Bradford City will have a great escape expert in their side when they play Liverpool in a crucial last match of the Premiership season.

Defender-turned-midfielder John Dreyer has escaped relegation in the last match of the season with both Oxford and Luton - all in the old First Division which was the forerunner of the Premiership.

He has also suffered the heartache of relegation over a long career, but he prefers to talk about those great escapes and hopes his experience of avoiding the drop can help City when they meet Liverpool tomorrow.

Dreyer said: "I like to think of myself as a survival specialist, but our fate is out of our hands now. All we can do is to concentrate on the job in hand.

"In some respects there is a little less pressure on us which means we may not be as uptight as we were at Leicester last Saturday.

"Knowing the players as I do, the defeat at Leicester will make us all the more determined. We will want to make up for that defeat and put in a performance that is worthy of the club and hope it will be enough, especially in front of our own supporters.

"Wimbledon's game at Southampton is out of our hands. We cannot determine that result, but we can give 100 per cent and hope it is enough.

"We knew Leicester was an inadequate performance and we just hope we can redeem ourselves."

Coincidentally, City striker Dean Saunders, who was a team-mate at Oxford, was also involved in Oxford's dramatic escape in 1986-87.

Dreyer recalls: "We needed to win at Luton in our next to the last match when they had the artificial or plastic pitch. Fortunately we beat them 3-2 - Dean Saunders scored twice and I crossed the ball for him to head one of the goals.

"Bryan Hamilton, who was manager of Leicester City, the team we played at home in our last match, came to watch us on a spying mission. He left the ground with three minutes to go when we were 2-0 up.

"So he missed seeing Luton score twice to make it 2-2 and he also missed seeing me lay on the winner with 20 seconds left. We duly played Leicester at home the following week, but by that time we had enough points to stay up, the match was a non-event and it ended 0-0."

Oxford - and Dreyer - were not so fortunate the following season and lost their last three matches to finish bottom of the table. They were relegated to the old Second Division and have never been back since.

In the next season Dreyer moved to Luton and he was involved in more late-season drama as his new club also tried to cling on to their First Division status.

In fact, in season 1989-90, Dreyer was in a dramatic escape as Luton won their last match of the season 3-2 at Derby and finished fourth from the bottom with 43 points, the same as Sheffield Wednesday, the team immediately below them. But whereas Luton's goal difference was minus 14 Wednesday's was minus 16.

Kingsley Black scored two of the goals and Tim Breacker, the other.

In 1990-91, Luton won 2-0 at Derby in their last match to finish third from the bottom, one place away from relegation. Saunders, who was in the Derby line-up that day, finished leading scorer with them that season.

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