STUART McCall admits City will have to tough it out to get back to winning ways at Valley Parade tomorrow.

The Bantams boss will leave it late before naming his side to face Rochdale as they hunt a first home league victory in five games.

Jake Reeves (groin) and Tony McMahon (hamstring) are both doubtful and another couple of players are laid low with the illness that affected Dominic Poleon at the start of the week.

City also have to conquer a pitch that is showing the strain of a heavy concentration of games in recent weeks as the weather turns wintry.

McCall said: "It must be the time of year because a couple cried off training yesterday with illness.

"We've also still got one or two, Reeves and Macca, who are big doubts for tomorrow. They've not trained this week.

"The injury list is obviously quite long. Unfortunately there's a lot of red on my board at the minute, which means the players that are unavailable.

"I think we only had one on there about a month ago. Now we're certainly into double figures with the young lads as well.

"It's part and parcel of football but it's just the illnesses. With injury, you know a few days in advance when they are coming back, but it's different when players just turn up on a Thursday with illness.

"But it's the same for everyone and you've just got to get on with it."

The Dale game will be the third in eight days at Valley Parade after the cup ties against Plymouth and Oldham. McCall sat in the stand for the Checkatrade Trophy defeat on Tuesday and could see the wear and tear on the playing surface.

"Watching it from an elevated point, you could see the pitch is deteriorating," he said.

"Unfortunately we're not a club with a lot of money necessarily to improve it. The ground staff are doing their best but certain things need doing to the pitch.

"We aren't in the position to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on it at this moment in time.

"Last season it was after Christmas when it began to struggle. But even now we need to concentrate more when we've got the ball.

"The back end of last year, when it deteriorated a lot, we played a different way.

"We actually ended up winning six on the bounce but they were tight games, 1-0s like Peterborough and Oxford.

"We'll just have to take everything into account but it's certainly not conducive to the way we want to play."