Graham Alexander on Bantams' opening friendly at Chorley

Wright trained with his team-mates yesterday for the first time since returning on a permanent deal.

Graham Alexander is weighing up whether to give his latest signing a run-out at Chorley this afternoon.

“We have to ascertain where Tyreik is physically.

“But it is something we see as part of the training programme rather than a full-on game.

“We’d like to think he’d be able to get some minutes. But we need to make sure that we have him for the start of the season and available to compete for the team.”

Tyreik Wright has completed a permanent return (Image: Bradford City)

It was a gruelling comeback for Wright yesterday. The players were put through a double training session to round off their first full week back at Apperley Bridge.

“They’ll go into the game fatigued but it’s all about preparation for the season,” added Alexander.

“It’s not about being prepared for this game but game one when the season starts.

“During the season, Thursday and Friday is really light as we taper the training to leave all their energy for the game on Saturday.

“That won’t be the case during pre-season. We have to use every day as a physical and tactical exercise.

“We’ve done a lot of ball work every day. Pre-seasons have changed over the last 15-20 years.

“We were straight onto the balls but there’s obviously a lot of fitness work in there.

“I want to get everyone who’s going to play a part for us this season to have some game time.

“I want them to get rewarded and get the kit back on at the end of a tough week.

“It’s been hard but the players have responded in exactly the manner I would have expected from this group.”

Some are likely to miss out as the strain of City’s pre-season return takes its toll. Alexander will take no chances.

“We’ve got a couple of niggles, but you always get that in the first couple of weeks of pre-season.

“It’s just an uplift in workload. They go from training three days a week to every day and sometimes double sessions.

“We always want to be careful. I’d rather players miss two days of training than three weeks of pre-season.

Graham Alexander sharing a joke with Richie Smallwood (Image: Thomas Gadd)

“If we can just pre-empt stuff, then we will do so.

“There will be a couple of players probably not involved for those reasons. But we’ve had three or four of the young players training with us all week, so they’ll play a part as well.”

Kick-off was brought forward an hour to 2pm to give fans time to get home to watch England’s Euro quarter-final against Switzerland.

City are expected to bring plenty of support for a first glimpse of the squad back in action.

Alexander said: “We’ve done a bit of tactical work to give us a base where we want to start from.

“It’s obviously not everything that we do, certainly in possession and stuff. That will progress as we go through pre-season.

“But we will see some of the aspects that underpin how we want to play.

“We’ve shown the players a few clips from last season and how we played and where we were successful.

“You can’t overload it in the first week. I’m looking at the physical output because they’ll only play 45 minutes max.

“I don’t want to use anyone longer than that.”