KENNY Black lauded City for lifting the “doom and gloom” with a strong response at Mansfield.

The assistant boss was delighted to get the Harrogate defeat straight out the system with a convincing 3-1 victory – the first in the league on the road for the Bantams for 371 days.

Black said: “We were a little bit doom and gloom after the game on Monday because we know what we wanted to do in front of the TV cameras. But we put that to bed.

“We were always going to make changes today, freshened the team up and got a really good reaction from the guys who came in – and those who had played on Monday and suffered the disappointment of losing at home.”

City made five changes from the previous outing – with Reece Staunton and Levi Sutton joining Gareth Evans on the injury list.

But they roared into a two-goal lead inside 14 minutes, assisted by a goalkeeping howler for the opener. Black felt that fast start set the tone.

He added: “Any game you play in you want to have a positive reaction to the first whistle. It puts down a marker and that certainly happened today.

“Maybe we could have scored a few more but that’s being a little bit blasé.

“We were happy with the creative aspect of our game. If you want to be ultra-critical, we could have been a little bit more ruthless.

“It was disappointing again we lost a goal towards the end. They had a couple of free headers from set-plays as well so that’s something we have to work on.

“But if you’d offered us 3-1 before the game, we’d have gladly taken that.”