Where Did It All Go...Bristol City E/P Article...?

A good article in the Bristol Post :

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In May 2008, Bristol City were one match away from the riches of the Premier League. Fast forward five years, and they face an uphill battle to avoid dropping into the basement division of English League football. Andy Stockhausen charts the decline of the club's fortunes, and ponders what has gone wrong.

IT may seem hard to believe but it was only five years ago that expectant Bristol City fans were living the dream. More than 36,000 made the journey along the M4 on a sunny day in May 2008 in the hope of seeing their team beat Hull City in the Championship play-off final at Wembley and ascend to the promised land of the Barclays Premier League.

It was not to be. With one swish of his right foot, veteran striker Dean Windass scored one of the most memorable goals of recent times to deliver top-flight football for thousands of success-starved football fans on Humberside.

Defeat was gut-wrenching for the Robins. Yet when the dust settled and fans reflected on a second successful season in as many years, it was apparent all was well both on and off the pitch.

At that point, the wage bill stood at £8 million, the second lowest in the Championship, and revenues were increasing on the back of 13,000 season-ticket sales. In Gary Johnson, the club boasted a good manager, one who had built an affordable and close-knit squad and taken it to within 90 minutes of a place in the Premier League. Arguably, the club had it right in 2008.

Things started to unravel from that point onwards. Feeling as though they had proved their credentials in the Championship, the players requested – and were granted – pay rises and contract extensions that set in motion the process of spiralling wages.

When Johnson was unable to emulate his achievement of reaching the play-offs in his first season in the second tier and began to seek recourse in expensive loan signings, the die was cast.

A drop-off in results activated a downturn in revenues from gate receipts as average attendance fell from in excess of 16,000 in 2007-08 and 2008-09 to nearer 14,000 in 2009-10.

At the same time as wages were rising and the losses were becoming bigger, so results took a dip and Johnson, having departed from the formula that brought him success in the first place, began to panic. A series of expensive loan signings came and went, among them the ineffective but costly Alvaro Saborio and Evander Sno. The sale of Nick Carle to Crystal Palace for a profit of almost £1 million stood out as a rare example of sound business practice.

When Johnson and the Robins parted company in March 2010, he was paid off. Losses mounted dramatically, culminating in the announcement of a club- record annual deficit of £10 million.

Once again, deteriorating performance on the pitch was accompanied by increased spending and falling revenues. In hindsight, the crisis point was reached when then-chairman Steve Lansdown, eschewing all other candidates and refusing to consult fellow board-members, appointed Steve Coppell manager in the summer of 2010.

The former Manchester United and England winger did not arrive behind his desk until July 1, by which time Jamie McCombe had left to join Huddersfield Town and Bradley Orr was already on his way out of the door to Queens Park Rangers.

Realising he needed a right-back and a centre-back with time running out before the start of the season, Coppell spent big money on Nicky Hunt and Damian Stewart, expensive players who were past their best. But it was the signing of David James that finally tipped the balance. Although Coppell was in favour of bringing the England keeper on board, the boss was probably not aware that the club had agreed to pay him in excess of £20,000 a week in wages.

When it was clear there was little or no money left to make additional signings and strengthen other areas of the team, Coppell became disillusioned, feeling he had been appointed on false pretences. His resignation two games into the season rocked the club.

By signing mercenaries, who represented the very antithesis of what Johnson had preached during his early years at the helm, Coppell created an untenable situation that Keith Millen was then asked to manage.

Although his appointment represented another knee-jerk reaction on the part of the majority shareholder, Millen did well to keep the Robins up during his first season in charge. Yet Millen was hamstrung in terms of who he could sign, having inherited expensive players not of his choosing.

Valuable resource was being poured into the proposed Ashton Vale stadium project, Steve Lansdown had relocated to Guernsey and was no longer hands-on in the way he had been, and results nosedived at the start of the 2011-12 campaign. Millen was sacked, and left with a sizeable pay-off. As the club reported a record annual loss of around £14 million, the wage bill peaked at £18.6 million.

Millen's successor Derek McInnes did well to keep the club up after spending his first eight months in charge battling relegation.

But the Scot faced many of the problems that defeated Millen and, unable to move certain players on, he had limited funds to build his own team. And he struggled to deal with the Ashton Gate hierarchy.

Confronted by a board with no clear definition, he did not know who to confide in and who to go to for help. If he wanted to ask for money to sign a player, or to sit down and chat about team affairs, should he go to the new chairman, Keith Dawe, or managing director Jon Lansdown? Should he talk to board members Doug Harman and Ernie Arathoon or trust in Mark Ashton and Martin Griffiths, men who were becoming increasingly influential behind the scenes?

During McInnes' reign, the club's spending became unsustainable. Against a backdrop of spiralling debt and falling revenues – disaffected fans were voting with their feet and staying away – cost-cutting measures were introduced along with a long-term strategy based on the five pillars of academy, recruitment, facilities, community and financial prudence.

The Robins now find themselves at the foot of League One months after being relegated from the Championship. That suggests the changes may have been implemented too quickly and are too drastic to afford head coach Sean O'Driscoll a realistic prospect of halting the decline.

Owner Steve Lansdown must still be pouring a sizeable amount of his fortune into the club. But structure, rather than finance, is emerging as a key issue. The debate is moving away from the merits and shortcomings of the managers who have come and gone, and on to the way the club is run at the top.

Given the prevailing culture, it is certain that O'Driscoll will be relieved of his duties as head coach sooner or later. The current obsession with his position seems to have blinded the club's fans to the more pressing issue of boardroom accountability. When people begin to discuss leadership, football knowledge and business acumen among those responsible for giving Bristol City direction, we can start to find a way through the mess that is threatening to engulf the club.


http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/story-19980071-detail/story.html