The Exiled Robin

The last time Bristol City hosted Rotherham United, more than 19,000 Robins fans packed into Ashton Gate on a gloriously warm, sunny early-May afternoon.  Needing a win to secure promotion to the Championship, Gary Johnson’s men swept aside the Millers with help from a David Noble double, before Alex Russell scored the goal which made sure City had accomplished their mission. The rest, as is so often mooted, is very much history,  http://exiledrobin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/down-and-out-bristol-city-season-review.html   Who would have thought on that sunny day that 6½ years on that we’d be approaching this game with our fifth different manager (or head coach) about to take charge of his first league match. Who could have predicted we’d be not only back in League One (OK, most of us might have forecast that!) but £50m worse off and facing a fight to stave off relegation to the basement?  Who would have thought we’d still be awaiting a decision on where we’ll b...

Following the first Exiled Robin review earlier in the week, David Rawson, a Rotherham fan and blogger to boot, has kindly offered a further view on our latest signing. In the end, there was competition. Millwall agreed a fee with us, Scunthorpe wanted to sign him, Barnsley were keeping tabs. But Ryan Taylor signed for Bristol City and is a Championship player. In a lot of ways, it’s a brilliant move for him. Financially, of course, it’ll be a massive pay-rise and from a footballing perspective he’ll be one of a relatively small number of players who jump straight from League Two to the second tier of English football. But it also feels a little unnatural, somehow, a little bit overly challenging, perhaps. In reality, the Taylor that got this move, the one that turned down a new contract offer at Christmas in favour of waiting to “see if the club could match his ambitions of playing in a higher league”, has only been around for two thirds of a season. The greater part of his car...

Ryan Taylor became City's second signing of the summer today, the out-of-contract striker signing from Rotherham for a fee to be decided by either negotiation or tribunal (he's out of contract but under-24, meaning a fee is payable). Whilst you may have seen him score both of the Millers' goals in vain during the play-off final at Wembley a year ago, and know his strike partner Adam le Fondre has scored goals for fun alongside him, I think it's safe to say there aren't too many Robins fans who know much about Taylor, so I've enlisted the help of Jonathan Veal, a journalist who covers Rotherham, to give us the lowdown on our new player. Ryan Taylor was something of a late developer for Rotherham and the season just gone was his first run of games as a first choice striker. He was unlucky in the early part of his career, suffering from injuries and glandular fever and he was only ever a bit-part player that, despite being a local-born lad, struggled to get ...