Play Off Contenders

[Wanderingred]

Let’s face it, how many times this season have we walked out of Ashton Gate thinking “we should have won that”.

Swansea, Watford, Sheff Utd, Blackburn, Wigan, Reading… We’ve been dominating games at home but failed to put teams to the sword. It’s a good start at least. Nigel has sorted out the performances, now we need to make sure we get the results to go with them!

[Lanterne Rouge]

Coventry 1 up

[The Humble Realist]

We are going to finish exactly where we deserve to. 

Anything else is just rose tinted glasses or doom merchants 

[Supersonic Robin]

Would hate to see Luton, Coventry, or Millwall go up. It's both depressing and embarrassing to be overtaken and outperformed by teams who shouldn't be any better than us. 

By process of elimination, I suppose I'm hoping for Middlesbrough, Sunderland, or WBA!

[firstdivision]

12 hours ago, Harry said:

This run of fixtures below was the problem. 
At the start of the season I’d have settled for lower-mid table. But on reflection I think this year has been the poorest championship season we’ve seen in many years. Every team we’ve faced at the Gate I’ve gone home thinking “well they weren’t anything special”. 
There are a number of very poor teams, a big number of very average teams, and really only 1 good team. 
In hindsight I think this season, despite all of our financial problems, has been a missed opportunity. 
 

I look back to that run of fixtures between October and the new year and think what might have been. 
It was clear to a lot of fans during this period that we needed to get away from the 3 / 5 at the back. There were some odd things happening during that period, ranging from Klose’s form, King at centre back, Scott not being played in his best role, Weimann at wing back and numerous others. 
Once we switched to 4 at the back and played our best player in his best role, we improved. 
I just look back and wonder, had we changed it up earlier, that poor run of 1 win in 10 and 3 wins in 18 might be the difference between us making a playoff challenge. 
It’s a very very poor standard this season and I actually think that the way we’ve been playing this last couple of months would’ve had us up there had we played this way all season. 

There’s a lot of good sense in this post.
At times, it’s felt like a nearly season with some good performances but no points.
But I still feel the squad was a little too thin to give it a real go. And when injuries arrived we looked a desperately ordinary side (at Luton and Swansea, for example). Also, play-off chasing teams don’t have Andy King at centre-back: the Stoke home defeat was one of the most dispiriting of the season (a game we should have won but for two gifts). I would argue that play-off chasing teams don’t have Andy King in them full stop but that’s just me.

Edited April 29, 2023 by firstdivision

[Mr Popodopolous]

9 hours ago, Wanderingred said:

Let’s face it, how many times this season have we walked out of Ashton Gate thinking “we should have won that”.

Swansea, Watford, Sheff Utd, Blackburn, Wigan, Reading… We’ve been dominating games at home but failed to put teams to the sword. It’s a good start at least. Nigel has sorted out the performances, now we need to make sure we get the results to go with them!

Not sure about the Swansea or Wigan games but without doubt the others. We had just the one shot on target v Wigan albeit more possession, and hit woodwork twice...they hit it once. We went to sleep for a while after we took the lead in that Wigan game.

We're not the luckiest of sides it seems but for games we have dominated without reward at home there have been away games where perhaps we have absorbed a lot of pressure and got results we may not have.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Mr Popodopolous

[Garland-sweden]

Coventry, Millwall, Sunderland, Blackburn, WBA, they are fighting top six. Our team played those teams and think we were better than them. This leauge is very tough and you can not make easy misstakes , the ref, pens. Believe we will be top six next season.