GARY Bowyer wants to make every minute count as City’s schedule hits a breather.

After successive Tuesday games, the Bantams have a free run to prepare for Saturday’s home clash with Swindon.

They are not back in midweek action until three weeks today when Port Vale visit Valley Parade.

Having crammed 14 games into the first two months of the season, the fixture lull has been welcomed by Bowyer.

And it comes at a time when they prepare for Swindon without suspended duo Ben Richards-Everton and James Vaughan as well as the injured Matty Palmer. Jordan Gibson is also still sidelined with a calf problem.

Bowyer intends to make the most of the lighter October workload by utilising the extra time on the training pitch.

He said: “It gives us time to do some more work with the team and obviously for one or two to get back fit as well.

“We’ve probably not had that opportunity since the (transfer) window has shut. We’ve got to put it to good use.

“It’s a case of working on specifics that we’ve identified, not just from Saturday’s game but the last couple of weeks where we feel we can make improvements.

“You can take stock a bit because it has been frantic. We can get some quality time on the grass with how we want to play.”

Vaughan was yellow-carded late on at Scunthorpe to take him to five bookings and will miss his first league game.

His absence up front opens the door for either Aramide Oteh or Shay McCartan to step up alongside Clayton Donaldson.

Both came off the bench at Glanford Park, although McCartan was only brought on in added time, and Bowyer will assess their starting claims during the week.

He said: “We feel we’ve got quality there. Shay is desperate to be playing and we saw what he brings when he came on against Oldham.

“Remi has also impressed when he came on in the last couple of games and nearly won it for us at the death on Saturday.”

Zeli Ismail and Jermaine Anderson were also back in training yesterday and will come back into the mix after sitting out the weekend.

City are still waiting on the scan reports on Palmer’s knee injury that he suffered from the lunge that saw Scunthorpe’s Matty Lund sent off.

Bowyer added: “You’ve just got to wait and see. He feels it’s getting better every day but the tackle itself wasn’t very good.

“Like I said after the Carlisle game, putting Cookie (Callum Cooke) in complemented how Matty played and it was something we wanted to build on.”