Depends on your living memory I can remember 3 cup semi finals including Man City. 1970 v Spurs and Forest 1989.. The problem is the the foundations were undermined by an expensively poor squad that was left.
Foundations are still foundations, how they were laid, i.e. funding, is another thing. This comes back to not giving LJ proper/any credit for what he did here. Yes he got a lot wrong, but unlike many managers before for our club who got things wrong, it still kept us in the top half of the Championship, and not relegated back to the 3rd or 4th tier of English football. That is why I defend his record on here. Go back to almost any point since the late 70's, we have been crying out for what we have had the last 5 years, 2nd tier football!
The hypocrisy is you want the 'team' to improve and so far they have, even in our worse game v Middlesborough we had 8 shots with 5 on target, a huge improvement from 1 and 2 shots with zero on target that was at times the norm over the past 2 seasons and gilt edged chance missed by Palmer and individual defensive errors killed us and are still killing us. The only team error was for the Swansea goal.
Steve Cotterill was appointed manager of Bristol City in December 2013, taking them to the Championship before being dismissed in January 2016, you could use that argument then to say the 2 years Steve Cotterill was at Bristol City laid all of the foundations and success to help LJ and his career at City.
I have always accepted his keeping us in the championship, sadly for LJ it is something peculiar to BCFC and not an achievement that will go in trophy cabinet. My issue will always be the shocking recruitment policy after the 4 year contract was signed of which Nagy was one of them, undoubtedly a good player but fell out with LJ after the first international break and was rarely the same again.
You could go back to miserable old SOD, he laid the foundations for the academy that is at last being given a chance.
It was tongue in cheek FFS!! But if you want to take that angle, then I can go back to the year we had our worst ever run (before this current one...), and we played well, but bad, bad errors in front of goal, chiefly from Bobby Reid meant we dropped lots of points that would have stopped that run. I recall then that it was all the manager's fault, not an individual error, so why is it different now? That is where the hypocrisy is on this site!
Trust Wiz to get his lovechild Cotterill in there. As I said before, under Cotterill we were heading where many (Osman, Benny, Millen et al) before have taken City, straight back down! You could argue that SOD laid those foundations, although not that many from that era have come through the youth ranks at City, or elsewhere to be that successful. The one constant in this is SL, he has got a lot wrong for sure, but without keeping City in the Championship, LJ wouldn't have had 'the sweetshop' at his disposal. So he became the victim of his own success (relative to BCFC). We will see if SL continues to fund the team in future, I suspect COVID will change his longer term view now.
And there you have it, individual mistakes usually by serial offenders, no manager/coach or religion can stop them and it's killing us, it has cost us 6 points already this season.
Surely as we are handing out plaudits to stuff not in the trophy cabinet, Cotterill got us into the championship with a record breaking season and our first championship for nearly 60 years and was the reason that LJ got a job in the championship and SOD laid the foundations for our academy that Tinnion and others have turned into the success it has become, although largely ignored by LJ. I have no issue with any sackings that SL has ever made, my issue is with some of his more reckless appointments like Coppell, Millen, Holden and of course Ashton. It is refreshing though that you seem now to accept that we are improving team wise but being killed by individual errors.
I take it you meant M I have no issue with any sackings that SL has ever made, my issue is with some of his more reckless appointments like Coppell, Millen, Holden and of course Ashton. Also, and if true, the pivotal role Lansdown played in getting David James to come to AG was a very poor decision, both on and off the pitch.
