‘No humiliation in losing narrowly to any Premier League side’

Just call me Nostradamus. Well, not exactly. One prediction out of two isn’t too bad though, a better ratio than the great man himself, I would hazard a guess. For those of you who aren’t quite catching my drift, I predicted two victories for Lee Johnson’s men over the past week.

The first came true courtesy of a late, and reasonably fortuitous, strike by our ageing (but increasingly wise) Aaron Wilbraham. The second game of the week saw us narrowly miss out against a surprisingly strong Hull City side in the EFL cup forth round.

I was not able to make the mid-week cup match but friends who went ensured me they had witnessed a strong performance and were in fact “buzzing” upon the final whistle. City had pilled on the pressure in the closing minutes and only just missed out on grabbing an equaliser that would have lead to extra-time and potentially penalties.

I am unsure whether it is a show of strength or slight weakness that Johnson made so many changes between the two fixtures. Of course it’s a great sign of our strength in depth that we can alter nine of our starting eleven and still compete against a side who started so well in the Premier League even of they have faltered of late.

The weakness is, however, that we only seemed to really compete, from what I have read, once Tomlin and Abraham joined the fray. This sadly harks back to last week’s point that although our squad of young and talented players seem to more than hold their own in most matches and tend to dominate play, we struggle to turn that possession into goals unless the likes of Tomlin and Abraham are on the pitch. And if they are faltering, we have few other options.

There is though, of course, no humiliation in losing narrowly to any Premier League side when fielding a team with the average age of 24 or so.

Last Saturday’s Blackburn match saw an impressive 21,000-plus fans witness a fitting tribute to the late, and great, Gerry Gow who sadly passed recently. Gow was one of those names that I grew up hearing about around Bristol City and was a star of the side the last time City were playing top-flight football.

Wikipedia, reliably I hope, informs me he played 375 times in the red of Bristol City and Ashton Gate’s tribute the City legend was a fitting gesture by a club that seems to be getting things as right off that pitch as on it.

I have read some chatter on various social media sites moaning about the numbers, or lack their of, of City fans travelling away to Lee Johnson’s former club Barnsley this Saturday.

At the time of writing, City have sold just over 500 tickets for the Championship encounter. One post I read said this was “an embarrassment compared to the 5,000-plus that Newcastle took a few weeks age”. I have to say that, to me, 500 doesn’t seem too bad and that some fans might be thinking the club can run before it has learnt walk.

Without doubt the club is growing, step-by-step. We have a fantastic stadium that we seem to be able to regularly fill to around 75 per cent of its capacity. This of course gives us room to grow.

We have a young and exciting squad with an up and coming manager who seems genuinely progressive in his approach to the game. Gone are the days of overpaying players because they have a year or two of Premier League experience (Nicky Hunt) just for them to rot in the reserves.

The club seem to be organised off the field too and the match-day experience has improved no end. Let’s not do ourselves down because we can’t quite, yet at least, match the away support of some of the most fanatical fans in the land.