Lee Johnson

[slartibartfast]

6 hours ago, pongo88 said:

Based on his post match press conferences, he could make a good career as a Stanley Unwin tribute act (one for the oldies) 

Ah, a deep thorkus and a trickley how down the tabloders to the dungeymost.....deep folly !

[Riaz]

On 28/07/2023 at 12:31, Silvio Dante said:

It’s not a weak argument. I watched Marvin, I thought Marvin was great. What I can do, which you can’t, is understand that sometimes a player who isn’t popular can be integral to a team.

Just to confirm in that season:

First 38 games we got 67 points - 1.76ppg

Last 8 games we got 7 points - 0.88ppg

If for approximately 1/5 of a season you were without a certain player and you got 0.88 less ppg on average (essentially moving from promotion to relegation form), you’d suggest that player was pretty integral to the success of the team.

That it isn’t viewed that way is simply because his name is Lee Johnson.

The team that season was better - way better- than the sum of its parts (hence Byfield top scoring with 8). If you took any of them out, it may well have been the same drop off. But it was LJ, and the dropoff happened. That’s just basic facts.

Yep.

LJ was key to how we played that season - he would take the ball off the back four, especially jamie mccombe and start attacks and get us playing.

When he got injured, we missed that link. And mccombe and the rest of the back four, constantly lumped the ball down field aimlessy.

[Riaz]

On 28/07/2023 at 16:04, Robbored said:

I watched every game at AG that season (as I do every season) and I honestly can’t remember LJ ever making a telling contribution apart from when he scored a goal. The midfield players that impressed me were Marv, Noble and Hartley. Marv in particular was the best of them all with his drive and power.

I remember when he got injured at Home Park on a rainy night and had to be substituted and my heart sank. Losing him was a such a blow.

I’m guessing that LJ played in that game but I can’t actually remember.

LJ, particularly the 07-08 season, did the simple things well and you only realised how important he was, once he got injured.

You may under-rate him taking the ball off the back four and get play going - and so did i - but the results spoke for themselves.

[Robbored]

2 hours ago, Riaz said:

LJ, particularly the 07-08 season, did the simple things well and you only realised how important he was, once he got injured.

You may under-rate him taking the ball off the back four and get play going - and so did i - but the results spoke for themselves.

LJ was a small fish in a big pond and he wasn’t reason that City won games - he may have played a minor part but better results were down to a solid defence, creative players like Noble and Hartley. The strikers were pretty useful as well.

[Riaz]

12 minutes ago, Robbored said:

LJ was a small fish in a big pond and he wasn’t reason that City won games - he may have played a minor part but better results were down to a solid defence, creative players like Noble and Hartley. The strikers were pretty useful as well.

Hartley didnt play for us that season - and Noble, as talented as he was - Wasnt the fittest.

LJ wasnt as talented, but he was reliable and performed a job for the team - especially that season

[frenchred]

13 minutes ago, Robbored said:

LJ was a small fish in a big pond and he wasn’t reason that City won games - he may have played a minor part but better results were down to a solid defence, creative players like Noble and Hartley. The strikers were pretty useful as well.

Hartley-Another player who has got better and better the longer he hadn't played for us!

Was only here for one season and grossly over rated

[Wedontplayinblue]

19 minutes ago, Robbored said:

LJ was a small fish in a big pond and he wasn’t reason that City won games - he may have played a minor part but better results were down to a solid defence, creative players like Noble and Hartley. The strikers were pretty useful as well.

Imagine trying to use facts and still getting it wrong. 

[GrahamC]

3 hours ago, Riaz said:

Hartley didnt play for us that season - and Noble, as talented as he was - Wasnt the fittest.

LJ wasnt as talented, but he was reliable and performed a job for the team - especially that season

Indeed- Hartley’s only season with us was 2 years later than this & by the time he arrived Noble had already left.

The “pretty useful” strikers were ones where no individual scored more than 8…

He’s getting all confused again.

[PHILINFRANCE]

5 hours ago, Robbored said:

LJ was a small fish in a big pond and he wasn’t reason that City won games - he may have played a minor part but better results were down to a solid defence, creative players like Noble and Hartley. The strikers were pretty useful as well.

Robbo, you are probably quite correct to say that LJ only played a ‘minor part’ in our playoff season, but it was, nevertheless, a very important minor part and, indeed, was integral to the way we played.

We didn’t really have any standout stars, and certainly didn’t have a 20 goal a season forward - from memory Byfield was our top scorer with 8?, and our goal difference was either + or - 1.

But we had a team, a team that was far greater than its parts, and LJ was integral to and a very important part of that team, playing the ‘minor’ part that ensured all the other parts kept working, as was witnessed when he got injured.

Finally, whilst he was a fine player, Paul Hartley was not a member of our playoff season team.

[robinforlife2]

I think Robbored is getting Hartley and Carle mixed up.

There is no doubt, Noble and Carle were more technically talented players than Johnson and would be get yourself out your seat type players, but I will say it again, as I've said before. The reason we didn't get promoted automatically was Lee Johnson got injured. LJ as a player had exceptional vision, he was on a different wave length to a lot of our players. He is a brilliant reader of the game, and he knew how to do the simple things, he could see how the game moved, and he was very much a playmaker who linked defence to midfield, and brought players into a game. He got a lot of stick for being small or the managers son, but we missed him massively in those games he missed when the wheels fell off in our final 11 matches that season. 

Johnson could see things other players couldn't, he done a lot of the hard work, you don't get praise or noticed for, but when he wasn't there, the other players didn't have that cog that made things click together. 

Regardless of how you see his tenure as our manager, I doubt many with a brain, would not appreciate what he brought to the pitch as a player, and how crucially important he was to us in that 07/08 season. Had he not got injured, I have no doubt, we wouldn't have lost a couple of those games we did, and may have got a win out of a couple of the draws and we would have gone up automatically, we lost more than 5pts without him in those matches. 

[robinforlife2]

15 hours ago, Robbored said:

LJ was a small fish in a big pond and he wasn’t reason that City won games - he may have played a minor part but better results were down to a solid defence, creative players like Noble and Hartley. The strikers were pretty useful as well.

Strikers like Jevons, Byfield, Trundle, Brooker and Adebola who amassed a total of 22 goals between them ? McIndoe, who was a midfielder scored 7, and Scotty and Noble got 3 each. 

Jevons was a bit part player, Adebola came in to cover Brooker being injured in January and Trundle and Byfield led the line who had 12 goals between them.

Those are not the stats of "pretty useful" strikers. 

[CodeRed]

53 minutes ago, robinforlife2 said:

LJ as a player had exceptional vision, he was on a different wave length to a lot of our players. He is a brilliant reader of the game, and he knew how to do the simple things, he could see how the game moved, and he was very much a playmaker who linked defence to midfield, and brought players into a game. He got a lot of stick for being small or the managerplayers into a game. He got a lot of s son, but we missed him massively in those games he missed when the wheels fell off in our final 11 matches that season. 

Johnson could see things other players couldn't, he done a lot of the hard work, you don't get praise or noticed for, but when he wasn't there, the other players didn't have that cog that made things click together. 

Regardless of how you see his tenure as our manager, I doubt many with a brain, would not appreciate what he brought to the pitch as a player, and how crucially important he was to us in that 07/08 season. Had he not got injured, I have no doubt, we wouldn't have lost a couple of those games we did, and may have got a win out of a couple of the draws and we would have gone up automatically, we lost more than 5pts without him in those matches. 

Nice to hear from you Gary, how do think Torquay will do this season.

Edited August 8, 2023 by CodeRed

[SecretSam]

16 hours ago, frenchred said:

Hartley-Another player who has got better and better the longer he hadn't played for us!

Was only here for one season and grossly over rated

See also Lee Trundle

[MarcusX]

17 hours ago, Robbored said:

LJ was a small fish in a big pond and he wasn’t reason that City won games - he may have played a minor part but better results were down to a solid defence, creative players like Noble and Hartley. The strikers were pretty useful as well.

Hartley didn't play that season, Noble - as talented as he was - was mostly sub appearences if I recall

Strikers being "useful" is interesting too as I think that's where we struggled. We were very low scoring and our top scorer got 8 (though Adebola got 6 after arriving in Jan, and some important ones). The other 3 got 5,3 and 1 (Brooker obviously coming back from injury)

We were a team stronger than it's parts, that's for sure. We had a fairly strong defence and we knew how to push to the last minute.

[italian dave]

17 hours ago, Robbored said:

LJ was a small fish in a big pond and he wasn’t reason that City won games - he may have played a minor part but better results were down to a solid defence, creative players like Noble and Hartley. The strikers were pretty useful as well.

Out of interest, which strikers are you thinking of specifically? 

[robinforlife2]

1 hour ago, CodeRed said:

Nice to hear from you Gary, how do think Torquay will do this season.

Great mush, hopefully get promoted. Even invited Robbored to my office down here, so I can make him cry like a baby again, but he seems to be ignoring me. 

[Leveller]

11 minutes ago, robinforlife2 said:

Great mush, hopefully get promoted. Even invited Robbored to my office down here, so I can make him cry like a baby again, but he seems to be ignoring me. 

With a bit of luck he’s gone to an appointment at the opticians.

[MarcusX]

2 hours ago, robinforlife2 said:

Strikers like Jevons, Byfield, Trundle, Brooker and Adebola who amassed a total of 22 goals between them ? McIndoe, who was a midfielder scored 7, and Scotty and Noble got 3 each. 

Jevons was a bit part player, Adebola came in to cover Brooker being injured in January and Trundle and Byfield led the line who had 12 goals between them.

Those are not the stats of "pretty useful" strikers. 

Jevons went on loan early then never returned

 

[IAmNick]

Lee was injured at the end of that 07/08 season, but he still played in 3 of the last 8 games. 3 of the 5 we lost were also against Wolves, Stoke, and Sheff Utd who were all either in or around the top 6 (or 2 in Stoke's case) - tough games at the end of the season. I think it's too simplistic and too few games to point to Lee being in or out of the team as meaningful there.

The Adebola thing - yes our style changed when he signed... and we were extremely effective as a result. After he signed on Jan 30th, we only lost once in the next 10 games, ending W 4, D 5, L1. Not exactly a disasterous change of style then? I liked Adebola and thought people unfairly had little patience with him on here.

Lee was as divisive then as he is now, if not more so. I've never heard cheering at our own sub before as I have when he was taken off once - which was quite unfair on him. It wasn't his fault he was picked, or that his dad was the manager.

My view is that he always tried, but was a pretty limited footballer. He drove me mad with his tiny dinks to nobody from free kicks, not putting a tackle in, and slow recycling of possession. I didn't like him at all - but I do accept he was a reasonable and quite important player for us at that time, albeit one I thought was also limiting us as a team big time.

I didn't find him enjoyable or exciting to watch, but that said I also don't hate him and I don't want him to fail as a manager... although it is slightly entertaining for some reason, I'll admit.

Edited August 8, 2023 by IAmNick

[LondonBristolian]

I think the fundamental point with 2007/2008 was we had a tight team that functioned really well as a unit and everyone had a clear part in that. Both Lee Johnson and Marvin Elliott - and the way they worked in partnership - was essential to that. Johnson wasn't the flashiest or the best midfielder but he knew his role in the game plan and executed it extremely well. It's no coincidence that neither Johnson nor Elliott hit the same standars as we moved away from a structure that was less built around their strengths.

Johnson was a player who knew what he could do and knew that he couldn't do and the system got the best out of that. An objectively "better" midfielder could easily have been far less effective on the team and we had seasons where we hit far lower standards with theoretically better players. 

[Oh Louie louie]

3 hours ago, robinforlife2 said:

Strikers like Jevons, Byfield, Trundle, Brooker and Adebola who amassed a total of 22 goals between them ? McIndoe, who was a midfielder scored 7, and Scotty and Noble got 3 each. 

Jevons was a bit part player, Adebola came in to cover Brooker being injured in January and Trundle and Byfield led the line who had 12 goals between them.

Those are not the stats of "pretty useful" strikers. 

Add enochs name to that list, yep jevons scored twice in his last game for us, in the cup

[Riaz]

11 minutes ago, IAmNick said:

Lee was injured at the end of that 07/08 season, but he still played in 3 of the last 8 games. 3 of the 5 we lost were also against Wolves, Stoke, and Sheff Utd who were all either in or around the top 6 (or 2 in Stoke's case) - tough games at the end of the season. I think it's too simplistic and too few games to point to Lee being in or out of the team as meaningful there.

The Adebola thing - yes our style changed when he signed... and we were extremely effective as a result. After he signed on Jan 30th, we only lost once in the next 10 games, ending W 4, D 5, L1. Not exactly a disasterous change of style then? I liked Adebola and thought people unfairly had little patience with him on here.

Lee was as divisive then as he is now, if not more so. I've never heard cheering at our own sub before as I have when he was taken off once - which was quite unfair on him. It wasn't his fault he was picked, or that his dad was the manager.

My view is that he always tried, but was a pretty limited footballer. He drove me mad with his tiny dinks to nobody from free kicks, not putting a tackle in, and slow recycling of possession. I didn't like him at all - but I do accept he was a reasonable and quite important player for us at that time, albeit one I thought was also limiting us as a team big time.

I didn't find him enjoyable or exciting to watch, but that said I also don't hate him and I don't want him to fail as a manager... although it is slightly entertaining for some reason, I'll admit.

Totally disagree.

I did a post on here at the time. And our results suffered with Dele in the team.

May have had an inital impact - but we werent the same with him in the team the next season onwards.

He won a lot of headers, but it rarely ended up with us retaining possesion.

[IAmNick]

13 minutes ago, Riaz said:

Totally disagree.

I did a post on here at the time. And our results suffered with Dele in the team.

May have had an inital impact - but we werent the same with him in the team the next season onwards.

He won a lot of headers, but it rarely ended up with us retaining possesion.

Many other things changed the next season too - and we still finished 10th the following two seasons which is better than all but one since so it can't have been that bad.

I don't think our squad was as good as our league position showed in 07/08 - we were riding the promotion high, and that amongst other things made the team more than the sum of it's parts. We were in the auto promotion spots for 9 of the last 15 games, it was mad.

The following seasons we regressed to what you could have reasonably expected from what we had at our disposal.

[NickJ]

Have tried very hard to stay away from his thread, had many a diasgreement about LJ in the past.

Nevertheless, Robbored is getting slated, deservedly so for some things, but not deservedly for pointing out that somehow or another, Lee Johnson was constantly selected ahead of unarguably better players. 

When Johnson got injured towards the end of the 2007/08 season, Gary Johnson would have been desperate to start him in the final, but was sensible enough, after the Palace play off games, to realise that had he dropped Carle or Noble, or Elliott, and we'd lost, both Johnsons would have been hammered for it.

The travesty was the Orr injury and Gary Johnson's desperation to get his son on the pitch. The obvious substitution was Vasko on and Carey to right back. Unfortunately bringing Johnson on and moving Elliott - who let's not forget had been named as the central midfielder in the divisions team of the season - to right back was ridiculous. It took away the very essence of what had made us so difficult to beat, something which to be fair to Johnson Senior he had achieved by recognizing and bringing out previously underrated qualities from Elliott.

I'm fairly sure I'm right in saying that Gary's loyalty to his son is what was the catalyst for the incident at Plymough and ultimately cost him his job, which is a shame because after Cotterill, Johnson was the best manager we'd had since Alan Dicks.

I will never forget turning up at Barnsley following a midweek win where Johnson had been left out, to see Johnson on the pitch and Hartley on the bench. Explained by Johnson Senior as due to our "rotation policy", a phrase not heard at Bristol City before or since.

Yes he could play a short pass - usually sideways or bacwards - but thats about all he could do and you have to ask the question, when could you ever remember him making a significant cotribution. A goal, an assist, a killer pass, a goal saving tackle, a brillant cross, a mazy run, anything to make it difficult for the opposition. Being the "cog" that keeps the ball moving sideways and backwards is not that difficult and I had to laugh at one of the comments above "had exceptional vision, he was on a different wave length to a lot of our players." 

There's no way he would have played so many Championship games if his dad hadn't been manager, possibly none at all.

 

As for management, the biggest skill Lee Johnson has is promoting the "Lee Johnson" brand, and that's about it.

Have had a look at the Hibernian forums this week, and apart from the personal comments seen many times before - "David Brent", "slaverer" (apparently Scottish slang for someone who talks gibberish) - "coward" "smug" are just some of the politer ones - the talk is eaxtly as it used to be on here and indeed at Sunderland. Tactically inept. Throwing players under buses. Results not aligned with being given more money to spend that any other manager previously. Fraud.

The thing is, David Brentisms aside, he is articulate and seems capable of talking intelligent people into believing that not only is he the man for the job, but also should be given almsot unlimited funds to spend in order to do that job.

When LJ was a Bristol City player and manager it used to anger me, but now I just think, good luck to him, it's a free market economy and he's managed to achieve not only a well paid Championship playing career with extremely limited ability for that level,  but now also a well paid managerial career with extremely limited credentials.

[redysteadygo]

An accurate description of LJ's ability, playing style and skills (lack of) as far as I'm concerned. I always maintained his only involvement in a game was receiving a pass and playing it in the direction he was facing, to the nearest player, regardless of what pressure that put him under. Now if that's what you call keeping the ball moving etc then you can keep it. As for tackling he would be in the hurdle relay team with McIndoe and Sproule.

[Steve Watts]

23 hours ago, Wedontplayinblue said:

Imagine trying to use facts and still getting it wrong. 

Hey, leave him alone....he only had it pointed out to him a dozen or so times after using the "fact" initially before using it again.  Facts have never been RR's strong point, especially when the topic of conversation happens to have the surname Johnson.

[eardun]

7 hours ago, LondonBristolian said:

I think the fundamental point with 2007/2008 was we had a tight team that functioned really well as a unit and everyone had a clear part in that. Both Lee Johnson and Marvin Elliott - and the way they worked in partnership - was essential to that. Johnson wasn't the flashiest or the best midfielder but he knew his role in the game plan and executed it extremely well. It's no coincidence that neither Johnson nor Elliott hit the same standars as we moved away from a structure that was less built around their strengths.

Johnson was a player who knew what he could do and knew that he couldn't do and the system got the best out of that. An objectively "better" midfielder could easily have been far less effective on the team and we had seasons where we hit far lower standards with theoretically better players. 

Perfectly put. 

[Leveller]

21 hours ago, Steve Watts said:

Hey, leave him alone....he only had it pointed out to him a dozen or so times after using the "fact" initially before using it again.  Facts have never been RR's strong point, especially when the topic of conversation happens to have the surname Johnson.

Intriguingly “Rob bored” wrote quite flatteringly about LJ as a manager a few weeks before he was sacked, but has since gone down a revisionist bandwagon route.

[Kid in the Riot]

Cracking result for Hibs tonight. Watched the second half and they played well. Decent chance of making the group stages now. 

[Gillies Downs Leeds]

8 minutes ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Cracking result for Hibs tonight. Watched the second half and they played well. Decent chance of making the group stages now. 

What is the format then, I thought they had Villa if they got through this tie?