CITY will not 'park the bus' against Wigan like Plymouth did at Valley Parade.

Stuart McCall has stressed he won't look to copy the spoiling tactics that proved so effective at the Bantams' expense over the weekend.

The visitors packed their defence to frustrate McCall's men by hanging on to a 1-0 win.

As City build up for the first of the three upcoming games against promotion rivals, he insisted there are no plans for a similarly negative policy at Wigan.

McCall said: "It's not something I would be comfortable at doing. I'm not the type of person to do that – unless we're going to Arsenal in the FA Cup maybe!

"We didn't play particularly well at Portsmouth but we didn't deliberately sit back. If you play that way, you end up isolating Charlie Wyke.

"Plymouth did that with (Jake) Jervis and he was up there on his own. He ends up getting the goal but how many times will they do that?

"We've lost so we've had to lick our wounds. But if we beat them, the consensus from their punters would have been 'can't believe we went to park the bus, we were always going to let in a goal'.

"When you sit back like that, inevitably teams get chances. It works both ways.

"You can sit deep, soak it up and get a little bit of luck and come out 1-0 winners as they did.

"Or like Swindon last year, you sit deep and lose two goals in the final few minutes and their manager is getting slated because they showed no ambition.

"I watched the last 20 minutes of Sweden and Italy on Monday night. Sweden were camped in and Italy were throwing balls in from all angles but couldn't score.

"The Republic (of Ireland) went to Wales a month ago and got a result by being strong defensively and taking their chance when it came along.

"Did Plymouth deserve to win? Well, they scored a goal and we didn't.

"If we come to the FA Cup game and we get as many opportunities as we did on Saturday and they only get their two, then law of averages we would like to think we will win.

"But watching the end of the Sweden game, that's where their strengths were – just like Plymouth. They defended stoutly but you can do that when you get the first goal."

McCall will have a chat this week with Tony McMahon over whether the full back will stay on penalty duty after his second-half effort was saved.

The City boss said: "If Tony's penalty goes in, and it was a clear penalty when you see it again, you feel confident you've got the momentum to still have time to go get another one.

"We'll have a chat this week. He hadn't missed one up to then and was confident about taking it but I'll speak to him."