If Bristol City can’t rise to the challenge I really don’t want to think of the consequences Bristol City fan and Post columnist Matthew Withers discusses what looms ahead for the Robins as the season end draws closer There are eight games to go in the remainder of the Championship season, a possible 24 points and just how many we will need to retain our Championship status remains to be seen. City currently have 41 points and are 19 in the table, 1 point and 3 places above Blackburn Rovers and that all-important 22 position. Last season Neil Warnock’s Rotherham United side finished in 21 place on 49 points with Charlton Athletic finishing 22 and getting relegated on 40 points. In the 2012/2013 season Barnsley were the team finishing just outside that final relegation place on 55 points, with Peterborough going down having achieved a remarkable 54 points. City were relegated bottom that year on 41 points. I would expect the survival points total to be around 52 points and on that basis Lee Johnson’s team need another 11 points to survive. Only in that 2012/2013 season has 52 points not been enough to maintain 2 Tier status. If in the remaining games City can match the energy and performance and be as clinical as they showed in their last outing against Huddersfield Town then they have every chance of avoiding relegation to League One. Each of those 8 games is massive but the game against Blackburn Rovers away on the Bank Holiday Monday 17April stands out as potentially crucial. Lee Johnson needs to keep a settled side and a settled formation. We need our big players, the likes of Lee Tomlin, Aiden Flint, Korey Smith, Gary O’Neil and Tammy Abraham to be at the top of their games as they were against the Terriers. If we can’t rise to the challenge I really don’t want to think of the consequences. The Championship is an exciting division to watch your team play football in. Many professionals and pundits consider it to be the toughest division in all of the major leagues. There are some huge clubs that play in the Championship with Premier League stadiums, the likes of Newcastle’s St James Park and Aston Villas Villa Park. Relegation would inevitably mean that our star players would look to move on and a rebuilding process would have to start. The number of season tickets would reduce and crowds would be back around the 10,000 mark, not the 17,000+ that we have seen this year. Steve Lansdown has stuck by his man in Lee Johnson and I don’t expect that to change between now and the end of the season. Relegation would surely mean the end for Lee whilst staying in the Championship will undoubtedly mean him being given another opportunity at the helm next season. If you had asked me after the Burton Albion game I would have said relegation was a nailed on certainty. Following the draw against Norwich City and wins against Wigan and Huddersfield I’m more optimistic. We definitely have the players capable of staying up but they have to put it in and show us the fans that they are up for the fight as evidenced in that last game. Only time will tell where we end up. http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/bristol-city-cant-rise-challenge-13702
A nightmare and a dream in one sentence.. 'Relegation would surely mean the end for Lee whilst staying in the Championship will undoubtedly mean him being given another opportunity at the helm next season'
Interesting read and it highlights the fact that we have not lived up to any promises made by our owner and his commitment to stick with Lee under any circumstances could end a lot of dreams. Relegation is still on the cards and Lansdown's insistence of keeping his head buried well below visibility and allowing bad things to happen without addressing the problems and then fixing them makes me truly believe he is such an egotist that he can never get the message. We are probably the only club around that would continue to employ such an ineffective manager for this amount of time without considering a replacement and although I have wanted him gone for quite some time all I want now is for him to clean up his own mess before he leaves. Whether there was validity in sacking Pemberton or not will probably never really be answered, and perhaps the combination of Lee and Jamie do give us a better chance of surviving, but the sour taste left behind at the end of what has been a dismal confused season will take a long time to eradicate. Bristol City have had many upsetting seasons before and we just never seem to make the grade, despite promises from our leader, and it leaves me to wonder if we will ever be capable of getting there, wherever that may be, and who decides how and where we want to be for the future. My concern is that if we keeping going down the same old paths thinking the scenery will change for the better then we are barking up the wrong tree again.
Thanks for putting it up WIZ, interesting read looks like a concise round up of all that we on here have been saying. Do not see anything in it that is new If I went back, 52 points was the figure I determined about 20 games ago, it is always higher, above 50pts when the bottom team finishes on 39 or less or the top 6 teams " end" with 72-86 pts. Wigan need to win 4 at least to stand a chance, the rest are covered in my other post...
50 points is usually the magic number - though last time we went down I think Peterborough got relegated with 52
54 it was. At one point during the last day of that season, Huddersfield would have gone down with 57!
whilst 50 is usually a safe bet since 2004/5 when it was 51 safe, 50 on gd safe points have been 43 ;43 ; 53* ;47 ;48 ;42 ;41 ;55** ;45*** ;42 ; last season 41 * city finished 4th on 74 pts ** top was 87 6th was 68 pts 21st upwards 12 teams, half the division separated by 6 pts, ( 4 wins and a draw and 21st could have been 6th! ***44 pts on GD was the saviour so 45 would have been pts target... ROTHERHAM have been 21st last 2 seasons THIS SEASON how the fixtures pan out ( between lower team match's ) 47 looks a likely on paper target I said months ago 52 and think this will be ample ! PS Peterbro 54pts PS OOOOOOOOOOOOOPS typed up at 1300hrs forgot to send got home 2230 and still on here ..
