City miss out on dream Wembley trip
With just 90 minutes of football separating Bradford City from a dream place in the FA Cup semi-finals. Monday night’s clash with Reading was always going to be a big one.
Unfortunately, for the hundreds of travelling Bantams fans, and the thousands watching across the country, the fairytale ending was not to be as the West Yorkshire outfit went down by three goals to nil.
Early strikes from Hal Robson-Kanu and Garath McCleary sent the Royals into a ten-minute two goal lead before Jamie Mackie rounded off the scoring moments after city were reduced to ten men.
Filipe Morais was dismissed for a high challenge on Chelsea loanee, Nathaniel Chalobah, who set up Mackie to all but finish off Phil Parkinson’s men.
Bradford were aiming to reach the final four of the competition for the first time in over one-hundred years yet were ultimately beaten by the better side on the night.
Speaking after the loss, Parkisnon said: “We have to be immensely proud of what we have achieved in this competition.
“Obviously tonight (Monday) is tough to take, we wanted to progress and we had a great support cheering us on, but we have to quickly move on.
“Reflecting on what we have accomplished, we have so many great memories from this season’s FA Cup.
“We can take that with us for the rest of the season and beyond. We have eleven games to go in the league and we must look to that now.
“No-one in the league, apart from Sheffield United earlier in the season, has had to deal with the amount of high profile games we’ve had recently.
“The lads have done terrifically well with it all, however, and we’re going to have a good go at things now we have a clear run in the league.”
Reading will now face-off against Arsenal at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 18th April.
