Graham Alexander on Bradford City proving a point and giving a ‘little bit of hope’ to supporters against Barnsley

City booked a home tie in the last 32 with a discernible swagger with five goals in an impressive 5-1 victory over their Yorkshire rivals to register the first victory of the Alexander era in eye-catching fashion.

Three arrived in the first period from Matty Platt, Andy Cook, who found the net on home soil for the first time since the end of September and Tyler Smith, who followed up his treble in the previous group game with Manchester City under-21s.

Tyler Richards helped himself to his first goal for the club on the resumption before ex-Reds player and ‘Great Escape’ hero Clarke Oduor, who made his first appearance for the club under Alexander, crowned a strong performance with the hosts’ fifth midway through the second half.

Alexander was particularly pleased for the club’s supporters, having been impressed with how they stuck with his side in tough circumstances at Notts County on Saturday – having seen the Bantams trail 4-0 at the interval following a grim opening half.

Alexander said: "It was the EFL Trophy, but they are coming to watch their team try and win. To be fair, I thought the supporters were fantastic with us on Saturday.

"Hearing boos at half-time. You are kidding me, it’s 4-0..What do you expect them to do? I’d be really surprised if there was anything else.

"But in the second half, we gave them something, they got right behind us and helped us all the way through.

"They saw a team fighting in the second half and I thought we gave another performance to the ones who were here. We have to engage and give them something to hang onto.

"Hopefully, in the last game and a half, we have given them a little bit of hope that we produce a good football team that wins games.

"We are in the game and it’s about results. I said that on Saturday, even though we played well in the second half, but got beat. So we had to deal with reality.

"But we’ve won this and can have a smile and pat ourselves on the back, but make sure we are ready to work on Thursday and we have a really tough day on Saturday.”

Alexander felt that his side’s strong display against the Reds followed on from the back of their much-improved second half at Meadow Lane, which saw them score twice, albeit in a losing cause.

He added: “The players continued where they left off in the second half on Saturday.

"We had to continue in the same vein and we did and scored a really early goal and didn’t take a step back and it actually encouraged us to be more aggressive and on the front foot.

"We scored another couple and wanted to continue that in the second half and didn’t want to just sit back and see out the game.

"Five different scorers. I could not have asked for a better response to Saturday (first half).

"It sounds a little bit weird after a 4-2 defeat. But I think we had a little bit of a confidence boost from the second half in how we could turn our performance around against a very good team.

"We had a point to prove in continuing to do that for a full game, which we did."