Bantams don’t care about Doncaster’s anger following a crushing defeat

CITY will switch off the outside noise as they try to deliver an early three-point Christmas present for the fans. Graham Alexander’s in-form men are looking to spread more festive cheer for a crammed away end at the Eco-Power Stadium tomorrow night.

Wounded Doncaster are coming off a 5-0 home humiliation to Morecambe and desperate for a reaction in the Yorkshire derby. But Alexander stressed that will not change anything in City’s mindset. “There’s always some tagline going into a game,” he said.

“Whether it’s a team’s previous result, a massive run of form or a local derby, there’s always something added to it. “But what we’ve got to try and do is break it down to how we have to perform to win a game of football. “The players have done that exceptionally well in the last five games. “We’ve understood what we’ve had to do to start the game well, maintain certain periods and let our quality flourish and how to see the game out. “They are the things our players need to focus on.

We can’t get side-tracked by anything else that has gone on previously and will potentially afterwards. “As long as we never get distracted from that, I’ll back my team to continue to do well.” Three league wins on the bounce have narrowed the gap to the top seven from nine points a month ago to just three. That could change drastically over the four-game festive schedule and Alexander insists nobody is getting carried away. “That’s the message I will be constantly reminding the players. “There’s a lot of experience in there and we’ve got good players who will take that message on and are probably already saying it themselves. “We have to make sure we stay grounded with what we are trying to do.”

Doncaster go into the game five points and five places below the Bantams. They have picked up only four points from their last five. Winning last five means nothing tomorrow Alexander added: “It’s about what we want to do. “Every team at a professional level in England has got a good manager, a good coach and good players. “They’re organised, have good analysis and all that sort of thing.

It’s really competitive. “My expectations are on what my team can produce. Can our players extend and improve the levels they’ve got to in the last month? “Before we deal with the opposition, it’s about where we can get to with our performance. “We know there are some good teams that we’re going to come up against all the time, regardless of where they are in the league or what their last result was.

“We cannot let it get into our psyche that we’ve won the last five. I can guarantee that what we have done in the past is not going to win us the game tonight. “We have to make sure we understand why we’ve won those games and repeat, repeat, repeat. That’s where our success will come from – our consistency of our mindset.”