Boss Graham Alexander thought Bradford’s seventh consecutive home win should have been more comfortable after beating Harrogate 1-0.
Antoni Sarcevic headed home the only goal inside two minutes as the Bantams maintained their automatic promotion push.
But Alexander felt they should have gone on to score more.
He said: “It was a really good first half and I thought we were excellent. We just needed a second goal to justify our dominance.
“In the second half, it was a very transitional game. We didn’t have any control over it really.
“We had moments where we could have been better on counter-attacks and then moments in the final third and the game was on a knife-edge in the last 15 to 20 minutes because of the scoreline.
“They were obviously chasing that equaliser and putting us under a lot of pressure in our final third. To be fair to our players, we haven’t conceded an effort on target in the second half but there were a few moments where we could have done better.
“We became a little bit passive in our passing and not asking the questions we did in the first 25 minutes.
“You go through spells like that in games. It can’t just be attack after attack but when we have the opportunity, we have to try and take that because we want to be an attacking team and create pressure on the opponent.”
Brad Halliday and Alex Pattison had chances to increase the lead before half-time but Harrogate grew in confidence as the game went on and nearly equalised through Olly Sanderson, who had been on loan at Bradford until last month.
Harrogate manager Simon Weaver admitted his side paid the price for a “dopey” start.
Weaver said: “It was a very tight game that was settled from a moment of quality. We switched off in the first 90 seconds but it was a good finish by Sarcevic, which he’s renowned for arriving late in the box.
“We showed good resilience after that dopey start. We grew in stature and pinned them back second half but we didn’t have our moment in front of goal.
“It’s about organisation. League Two has moved on tactically now and you need to stick to those roles which we didn’t do for the first 90 seconds.
“That gets their heads up and their confidence and obviously it’s in a big stadium where the Bradford fans are very vocal.
“They were riding on a bit of a wave of doing well at home but I don’t think anyone went under. We weathered the storm for 10 minutes but they didn’t create much after that and created nothing second half.
“But we had to have someone wanting to grab the headlines.”
