RORY McArdle is happy for City to stay under the radar and let others deal with the promotion spotlight.

The Bantams face Charlton tonight just two points off second-placed Fleetwood in League One's frenetic race to go up.

They have claimed ten points from the last 12 to raise genuine hopes of sneaking into the automatic promotion spot behind clear leaders Sheffield United.

Bolton, who are one point ahead of City, are still in the strongest position to seize that with two games in hand – but McArdle believes it may help not having that weight of expectation.

"We'll just keep going along, trying to pick up three points and sneaking up the league," said the centre half.

"Come the end of the season, you want to be in the mix with something to play for. That's exactly what we've got and we want to enjoy it and thrive on it.

"If we all of a sudden start saying 'yeah, we are going to finish second', that would be such a bad way to go about it.

"We're not there at the minute and if other teams win their games in hand, it's out of our hands.

"It's weird but we're going into every game calm and just treating it like normal. But if we can keep that momentum and go under the radar a little bit, we'll see where that takes us come the end of April.

"We've got enough experience and quality in the dressing room to ultimately get to where we want to be."

City head to London on the back of an eighth away win of the season at Coventry on Saturday. They have also picked up successive clean sheets after two months without one.

McArdle, who will be making his first trip to the Valley, said: "The goals we've been conceding were generally scrappy ones and came from little blips of concentration. It's just a case of getting back to basics and defending as a unit.

"Clean sheets make a massive difference. Look at the last four or five weeks, if we'd kept a couple we would have had a few more wins.

"But there are still nine games to go and we're in decent nick. We're keeping clean sheets and have got goals in the team.

"Without being too disrespectful to everyone, we know that when we're playing well, we're a team to be reckoned with.

"Hopefully we are hitting a good run at just the right time, as we showed a few years ago when we won promotion."