Up The City!

12 minutes ago, Hello said:

I agree with you to a degree on the jump to the Championship. I think we need to establish ourselves back in league One and the new owners have time to implement any plans and hopefully get the stadium built.

I wouldn't turn down promotion if it came. but if we were somehow good enough/fortunate to go straight up again, we wouldn't be ready

I admire your sense of realism. I feel exactly the same about our chances if we managed to get to the prem any time soon. The only difference being one season in the prem would set us up nicely for the next few seasons. Like Burnley I suppose.

In the Championship you don't make money, the Championship bleeds you dry and without a stadium that can generate income by ticket sales and hospitality or without wealthy owners it's pretty difficult. Currently I suspect you have neither of those ingredients. 

I'm firmly against the Bristol United model but do believe it could benefit both club's and Bristol if we could work closer together. However your fans attitude towards us and their vendetta simply means this could never happen.

I would quite like a Liverpool - Everton situation. There is a United front with their fans. Families who have divided support sit and watch the game together.

Following a Bristol derby I've not spoke to friends and family for weeks after because of the bitterness I get from them. There is nothing good about a Bristol derby. It turns genuine nice people into nasty horrible people for those couple of weeks.

Of course it has to remain we are more like Liverpool and your more like Everton.

1 hour ago, Philgas said:

Very brutal indeed , best bet is for us to see what happens. Luckily we have good team spirit and see where it takes us , sorry you feel the way you do, a lot of city fans are actually happy for us 

I would be happy for you if the majority of your fans didn't continually harp on about us and they concentrated on your own club. 

You have to also remember that back to back promotions from the conference to league one is not all that uncommon. So far momentum and team spirit has carried you to where you are now. Your gonna need a little bit more about you if you are gonna push on further and to be honest to even survive.

To make the jump up to the Championship is far more difficult. Donny and Yeovil have done it and have then returned to what may be considered their natural positions in the league.

Your club as a whole is a million miles away from being a Championship club. In fact I'd love to see you make the jump up to the Championship as it will destroy your club. Ala Yeovil. I know Your fans like to think your the greatest club in the world but you simply would not be able to compete financially. Even us with our healthy resources struggle to compete with the bigger boys, things are slowly changing for us but only because of our Championship experience. We have had to suck a lot of lemons and kissed many frogs and made many mistakes and spent maybe 50 million? Just to be a lower Championship side. Our biggest mistake was reaching the play off final. We should have done it how we are doing it now.

The truth is over the past 10 years your club has had similar fortunes to Cheltenham and that's the size of club I consider you to be currently.

Around 2000 you were in a similar position to us, even finished above us, however for the majority of the past 15 years we have pushed on and had some modest success at the top of league one and in the Championship, you have just gone backwards with the odd small step forwards every now and then, but then you go backwards again.

When you had the likes of Roberts, Ellington, Cureton etc I feared you. You had an impressive team in those days. I could name every single one of your players back then. Now I couldn't name one.

As a club you have returned to league one with a poorer team than you had in those days and off the field you have made no progress at all. Your stadium is identical to 16 years ago save a new roof here and there. Your youth facilities are poorer. You've lost the rugby income and your attendances have been pretty average. In all honesty you should be able to attract at least 8k in league two regularly. The fact you havnt speaks volumes.

In the same period we have pushed on and became a Championship club, Our academy is a Cat 2. We have the whole Bristol Sport model. The stadium has been rebuilt, New training ground. Our fan base continues to grow. Our whole club has been overhauled off the pitch with people like Mark Ashton coming in. We were able to attract players such as Maynard, Trundle, Sno, Hartley, Heaton and more recently Kodjia, Baker, Tomlin, Flint, Freeman etc etc. You signed a homeless guy.

Don't run before you can walk. 

1 hour ago, Philgas said:

 Whether you like it or not we are definitely on your radar now , we may not have been for years but we are now .I'm very proud of my club and we'll end up where we're supposed to be.  Take care and watch this space.UTG 

There we go, your showing your true colours now. You have some success and your making it all about us. 

The truth is pal, I never want to see City play you lot again, if we do that will mean we have gone backwards. 

You and your 6 fingered friends ambition is to get in the same league as us and finish above us even if it's by +1 GD. That's as far as your ambition stretches. Our ambition is to get to the prem, to play the likes of Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea etc. For now we will enjoy playing the likes of Aston Villa and Newcastle. 

You are a million miles away from being anywhere near our radar sorry to say. 

Let's just remember the last time you were a league below us you finished 23rd in that league. Was you also on our radar then? Was you coming for us then also? So please forgive me for rolling on the floor laughing hystericaly at your coming to get us claims. Here's hoping for the same outcome this time.

If dopey leads you to mid table obscurity like Trollope did will your fans hound him out also? Simply because you couldn't catch up with us? In your eyes you were so close but just couldn't get anywhere near us and Trollope was made the fall guy for that failure. You then tumbled down the league's. Just shows how unhealthy your obsession with us is. You would gamble everything to try and close the gap.

To be brutally honest with you now you have been promoted you are punching above your weight. With your whole current set up you are a mid table league two club at best.

3 hours ago, Smaller than a flea said:

I'm confused by this thread. Nottingham Forest, having just won the European Cup, were laughing at their little neighbours Notts County way back when.  Fair enough.

But no. We have just been promoted to a league you last saw in.....let me check....ah yes...2014-15. One which, the season before, you were at one point in being danger of being relegated from under O'Dismal.

So we are now playing the same teams you played all of 12 months ago.

Yet a vast gulf exists. You only think of us when you see a blue shirt in Bristol. Other than that, we do not register. You are in a different league, not just literally, but metaphorically. Apparently.

I'm making no claims about Rovers being a big club in any sense, but some on here (not all by any means) honestly need to get a sense of perspective.  Bristol City are perceived by the big boys in the Championship as being about on a par with Millwall or Rotherham. You might improve and creep up the Championship, but we are talking now, not some golden time in the future.

 

The difference being we couldn't wait to get out of that league, you couldn't wait to get into it.

5 minutes ago, Philgas said:

This team we have are capable of holding their own definitely and if you offered me mid table then yep I'd take it 

I think your getting slightly carried away with your recent success, enjoy it, but enjoy it for what it is. You have achieved back to back promotions in two very poor leagues. Your recent success involved a big element of luck rather than pure ability. Winning on penalties and scraping promotion by having a better GD than Accrington shows that. League One is tough. Tougher than it appears you realise. A he'll of a lot tougher than anything you have faced in the past two seasons. I think your going to need quite a few decent players before you can even dream about mid table.

For me you are dead certs to finish bottom. I don't know the turnover of players you have had in the past two seasons but it was only two years ago that you finished 91st in the entire football league. So to say you are definitely capable of holding your own is a very bold claim.

You may feel like world beaters atm but you need to remain grounded. Finishing above Accrington on GD surely shows that? 

Let's look at the facts, your playing in a run down former rugby stadium, your likely to have crowds of between 6-9k but may sell out for the bigger games. I'm not going to factor in your billionaire right now as I'm far from convinced he has any substantial funds to invest in you. Your team is going to need reinforcements if it's going to hold its own. It remains to be seen if you can afford decent league one players. You then have the possibility that your manager and your top players whoever they may be may leave over the summer. Two promotions on the bounce will have club's sniffing around them and unfortunately for you even club's like Fleetwood are a more attractive proposition than yourselves. The only way for you to hold on to your own players and attract others is to pay over the odds like you did in the past. We have faced the same problem. It's difficult to attract players to Bristol as its considered a footballing backwater.

I wish you all the luck in the world, I just hope you can remain realistic about your chances.

I actually wish that your club dropped its obsession with us and both club's worked together. I remember a time when many would support both teams, they would go to Ashton Gate one week and Eastville the next. Imagine if relations were better, we could send our talented young players like Burns, Vyner etc on loan to you to gain experience. The advantages being they would still be able to train with us during the week and you would gain some fantastic players on the cheap. Unfortunately for Bristol football your club and fans have created so much hostility anything like that would be highly unlikely to ever happen. Sort of shot yourselves in the foot There I feel.

@Jack Dawe

One of the best posts I've seen on this forum. 100% agree with every word.

Laying my cards on the table here, In my youth I never had a problem with the sags, in fact I enjoyed the derby games, i even followed them loosely hoping they would also fly the flag for Bristol. however as the years went on I started to dislike them more and more. I found they were obsessed with us, so obsessed its in fact freaky. I'm sure some of their fans follow us to in the hope of seeing us fail more than they follow their own team. The scores on the scoreboard and dopeys 'happy days' comment shows that. I bet if I stood on the blackthorn end I'd see a mass of people glued to their phones checking our score.

Every time Rovers have some success all I hear about is us, it's this obsession with us that makes me dislike them, I'm not even sure if dislike is the correct word? I think it's more pity. It's almost as if we are the mother and we abandoned them as children and to this day they hold a resentment against us. Every time they have the smallest bit of success they scream from the hill tops in an attempt to gain our attention. 

I just wish they could support their club as much as they support us failing.

37 minutes ago, Hello said:

all the Home tickets were sold. there were 11,130 officially. Daggers had their allocation reduced to 400 and only sold 291 and there was a small segregated area. (no more than 100 seats I would say)

 

apparently the official capacity is 11,916 according to online sources (although I guess that doesn't include any segregation) to me though that doesn't add up

A sag bead once again going on about attendances, change the bloody record will you. 11k is pathetic.

27 minutes ago, Philgas said:

Well written and I understand exactly what you're saying.Time to consolidate in league one and find our feet .Fact is we've managed to win promotion twice on the bounce and yes it has been a shock to us all but the players have united as one solid unit , let's see what happens in the summer. Bristol as a whole is now a lot more interesting football and rugby wise !!

It has been a rollercoaster ride for all us Rovers fans 

I really wish all your fans were similar to yourself. I am genuinely impressed with the back to back promotions. To go from finishing 2nd bottom of the league to League One is impressive. Ok I didn't want it to happen and there has been a fair amount of luck along the way but nevertheless it's still a fantastic achievement. The only thing that is going to put your future hopes at risk is your own fans. Many simply can't accept the mid table obscurity, the coming for us claims prove that.If you spent 2-3 seasons in mid table your fans will become increasingly frustrated that you havnt caught up with us yet and once again that will be your undoing. But congratulations from me, when you have been through tough times it makes the good times even more worthwhile.

A bit of realism is needed here. Trollope was hounded out as he kept leading them to League One mid table obscurity and now they are celebrating being back in that league that they was so desperate to leave? #GasLogic

There aim once again is to catch up with us, a couple of years in league one will be a good achievement for them. However once again they will become frustrated as they are unable to catch up with us and will hound someone else out who's performing a competent job.

Two years ago they were so shite they were relegated out of the league. They have bounced back straight away but my concern if I was them would be have they bounced back to quickly? The whole club from top to bottom is simply not a league one club and I can see them quickly returning to League Two.

Had we won the Championship play off final without a doubt we would have finished bottom of the prem because of the rapid rise would have been too much for us.

To jump two divisions and to sustain that sucess you really need a good solid infrastructure and Rovers simply do not have that.

Despite their 'billionaire Chelsea supporting owner' they simply will not be able to compete financially with many of the club's at that level, their stadium is non league standard, no academy, poor training facilities etc. Being promoted is one thing button sustain it you need all those ingredients Rovers are sadly lacking, hence why I am not remotely concerned about their coming to get us claims. 

Just look at Yeovil. Getting to the Championship destroyed them. Sam's could happen to Rovers.

18 minutes ago, Bristol Rob said:

Can still hear them singing on Gloucester Road. 

However....

For the small group who are singing 'championies'... Lads. I hate to break it to you, but...

#GasLogic

Finish 3rd on GD and your champions.

I just don't get it, genuinely impressed by their back to back promotions, but despite this fantastic achievement and games against the likes of Coventry and Bolton to look forward to, all I've seen since promotion has been secured is stuff about us. It's very weird. I think we need a restraining order or something.

Fans on the pitch celebrating...

3 hours ago, Hello said:

and the same token there are many of your lot that don't consider us rivals any more but continue to talk about us.

I am not going to get carried away with how much or how little the new owners at Rovers have or whether The/A Stadium comes out of his pocket or is actually well funded.

However so far they are a breath of fresh air and I am glad to be finally rid of the chancers we had leading us to oblivion.

Please do not put us in the same bracket as yourselves, your doing that so that yit 

Each and every Rovers fan have a deep physiological problem with us, I can't even explain it, it's just weird. They hate us but at the same time are also obsessed by us? I think secretly deep down they all wish they were City fans but just to stubborn to admit it.

This is far from over, remember that certain win against a Mansfield side that were already on holiday? They even turnt up without a kit they was that unbothered. A million other results had to go against them, yet still they managed to be relegated.

4 hours ago, S_Y_G said:

Sorry to disappoint, but the rover's stadium is as good as built.   Owners value? -  its the family and not Wael.  I guess end of season transfers will answer that question.  If our biggest signing is for 10k feel free to laugh.   

Think your somewhat confused. It is our stadium which is almost finished being built, yours is still a David pipe dream.

4 hours ago, 22A said:

When Jeff Stelling went over to Sixfields after the equaliser, the reporter there said "The game isn't over, but Bristol Rovers fans have invaded the pitch and are letting off flares".

 

Oh how this is starting to remind me of the celebrations at Wycombe which surely secured their survival.

Just for the record that Keith Brockman bloke or whatever his name is I can't stand at all!!! He always makes a big deal out of any tiny bit of success Rovers have. Juding by how he talks You would think it was them who were the Championship club beating teams like Wednesday, Forest, Fulham etc.

But they're not, instead they are celebrating a 2-2 draw with Northampton in league two. 

No matter where they finish in League Two or One to be so far behind a team that plays in the same City is shameful and quite pathetic. Whatever they do in Leagues one or Two will never compare to our successes in the Championship. Even if we finished bottom of the Championship to just be in that league is more of a success then competing with the likes of Accrington for promotion.

The last time they got to league one they got rid of Trollope who each your produced a consistent team that were steady eddies in League One and took them on a good run in the cup. But that wasn't good enough for them, they sacked him because they got too big for their boots, now they are singing from the roof tops about returning to a league that Trollope got sacked for for not being able to get them promoted out of it. Strange philosophy.

Been busy today so about 10 minutes from the end today I  text my friend to ask the score, they said 4-1, I replied with lots of explicits to then be told it was us winning, then tuned in to radio Bristol and Rovers scored and I couldn't believe how they were creaming about a 2-2 draw in league two ffs!! A bit of perspective we have just beat a top team in the Championship. They drawer in league two.

On 3/4/2016 at 22:30, Smaller than a flea said:

On 3/4/2016 at 23:17, Andy082005 said:

On what basis do you think you will get 8,500-9,000?? 18,000 in the Championship?!?! Haha...

You didn't get close to 8k or 9k that last time you were in League One a few years back

Your clutching at straws at just guessing.  

Yes there is a gap. Take away the two divisions, take away the fact we have a better stadium, better training facilities, more fans, and more money....then yeah...take away all that, and that gaps not that much . 

You plonker 

 

I don't think there's much doubt that Rovers attract away attendances on a par with City.  The question is why their home crowds are so much lower.

Clearly being in the Championship City attract more fans.  Rovers average about 7,000 recently.  City about 15,000, but constrained by the rebuild.  I would guess if the ground was complete, and for sake of fairness, City were doing pretty well in the Championship, there would be about 22,000 there. 

If Rovers are in League 1 next season, the crowd would increase to about 8,500 - 9,000, and if (bear with me) they get to the Championship, maybe 11,000, or nearly a sell-out every week at the Mem.  I base my opinion on recent attendances, not those from decades ago.

If the UWE actually gets built (and there's no evidence yet that it will), I would expect Rovers in the Championship to up their crowds from my 11,000 projection to 18,000 or so, which is modest compared with how Brighton did.

There is a gap, but place both teams in the same league with modern stadiums and it's not much

48 minutes ago, Reds2016 said:

Next fixtures;

Mk Dons v Fulham 

Hull v Bristol C

Rotherham v Leeds 

Nerves are starting now!

No nerves here. With 8 games to play I'd say we're almost safe. In fact I'd be confident enough to say we will 100% stay up.

**** you Zach Clough!!!!

3 hours ago, RedRaw said:

So, they have the guy who got sacked for completely fudging up Wembley "delivering" their new stadium, the guy who got sacked for nearly driving Swansea to the wall and who associates himself with convicted fraudsters as their new chairman and a Chelsea loving president whose "wealth" is still a mystery as is any real indication of what he intends to invest.............pftt, sit back, relax and take in the view boys, this is only going one way 

Spot on sir!!

5 minutes ago, Rudolf Hucker said:

Of course, they are talking about a multi-use stadium but there's no rugby with which to share now. Perhaps they should consider speedway and greyhound racing?

They would steal the bikes and the dogs.

1 minute ago, City169 said:

Wasn't Wembley really delayed and over budget? And Rovers hired the man who himself says he was responsible for all that...

The gift....