Football / Fan's View
‘That all too familiar sinking feeling’
Monday, January 22, 2017
16.04
Unbridled joy for me and others at Ashton Gate. Tammy Abraham puts his penalty away with aplomb and City take a surprising 2-0 lead over promotion chasing rivals Reading.
16.24
My friend passes me on his way to the loo saying he thinks City (who are still 2-0 up at this point but are spending most of their time defending in their final third) will be lucky to “get a draw out of this”.
16.32
City concede what will be the first of three goals in the final 20 minutes and I, and many other City fans, get that all too familiar sinking feeling.
17.02
As we leave the stadium having witnessed our side’s capitulation, I overhear a fellow fan exclaiming, “at least Rovers lost”. This does little, in fact nothing, to alleviate my woes.
So there it is. City clutching defeat from the jaws of victory in quite spectacular fashion, 2-0 and we messed it up, to paraphrase the Reading chant at the end of the game.
Initially, I had been very impressed with both our approach to the game and our performance. We sat back, let the superior side come at us and only “pressed” the ball when Reading approached our final third.
We hit them on the break making the most of our youthful, quick and skillful team selection, but as the game went on we started to defend deeper and deeper. The first half seemed to take its toll on the players and we began to struggle to close our opponents down offering them chance after chance.
On the rare chance we did try and launch a counter attack, we were stopped in our tracks by some cynical- or clever depending on your view- fouls that served to break up play and allow time for Reading to regroup.
Johnson was rightfully at a loss to explain how his side had thrown away such a strong position and vowed to fight on, and importantly, add to the group as soon as possible as we are- were- in desperate need of some help within the squad.
Fast forward a few days and City have managed to acquire two, on the face of it at least, quality signings that should go straight into the squad for Saturday’s home FA Cup tie against Fleetwood Town.
Milan Duric, who stands at 6ft 6in, signs from Serie B side Cesena. A striker and an international (Bosnia and Herzegovina) who is, thankfully as far as I am concerned, 26. I have made a lot of the need of signing players who are around their peak years and who are able to come straight into the first team. Milan certainly fits that bill.
Our other new acquisition is Jens Hegeler, another six-foot plus athletic player who boasts over 150 games in the German Bundestag. Once again, Hegeler is at, or close to, optimum age at 28. He is described as a holding midfielder.
City look set to make one or two more signings within the next few days and certainly in time for the seven side Derby against Cardiff on 14th January. Rumours suggest Johnson is after a commanding centre half and one other, hopefully a right back. Centre half is a position that we certainly will need cover in due to the departure of Joel Ekstrand and the supposedly imminent loan move of Taylor Moore.
So. Let’s take stock. City have been on an atrocious run of late and fans, rightly in my view, are questioning the credentials of Lee Johnson, as well as some of our current first team squad. It will be interesting to see how these new recruits bed in and time is of the essence given how badly we have been of late.
I would urge City fans to withhold judgement on Johnson for the time being as we, hopefully, see these new signings pull us clear of the dreaded relegation zone.
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