hard that now and again he is going to get frustrated and miss time a tackle.

If we had eleven Holts on the field, we would probably be top of the league – that is if we remained with eleven men for the whole game.

On the transfer front, we have already seen the arrival of Joss Labadie from West Brom on a month’s loan, while Marc Tierney made his switch to Colchester permanent.

I must admit I was surprised to hear we had signed such a young player who has very little experience.

I don’t doubt is ability and promise, but League Two is a tough place and it would be better to sign players who can fit straight into the team and have the knowledge to play football at this level.

I hope I am proved wrong and that he will do as well as Daniels has done. Labadie is also more of a defensive midfielder, which we have already got in McIntyre and Murray.

What we need is a creative, goalscoring midfielder who will create and get us goals when Davies is not on his game. But, having said that, I thought the young player had a decent debut considering it was a big game.

Simpson has also inquired about Peterborough’s Liam Hatch but was priced out of the deal. It’s good to see Simpson is targeting quality players and although unsuccessful on this occasion it proves he can spot quality.At the end of the day it’s not worth paying over the odds.

Town’s next two games are local derbies against Chester and Port Vale. Anything can happen in these games but for the sake of keeping up our promotion challenge and gaining bragging rights, six points out of six would be nice.

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