Bradford City's players need shooting for being down among the relegation strugglers, with the players they have at their disposal.

After feeling the ire of their own supporters at Valley Parade in midweek, when they scrambled a 1-1 draw with Port Vale, they decided to turn up and give a performance at Plainmoor on Saturday. It was enough, against a slightly hesitant Torquay United, to stop the Gulls clinching a club record-equalling eighth successive win.

What else the 2-1 home defeat might have done to United's promotion hopes, we will only discover during the rest of February and March, when they play five of their next seven games away.

The shame was that Martin Ling's men had to lose for the first time in ten games in front of their own supporters.

Somehow, after their heroics of recent weeks, it might not have seemed so bad if they had gone down away from Plainmoor. But Ling was quick to give credit where it was due, and the fact is Phil Parkinson managed to rouse his under-achieving Bantams to such an extent they looked as if promotion was on the agenda for them, and not for Torquay.

Or was it, perhaps, a few of their jobs on the line?

Picture gallery from Bradford game

In United's awards-nominated programme TQ1, the two squads were in sharp contrast. The Gulls' 23 players, including three or four lads with little chance of playing at the moment, left lots of room for match officials underneath. Bradford's squad of 33 nearly ran off the bottom of the page.

A pre-match downpour left the pitch soft and sticky, hardly conducive to the accurate, quick-passing game which has seen United at their best during that astonishing run of 41 points from 48. But, for long periods of the game, Torquay persisted in trying the extra touches and taking the extra risks which have been coming off in their recent charge up the table.

Parkinson, without his injured target man James Hanson, played a 4-4-1-1 formation, with ex-Premier League striker Craig Fagan on his own up front and experienced attacking midfielder Mike Flynn just behind him.

Along with talented but often-inconsistent winger Kyel Reid on the left, they gave United all the trouble they could handle in the early stages. It was against the run of play that Torquay took the lead in the 12th minute.

Ian Morris nodded the ball out to Eunan O'Kane on the right wing, he drilled a low cross into the middle, where Danny Stevens hit a first-time right-foot shot into the bottom corner from 15 yards for his seventh goal of the season.

Most home fans probably thought that normal service had been resumed. Wrong. In the 17th minute, after Brian Saah had done well to block Deane Smalley's cross from the right, Reid followed up to centre low from the left and Fagan was there to stab the ball home from close-range.

Only three minutes later, the visitors scored again. Reid, with a clever chipped first pass, played a one-two with Fagan and gave Bobby Olejnik no chance.

Those two quick goals seemed to stun a United side who had registered four successive "clean-sheets" and had come to regard goals-against as an insult to their pride. Yet they might have found themselves three down just before half-time when Ricky Ravenhill shot narrowly wide.

Oastler had his work cut out against former West Ham and Charlton winger Reid and, when United's right-back lost possession early in the second half, Reid was away again, shooting wide when he should have done better. You could not accuse United of abandoning their principles – in fact, they probably should have done. But to stop passing the ball and start going long and early to Taiwo Atieno was meat and drink to Bradford's two big centre-backs, Luke Oliver and Andrew Davies, who cost Stoke City £1 million from Southampton not long ago.

Still, United did wind up some pressure in the second half, through sheer effort. O'Kane and Chris McPhee, deputising for the injured Damon Lathrope in midfield, had shots held by Jon McLaughlin. Kevin Nicholson curled a free-kick from the left to the far post where Mark Ellis thumped a header against the post. By then, Ling had swapped Rene Howe for Atieno, and in the 78th minute, sent on young striker Ashley Yeoman for his League debut.

Ex-trainee Yeoman certainly did not look overawed in a bright cameo display.

United pushed Ellis up front near the end, but his earlier header against the woodwork was as near as United came to an equaliser.

It was only Bradford's second away win of the season, but they have done the "double" over Torquay. Ling's squad travel to Gillingham and Crawley Town in their next two matches.

Torquay United (4-1-4-1): Olejnik; Oastler, Saah, Ellis, Nicholson; McPhee (Yeoman 78); Morris, Mansell, O'Kane, Stevens; Atieno (Howe 59). Substitutes (not used): Rice (gk), MacDonald, Rowe-Turner.

Goal: Stevens 12.

Bradford City (4-4-1-1): McLaughlin; Ramsden, Davies, Oliver, Seip; Smalley (Syers 76), Jones, Ravenhill, Reid (Atkinson 90+2); Flynn; Fagan (Wells 85). Substitutes (not used): Kozluk, Duke (gk).

Goals: Fagan 17, Reid 20.

Referee: P Miller (Bedfordshire).

Attendance: 2,566.