Lee Johnson

[Fordy62]

2 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Devil's advocate then, are you saying that had Cotts managed to keep us up.and stay in situ until summer 2016 he wouldn't have been backed somewhat more as revenue grew?

Genuinely, I don’t think he would have. 

Cotts wanted to sign Tomlin on loan, but was told there wasn’t the funds to do so. LJ appointed and guess what…

[Mr Popodopolous]

5 minutes ago, Fordy62 said:

Genuinely, I don’t think he would have. 

Cotts wanted to sign Tomlin on loan, but was told there wasn’t the funds to do so. LJ appointed and guess what…

Ah okay wasn't aware of that bit or had forgotten. Thanks I'll revise my views a bit.

I hope he would have backed him at minimum in line with the growth, it's the least he deserved.

NP post Scott sale will be a big test as to whether Lansdown has changed, will do the correct thing. I hope he does- think we all hope he does, NP has navigated a very difficult period for us and done it well.

[Loosey Boy]

2 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Ah okay wasn't aware of that bit or had forgotten. Thanks I'll revise my views a bit.

I hope he would have backed him at minimum in line with the growth, it's the least he deserved.

NP post Scott sale will be a big test as to whether Lansdown has changed, will do the correct thing. I hope he does- think we all hope he does, NP has navigated a very difficult period for us and done it well.

Agreed - NP deserves to be backed…..next few weeks will be interesting and quite telling

[Mr Popodopolous]

3 minutes ago, Loosey Boy said:

Agreed - NP deserves to be backed…..next few weeks will be interesting and quite telling

Definitely deserves to be, they definitely will be interesting and telling.

He will expect to be backed to a reasonable level, I hope the club and NP are on the same page.

[And Its Smith]

[Riaz]

4 hours ago, ChrisBW said:

LJ was out of his depth. A league one/two manager in England, should never have gotten the job in the first place 

If he was out of his depth…

How did he take a woeful team  ijn the relegation zone and move us up the table in his first season? 
 

And then establish us as top half side?

[Riaz]

3 hours ago, The Coach said:

Bottom line for me is he was given the key to the kingdom with strong financial backing like we’ve never seen before at City. Just to be a mid-table team that had no football philosophy in play that Johnson always spoke about. 

Again this is a total myth. 
soon after joining the club had to sell kodjia for 13m… and then during his time, we kept selling his best players… and he spent the money from the sales. He actually had a negative net spend 

[Riaz]

2 hours ago, Fordy62 said:

We should probably factor in that the outgoings of Reid and Wester (credit) were considerably offset by him giving away Ayling and Freeman, both of whom proved themselves to be far better than pretty much everyone he brought in. 

Ayling out his hands.

Freeman? Really? He was bang average for us at champ level and couldn’t beat a player. We brought in Pato, who is a much better player 

[Riaz]

1 hour ago, Fordy62 said:

Genuinely, I don’t think he would have. 

Cotts wanted to sign Tomlin on loan, but was told there wasn’t the funds to do so. LJ appointed and guess what…

 Nothing to do with the kodjia sale then

[Riaz]

Cotts was talking us back down. LJ Kept us up. Gotta give him credit for that 

[Fred89]

3 hours ago, Davefevs said:

I have no LJ playing-days bias, I saw him once live, for 40 minutes home to Watford in the 0-0 where he went off injured in 07-08.

So I’d rather criticise the “regime” rather than an individual.

But around 2016 a mate of mine asked whether SL’s sustainable financial model could see us make the PL vs the unfairness of the parachute payment clubs, so I set about really looking into finances in football.  My interest had already been piqued by reading two books, one by David Conn (The Beautiful Game) and Simon Jordan’s autobiography, which totally changed by opinion of him.

Before the pandemic, the finances were beginning to look a bit dodgy.  And I don’t mean breaking FFP, just that for the outlay and increases in costs (wages, amortisation, other) I wasn’t convinced we were quite as “world class” as we were being told.

Going back to the question posed by my mate, it started to dawn on me that two things were important:

• Academy
• Recruitment

No shit Sherlock you may cry.

And over time, we didn’t perform well enough in either of those areas.

We didn’t bring enough through the academy.  Whether they were good enough is a matter for debate, but even if they’re not, a bit of exposure can make them a sellable asset.

We recruited poorly, our hit-rate was terrible.  Thankfully, the few hits we had covered up the misses.  A “world leading recruitment set-up” we were told, “seen as the go to for other clubs”, was a laughable claim.

Part of the reason for the poor hit-rate was:

• too many players brought in meaning they couldn’t all play, therefore they couldn’t add value
• bought then loaned them
• too high fees / too high wages
• no real playing system, meaning bullet one

Basically the Webster and Kelly sales saved it from being disastrous.  Covid shone a light on it…and Covid really did was speed up the decline…and make a rebuild necessary and draw out the pain.  If you think this is all down to Covid, then I’m afraid I couldn’t disagree with you more.  I wrote on here several times pre-Covid about the warning signs.  The trajectory was worrying.

Before Mr P chimes in, I’ve used the football club accounts above, not to be devious, but because Ashton Gate Ltd numbers don’t really have any materiality or relevance to this debate.

Despite all the sales, we still lost £70m over 5 seasons of SL / Ashton’s tenure (4 of LJ / 1 of DH), or £35m of the 4 years of SL / MA / LJ.

The wage bill doubled, the amortisation went up 5-fold, other costs doubled too.  We carried on spending more and more even though income had steadied.  Basically we’d done the stadium re-fit and there’s inky so much you can sweat!

I also “we” a lot above…I should really use “they”.

LJ did some good things too, but he was part of a “regime” that was moving towards putting us in the shit.

That’s my brief summary of why I think LJ deserves criticism for the part he played…and that’s with no bias from his playing days or his dad or anything else.

As above he deserves some praise too, but for me, the above tends to outweigh it.

Happy to go into more detail if you like.  But if you’re blaming Covid you’ve missed the root cause.

Is it perfect under SL / NP / PA / Tins?  Nope.  But it is moving us forward into a far better position to achieve success.

I’m completely happy with Pearsons management of the club up to now just for the record. I just find the criticism of Lee Johnson tenure aggravating.

Lets hope we can make the playoffs this year and move on as a fan base from our perceptions of why we are stuck in a repetitive cycle of mediocrity 

Edited August 11, 2023 by Fred89

[Davefevs]

1 hour ago, Riaz said:

Again this is a total myth. 
soon after joining the club had to sell kodjia for 13m… and then during his time, we kept selling his best players… and he spent the money from the sales. He actually had a negative net spend 

We didn’t need to sell Kodjia at all.

We got an offer a) too good to turn down b) player wanted to go to a bigger club and c) we had Abraham.

You could easily argue that LJ facilitated the move by playing him on the wing and playing Abraham centrally over him.

He signed 19 players that season (16 perm / 3 loans):

 

[petehinton]

2 hours ago, Riaz said:

Cotts was talking us back down. LJ Kept us up. Gotta give him credit for that 

He kept us up because of the January window imo. Tomlin in a cotterill team would’ve kept us up in the same way he did under LJ, no doubt in my mind. 
 

Cotts wasn’t backed, and that’s what killed us. 

[SydneyCity]

LJ’s Brentisms are not going unnoticed north of the border.

[Tim Monaghan]

7 hours ago, Riaz said:

Cotts was talking us back down. LJ Kept us up. Gotta give him credit for that 

At last, someone who is talking some sense. 

SC’s league one campaign is my favourite in my 30 years of supporting City. But let's not kid ourselves, he was out of his depth in the Championship. The football being played was awful and we were going down under him, let's not sugarcoat things here. The atmosphere was TOXIC against Cotts before he was sacked. Has everyone forgotten that bit? 

Edited August 12, 2023 by Ghost Rider

[Riaz]

6 hours ago, petehinton said:

He kept us up because of the January window imo. Tomlin in a cotterill team would’ve kept us up in the same way he did under LJ, no doubt in my mind. 
 

Cotts wasn’t backed, and that’s what killed us. 

Again. Another myth. 
 

Cotts went for unrealistic targets. Amongst other things 

[Riaz]

1 hour ago, Ghost Rider said:

At last, someone who is talking some sense. 

SC’s league one campaign is my favourite in my 30 years of supporting City. But let's not kid ourselves, he was out of his depth in the Championship. The football being played was awful and we were going down under him, let's not sugarcoat things here. The atmosphere was TOXIC against Cotts before he was sacked. Has everyone forgotten that bit? 

People forget how bad we were, before Cotts got sacked 

[The Coach]

7 hours ago, Davefevs said:

We didn’t need to sell Kodjia at all.

We got an offer a) too good to turn down b) player wanted to go to a bigger club and c) we had Abraham.

You could easily argue that LJ facilitated the move by playing him on the wing and playing Abraham centrally over him.

He signed 19 players that season (16 perm / 3 loans):

 

Thanks @Davefevs funnily enough was going to respond with yourself tagged to provide such data

Therefore my point is valid and truthful. Just have to look at the player turnover during Johnson’s time.

[Tim Monaghan]

6 minutes ago, Riaz said:

People forget how bad we were, before Cotts got sacked 

He was literally fighting people in the crowd .

I love Cotts, but everyone seems to just forget that part. 

[Riaz]

7 hours ago, Davefevs said:

We didn’t need to sell Kodjia at all.

We got an offer a) too good to turn down b) player wanted to go to a bigger club and c) we had Abraham.

You could easily argue that LJ facilitated the move by playing him on the wing and playing Abraham centrally over him.

He signed 19 players that season (16 perm / 3 loans):

 

Kodjia was refusing to play

[Riaz]

11 minutes ago, The Coach said:

Thanks @Davefevs funnily enough was going to respond with yourself tagged to provide such data

Therefore my point is valid and truthful. Just have to look at the player turnover during Johnson’s time.

Again, the club kept selling our best players. 

[The Coach]

1 minute ago, Riaz said:

Again, the club kept selling our best players. 

Unless you’re top of the food chain. You’re always going to lose your best players to bigger teams. I genuinely never understand how there are still a lot of football fans who don’t understand this. It’s not even just about the club. The players heads will have turned also.

Bar a couple of players that were part of our academy. How many players did Johnson actually work to improve on to then have a big sell on? I can only think of Webster and Brownhill top of my head. Where did the rest go? Either released or cheap transfer details to lower league sides or overseas.

Lee Johnson was a failed experiment. 10 years in football management with a Johnstones paint trophy to his name. Doesn’t look great does it.

 

[Silvio Dante]

Is this still going? I thought we’d settled it a couple of weeks ago. By no means great player, by no means great manager, by no means shit player and by no means shit manager. With people at the extremes too entrenched to change their viewpoint.

Still, something good has to come of the extension of this thread and I propose it’s that you all follow this:

https://x.com/brentorjohnson?s=11&t=oNPHaJCf-XZnPFOJQiVJjg
 

Sample…

 

[Son of Fred]

2 hours ago, Ghost Rider said:

At last, someone who is talking some sense. 

SC’s league one campaign is my favourite in my 30 years of supporting City. But let's not kid ourselves, he was out of his depth in the Championship. The football being played was awful and we were going down under him, let's not sugarcoat things here. The atmosphere was TOXIC against Cotts before he was sacked. Has everyone forgotten that bit? 

The one thing I can't forget is the making a point by leaving spaces on the bench -

That's when I knew he'd lost it...and he'd lost my support.

[Riaz]

18 minutes ago, The Coach said:

Unless you’re top of the food chain. You’re always going to lose your best players to bigger teams. I genuinely never understand how there are still a lot of football fans who don’t understand this. It’s not even just about the club. The players heads will have turned also.

Bar a couple of players that were part of our academy. How many players did Johnson actually work to improve on to then have a big sell on? I can only think of Webster and Brownhill top of my head. Where did the rest go? Either released or cheap transfer details to lower league sides or overseas.

Lee Johnson was a failed experiment. 10 years in football management with a Johnstones paint trophy to his name. Doesn’t look great does it.

 

I’m not saying the club shouldn’t have sold the players.

Point I’m making is, when people say he spent a lot or had a high turnover of players, it’s not telling the whole story..

he improved many players.

Webster and brownhill as you say.

Took Bobby Reid from his career going nowhere to a 20 goal striker.

Joey Bryan improved immensely 

Aden Flint had his best years under Johnson.

[Red Exile]

11 minutes ago, The Coach said:

Lee Johnson was a failed experiment. 10 years in football management with a Johnstones paint trophy to his name. Doesn’t look great does it.

This - in a nutshell. But you'll get nowhere arguing with those who bought into him.

I think @Silvio Dante hits the nail on the head.

7 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

Is this still going? I thought we’d settled it a couple of weeks ago. By no means great player, by no means great manager, by no means shit player and by no means shit manager. With people at the extremes too entrenched to change their viewpoint.

Still, something good has to come of the extension of this thread and I propose it’s that you all follow this:

https://x.com/brentorjohnson?s=11&t=oNPHaJCf-XZnPFOJQiVJjg

I note that 'Lee David Brent Johnson' remains his name on Wikipedia.

[ChippenhamRed]

7 hours ago, petehinton said:

He kept us up because of the January window imo. Tomlin in a cotterill team would’ve kept us up in the same way he did under LJ, no doubt in my mind. 
 

Cotts wasn’t backed, and that’s what killed us. 

“Cotts wasn’t backed”

 

[Bristol Oil Services]

If you compare Lee to Cotts/SOD/by Bristol City's standards, you can only say he was very good, did very well (sadly for us, the rest of the Championship have the bar set much higher); if you just look at Luton, who were mid table in L2 when Lee rocked up here, you want to ask: what's your problem, Lee? Why have we not finished top six? Not enough to spend?

This club, in this (unfair, unequal) division, cannot afford not to win promotion, at some point. Lee had to deliver what Luton have done, and he failed. He failed better than anyone here since his dad, tbf.

Steve must be of this opinion too, otherwise why sack him when we were 12th?

 

[Riaz]

Finally some sense.

We we’re newly promoted and Cotts was going for some totally unrealistic players 

[Robbored]

5 minutes ago, Son of Fred said:

The one thing I can't forget is the making a point by leaving spaces on the bench 

That was a huge factor in his sacking. That irritated SL immensely and when SC went the him asking for money to buy a striker that was the coup de grace