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Davis relief at Crewe escape

Image: Steve Davis: Thrives off the pressure

Steve Davis described another final day of high drama at Gresty Road as "horrible" as Crewe relied on results elsewhere to stay up.

Bradford recorded a 1-0 win over the Railwaymen, thanks to a first-half goal from Billy Clarke, leaving Crewe's fate in the hands of other teams to ensure they would once again beat the drop during the season's concluding round of fixtures. On more than one occasion during the 90 minutes they slipped into the bottom four, but with Coventry coming from behind to defeat Crawley and Gillingham grabbing three late goals against Notts County, they booked a spot in League One for the 2015-16 campaign. Asked about his emotions afterwards, Davis said: "It's a horrible feeling. You're up, you're down and then you're okay. Then you're down again. "With five minutes to go we were down and the late goals have changed that. It's not nice if you're involved in it, there was a lot of pressure. But I love it and thrive off it. It's what I want to do and they are situations I want to be involved in." Crewe never looked like defeating their opponents from West Yorkshire, even though they played most of the second half with three strikers. Yet Davis paid tribute to his squad's character after they rallied from a disappointing start to the season to gain enough points down the stretch to stave off relegation. "I feel a little bit underwhelmed in terms of not being able to win the game and do it ourselves, almost to the point of not celebrating what we've achieved" he noted. "But we should be, if you look at what we were doing in September and October when we had four points from 11 games, that's a massive turnaround in three quarters of the season. "To even be in with a chance of staying up in the last few games is a great achievement. But we don't want to be doing it every season, we want to be doing better than that." Bradford finished the season in seventh place, one place and four points away from a play-off berth. However, instead of ruing what might have been, manager Phil Parkinson said he would rather reflect on a thrilling campaign which saw them also defeat Leeds, Millwall, Chelsea and Sunderland in cup competitions. "We're going into the summer with a positive squad, a team which is definitely capable of getting in the play-offs," he added. "I think without the distraction of the cup run this year, which was very demanding on the players, I think we'd probably have been there. "But, overall, FA Cup quarter-finals and seventh in the league is a good season for us."

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