‘Football is a result based busniess’

It is with the up-most joy that I pick up my quill this week given that last weekend Bristol City, as my friend Dave would say, “did a win”. As Johnson suggested after the game it was more the sense of relief than anything else that most of us wandered, or stumbled, away from Ashton Gate with last Saturday.

The penalty, on reflection, seemed like a penalty and despite my mild criticism of Tomlin last week he dispatched said spot kick away with such aplomb that even I was questioning as to if my critique had been too harsh.

City’s second will have to go down as one of those “I was there” moments. Luke Freeman scored his first goal at Ashton Gate, and what a goal it was but before I go on to lord over the former Arsenal man let’s just ponder on that fact for a minute.

Freeman has been at the club since the summer of 2014 and as Wikipedia has reliably informed me has played for us 99 times, not sure I quite believe that but hey. In his first season here, the double wining campaign of 2014/15, he was one of the star players and was unlucky to not be named player of the season.

Last season he, and many of the other regulars from that side, took some time to get accustomed to Championship football and overall I would give Freeman a C+ for his efforts in 2015/16.

So. I would suggest he needs to push on. Me and my friends that I attend games with have said for some time that if he could shoot and cross, a little more consistently, he wouldn’t be playing for us. As in, he has a lot of the qualities needed to play in the Premier League but at the moment isn’t quite there. To that end I hope he improves in those areas, and becomes a player deemed to play at that level, with us.

As I ponder as to which direction to continue my ramble in, the idea of discussing our good friends across the city’s recent woes in the FA Cup. I will though, however, refrain from any vitriol as such chat can come back and haunt you, especially given our atrocious cup record of late.

I will instead spend the final part of this weeks blog discussing today’s news that our current leader, Lee Johnson, has just extended his contract until 2020.

I am more than happy to admit that I was one of many who was sceptical at the time of his appointment. I thought, wrongly as time has told us, that he would be an unpopular choice among supporters given the slightly odd status he held upon his return. I didn’t feel he got the respect he deserved as a player and to some seemed something of a hate figure.

Maybe I over estimated those misgivings among the support. I think I also overlooked the fact that football is, essentially, for fans at least, a result based business. Almost solely at times. And, his results were better than Cotterill’s which led to us retaining our Championship status.

Since then he has assembled a squad full of youth, enthusiasm and quality. They may be a little raw, and Saturday’s win wasn’t the exhibition of free flowing football that we had come expectant too, but I for one am very happy to congratulate Johnson on his job so far and very much look forward to the next few years under his stewardship.