Bristol City fans seeking an end to 'beige' purgatory

[BBC]

Here is a prediction for Bristol City's final league position in 2026-27 season - we will probably finish 12th.

There comes a point when supporting your football club when you stop asking whether the team is good enough to go up or bad enough to go down.

Instead you start asking yourself, 'what on earth is the point of this?' You question the financial cost and also why bother if you are not enjoying your team being just average?

So why, and how, do you arrive at this point? It is not because you stopped loving your club - that never leaves you.

Bristol City supporters are passionate - we follow our team by travelling thousands of miles and spend a lot of our hard-earned cash alongside our emotional investment.

The oldest ones amongst us know what it feels like when we nearly did not have a club (1982) and remain thankful to those who made huge personal and financial sacrifices to ensure we still have one.

We still convince ourselves every August that this season will finally be different.

You can be sure the one season we do not engage with the club and commit to the season ticket or membership will be the season we pull off the miracle and achieve promotion.

But eventually, the numbers and the facts become impossible to ignore. Over the past 10 seasons in the Championship, Bristol City have become the definition of football mediocrity, in fact it is felt like purgatory at times.

As an example, look at the averages of our goal difference, league position, average points across the time we have spent in the Championship. What jumps out isn't a disaster. It's repetition of mediocrity.

In the time we have been back in the Championship there's been one genuine play-off push (2025), and that ended in the largest aggregate loss of any club in recent play-off history.

Since we have been back in the Championship there have been a couple of flirtations with relegation, but to be honest, apart from the Lee Johnson run in the League Cup, it all sits somewhere between forgettable and harmless.

I mentioned our averages over the time we've been in the Championship, well they go something like this: about 60 points a season, around a -3 goal difference, and we tend to finish 12th.

It just does not feel like progression does it?

I think it is what they call a holding pattern. But the most symbolic figure, in 2025-26 our goal difference was zero. We were not shocking, we just existed, we were there.

If you were going to go into your local DIY store, and select a colour based on Bristol City's performance. It's going to be beige - it is inoffensive, it just sits there , does not cause any bother, it exists.

Last season was the season we really should not have bothered.

At the start, Struberball got us so excited, but then it all changed. There was no genuine promotion push, there was not really any jeopardy, but we ended up with a feeling within the fanbase that the club had not moved forwards. Apathy has struck.

We now find ourselves waiting for the additional layer of hierarchy to be filled which we are told will help remove the blandness you associate with Bristol City.

The appointment of a sporting director who will then choose a head coach to lead and develop the team and lead us all into the land of riches and dreams called the Premier League.

You can hear more from Richard Angell on the Forever Bristol City podcast.