Football / Fan's View
‘Are City’s transfer targets beyond them?’
Well, to steal a quote from last week’s Bristol Rovers blog piece, what a difference a week makes. On 87 minutes, in our home Leeds tie last week, the hapless, unbelieving, naïve and borderline traitorous fans amongst us left Ashton Gate criticising the team. Some fans were heard muttering such things as, and I quote: “I thought that group of players would be good enough for this league, and I am sad to admit it, but I’m wrong”.
So, where are we now? Off the pitch, we failed in our attempt to bring in both of the multi-million pound transfer targets, Andre Grey and Dwight Gayle. It would be interesting to know how close either of their purchases came to fruition. Cotteril has said that Gayle didn’t want to drop down a league and that Grey wanted more financially than we were prepared to offer.
It will be fascinating to see what reception Grey will get, if he plays for his new side Burnley, this weekend at Ashton Gate. It could produce one of those slightly harsh situations where a player gets a tough time even though they have done little wrong. Were these targets beyond us? Was there more than meets the eye in the pursuit of such players? Will we ever know?
It remains to be seen whether or not City will pursue another big name player, with a transfer fee so large, between now and Monday when the window closes. I think we could do with adding a couple but I have realised, as all fans should at some stage in their club-supporting career, that a lot of things that I say go wrong, or were wrong in the first place. Or to put it more simply, I was wrong.
However, this is by far the most public forum I have had to make such mistakes in. I promise though, dear people at Bristol24/7, I will continue to make wild judgements and ill-informed rants as long as the season lasts.
Now, on the pitch. Wow. What a performance last week at Middlesbrough. I think that Joe Bryan was right to say that most people, barring those in the dressing room, would have believed that City would do very well to get even a point from a Riverside team that only narrowly missed out on promotion last year.
Joe’s goal, as well as a stunning performance from on-loan keeper Hamer, appears to be among a plethora of highlights from a performance that was built on team work and endeavour – two of the vital qualities that saw us being crowned League One winners last year and qualities we will need in abundance this time around regardless of who we may or may not sign in the coming days.
A win against Burnley will see us on the edge of the play-off spots – where I had assumed we would be after five matches.
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