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2008 play-off final - what if?


The Dolman Pragmatist

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Just noticed that highlights of the 2008 play-off final against Hull are on Sky Sports football at 2.00 today (Thursday 30th August).  I’ve never watched the highlights - up to now couldn’t bear to see it again - but given it’s more than ten years ago, maybe I’ll give it a go today.

It set me wondering though where we would be today if we’d won that match.  Anyone like to have a go at a counterfactual scenario for the past decade, following a win against Hull?

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I'm pretty sure there would have posts suggesting that our "conference manager" would not be up to the task of managing a premier league team.

Accordingly, GJ would have moved to a Director of Football role allowing his son to retire very early  to take on the role of head coach. After 3 seasons, where our form swung between champions and relegation favourites, we finally qualified for the Europa League with a team mainly made up of academy graduates and downs league players, as LJ has been following SL's mantra of making the club self sustaining.

With European qualification secured, SL decided that Ashton Gate was no longer fit for purpose, so using his new position as Mayor of Bristol to influence the movers and shakers on the planning committee he secured planning permission for a new, state of the art 50,000 seater stadium to be built on the Downs, which he had previously purchased in a move that surprised the whole of Bristol. However, that was not as big a surprise than the move to widen the Suspension bridge to make car access easier for games at the new stadium along with the new funicular railway bringing fans from the Portway up the face of the gorge to the Downs.

When City went on to qualify for the Champions league with a team of 19 year old academy ( previously called Bristol Rovers FC) players, having sold the previous season's team for a combined £300m  City fans were up in arms when England approached the club for permission to take LJ as manager to replace Sam Allardyce, following Allardyce's dismissal after 5 years in charge , during which no players under 6' 6" were selected, Harry Kane had not managed to score a single goal from his position as defensive midfielder  and crowds at Wembley had fallen to the 6,000 in the corporate seats around the tunnel. 

At this point Londoner was still posting that he was waiting for the next slump, as had happened during LJ's first 2 seasons.

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To answer the OP's question - I suspect the financial platform it would have given us would have enabled us to compete more consistently at the top end of the Championship / lower end of the Prem, perhaps yo-yoing at bit.  Assuming the stadium redevelopment happened in the same way it did in reality, I wonder if our attendances might also be even higher than they are now, having drawn in a number of new supporters thanks to a spell in the top division.  A bit of a guess, but if we'd been lower Prem / top end Champ for the last 10 years, I could see us averaging maybe 25-26k.

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An interesting question and don’t disagree with much of what Chippenham red said above however what I do think is that if we were promoted in the near future we’d probably be better set up to compete in the prem although I’m not sure I’d be confident of success!!!

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The thing people forget is that ffp didn’t exsist then and the billionaire club owners were limited to chelsea with Manchester City then being bought at the end of that august.

At the time we would of had considerable spending power compared to many in the top flight... if SL had thrown money at it. He chucked a load (in championship terms) at it the season after even though we didn’t go up sithere is no reason to think he wouldnt of spent more if we had gone up.

The record English transfer fee at the time was around 30 million. So plenty of decent top half players to be had at the 5-10 million mark.

Assuming the stadium was still redeveloped or was built at Ashton vale (premier league clubs tend to get their own way more often...) theres no reason that we couldnt have got by when ffp was eventually introduced.

Basically i believe we would either still be there as fairly successful top 10 club.... Or it would have all gone tits up and we would currently be trying to work our way back up the leagues....

As we are Bristol City it would almost certainly be the latter.....

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6 minutes ago, cider-manc said:

The thing people forget is that ffp didn’t exsist then and the billionaire club owners were limited to chelsea with Manchester City then being bought at the end of that august.

At the time we would of had considerable spending power compared to many in the top flight... if SL had thrown money at it. He chucked a load (in championship terms) at it the season after even though we didn’t go up sithere is no reason to think he wouldnt of spent more if we had gone up.

The record English transfer fee at the time was around 30 million. So plenty of decent top half players to be had at the 5-10 million mark.

Assuming the stadium was still redeveloped or was built at Ashton vale (premier league clubs tend to get their own way more often...) theres no reason that we couldnt have got by when ffp was eventually introduced.

Basically i believe we would either still be there as fairly successful top 10 club.... Or it would have all gone tits up and we would currently be trying to work our way back up the leagues....

As we are Bristol City it would almost certainly be the latter.....

no we really didn't lansdown was worth 400 million then not 1.3 billion he is now,

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I think we'd have come straight back down again, mainly because Johnson Snr. Would have bought the best of the best from the Championship, and a few older players at the end of their Premiership careers, rather than spending big and going for it.

The following season we would have kept most of the Premiership squad together, and as we had previously bought the best of the Championship players available, would have stormed the League and be crowned champions by around Easter time. 

Uncle Steve, fearing that we would get relegated again the following season, moved Johnson Snr. into the DOF role, and got in Mr Moyes. We'd then go on and finish mid table in Moyes' first season, and narrowly lose the FA Cup final on penalties. The next season we start well, and end up top of the league by Christmas. LJ is moved into the managers office, after Moyes left due to the constant stalking of @RedM (not to be seen again for 6 months).

LJ wins his first couple of games, but then goes on one of his "bad runs". Uncle Steve then fears the worse, remembering the previous relegation, sacks both Johnson's, and then puts the club up for sale.

Roman Abramovich then decides to sell Chelsea, buy Bristol City, and then turn it into a worldwide juggernaught, dwarfing Barcelona and Real Madrid, making Poch the manager (much to Tottenhams disgust) signs Messi, Ronaldo and Bale, and the rest as they say, is history.

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We would have won the FA Cup in 2009, the league title in 2010 and the Champions League in 2011. GJ would've been promoted to tekky director in 2012 along with SL selling BCFC to a group of Brazilian business men. We immediately get relegated and in 2014 realise we have replicated what we did between 1980 and 1982. The good news out of all of this though is that we still finished above Rovers.....which apparently to some is the most important.

 

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50 minutes ago, Taz said:

I think we'd have come straight back down again, mainly because Johnson Snr. Would have bought the best of the best from the Championship, and a few older players at the end of their Premiership careers, rather than spending big and going for it.

The following season we would have kept most of the Premiership squad together, and as we had previously bought the best of the Championship players available, would have stormed the League and be crowned champions by around Easter time. 

Uncle Steve, fearing that we would get relegated again the following season, moved Johnson Snr. into the DOF role, and got in Mr Moyes. We'd then go on and finish mid table in Moyes' first season, and narrowly lose the FA Cup final on penalties. The next season we start well, and end up top of the league by Christmas. LJ is moved into the managers office, after Moyes left due to the constant stalking of @RedM (not to be seen again for 6 months).

LJ wins his first couple of games, but then goes on one of his "bad runs". Uncle Steve then fears the worse, remembering the previous relegation, sacks both Johnson's, and then puts the club up for sale.

Roman Abramovich then decides to sell Chelsea, buy Bristol City, and then turn it into a worldwide juggernaught, dwarfing Barcelona and Real Madrid, making Poch the manager (much to Tottenhams disgust) signs Messi, Ronaldo and Bale, and the rest as they say, is history.

I’m not sure if that makes me responsible for our downfall or uprise :laugh:, but oh for the chance to have found out. ?

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4 minutes ago, RedM said:

I’m not sure if that makes me responsible for our downfall or uprise :laugh:, but oh for the chance to have found out. ?

To be honest I just needed to think of a reason why Moyes would have left. As good a reason as any I thought ?

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1 hour ago, ChippenhamRed said:

Based on what exactly?  Absolutely nothing by any chance?

Because I believe we weren't ready. We would've gone up, then straight back down in a time of insignificant parachute payments, would've still been in debt to SL, would've faced back to back relegation after the majority of players leave, then SL would be less inclined to invest. Similar to Blackpool

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Straight back down after 1 season because the squad wasn't anywhere near good enough. Then:

GJ is sacked after a poor start back in the Championship.

Millen performs well as caretaker but Lansdown hires Steve Coppell in an attempt to get straight back up.

Coppell gives up after a couple of matches because the job is harder than he thought. Millen gets the job permanently.

Millen signs Jon Stead and Brett Pitman but the team generally struggles. He's sacked and replaced by promising Scottish manager Derek McInnes.

McInnes signs half of Scotland before finding out that none of them are any good at football. He's sacked and replaced by Sean O'Driscoll.

City are relegated to League One.

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1 hour ago, ChippenhamRed said:

To answer the OP's question - I suspect the financial platform it would have given us would have enabled us to compete more consistently at the top end of the Championship / lower end of the Prem, perhaps yo-yoing at bit.  Assuming the stadium redevelopment happened in the same way it did in reality, I wonder if our attendances might also be even higher than they are now, having drawn in a number of new supporters thanks to a spell in the top division.  A bit of a guess, but if we'd been lower Prem / top end Champ for the last 10 years, I could see us averaging maybe 25-26k.

With Senior in charge we’d  have been relegated after one season with fewer points than the 18 Derby managed, regardless of the finances.

His one dimensional management style simply wouldn’t have been up to it. 

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I would hope we would have used the money to really establish and improve the club in the Championship and build a platform as other teams have done. However I really don't think we were ready for promotion and it might have meant we had persisted with an outdated infrastructure behind the scenes for far longer whereas I think the club has been massively professionalised in recent years through learning through mistakes. 

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1 hour ago, cider-manc said:

The thing people forget is that ffp didn’t exsist then and the billionaire club owners were limited to chelsea with Manchester City then being bought at the end of that august.

At the time we would of had considerable spending power compared to many in the top flight... if SL had thrown money at it. He chucked a load (in championship terms) at it the season after even though we didn’t go up sithere is no reason to think he wouldnt of spent more if we had gone up.

The record English transfer fee at the time was around 30 million. So plenty of decent top half players to be had at the 5-10 million mark.

Assuming the stadium was still redeveloped or was built at Ashton vale (premier league clubs tend to get their own way more often...) theres no reason that we couldnt have got by when ffp was eventually introduced.

Basically i believe we would either still be there as fairly successful top 10 club.... Or it would have all gone tits up and we would currently be trying to work our way back up the leagues....

As we are Bristol City it would almost certainly be the latter.....

I recall a BBC article stating that Lansdown was prepared to spend £40m in the summer of 2008 if City got promoted. That was a lot of money back then. 

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16 minutes ago, Chairman Mao said:

I recall a BBC article stating that Lansdown was prepared to spend £40m in the summer of 2008 if City got promoted. That was a lot of money back then. 

That sounds about right. In which case, this gives us some idea what we could have got for our money:

wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_football_transfers_summer_2008

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It’s also interesting to compare our current situation with that of Hull. I might be completely wrong because I don’t know that much about them (are they one of those clubs with bonkers owners?) but it seems like once they got promoted it gave them a boost for a while and they spent a couple of seasons as a yo-yo club... but 10 years later seem to be just a middling Championship club with no better chance of promotion than us.

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Just watched the highlights.  I’d forgotten just how much we dominated that game - my god, we should have won.  The list of ‘what ifs’ go on and on: if only Jamie McCombe hadn’t been taken ill (was he nobbled?); if only the medical team had spotted that Bradley was seriously injured and subbed him straight away; if only GJ had brought on Vasko and moved Louis to RB, leaving Marvin in midfield;  if only Trundle or Adebola had taken one of their numerous chances; if only we hadn’t frozen when it really mattered...

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12 minutes ago, The Dolman Pragmatist said:

Just watched the highlights.  I’d forgotten just how much we dominated that game - my god, we should have won.  The list of ‘what ifs’ go on and on: if only Jamie McCombe hadn’t been taken ill (was he nobbled?); if only the medical team had spotted that Bradley was seriously injured and subbed him straight away; if only GJ had brought on Vasko and moved Louis to RB, leaving Marvin in midfield;  if only Trundle or Adebola had taken one of their numerous chances; if only we hadn’t frozen when it really mattered...

Agree.. was a great chance to get into the topflight.. still pains me to even talk about it to be honest!

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3 hours ago, Robbored said:

With Senior in charge we’d  have been relegated after one season with fewer points than the 18 Derby managed, regardless of the finances.

His one dimensional management style simply wouldn’t have been up to it. 

Rubbish.

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