Fanfare For People's Man Fashioning A Bristol Boom

[greenun]

Fanfare for people's man

fashioning a Bristol boom

The Observer, Sunday May 4 2008

Article history

It will happen this afternoon, just as it has happened every time Bristol City have played at home for the past two years. As soon as Gary Johnson emerges from the tunnel at Ashton Gate the crowd will be on their feet, applauding the diminutive manager every inch of his 60-yard walk across the pitch to the dugouts. Even after the 6-0 drubbing at Ipswich last November, which followed a disappointing home defeat to Charlton, they still did it. No moaning, no bitching, just the sound of thousands of pairs of hands clapping interspersed with appreciative chants and whistles.

Before Johnson came to Bristol City they used to perform a similar ritual at Yeovil Town, the club Johnson led from the backwaters of the Conference to the third tier of English League football before quitting for Ashton Gate. Before Yeovil they sung his praises in Riga, where Johnson spent two years laying the foundations to Latvia's surprise qualification for the Euro 2004 finals. To this day he remains a hero in the former Russian republic, his contribution reflected in the role of honorary president of the Latvian Football Federation.

Twenty years after Johnson accepted the job of reserve-team boss at Cambridge United, the gloss just refuses to fade on his remarkable yet relatively unheralded managerial career. Before May is out Bristol City supporters will know whether he has succeeded in his latest mission impossible of guiding the Robins to promotion from the Championship via the playoffs 12 months after making the jump from League One. In the 28 years since they last played in the top flight the club have plumbed dark depths, famously being relegated from the First Division to the Fourth in consecutive seasons. Plenty of bright young managers have come and gone in the meantime, plus a few wily old ones, but none has come close to emulating the 52-year-old Johnson. No wonder the red half of Bristol adores him.

'We said we wanted to compete in our first year in the Championship and we have competed,' Johnson says proudly. 'Of course the higher you are in the table and the longer you are up there, the more people expect you to do things and actually get to the promised land. But whatever happens we've had a fantastic season and that's a credit to everyone.'

Those cynics who suggest Johnson's side are only where they are because of the poor runners competing in this season's Championship field are missing the point. City have underachieved so grandly during the past three decades that they have spent the vast majority of the time in what is now League One. When Johnson arrived in September 2005, relegation to the basement looked a distinct possibility, so you can understand supporters not giving a tinker's cuss about City's negative goal difference going into today's game against Preston North End. If anything their Achilles heel has been a dogged determination to stick to the passing game at all costs.

Then again, Johnson has never been one to take the easy option. As a midfielder he failed to break into the first teams at Watford, Brentford and Northampton, not that his inability to light up the professional game as a player hindered what was to follow. At Cambridge he became John Beck's right-hand man, helping guide them to two FA Cup quarter-finals and the verge of the embryonic Premier League. The football was never pretty, but the experience provided Johnson with a solid education, as did his spell under Graham Taylor as Watford's academy director.

It was while he was at Vicarage Road that a Russian agent - no, not that sort - asked Johnson if he fancied going to Moscow to watch Skonto Riga play. To cut a long story short the trip led to a meeting with the head of Latvia's FA, plus Johnson telling the agent that one of his players - Marian Pahars - had Premier League class. Pahars ended up going to Southampton for £1million and, as City's manager recalls with a wry smile, 'all of a sudden I was the king of Latvia'.

Legend has it that within six months of becoming Latvia's manager Johnson had his players speaking Cockney English, his only native line being 'Where's my aeroplane?' Whatever the truth, his appointment quickly paid dividends in a land where football is traditionally ranked fourth in the popularity stakes behind ice hockey, basketball and athletics. Johnson's charges responded well to the Londoner's honesty and enthusiasm, much as they did at Yeovil. There were offers aplenty to leave Huish Park during his four-year spell. But Johnson stayed put, telling one local reporter that only two clubs were capable of luring him away. One was Bristol City. And the other? 'All he said was, "You'll know if it ever happens," the reporter says. 'He ended up going to City, so I've never found out.'

'Life's about making decisions,' said Johnson. 'Turning some clubs down, deciding to go to Latvia at a certain time, deciding to come to Bristol City at a certain time from Yeovil when everything was sweet and hunky-dory down there. Every decision I've made, I'm pleased to say, has turned out OK. I don't regret anything that I've done in the past. It all helped me gain the experience I wanted to gain. I'd like to become the first manager to go from the Conference up to the Premier League through promotions, albeit with two different clubs, and hopefully we're four games away from that. This is the hardest part. The next few games are going to be unbelievable.'

'It has been a great season, but the last thing we want is for it to peter out,' says Steve Brooker, the City striker who first crossed paths with Johnson 10 years ago. 'He was my youth development officer at Watford and I was in the youth team with his son Lee [also now at City], so I've known him all my adult life. One thing he will say is that it's either his way or no way. He's not afraid to put his ideas across and if you don't want to be part of that then you won't be. He gets all his troops heading in the right direction and gunning for the same thing. These lads have got where they are entirely on merit and don't want to blow it at the end.'

If that explains the Johnson effect on the pitch, how do you account for the man's enduring appeal off it, something that goes well beyond the typical relationship a manager has not just with supporters but also club officials and the press? 'He has that "c" word - charisma,' says Ben Orr, who has followed Johnson's career at Yeovil and City while reporting for BBC Radio Bristol. 'He's excellent at communicating with the fans. He's a manager who says what he's got to say in the dressing room and, because he's said it to the players' faces, doesn't mind coming out and being honest with the press and the fans as well. He builds relationships through honesty and talking to the fans as though they're part of the club. You don't hear that from a lot of managers, at least not genuinely.'

'The biggest thing is that you know people trust you,' Johnson says. 'It takes a little bit of time to get trust between manager and supporters, the kind where they let you get on with it because they know you're trying to do everything for the right reasons. Once you get that trust and the trust of the chairman - and you as a manager trust the supporters and the chairman - then everything can go quite smoothly because no one's trying to do anything that might disrupt what we are trying to achieve. That's what's happened here. That's why we're doing well.'

[Guest Bristoliain]

[Philip Belgrave]

This thread has been duplicated: but it's worth saying again.

A most interesting, well-written and perceptive article. What a pity it is that sporting journalism in general ,both in the U.K and Australia ,is seldom of this high standard.

[myol'man]

This thread has been duplicated: but it's worth saying again.

A most interesting, well-written and perceptive article. What a pity it is that sporting journalism in general ,both in the U.K and Australia ,is seldom of this high standard.

What? You mean Andy Stockhausen ain't this good

[Philip Belgrave]

What? You mean Andy Stockhausen ain't this good

Andy who.....?

No, it was just a general comment. This forum alone is crammed with examples of ill-written, ill-informed,biased crap which masquerades as objective journalism.

I'm sure that your Mr Stockhausen is quite excellent.