The myth that Bristol is too nice to have successful football clubs.

[East Londoner]

5 hours ago, OneCity said:

Bristol itself is not to blame, Bristol itself is just fine. It really is all about how the club is run. If you look back to the 70s, we were a top flight team then. We had no problem attracting quality players (Hunter, Royle, et al), and even prior to that, in building that promotion side, we had no problem attracting top talent from even as far away as Scotland (that squad had a number of Scots). Back then everything was peachy.

City's success (or lack of since the 70s) has been entirely commensurate with how the club has been run, from administration at the executive level, through to scouting and recruitment, down to training and team management, ethos, and culture. That's what I automatically think of when someone says infrastructure, or the 'DNA of a club'. If the DNA is lacking or broken that translates to the product on the field. Basically, garbage in garbage out.

There's nothing wrong with Bristol at all, the city or its location. If you're looking to explain the last forty years, and why it hasn't been good enough, why we haven't lived up to expectations of the club's potential (given the size of the city) all faults lie with the infrastructure in place.

Success on the field is proportionate to the framework off it. For Norwich, or Southampton, both less than half the size of Bristol and just as distant from 'big' football centres, theirs - over the same 40 year period - must have been in much better shape than ours.

Didn’t city pay hunter bigger wages than he earned during his Leeds hay day? If you pay the wages people will want to play for you, just look at Blackburn in the early 90’s before being promoted to the prem 

It does speak volumes that the likes of Norwich and Southampton were scouting in the Bristol area in the first place, they obviously saw that neither Bristol club was doing it or doing it effectively so was an untapped resource. At least these days we look more professional in that regard although it would be interesting to know what difference upgrading the academy to category one would make 

 

[Ivorguy]

6 hours ago, 054123 said:

Norwich is lovely. If there was a Norwich Rovers which split the city I doubt that Norwich City would be as successful.

Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester etc. have historically been more passionate about their football.

If Bristol only had one club, I firmly believe it’s football history would have been much different.

The old old story of if only there was a Bristol United.

Rubbish.  When both clubs were in the old Second Division with an England centre forward at both clubs people never thought that.  The dream was of both clubs being promoted.

Both clubs have just been badly run, with the exception of City for that brief moment in top flight.  I find it difficult now to believe we even made it there, only to crash in spectacular flames of course, but even then I thought we would rise again from 4th to 1st division.  Still waiting a lifetime on.

[Rich]

9 hours ago, Major Isewater said:

Bristol is my town and a beautiful place to live but I have also lived in Norwich which is equally beautiful and that doesn’t seem to have hurt them. 
 

What is the difference ? 
 

Why have the Canaries been so successful and we’ve stayed relatively still ?

When I was a youngster Norwich were a third division club and a bit of a joke.

They have a lovely ground in the city centre and great training facilities.

They are two hours from anywhere but still attract quality players. 
 

It is amazing what they’ve achieved.

 

You must be suffering with posts like this and the Peterborough one Major. I'm with you on this and I like so many others are suffering with you. I have commented many times on this topic and have my own views which I've gathered information on over many years.

Bristol City as a football club mirror the City as a whole, one of being large enough to be successful, yet so diverse in it's make up that it hinders progress. Like the city it's rarely had a united front with turmoil after turmoil running through the power bases at the club. In recent times we've had the stability of MR Lansdown and our structure has improved no end. Sadly the decisions taken at the sharp end have been flawed to say the least.

The city of Bristol has also suffered from disjointed government over many decades, with power shifting from one political group to another, with the usual pandering to the smaller parties to get things done, which rarely happens before another change of administration.

Norwich are a club the MR L has often spoken of and tried to emulate. They have a largish base of supporters made up from season card holders that encourage and achieve many families attending. They are not football mad like the Northern cities but, they have unity and a very important fact, no direct rivalry within that city to disrupt the unity. As such the whole city supports NCFC and helps it succeed.

In Bristol we have a divided city in terms of support for football from the powers that be. They can't be seen to be helping one club over another, so they help no club. The same applies to business sponsorship, with most Bristol based companies putting their money into other sports, or in some cases, other cities/Towns.

But, as people have alluded to, the main reason for our lack of success is down to poor use of the attributes available to the club, in terms of reasonably good levels of support, good access to other areas of the country and a desire to make things work. 

As a fan base, we are so used to being let down, we almost expect it, so don't tend to get behind the team as much as some other clubs. We are reactive as opposed to proactive in our vocal support, maybe that comes across to the players as maybe a bit lacking, as opposed to our noisy northerners. 

That said, there are other comparisons to make which are the exceptions to that but, usually the smaller clubs that taste success are from one club towns and have unity.

I hope we see some light very shortly, or you might end up posting about how great a club Reading are and should we compare ourselves to them.

  

[Major Isewater]

34 minutes ago, Rich said:

hope we see some light very shortly, or you might end up posting about how great a club Reading are and should we compare ourselves to them.

 

Damn , you’ve stolen my thunder for tomorrow. 
 

[054123]

2 hours ago, Ivorguy said:

The old old story of if only there was a Bristol United.

Rubbish.  When both clubs were in the old Second Division with an England centre forward at both clubs people never thought that.  The dream was of both clubs being promoted.

Both clubs have just been badly run, with the exception of City for that brief moment in top flight.  I find it difficult now to believe we even made it there, only to crash in spectacular flames of course, but even then I thought we would rise again from 4th to 1st division.  Still waiting a lifetime on.

I suppose we’ll never know.

[Wiltshire robin]

8 hours ago, Phileas Fogg said:

Well it's possible, who knows. One club in a large city like Bristol is far more attractive for investment. Easy to aftertime about these sort of things, but theoretically the only club in Bristol would've had Bryan, Kelly, Reid and all our other successful academy products over the years.

I think it's far more likely a one club Bristol would've had a prem team by now, although the amount of 2 club cities who've had footballing success proves it isn't a prerequisite. 

So true just look at Leeds