‘Players should be proud of turning it round’

So, we did it. Bristol City will be playing Championship football in the 2016/2017 season. You could say it was never in doubt. Not true. You could say we deserve it. I think that’s fair

We’ve been up and down most of the year but have produced some really good performances and there are certainly three sides worse than us in the division, the three that have gone down in my view.

Such is the nature of football that it’s fair to say the post-mortem of the season has now begun in earnest, yep, before the final whistle is even blown. What went well, and what can be improved on for next season, will be the question being discussed before and after this weekend’s final home match against Huddersfield on Saturday.

The biggest positive is that we stayed up. This shouldn’t be over looked, but what else can we really shout about? Our squad, still rather young and inexperienced, coped reasonably well with the rigours of Championship football and have clearly gained so much experienced from a year of plying their trade at this notably higher level.

The ground looks great and as of next season we will have a stadium suitable for playing football at the level we are at. Support has been, as ever really, fantastic both at Ashton Gate and on the road.

Most homes games have sold out, all be it with a reduced capacity. It will be interesting to see how this holds up next season given our increased capacity. I’d like to think we could push towards, and sometimes exceed, the twenty thousand barrier for most of the season.

Now, to what went wrong. It’s fair to say that we have been over reliant on loan signings. This is, in-part, due to the poor summer of recruitment that we we had following our magnification season last time out.

As all fans know, it’s best to do your business as early as possible. We surely knew that as that had been one of the shining lights from the 2014/15 season. The likes of Smith, Ayling and Freeman were in place way before the season kicked off but for whatever reason this strategy was not followed last summer.

The change of manager seemed to have a positive affect on things as did the flurry of January signings, albeit with most of them on a temporary basis. I was sad to see Cotterill go but it turned out to be for the best and I have really warmed to Johnson since he took over. He talks a good game and doesn’t seem shy to try new things or think outside the box at times.

So, it will be with much relief and a decent amount of joy that Ashton Gate will applaud the City players after Saturday’s match in the now customary end of season lap of honour.

The players should be proud of how they turned it around. How many of them will start for us next season though remains to be seen. I’d like to see some of the loan signings become permanent ones but we will have play that ‘wait and see what happens’ game. If you are going down, enjoy your day and I’ll see you in the pub after the match for a pint or two.