PAUDIE O’Connor hopes history can repeat itself and provide the winning boost to shoot City back up League Two.

The Bantams make the short journey to Rochdale this afternoon looking to record back-to-back wins for the first time since the opening month.

O’Connor, who headed last week’s winner against Salford, would love a repeat of the run they had at this stage of last season.

City, then under the joint command of Mark Trueman and Conor Sellars, won seven out of eight including five on the bounce to race up the table.

The centre half views the approaching busy spell of fixtures as a chance to make quick progress in similar fashion.

O’Connor said: “You don’t want to say it 100 per cent because it can swing both ways but when you’re winning games and rolling on to the next one, it can get a bit of momentum together.

“Going into this game, you’ve got a quick turnaround into Walsall and then Crawley.

“You put three wins together there and suddenly you’re looking a lot further up than if you were maybe playing Saturday to Saturday.

“I go back to last year when we put five or six wins together in a short space of time. We went from right down the bottom to top half towards the play-offs.

“We’ll hopefully be looking to do something similar over the next three or four weeks.

“We spoke about that after last week’s game. It was great to get the win but it was about backing it up.

“If you’re putting in these wins every few weeks and only backing it up with draws, it doesn’t really help you out as much as you could do.

“If you put a string of three wins together then you’re looking at other teams. There are a lot around there vying for the same spot so it can fly you up the league.”

O’Connor believes Tranmere are the perfect example after their comeback victory over City sparked a six-game winning charge that has taken them up to second.

“After we played them late November, we went to Scunthorpe and drew and then drew in the next home game,” he said.

“Suddenly from being 1-0 up at Tranmere, they came back to win 2-1 and then put a run together and now they’re up in the automatic positions. That’s how quickly it can happen.

“It’s all good saying this but it’s about having that belief. Three new additions have added more of that because the quality that has come into the building is really top notch for this division.

“I don’t think the squad was a million miles away. The recruitment in the summer was quite good.

“We are pretty even all over the pitch and we’re not really relying on one person to do it all on their own.

“I just think it takes some of the pressure off the forward lads when they see the other ones coming in.”

O’Connor also revealed he was among those knocked out by Covid over the Christmas period when City were forced to call off three games because of the impact the virus had on the squad.

“I was pretty KO'ed from the 22nd to the 26th (December). I was laid out on the couch with not a lot of energy to do anything.

“When we came back, we only had three or four days to get ready for the Barrow game.

“You get through that one on adrenalin but it’s hard getting adjusted to the training load when your body hasn’t done it for close to 10 days.

“You get that back with games and training sessions, so hopefully a good few of us are starting to turn that corner and we can kick on for the second half of the season.”