ANTHONY O’Connor insists confident City can face third-placed Cheltenham as equals this weekend.

Having seen off Morecambe at Valley Parade, the Bantams are now preparing to face another promotion contender.

But O’Connor feels they can travel with plenty of belief on the back of a run of 21 points from the 10 games since Mark Trueman and Conor Sellars took the helm.

He said: “Cheltenham are a good footballing side but so are we. We’re not going there thinking we are underdogs.

“We’re going to go toe to toe with them. We know it’s going to be a good game.

“We’ll go in with confidence and trying to get a result.

“Morecambe aren’t at the top end of the table by fluke. But in the course of the last 10 games we’ve had good results against teams that are up there.

“It shows how good a team we are. We’re as good as anybody on any given day.”

O’Connor, who was moved to right back from his usual central-defensive role, scored the equaliser on Tuesday as City came from behind to win for only the second time this season.

They are now 11 points clear of the League Two drop zone – and nine behind the play-offs with 20 games to go.

He added: “It’s really tight from us up to seventh or eighth. Thankfully we’re looking up more than down.

Bradford Telegraph and Argus: O'Connor, left, gets a group hug after his goal against MorecambeO'Connor, left, gets a group hug after his goal against Morecambe

“We can’t get carried away, we know that. We’ve got to keep putting points on the board.

“People are starting to mention that the play-offs may be in sight. But for us it’s just about the next game.

“Mark and Conor say that to us every day – focus on putting three points on the board.

“We’re going to have setbacks and games when we’re not at our best. We won’t go the rest of the season unbeaten, although we’d love to.

“It’s important that we keep picking up the points and see where that takes us.”

City have claimed six wins in the two months with the interim management duo – having managed just three in the 16 games leading up to Stuart McCall’s exit.

They have the highest points tally in the division in that time.

“If someone had said that when Mark and Conor took over for their first game at Crawley they’d have laughed at us,” said O’Connor.

“Credit goes to the management staff - and also to the players. We’re the ones that have to step on the pitch and do the business.

“The first few games we just had to be harder to beat, try to pick up results and build confidence.

“We managed to do that. Over the course of the next five or six games, we’ve shown how good we are.

“It would have been easy for us to feel sorry for ourselves. But we’ve managed to dig deep and pull ourselves away from the bottom and build that gap.

“We shouldn’t have been down there but that was the reality.

“It was important that we tried to shut the back door, first and foremost, and our defensive record has improved a lot recently.

“The unbeaten run had to come to an end at some point and it was important we bounced back as quickly as we could. That’s the sign of a good team to put a win straight on the board again.”