Football / Bristol City
‘A disappointing week for Bristol City’
One week. Two games. Two losses and two frustrating matches that in all honesty could have gone either way. Such is life in this league though things can change pretty quickly and City will go into Saturday’s match against Blackburn hoping for their first win in three weeks.
The first of our two losses was an irritating away defeat to our Welsh foes managed by pantomime villain Neil Warnock. The match itself was as annoying as it was disappointing. We didn’t quite look up for the fight, and, of course, Cardiff, under their new boss, did. They out battled us at first and by the time we had rose to the challenge we were a couple of goals behind and chasing our tails.
Match reports suggest our second game of the week in the nations capital against Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s Queens Park Rangers was a similarly frustrating match for those supporting the mighty Bristol City.
So, what have we learnt from our zero points over the past week or so?
Firstly, is that this league is tight. We didn’t play well in either game but we could have picked up points and maybe even could have even won both matches had things panned out slightly differently and some refereeing decisions gone our way.
Secondly is that we are pretty light up front and in goal-scoring options in general this season. It won’t have escaped peoples attention that Tammy Abraham failed to score in either game and, as previously touched upon in this blog, we don’t seem, at the moment at least, to have many other options for that lone striker role.
Gustav Engvall will hopefully become that other option but his Bristol City career has been blighted by injury thus far and he is nowhere near match speed just yet. The other recognised striker on our books is Aaron Wilbraham who, with the best will in the world, doesn’t seem to be able to play a full ninety minutes and certainly not in back-to-back games.
It is frustrating to see the likes of Peter Odemwingie, who was up until recently without a club, not signed up even on a short term basis. I thought he impressed for us last season and he certainly could have done a job supporting our current strike force.
Overall though I think most City fans will be happy with how the first couple of months of the 2016/17 season have gone. We play a Blackburn team this weekend who sit just one place above the drop zone and have had a shaky start under new boss Owen Coyle so fans will expect a change of fortunes no doubt. I for one will be applauding the return of Derek Williams who left us for Coyle’s side just before the transfer window closed.
We also host Hull City on Tuesday night in a English Football League tie that could see us reach the last eight of the competition and face one of the countries top teams which could see, potentially at least, us selling out at our new look stadium for the first time, but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.
I rarely make predictions but this week I am going to put my head above water and say we will beat Blackburn and make it through our fourth round cup tie, perhaps on penalty kicks.
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