DAVID Hopkin anticipates City’s latest home game to be much easier on the eye than the last one.

After the frustration of Fleetwood, in-form Plymouth provide the Valley Parade opposition this afternoon as the Bantams try to bounce straight back in the relegation battle.

Derek Adams’ side have pulled five points ahead with a run of five wins from their last eight games.

READ MORE: Bantams share spoils in six-goal thriller at Plymouth

With that in mind, and the fact the sides drew 3-3 in December, Hopkin does not expect to see the visitors shut up shop like Fleetwood.

The Bantams boss said: “Last Saturday was a bit of frustration for everybody.

“Fleetwood came and made the game difficult and everyone got caught up in that.

“It wasn’t a great game of football. Fleetwood scored early and then killed it.

“Plymouth will come here and try and play. Derek has done a fantastic job again. They try and play football and score goals. They are an attacking team.

“They’ve been on a fantastic run and why would you want to change a winning formula?

“We’re hopefully looking forward to a better game of football than we saw last week.”

Only top two Luton and Barnsley and Stuart McCall’s Scunthorpe have picked up more points than Plymouth since Boxing Day. Adams’ side were bottom at the time but have since risen to 15th place.

Hopkin added: “You need to win three or four games and hopefully get away from where we are.

“It’s a league where we have been winning games but whenever we’ve done that, the teams around about us have won.

“Last week, when we did lose a game, at least all the other results went in our favour.

“There will be a lot of twists and turns between now and May. But we just need to keep the players in a positive mind.

“Plymouth have got very good attacking players. The front three or four always cause problems.

“They are quite prepared to go on one v ones and they are fantastic at set-plays. We need to be aware of Graham Carey and Danny Fox because they have got great deliveries.

“These are things that we work on. We spoke about the game against Fleetwood and the one mistake we made, we got punished.

“They came with a game plan. Every time they had the ball, it would be kicked in the stands and different things like that.

“The biggest thing was the frustration for everyone in the stadium. But we still created four or five good chances which we should have scored.”

Hopkin also intends to look at reinstating a reserve team for next season – which was scrapped by Edin Rahic.

He believes the absence of a back-up side to keep players match fit has hampered the squad.

Hopkin said: “Financially it will work itself out at the end of the season with where we are.

“I always like to have somewhere you can get a fall back on because obviously there are players here who haven’t played football for three or four months.

“You want to get them back up to speed. If somebody’s injured, you’ve got to put them back straight into a first team game and it’s difficult.

“It’s probably something I will have a look at in the summer.

“It’s a massive step-up if you’re playing under-18s football and then asked to go straight into the first team. There’s got to be a gap between that.”