Bristol City at Ashton Gate on a Tuesday night is an unavoidable reminder of our last season in the Championship when we rocked up at Bristol City, were shite, and got beaten comfortably. Back then we were 25 games unbeaten, but at the end of the day, we all accepted that the run was going to come to an end at some point, and it happened to be at Ashton Gate.

Back then, we were into the run in that would eventually take us to the playoffs, Wembley and the Premier League and the less said about what happened after that the better. This time around we are still trying to get into the season and get it up and running. Today is as good as day as any.

Bristol City, now managed by Gerhard Struber, have made a decent start and currently set seventh in the Championship but they do have problems with their home form which is something that we need to exploit tonight. Saints are undoubtedly going to be a better team in away games than they are in home games this season, as proven by our struggles at home and by the general wisdom that teams will come out and play against us more when they are in front of their home fans. Saints have proved already this season that we are half decent on the transition but we struggle when we have too much possession so that particularly, shouldn’t be an issue today. We may have other issues however, namely putting the ball in the fucking net. We haven’t quite reached the stage where all our fans behind the goal are running around with big arrows pointing towards the net, but it can’t be far off.

This game comes at the start of a week where we have two away games, first this one and then away at Blackburn on Saturday. It mimics the week we had when we had Sheffield United on Tuesday and Derby on the Saturday, both away from home. It also mimics it in that we have the harder game on paper in the first fixture. I said we needed four points from the Sheffield United/Derby week and we need four or six from this week as well.

As I write, City have one of our former players in Joe Lumley, who they picked up at the expiry of his contract at the end of last season. Everyone was absolutely fucking baffled when they took him on to be their reserve keeper at the start of the season and that bafflement turned to outright amusement when their first choice, Max O’Leary, got injured with something that was always gonna keep him out for a few months. Allegedly, it took one pre-season game with Lumley in goal for city to work out that they desperately had to sign someone to play instead of him, and so a deal was set up with Manchester United to sign Radek Vitek. We will still however always be the answer to a quiz question when it is pondered which club gave Joe Lumley a start in the Premier League. If ever there was a metaphor for how shit we were in the Premier League last year, then that is it.

Lumley as it turns out, may not even be on the bench because he’s been linked with a loan to Sheffield Wednesday, who really are that desperate. Saints meanwhile have question marks over Elias Jelert, who limped off on Saturday, and it may be all change at full-back as it’s unlikely that Welington is fit enough for a second game in four days but then, that didn’t stop us killing Ross Stewart.

Team news and the big news is that Lumley is not ot he bench…. actually the big news is that Saints are unchanged from Swansea, barring Wee Man starting instead of the injured Jelert and the spare space ont he bench being taken by the returning Josh Q. Saints start well and it looks very bright with us building and attack down there right with Wee man feeding the ball into Armstrong who comes short, turns and finds Archer in the box and he makes a yard before somewhat tamely firing it over the bar. Decent show of intent though.

Bristol City are literally sitting with 11 players behind the ball and don’t look at all interested in attacking. It’s up to us to break it down of course but this makes for a lot of sideways passing from us and it is piss boring to watch. Charles tries to break the defence with a low pass to Armstrong who takes a good touch inside the defender and has a go with his left foot and sets it off towards the far post but it’s a bit of a scuffer through to the goalkeeper.

Saints continue dominating things in terms of possession, with just the odd Brizzle counter attack to deal with and we reached a half hour mark and Shea Charles tries to repeat of his previous pass and once again he dissects the defence and Armstrong takes a brilliant touch to take him through against the keeper and as Vitek comes out, Arma sits him down and dinks over him into the net. Absolutely brilliant finish it has to be said.

The key to this game will be how we react to scoring but surely it’s early enough for us to just keep going. Not a fucking bit of it as a pass is somewhat hopefully put forward by a City defender and Nathan Wood spoons it horribly into the path of Mehmeti who is clean through and onside and as usual I’m expecting us to get punished for this mistake and sure enough, he rolls the ball in the corner giving McCarthy no chance at all. Fucking hell. It is literally the first time they’ve got anywhere near our goal.

Initially, we look like they’re going to react well to the equaliser with a long punt forward being pulled down by Scienza and he runs at the right back before finding Adam Armstrong. He makes room for himself before firing over the bar and getting clattered in the process. We really have to be getting the ball to Scienza at every opportunity.

Just as we approach half time, Caspar Jander wins the ball in midfield and plays it to Adam Armstrong and it’s a lovely ball through the defence to send Archer through on goal in an identical situation to Armstrong had earlier, but whereas Armstrong was calm and clinical with his finish, Archer narrows his own angle down with his first touch and then never looks like he’s completely control of what he’s doing and when it comes to it, he smashes the ball straight in the onrushing Vitek’s face. Crap.

Half time and it’s once again ridiculous that we aren’t ahead. When we play at our level then we are miles better than Bristol but when we drop off the level, we are dreadful and they look good enough to take advantage. Second half and Saints again start well with Scienza picking it up on the left and he cuts infield along the top of the penalty area and smashes in a shot, which Vitek completely loses and it smashes off the bar and bounces off for a gold kick. Ridiculously unfortunate.

Saints still on top and Charles win a corner out on the left which is swung in by Scienza and Charles rises and meets it about 3 yards out and manages to head over the bar, which actually looks more difficult than heading it under the bar. Fucks sake.

Archer is now officially having a mare and coughs up possession up front to allow Bristol to break and the ball goes out to Mehmeti on the left and he cuts inside Edwards onto his right foot and hits an absolute tracer bullet just wide of the far post. If we fuck up, they will punish us and so it comes to pass.

Randall crosses from the right hand side and it’s stabbed away by THB, teed up for a shot to come in from the edge of the box and it hts Sinclair Armstrong who is trying to back away from the ball and plops onto the inside of the post and rolls across and Scott Twine has an open goal to chip the ball into over the flailing McCarthy. Fucking ridiculous how unlucky this is for us.

There are two choices left for us now, absolutely go for it or just capitulate and we go for the latter as Jander tries an inside pass to Wood and it’s intercepted by Twine who is clean through bearing down on McCarthy and as the keeper comes out he produces a lovely chipped finish into the empty net. Just fuck off Saints, seriously.

Robinson, Fellows and Manning are quickly on for Archer, Wee Man and Welington and we persist with the back three with Fellows going right wing back and Adam Armstrong becoming the central striker. Not long after that it’s time for Damion Downs to be given another run in place of Casper Jander. We are still three at the back, Fellows and Manning as wing backs, Charles in midfield on his own and everyone else kind of loafing about.

The game is completely dead now and Robinson tries to liven things up by cutting in from the left wing before pulling his shot horribly wide. We pay a couple of balls up in the general direction of Damion Downs, who of course doesn’t win any of them or barely get a touch of the ball but it’s not his fault that time is up and the final whistle goes to bring down the curtain on an absolute fucking shit show.

So in summary, we dominated the first half hour as Bristol City sat 11 players behind the ball and we scored with a great move involving Shea Charles and Adam Armstrong, who produced an absolutely sublime finish. We immediately went to shit and conceded straight away after Woody got his feet mixed up. We then had half an hour where we had a glorious chance to go back in front when Archer fucked the one on one and after half time, Scienza hits the bar, Charles misses the header and then we then conceded a very unlucky goal and then totally went to shit.

Would we have won if either the Archer, Scienza or Charles chances had gone in to give us a 2-1 lead? Evidence suggests we would have found some way to not win and that we would’ve stopped playing if any of those had gone in and conceded straight away anyway. What is remarkable is that we seem to react badly when we score a goal and also react badly when we concede. Our mentality is non-existent and that’s why we lose games like this and Bristol City win them. In terms of technical ability, they are no better than us but they hung in there when they had to, worked incredibly hard and they took their chances when they got the opportunity, usually handed to them by us.

What gets to me is that we find new ways to not win games, virtually with every passing week. Swansea – we play well and miss hundreds of chances and end up not winning. Derby – we play well for a bit, then someone gets injured and we go to shit, Ipswich – we play well for a bit and concede a shit goal, then get back into the game, then stop playing. Pompey – we don’t do anything and don’t have any shots all game. Boro – we look the better team and go in front and then stop playing and allow the opposition and easy route back into the game. We seem absolutely incapable of putting in a 90 minute performance and even the two wins we’ve had this season have been off the back of a good six minutes at the end of the Wrexham game and after a diabolical last half an hour against Sheffield United. At the root of it all is poor performance in both penalty areas – the goals we let in are either gifts or bad luck which you can’t help. No one ever seems to have to work particularly hard to score a goal against us. Up front of course, we never score the goals that we should.

If we could write off the Swansea game has just been unfortunate because of all the chances we created and missed then that’s fine. This today was fucking alarming. The absolute capitulation by the gutless spineless pathetic mentally weak fucking wankers out on the pitch. How can you be that dominant and in control until the first goal of the game and then be complete and utter fucking shit for the rest of the game.

Shit defeats like this one are really gonna turn the pressure up on Will Still, and rightly so. However, a manager should always be judged as to how well he does with the resources at his disposal so it’s difficult at the moment to judge the manager when so many of the players are barely fit for purpose. That however, doesn’t give him a free pass.

We could look at the Swansea game and say that the formation wasn’t the problem because we created loads of chances and of course missed them all but today – fucking hell – we are deep into the second half, two goals behind and we are still playing with three central defenders and they’ve been absolutely shit all game and the wingbacks have not been offering a thing going forward and we still have a lack of options to pass forward to because we have the extra defender on the pitch. Well that’s one reason. Fine to start with a three, but once we reach the last 20 and we’re behind, where was the value in having a third central defender when we were chasing the game? Maybe if Casper Jander has an extra player in front of the ball then he doesn’t play that shit sideways pass that resulted in the third goal. . I do however, totally get Will Still’s argument that the formation is not to blame for us missing chances again and it’s not the blame for the fuck ups on the first goal, nor the incredibly lucky second goal. I do not like the variations of three at the back and feel that hey cause more issues than they solve but it’s not the reason we lost today.

Substitutions – where was Finn Azaz when we needed a goal? Why didn’t he come on instead of Damion Downs or as well as him. I actually have no problems with Downs being given 10 minutes after Cameron Archers latest shit show but he barely got involved again and is clearly not the answer to anything.

If he’s not careful, forget the fans for a second, Will Still’s issue will be with the board. There will come a point when Spors and Parsons and maybe even Dragan Solak, will start looking at the players we have bought for a lot of money in Championship terms, and how they are performing. Tom Fellows and Finn Azaz are not doing anything tangible at the moment and they cost £20 million between them. The board will eventually use that as a stick to beat the manager with and we of course know who the buck always stops with.

The main issue today was not the manager however, it was the players. A few lived up to expectations but that’s not enough. Alex McCarthy actually did okay and did his best to keep the score down after the third goal went in. The wing-backs were completely ineffective in getting forward. Wee Man offered absolutely no attacking threat for us whatsoever and Welington was a little bit better in the first half, but faded after the break before being substituted for Ryan Manning, who continued his form of being incredibly irritating and pathetic, looking like he was taking it as seriously as a kick about with his mates on a park. Why was he suddenly on corners when Scienza is better at them? The central defenders were run ragged by a combination of Mehmeti, Twine and Sinclair Armstrong when he came on as a sub. Ronnie Edwards was okay at the start of the game but by the end was a complete shambles because all you have to do is bustle him around a bit and he can’t cope, whilst Nathan Wood had his worst game of the season and THB went into full moaning about everything else that was going wrong. I note with interest that Mehmeti was properly taking the piss out of THB as he went off, I assume for somthing said earlier in the game by our one-cap wonder.

In midfield, Shea Charles had what could be described as a good game, highlighted by a fantastic pass that he put through for Adam Armstrong to score. Caspar Jander seemed to be affected by the sideways and backwards play that we fall into, contributing to the third goal when he picked out a City forward and killed the game off. With his miss against Swansea and giving a goal away today, it is surely time for Flynn Downes to come back into the team, especially as we need every bit of ‘bollocks’ that we can muster from our squad.

Up front, Adam Armstrong earned his money with a very well-taken goal but was wasteful with other opportunities, usually mis-hitting them, but that’s what he is. He also set up Archer with the glorious chance that he missed and on the subject of Archer, our best finisher, allegedly, who had a glorious chance just before half-time to put us back in front but totally fucked it up and did nothing else for the rest of the game, in a standard “play for ten minutes then hide” outing from him. Leo Scienza must already be wondering what the hell he’s doing playing for us, looking the most likely to create something whenever he picked up the ball in the opposition half and being very unlucky with that run across the top of the penalty area when he hit the bar earlier in the second half. As I said, if that goes in, it could’ve been different, but probably not, the only unknown being just how we would fuck things up.

For those of you with long memories, this is shaping up very much like the season in the Championship in 2005/2006 under Harry Redknapp. In that season, we were drawing lots of games at the start of the season and the expectation was there that it was all going to turn around at some point, but then it did turn, but the wrong way. In that season we muddled along and finished 12th and at the moment you can see exactly the same happening this season.

Luckily for Will Still, we are in an intense period of games so another one rolls around pretty quickly with Saturday’s trip to Blackburn. When we went to Derby, we had the cushion of having beaten Sheffield United a few days earlier. but no such cushion this time and so the pressure is on. In the Sheffield/Derby week we performed worse in the second game and left everyone a bit down and the Sheffield result and the fact that we got four points out of six was kind of lost. Reverse that and win the second game and the shitshow Bristol game will be largely forgotten. If it was down to me I’d go with a back four but I guess that largely depends on one of Roerslev or Jelert being fit, or else you’d playing Wee Man or Edwards at right back. Regardless, I want to see Flynn Downes, Tom Fellows and Finn Azaz all restored to the side.

Talking of managers, Ralph Hasenhuttl was in the crowd today. He was good for us for a while, though he of course had some horror shows as well.

Up the fuicking Saints