BRADFORD Town boss Paul Shanley blasted his side’s ‘unacceptable’ display in their loss to Gillingham Town last weekend and insisted that his players must stop under-performing against the Toolstation League Premier Division’s strugglers.

The Trowbridge Road men saw their 1-0 second half lead, which came courtesy of Mark Wall’s eleventh goal of the season, cancelled out by strikes from Gillingham’s Taoufik Ben-Salem and Kieran Davis, with Bradford also ending the afternoon with ten men after Josh Brigham picked up two bookings.

The clash was the only game in the division to not be curtailed by the wet weather but Shanley admitted that he wished the meeting had fallen foul of the elements after Bradford’s performance left him with that sinking feeling.

“At 5.15 in the afternoon, I probably did wish that,” said Shanley.

“Les (Stevens) has spent a lot of time and money on the pitch and it was perfectly playable, but it’s just a shame we couldn’t play on it.

“It was our worst performance of the season. We seem to be able to get ourselves up to play in front of 400 people against Melksham but we perform this way against the teams below us in the table.

“We were poor against Bishop Sutton and we were poor against Longwell Green Sports – it’s gone on far too long and the players have to do something about it.”

Defeat leaves Bradford tenth in the Premier Division table and next on the menu is a trip to third-from-bottom Winterbourne United next weekend, seven days before their showpiece FA Vase fourth round clash with local rivals Melksham Town.

Manager Shanley added: “You’d have thought people would have wanted to play their way into the team for the Vase game but that didn’t happen.

“We could have gotten into the top six with a win last weekend. We’ve got to buck the trend and get a better result on Saturday.”

Strikers Sam Jordan and Jack Hopper return to the Bradford squad for the game at Winterbourne alongside Shaun Percival and Steve Hulbert.

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