LEWIS O’Brien is confident City can find a solution to overcome the League One spoil-sports.

The Bantams dropped back to second from bottom after being made to toil in the 1-0 home defeat to Fleetwood.

Joey Barton’s side frustrated the hosts by constantly breaking up the play – as Wycombe had done in a dour goalless draw the week before.

O’Brien admitted Saturday was a slog to play in as Fleetwood killed the momentum.

With another home game coming up against fellow strugglers Plymouth, the midfielder predicts more opponents may employ similar spoiling tactics.

But he insists City are good enough to work out an answer in their fight to stay up.

O’Brien said: “Teams will definitely start coming, especially to Bradford, and sitting back against us and trying to hold us off.

“But we will work on how to break those teams down and hopefully overcome it.

“It felt like the game on Saturday never really started. Every time we did get a foothold, they broke it up and slowed it down.

“It wasn’t the best game to be in, let alone watch.

“It’s horrible because we are quite a fast-paced team when we go forward.

“We like to counter quite quickly so when they are sat back not allowing us to play to our strengths, it’s very hard to get through.

“They just sit there in a full bank and we have to try and pass our way through.

“It was disappointing but the good thing about football is that there’s always another game. That’s gone so we’ll look to the next one.”

Plymouth have bagged 16 points from the last seven games to pull away from the bottom four. O’Brien has steered clear of studying the results of those around him but feels a victory is vital for City.

“When you look at our team on paper and the players that we have, you don’t really expect us to be in the position we are in,” he added.

“It was frustrating when we went on that run in December because a lot of the teams around us seemed to do the same. We never really got the breakaway that we wanted to.

“That’s why it makes it a six-pointer when we play Plymouth on Saturday.

“Put a run of two or three games together you can pull away from the bottom and give yourselves a bit of distance.

“I don’t really look at other team’s results because we know that anybody can beat anyone in this league. You’ve just got to focus on yourself and that’s what we’re trying to do.

“We need to try and win our games – we can’t do anything about anyone else.”

The on-loan Huddersfield youngster is bracing himself for the safety fight to go right down to the wire. But the tension has not put him off his first year of senior football.

“Football’s always enjoyable,” he said. “There are ups and downs but that’s what the game is and you’ve just to take every little aspect out of it.

“It looks like it could go all the way, so we’ve just got to keep concentrating and performing and making sure we are ready for every game.

“It will be a huge relief if we get out of it. The harder it makes it, the better it will feel at the end.”