McCall hails 'lionheart' O'Brien

Bradford City manager Stuart McCall hailed the attitude of Luke O'Brien after the young defender scored his first goal for the club.

The 19-year-old netted the opener in Bradford's 2-0 win at Rotherham.

McCall said: "I'm delighted for him - he's got the heart of a lion. He's a fantastic trainer, dedicated to what he does and an all-round terrific lad.

"I was right behind it and he's zipped it in. It was a terrific strike and I thought he was excellent."

He told BBC Radio Leeds: "He had some great runs down that left-hand side after his goal - he was like Roberto Carlos.

"People do say that he's not a big, strong and imposing six-footer and might get caught out sometimes on the back stick, but he's got the confidence now to go forwards more because in reserve games he goes forward all the time."

Despite the win, which lifted Bradford up to fourth in the League Two table, McCall was unhappy with certain aspects of the game - particularly their first-half performance.

"It wasn't good enough. If you're going to perform like that then there's no chance we'll get anywhere near the play-offs," he said.

"I'm the first to give other teams credit if they're playing on top of their game, but we just weren't at it all over the park.

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"Provided we can maintain our current points ratio come January hopefully with a fuller compliment of players available in my view we should be certainly good enough for the top seven, hopefully the top three"
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"Yet again we came up against three in the middle of the park and we weren't playing it correctly so I was pleased to get them in at half time and have a little check on what we should be trying to do and fortunately we were a lot more positive."

McCall, meanwhile, is trying to extend the loan spells of Tom Clarke and Nicky Law from Huddersfield Town and Sheffield United respectively.

The deals with both players run out after Tuesday night's home game against Chesterfield.

But McCall said that his search for a new right-sided midfielder in time for the game was likely to prove fruitless.

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