CITY need favours from Mansfield and Grimsby to pull off their unexpected play-off mission.

But Graham Alexander will not be begging for help from his rival managers.

The Bantams must beat Newport at Valley Parade on Saturday and hope Crawley and Barrow both trip up in their own final home games.

Alexander, though, has no intention of firing off good-luck messages to visiting bosses Nigel Clough and David Artell.

“I’m not going to do that,” he said. “That’s me getting distracted.

“These are thoroughly professional guys who want to win for their own reasons.

“I’d feel a bit cheeky doing that as if I’m questioning their integrity. I’d never do that to another professional.

“My only focus is on my players. It always has been and it always will be.

“I’ll do the same again and we’ll give it our best shot.”

City fans will be keeping right across the action involving the two teams standing in their way of seizing seventh spot on the last afternoon of League Two.

But Alexander expects his players to stay blinkered for their task of a fifth straight victory.

“If we don’t win, it’s irrelevant. That’s all we can focus on.

“If it’s good enough, that will be great. If not, then it’s not and we can’t control anything else.

“You have to put the blinkers on. It’s a really hard discipline to have.

“If you don’t have it, and I learned the hard way as a player when I was possibly focused on other things at times, then you don’t get there anyway. So, you’re thinking about things that are unachievable.

“You go out there with only one thought, ‘how do I play my best game for my team?’

“Think about anything else and you’re doing yourself and your team a disservice.”

City are still the rank outsiders in the play-off race but given where they were after those four straight losses last month, Alexander is delighted to have such a big finale in prospect.

“It’s good to have that hope and excitement and we want to live with that,” said the City boss. “It’s what football gives you, the players, the staff and the supporters.

“That’s what we’ve managed to generate over this last month, a little bit of hope and a lot of excitement, certainly now going into the final shoot-out in the normal programme.

“We just have to go out there and give it our best shot.

“We have to show a consistent mindset again and not make it bigger than it is. We cannot focus on anything else but the game in front of us.

“We’ve not talked about anything else each week but the next game and it’s held us in good stead. We have to continue that consistency that I’m craving for.

“We can all say we can be great, we can all say we’re resilient and that we’ll never quit. But it’s about actions.

“What the players have done in the last six games is show those attributes. It’s not just talk, they’ve shown it on the pitch where it counts.

“When you cross that white line, that’s when you’re judged, not in a press conference or an interview.

“To be fair to the players, they’ve been superb over these last five or six games, not only in getting the results but with how they’ve played and the belief they have shown in each other.

“Now we’ve got another great big challenge on Saturday to prepare for.”