Morecambe 1 Bradford City 2: How Jim Bentley and Gary Bowyer reacted afterwards

Morecambe boss Jim Bentley admitted his side paid the price for individual errors in their defeat to Bradford City.
Morecambe manager Jim BentleyMorecambe manager Jim Bentley
Morecambe manager Jim Bentley

The Shrimps’ manager saw his side beaten at the Globe Arena with goals from Hope Akpan and Aramide Oteh.

Tom Brewitt pulled a goal back in the penultimate of four added minutes but it was not enough for Morecambe, who dropped to the bottom of the EFL.

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Bentley said: “I can’t criticise them; what I can criticise is making sloppy decisions or slight errors and we seem to be getting punished for them.

“We had a positive week; there’s a good spirit among the players, all the staff are behind them and they’re behind us.

“We have regular meetings, we make it a happy working environment; we’ve worked them extremely hard at the start of the week and done our tactical work on Thursday.

“We looked at their side from last week and thought James Vaughan would have come back in and played up front with (Clayton) Donaldson but it was a similar shape.

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“We started quite brightly, we’ve had a couple of little half-chances; we’ve done well off a corner routine we’ve introduced in the week and I think their best chance has come from our poor play when we’ve given it away.

“We speak about key decisions and good decisions early in both halves when everyone’s full of energy.

“We can’t get caught where we get caught; the lad does extremely well but he digs it out to Hope Akpan and he puts it in the net.

“It lifts the away following and gives them a shot in arm; i thought we responded quite well but we’re disappointed with the second goal.”

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Bentley’s Bradford counterpart, Gary Bowyer, admitted his players had been forced to work hard.

“I think it’s one of the best wins of the season,” he said.

“It’s a tough place to come and it had been set up that they hadn’t won at home this season and where they are in the league – or where they currently are – because you look at the way they play and they played ever so well, so we knew it was going to be a tough game.

“It’s one of those games where, sometimes, you’re on a hiding to nothing because, if you win, people say you should but there’s no sense of entitlement; we had to drum that into the players.

“The first half was a cagey affair. We asked them to increase the intensity second half because I thought we played too slow – but I thought the game was too slow.

“As Jim’s teams do, they don’t let go; they keep fighting. Northampton were two up and they got back to 2-2 so I was aware of that and, disappointingly for us, they had opportunities.”