Notts County were fantastic from minute one to 90

Notts County boss Stuart Maynard hailed his team as “fantastic from minute one to 90” as they bounced back from embarrassment at Salford with an emphatic 3-0 win over Bradford in Sky Bet League Two.

The Magpies took the lead through Alassana Jatta and the Gambian forward turned provider shortly afterwards as he headed Dan Crowley’s far-post cross back across the six-yard box for David McGoldrick to score.

County had a third a minute later. McGoldrick and Jatta combined again, with the latter lofting the ball over the keeper.

Victory lifted Notts County from 11th back into the play-off places and they sit just five points off of the automatic spots with a game in hand.

Maynard said: “That is the level that we have performed at this season but maybe sometimes not got the correct rewards.

“I felt the lads from minute one to 90 today were fantastic and that is the whole squad, the subs that came on and the subs that didn’t as training was upped this week.

“Last Saturday was a very bad performance but on Monday morning we drew a line under it and collectively agreed that it couldn’t happen again.

“Once we went 1-0 up we knew we couldn’t just sit on that and we knew we had to keep going and smother them with more goals and that’s what we did.”

Bradford now have failed to win away since October 12 in the league, and manager Graham Alexander insisted it was “three swift punches” that cost his side.

“We created some good chances today, we turned the ball over a lot but then we had that three or four-minute spell where we conceded three terrible goals and I’ve seen them again, we miss a tackle in each one and that spell overall made it extremely difficult,” Alexander said.

“I told the players to go back out there and make sure that bad body language didn’t set in and it didn’t. We even had the same amount of box entries as them but they were just more clinical than us.

“It was three swift punches that cost us and that isn’t like us at all.”