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 news of Gerry Gow's passing has stirred many memories from fans old enough to have him play in his prime to those younger fans who never did, but who have heard so much about the great man. A couple of years back I wrote this blog post on City's promotion side of 1975-76, a side which had Gow very much in its engine room - appearing as an ever-present as City, finally, once again reached the top flight after decades in the wilderness. Quite simply, he was one of the best and most-loved players in our greatest team, and that tells you all you need to know http://thetwounfortunates.com/great-football-league-teams-49-bristol-city-1975-6/ The Exiled Robin Follow me on Twitter  --- 'Like' us on Facebook http://exiledrobin.blogspot.c om

It’s been a summer of huge excitement at Ashton Gate with the completion of the West Stand setting the perfect backdrop to the most extravagant outlay of our existence. Millions of pounds we know about, plus plenty we probably don’t in loan fees, signing-on fees and wages have led to a glut of exciting signings of mainly young players, a nice mixture of experienced mid 20-somethings and younger, high potential players. Having already snapped up players from Juventus and Bayern Munich, Lee Johnson and Mark Ashton have turned their attention closer to home with the latest loan signing and could have just landed the most exciting signing of them all, from Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea. Whilst there may be a touch of self-congratulation around it, both Johnson and Ashton have talked about the lengths they’ve gone to so as to snap up the teenage striker who was also being linked with a move to Spanish La Liga side Real Betis. As is often the case with these sorts of things, it was as ...

In the first of a series of pieces in the lead up to the new season, I take a look at one of our new signings, one who is arguably both the least known and the most exciting in terms of potential. It’s pretty safe to say that when the rumours started surfacing about City landing this young, Oxford winger, most had to quickly Google the name to find out a little bit more about him. Kemar Roofe took most of the plaudits at the Kassam Stadium last season and was the player fans perhaps hoped we’d be in for this summer. On a little more investigation, the move comes as little surprise when you hear Mark Ashton was a big fan of O’Dowda whilst at the U’s, and gets on well with his family. Whether or not you feel Ashton should be the one identifying players or not is a matter for another day, but you’d hope and assume with the network now in place that Lee Johnson has also seen enough to be convinced. Equally, digging a little deeper I have found out that some at the club actuall...

'Big’ Sam Allardyce. England manager. Yes really. On the face of it, no-one should be too surprised. He’s an Englishman who has managed in the Premier League for most of the last 15 years, and – on paper – has done a pretty good job at most of the clubs he’s managed at. Most recently he got West Ham back up at the first attempt and then consolidated their position in the Premier League, giving Slaven Bilic their platform for his success last season. He then somehow saved Sunderland from inevitable relegation last season, with an inspired signing of Jermaine Defoe providing the firepower once he’d re-organised and patched up the division’s worst-looking defence and turned them into clean sheet regulars. His hugely successful stint at Bolton is perhaps drifting into the memory banks but what he achieved there – especially when you look at where they are now – was nothing short of miraculous, albeit one that set in motion the start of the build-up of debt that has s...

Justice. 27 long years, almost to the day after the dreadful tragedy on that warm, spring day, the families of the Hillsborough victims finally had their loved ones’ names exonerated this week. Having spent a lifetime being told their criminal activity caused the disaster, their names are finally clear and they can truly, for the first time, rest in peace. As the truth has slowly seeped out over the last two decades, the outpouring of highly emotive comments from football fans far and wide has been hugely prevalent and that’s not only because it was such an awful event, with such obvious injustice. It’s partly because anyone who attended games at that time, and indeed, anyone who still does now, knows that it could have been them. Their friends, their parents, their children. I personally remember sitting in Block E of the Dolman Stand on that day. City were losing 2-1 at home to Blackpool in front of a little over 5,000 of their own fans – which tells its own story...