David Artell was a pleased manager as his Crewe Alexandra side recorded their fourth win out of the opening six games of the season. The Alex should have been out of sight at the break but were not ruthless enough to finish the Bantams off.

Artell’s team though showed great character to come back from 1-0 down after half an hour to go ahead by the hour mark thanks to goals from Charlie Kirk and Tom Lowery.

After a deserved 2-1 win over Bradford, the Alex boss the club’s official website: “We had enough chances to have been out of sight at half time. If it had been 4-1, 5-1 I don’t think that would not have flattered us with the chances we had. That would have been the ideal result.

"Green had two good chances, Kirk had a one-on-one and one off the line. The biggest surprise this afternoon was that he missed that one-on-one from that position because I didn’t think he would miss from that position.

“We played some great stuff again and the only two criticisms I have is that we gave away too many fouls, especially against a team who like to load the box.

“We have to be better when leading. We should be more ruthless and get to that next stage when we are 3-1, 4-1 up. We have won all our goals by the one goal, which is fine but we can be more comfortable because if they had scored with their last kick, we would have been bitterly disappointed.

“We have done all the work with the midfield players, getting into those positions so it was very pleasing to see not only because it was Tom Lowery but because we had put the work in out on the training ground.

He added: “We knew Bradford would whack it and load the box. They have two lively forwards and are a handful but we defended really well today and other than the goal which was a bit of quality from Devitt and Vaughan reacting, and the header they had at the end, I cannot remember too many chances for them.

“The players stood up to it well and defended our box really well. “