BRING some bottle – to paraphrase a well-publicised Government email.

Derek Adams has certainly not had the week to match Boris Johnson’s but he knows City could still do with a timely lift in the polls with the Valley Parade faithful.

The mood has been low since the Carlisle capitulation and the fans who spoke up in the midweek forum made their frustration clear to the manager.

There will be plenty riding on City’s first home game in over a month on Saturday – even more so with Gary Bowyer’s first return to his former club in front of a crowd.

Hopes will be pinned on new signing Jamie Walker to make an instant impact and provide that spark that was missing in that dismal display in Cumbria.

Walker is excited by his second crack at England after a previous spell with Wigan and Peterborough – and he does have a Valley Parade winner under his belt from December 2018 after netting the decisive penalty in the shoot-out for Posh when their FA Cup replay with City had finished 4-4.

“That was a mad game,” he recalled, “but it doesn’t count as a goal because it was a shoot-out!

“It was tough for me not getting as many games as I would have liked because I was used to playing every week. But that’s part of football I had to deal with at the time.

“I went to Wigan when they were top of League One and it was a decent bit of money at the time. I’d done very well back home and there was talk of going to Rangers and stuff.

“But I never really broke into the team and just found myself on the periphery of things so decided to go on loan to Peterborough.

“I played for the first half of the season and then went back in the January with a knee injury.

“If the chance hadn’t come to go back home to a big club in Hearts after that then I probably would have tried to stay in England.

“But I’ve got that experience of League One and hopefully I can use that here in League Two.”

Walker comes with a goal-scoring reputation after scoring more than 50 in two spells at Tynecastle.

Ironically, his first for the club came against Adams’ Ross County in 2013 – and he had also got off the mark in senior football the previous season with a last-minute equaliser against his new boss as an 18-year-old.

Adams was quick to remind Walker about that debut strike when they first discussed a potential loan move.

The Bantams chief said: “It was a fantastic goal for Raith Rovers down at Kirkcaldy. He was a young player out on loan from Heart of Midlothian at the time.

“He came in off the left-hand side and struck it with his right foot into the top corner. He’s gone on to do very well for Hearts over a number of years.

“He’s 28 now, he’s been to England and he’s played in really high-profile games in Scotland.

“He plays against the big teams in Scotland, Rangers and Celtic with 50,000 sell-outs. That experience leads you to deal with anything that can come in the lower reaches of English football.”

Walker’s big-game know-how will be put to the test straight away as City look to bounce back with a first-ever win over Salford. The new number 10 is keen to get going again.

“People come to this football club and maybe don’t realise how big it is,” he added. “It’s the same in Scotland with Celtic, Rangers, Hearts – people think ‘wow’ and don’t realise the expectations of the club.

“But that’s something I’m used to. It’s not always easy if you’re getting criticism but it’s something that I have to try and deal with.

“The manager here has got a great record – back home with Ross County he took them up to the SPL and took Plymouth and Morecambe up.

“He obviously knows what he’s doing and hopefully over the second half of the season we can really kick on and give it a good push.”