A £450 bottle of red dominated the buildup to the most memorable night in Bristol City’s recent history but, after victory against Manchester United, supporters of the Championship club suggested Lee Johnson walks not on water but cider, a staple of the West Country diet. After masterminding this, the sweetest of cup upsets, Johnson will never have to buy a drink again in the red half of the city.
It was a night that had the foundations of a revamped – and sold out – Ashton Gate, redeveloped at the cost of £45m, shaking while the noise from the euphoria was deafening. “It was almost like the roof came off,” the club’s chief executive officer, Mark Ashton, said. “Everybody was going ballistic and behind the scenes it was no different, to be honest. It’s been a city devoid of top-flight football success for such a long time, it was like all of that pent-up passion and frustration came out in the 93rd minute.”
In particular it was an evening Jaden Neale, who attends the nearby Parson Street school, will not forget in a hurry. The 10-year-old ballboy was at the heart of the night’s iconic moment, when he was swung around Johnson’s torso like a wooden horse on a carousel.
In some ways a result of this magnitude had been a long time coming, given the way City have lit up the second tier with their brand of hustling and fearless football, losing only three times in 27 matches this season. This Bristol City side make for brilliant viewing – and not only for their viral gifs of the midfielder Marlon Pack ironing his own shirt or the defender Aden Flint brushing his teeth – but their attacking football, too. As Johnson put it, a lung-busting display full of “eight or nine out of 10 minimum, and probably 10” performances.
Four years ago, City spent Christmas at the bottom of League One but Steve Cotterill hoisted them clear of relegation before earning promotion as champions the following season.
The key pillars of the squad in danger of dropping down to the fourth tier – Frank Fielding, Flint, Pack, plus the academy graduates Bobby Reid and Joe Bryan who joined the club aged seven and eight respectively – remain at the core of this current group. Bryan, a left-sided player with huge energy levels, has matured into the club’s prized possession while Reid, converted to a striker, has developed into a goalscorer.
“He [Bryan] has been here since he was a pup,” Ashton said. “Him and Bobby typify everything we’re trying to build.”
It has been an even bigger transformation since January, when on the back of eight consecutive league defeats and after signing Matty Taylor from Bristol Rovers, Johnson was the subject of death threats and forced to move house. He believes the vociferous discontent surrounding the club last season proved to be character building. “It definitely made the players stronger,” he said.
The backing of the Bristolian owner and billionaire Steve Lansdown, who Johnson joked saw “pound signs” after landing a two-leg tie with Manchester City in the semi-finals, has also been unwavering.
“He’s loving it, he tries to mask it sometimes but inside I know him well enough to know that he’s absolutely buzzing,” Johnson said. “This time last year he was so proud of beating Aston Villa at Ashton Gate but this tops it off by quite some way. There’s probably not a better owner that you could work for. When the pressure cranked up, he stood firm.”
City finished 17th last season, three points above the drop-zone, but this term they look wiser. “Maybe last season there was a bit of naivety, young players making silly individual errors that we have cut out this year,” Bryan said. “And I think it takes time for a manager to instil his ethos into a team and the way he wants to play. But we showed that this season and now against one of the best teams in the world. Too often people have itchy trigger fingers but it is nice to see a chairman backing a manager and we are reaping the fruits now.”
It is difficult not be impressed by Johnson, a former Barnsley and Oldham Athletic manager with a meticulous attention to detail and the king of marginal gains, making waves in the Championship. The 36-year-old, who has spent time with the NHS, SAS and at the city’s Michelin star restaurant Casamia to study how they deliver quality, measures the length of the grass before every match to assess the likely ball speed. He also uses a giant touchscreen in team meetings to “drag players around like Neville and Carragher do on Sky Sports”, is learning French with a tutor and practises on the app Duolingo to converse better with the Senegalese £5.3m record-signing Famara Diedhiou. Meanwhile Flint, the 6ft 6in centre-back who used to lay roads on night shifts, wears tailor-made socks on matchdays.
Recruitment has proved key, too, with the midfielders Josh Brownhill and Callum O’Dowda, signed from Preston North End and Oxford United respectively, shining examples of the young “unprovens” now upheld as astute signings. The other onus is on the academy, while the club has submitted plans to turn their Failand training base into a state-of-the-art complex.
Only in August 2016 Johnson told of his long-term ambitions, admitting he was sticking his “neck on the line” by saying they could be in the Europa League by 2021. After a good start in the league, the wheels came off and he was ridiculed. For now, the immediate focus turns to defeating Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road on Saturday but – with the winners of the League Cup gaining passage into Europe – that big aim, while implausible, is not impossible.
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