‘A truly special night for everyone connected to the club’

All my life, when asked the question, ‘who do you support?’ I’ve answered, Bristol City. My response is more often than not then followed up with ‘and who else?’. For those who don’t understand what it is to support your local team, not also having a Premier League team is somewhat unfathomable.

In secondary school, I was only one of ten or twenty, in a year of a-hundred-and-eighty or so, who followed a local team, either us or Rovers. Given it was the 90s, the favoured team in my class was Manchester United. Furthermore, being a Bristol City fan brought you a certain level of ridicule on a daily basis.

The first time I went to Asia I remember engaging in conversations with kids that consisted entirely of repeating Manchester United’s starting line-up. The fact that I could name their starting eleven endeared me to them somewhat. Sadly they’d never heard of Bristol City so to be polite I pretended to support Liverpool.

To understand the enormity of what happened on Wednesday evening in BS3 is quite hard to put into words. You can say it was the best home win in a generation or two – which it was. You can say that Bristol City were trending at number two on Twitter for a period of time that evening – which they were. You can comment on the collective cost of both squads with Bristol City’s paling into insignificance of the much richer rivals.

But, overall, you just have to say it was a truly special night for everyone connected to the club. A night which summed up the magic of football. A night that made you believe anything is possible and that with hard work, good planning and a little bit of luck even the unthinkable can be achieved.

Lee Johnson is winning plenty of well deserved plaudits for the manner in which his side went about the game. There seems to be a culture of fear and so called ‘parking-the-bus’ in the Premier League at the moment and the way City played was the antithesis to the defensive negative football seen all too often in the Premier League.

It’s a little unfair to pick out any individuals as the whole team have to be regarded as hero’s in my mind, but, Joe Bryan and Luke Steele were especially impressive for me. Although Fielding is having a great season its good to know that we have a backup keeper of such quality.

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, I was looking forward to sharing the experience with my friends that I have shared all the many trials and tribulations of being a City fan with over the years. I also have to admit that that evening I hugged a considerable amount of strangers too – as is the way when such euphoria erupts.

The night will, of course, go down as part of Bristol City folklore but all City fans hope that Wednesday night is not the lasting memory of this season. As both players and staff importantly reiterated in their post-match interviews, the main target this campaign has to be promotion.

I would expect some changes in the side that play QPR this weekend, as Wednesday must have taken a lot out of our young side both physically and mentally. That being said, our injury hit squad limits the options available to Lee Johnson meaning it will be interesting to see what the club do in January.

As I have mentioned before, I envisage two or three players coming in but I know the recruiting team will be making sure that they bring in the right sort of player, and at the right price. As has been our policy in recent years. Young players with the potential to develop will be model they go for I suspect.

Finally I would just like to wish all City fans and readers of this blog a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Fingers crossed our good form will continue and we have a bumper crowd at Ashton Gate for our Boxing day clash with Reading.

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