Boston Red

The maddening thing about the Swindon away game was that Christian Roberts was playing the game of his life and ripping Swindon to shreds. They equalised and immediately Wilson took off Roberts and brought on Lee Miller. When the chance came to Miller he hadn't been running around, in the flow of the game, with his head and his legs connected, and he missed. Roberts would have buried it but Wilson had taken him off. 

Another maddening thing about that season is that all we had to do was beat Brighton once in two games, one at home, and one at a neutral venue. One defeat and one win would have done it. But we couldn't.

Another maddening thing is how easy it would have been to go up that season if we had not sold Scott Murray. The season before he had scored 26 goals from the right wing. We had scored 106 goals in total, league and cup in 2002/3. All we had to do was tighten the defence, which we did by playing centre-backs at fullback. Carey played right back and Hill played left back. We only conceded 37 goals in 46 league games in 2003/4. With last season's attack did we then cruise to promotion? No. Because Steve Lansdown has two heads, a football fan's head and an accountant's head. Scott Murray was in the last year of his contract, so Lansdown the accountant took £600 000 from Reading for Murray. If that money was really necessary for the club to survive then you accept that, but the next day Lansdown put his football fan's head back on and spent that money on Lee Miller and Luke Wilshire, who were both useless. It would have been better to keep Murray, even if you lose him for nothing a year later, because his extra goals would easily have got us the extra points for promotion. At which point he would probably have signed a new contract anyway. Oh and by the way, we re-signed Murray anyway along with Tony Rougier and Darren Caskey ten months later, waiving some of his fee from Reading, so a 'financial' decision made us no money at all, and cost us our best player and promotion. But this sort of thing happens often with Steve "accountant-head football fan-heart" Lansdown. The decisions sort of cancel themselves out and you get the worst of both worlds. 

I am horribly biased, but I still think to this day if Mickey Bell and Brian Tinnion had been playing in the top division, they would have been picked for England. Both could cross perfectly left-footed, with Beckham-esque curl on the cross, and could put free kicks and penalties in the top corner at will. England needed left sided players in that era too. I remember sitting away at Leicester amongst the home fans, and they were amazed when Tinnion hit the bar twice from two 30 yard free kicks. 

Something died in me that day at the Millenium stadium. I've hardly been back since. 

That's all I want from my football team.

Playing good football, goals, and a win.

Not bothered about a new badge that looks like a robin on a unicycle.

Not bothered about what you call the training ground. 

Not even that bothered about which division you are in. You still play half your games in the same stadium.

Goals, good football, and a win. That'll do me. 

We play five at the back where the two wing backs, Sykes and Dasilva, aren't really top defenders in the sense of dominating their opponent and heading and tackling. 

We then have another weak link in Vyner.

This defence only has two midfielders in front of it for protection.

You are asking for it. 

Goalkeeper - 

Right Back - LUKE AYLING. Sold for £200, 000.

Left Back -  JOE BRYAN. Sold for 6 million.

Centre Back - ADAM WEBSTER. Sold for 21 million.

Centre Back - LLOYD KELLY. Sold for 13 million.

Centre Midfield - MARLON PACK. Sold for 4 million.

Centre Midfield - KOREY SMITH. Sold for................no wait..................given away for free to Swansea by Mark Ashton.

Right Midfield - JOSH BROWNHILL. Sold for 9 million.

Left Midfield - NICOLAS ELIASSON. Sold for 2.2 million.

Centre Forward - BOBBY REID. Sold for 10 million.

Centre Forward - JONATHAN KODJIA. Sold for 15 million.

SUBSTITUTE

ADEN FLINT - Sold for 7 million.

NUMBER OF THOSE PLAYERS THAT WENT ON TO PLAY IN THE PREMIER LEAGUE - Seven. 

TOTAL MONEY RECEIVED. - 87.4 million.

TOTAL CHANCE OF PROMOTION NOW THAT YOU HAVE SOLD ALL YOUR BEST PLAYERS AND GIVEN THE MONEY TO JOHNSON AND ASHTON TO WASTE ON GUSTAV ENGVALL, MARLEY WATKINS, MILAN DJURIC, ADAM NAGY, JAY DASILVA, KASEY PALMER, AND NAKHI WELLS. - Zero. 

What I object to about Mr Lansdown's tenure is this.

Bristol City used to be its own football club with its own ground and no debt.

It is now just a sub-section of a Land-based, Multi-sport, Property-development, Profit-motivated, Speculative Franchise. 

In the last 30 years City usually only get five or six years in the second tier before the club gets relegated and has to re-set. We wasted four years under Johnson selling all our best players and wasting the money on bad signings, and now a South exit from the Championship is looking more likely than a North exit. 

Didn't we beat Forest away on penalties in the 2006/7 promotion season in the LDV cup? Jevons scored an overhead kick from the edge of the box in the fog, it finished 2-2, and we won on penalties. Then lost to the Gas in the semis but went up.

CRASH OUT OF THE PLAY-0FFS 4 by Lee Johnson.

CRASH OUT OF THE PLAY OFFS 1. 2016/7.

In October 2016 City are 6th. Although Johnson still has two years to run on his contract, Lansdown extends it. This proves embarrassing for him, as City immediately lose 13 out of 16, including an unwanted club record 8 in a row. City just about avoid relegation, and finish one place higher than last season, 17th, but after spending 10 million on new players it is a disappointment of a season.

CRASH OUT OF THE PLAY OFFS 2. 2017/8

On Boxing Day 2017 against Reading, City win 2-0 with a Paterson curler into the top corner and a goal from youngster Lloyd Kelly, making his home debut as a substitute. City are SECOND in the Championship. They then are 1-1 and 2-2 with the great Manchester City over two legs, and although they concede last minute goals in each leg to go out 5-3, it is a mightily impressive show against the best team in Europe. 6 Premier League managers ring Lee Johnson to ask advice on how to play Man City.  The club say "We are a Premier League club in training." CRASH. Flint, Reid, and Bryan all say they want to leave the club and won't sign new contracts. City lose to Wolves and then 5-0 to Villa. City only win a pathetic FOUR league matches for the rest of the season and finish in a miserable ELEVENTH. 

CRASH OUT OF THE PLAY OFFS 3. 2018/9

City win 9 games out of 9 over December/January/February 2019. After a few defeats and draws they then beat Sheff Utd 3-2 away (Weimann hat-trick), Middlesbrough 1-0 away (Webster), and West Brom 3-2 at home (Brownhill, Weimann, Hunt). 

City are fifth with only six games to go. If they can beat Derby at home, effectively a shoot-out for 6th place, they only need 5 points from the other 5 games to finish in the play offs. But they lose to Derby at home, and only take 5 points from their last 6 games in total.  They finish 8th. 

At this point a narrative sprung up that Johnson was improving City year on year, based on final league position; 18th/17th/11th/8th. This implies that City are not a play off team, but we are steadily improving year on year and are creeping up on the play offs slowly but surely. The truth is rather different. The truth is that Johnson had absolutely no difficulty whatsoever getting City into the play offs, it is just that we crashed out again. Now, we crashed out to a higher position than the season before, but so what? A miss is as good as a mile. 

CRASH OUT OF THE PLAY OFFS 4. 2019/20

In February 2020 City beat QPR away 1-0 (Fammy neck-busting diving header). It is their 5th win out of 6. They are 6th, with 50 points from 30 games. You know what is coming next. The next 11 games?  Win 1 Draw 2 Lose 8. With only 5 games left of the season City have slumped to 12th, on 55 points. Not even the Lee Johnson party trick of pointing to an improved league position will work this time. Lansdown has had enough and fires Johnson.

So I am pleased Lee Johnson is doing well at Sunderland. He gave his all at City. When asked whether he ever had a day off he paused and said "No." His wife elbowed him at 11.30 pm in bed for taking a work call. Dean Holden banned Lee Johnson from contacting him with new ideas between the hours of 10pm and 8am so that he (Dean Holden) could get some sleep. Can't fault the bloke's commitment. Hope he takes Sunderland up. But can he get them over the line and not crash out at the end? That remains to be seen. 

What's disappointing is that LJ does not cash his successes.

Da Silva is forced to come on against Brentford, sets up the winner, plays well against Hull. Does LJ run with that bit of luck? No, drops him, and loses an advantage.

Taylor comes on against Hull, looks great, sets up the winner, gives us life. Does LJ run with that and start him? No. 

2 minutes ago, Dreamkiller said:

It's really difficult to explain 'briefly'. I could probably write a book about the man and his 'football style'. Basically though the matches (in general) were deadly dull to an extreme.

He was always happy with a 0-0 and if we sneaked a goal, so be it. There are plenty of managers who adopt a safety first policy, but again, Pulis just took it to an extreme. 

We once went on a run of 21 consecutive league games where the result was either 0-0, 0-1 or 1-0. It was excrutiating. 

There's loads more I could say with examples to back up the craziness behind the negativity, but I honestly don't want to bore people or end up repeating what I've said previously. 

Let's just say I'd rather be in the Championship with just about any other manager than be existing in the Premier League with him back in charge.

Hope that give a bit of an insight. Sorry it's not a lot.

Cheers pal, I understand. I once watched 5 successive 0-0s at home under Pulis. And that was in the third tier when we had million pound players up front.

35 minutes ago, Dreamkiller said:

Oh I can. I won't bore you with the details now, but I gave a full explanation when I first joined this forum, so feel free to check out my previous posts.

 

Any chance you could elaborate briefly, Dk? Genuinely interested.

PS At least one of us is going to be happy tonight.