The Exiled Robin

Exitlude Sam’s Town, the excellent second album from Nevada’s favourite sons, The Killers, includes a song titled ‘Exitlude’. It involves the lyrics: “Regrettably, time’s come to send you on your way We’ve seen it all; bonfires of trust; flash floods of pain……We hope you enjoyed your stay….It’s good to have you with us, even if it’s just for the day” Well BS3 isn’t Sam’s Town, it’s Steve’s Town, and despite Mr. Lansdown’s seemingly unwavering fondness and loyalty towards the Johnson family, now is the time to bite the bullet, so to speak, and bid farewell to Johnson Jnr before too many days are out. He’ll regret it, of course. As surely will almost everyone associated with the club. Whatever your views of the job Lee Johnson has done, surely no fan wants to see a manager sacked in the grand scheme of things, because that means you’re not performing as a club where everyone feels we should be? On a personal note, I have always felt the appointment a risk which m...

How to solve a problem like Lee Tomlin: The signing of Lee Tomlin in the summer was supposed to be the big signal of intent. Lee Johnson and Mark Ashton have received plenty of plaudits for their work in adding young, talented players to the squad, and had contract extensions been handed out to the pair of them at the end of September, the news would have been widely acclaimed. However, a couple of months on, we can’t buy a win – or even a draw come to that – and many of those exciting signings haven’t had the impact everyone would have hoped for. To address that first, I think it’s clear the policy in the summer was to make a number of signings ‘for the future’. Certainly Calum O’Dowda, Taylor Moore and Gustav Engvall fall into that category to a greater or lesser extent, yet many are now questioning why we spent over £5m on that particular trio. Rightly or wrongly, they were bought for potential and I think any major impact this season from any of them would have been s...

The prospect of raiding the under 14’s for squad members seemed  to finally jolt City into transfer action this week, as they swooped for the double loan signing of Derby County centre-half, Alex Pearce, and QPR’s ex-Swindon attacking midfielder, Ben Gladwin. To say caretaker boss John Pemberton moved quickly is perhaps masking the truth somewhat as I have it on very good authority that the Pearce signing in particular was lined up by Cotterill for last Friday morning, only to be delayed following his dismissal the evening before. We all saw what Gladwin could do last season, in the games against us in particular, but also in Swindon’s other televised games during the run-in. His challenge is two-fold; to prove that the great run of form at the end of the season wasn’t a flash in the pan, and, if it wasn’t, to prove he’s got the intelligence, pace and ability to show it at Championship level. With Alex Pearce, however, our experience is probably more limited, aside from reme...

In the end, it was very sudden.  In a season where pressure has increasingly grown on Steve Cotterill for all sorts of reasons, an unknown combination of a lacklustre, exhausted-looking performance at home to Preston, an unsavoury altercation with an abusive ‘supporter’ at the end of that game, or perhaps a behind-the-scenes disagreement over transfer policy look to have ultimately curtailed his time at Ashton Gate. No manager these days can win just four out of 28 games in a season, be in the bottom three, and expect to be impervious to the threat of being sacked. But given such an incredulous level of success last season, Cotterill was surely closer than most to having a level of credit in the bank to be given until the end of the season? I share views with many as a general principle where I wish all clubs would give mangers more time to build, but the days of giving a manager the luxury of years of under-achievement, of the type Alex Ferguson enjoyed, resulting in a ...

I'm dreading the sort of autobot tweets that might head my way calling this blog post that, but as I review Cotterill's policy of not picking a youth player to fill the bench, you'll understand the heading! The bulk of the article looks at the nervousness and lack of confidence seeping through the club at a pace right now, whilst I finish on what is sure to be a topic to get you talking - Cotterill's lack of willingness to put a youngster on the bench when there's a spare spot, something I personally feel quite strongly about. http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/BRISTOL-CITY-BLOG/story-27966626-detail/story.html Please let me know you thoughts, via the blog comments, the Post comments box or via more traditional channels such as Twitter/Facebook Thanks all for reading! The Exiled Robin Follow me on Twitter  --- 'Like' us on Facebook http://exiledrobin.blogspot.c om www.facebook.com/theciderdiaries --- www.twitter.com/th eciderdiaries

With memories of a 6-0 drubbing, amongst other Portman Road defeats, still relatively fresh in the memory, as well as Ipswich’s pedigree at this level, then Suffolk is probably one of the last places City would choose to head towards to right the wrongs of a difficult start to the season. Saying that, a win at Middlesbrough earlier in the season should give them confidence that, on their day, they can go anywhere in this division and get a result. A game that at the start of the season where many might have thought “ah, we’ve got ‘x’ points, it’s not been a bad start and we never do well there. A loss may not be too hard to take” has suddenly into another critical test of City’s credentials at this level. Given the start to the season and our inexperience at this level, many managers of many sides would head into this match considering a 4-5-1 formation to bolster the hitherto porous defensive record. Get ten men behind the ball, keep it tight and if we can snatch a b...

Last week an email popped into my inbox from my Dad, who had decided to pick up the virtual pen and key some thoughts on the start to City's season.  Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to upload this until now, so some comments (especially those on the transfer window) are a touch out of date, albeit, ultimately prophetic!  Over to Mr Binning Snr... "Gary Johnson always used to say that you have to wait for ten games to assess how you are  doing in a new season, and then reassess in ten game blocks. Well as we are fans we don't  need to wait ten games, do we?  We now have an international break after five games and I am  off to the sun (hopefully!) for a week, so that I don't miss a City match. Having seen every minute of every League game so far, I think that four points from five games is  harsh, when set against our performances so far. I suppose it could be a bit of a  reality check that in this much tougher D...