Bristol City 1894

I wanted to go to this one, but it’s such a schlep and it’s a school night. I don’t finish work in time. Fortunately it was on the telly; as is pretty much every football match at any given time, except City vs Port Vale next week, obviously.

Ewood Park looked empty. Attendance was 10k or thereabouts, which is mind-numbingly low. Their average attendance is 14k, less than half the 30k capacity. It feels odd, the first winners of the Premier League, now circling the drain in the Championship. That’s football I suppose, wealthy owners come and go, players are sold, nothing ever lasts for ever (except, in the words of the great Sean Hughes, for the Brookside omnibus on a Saturday which is still on, somewhere, every time you turn over, no matter what time of day). Despite the cycle, the inevitably, the rise and fall, all of that, something is rotten up there in Lancashire.

Under the Venkys’ ownership, the club has become stagnant, with no real investment in players, the ground or the kind of culture that changes and enlivens the place and creates a feeling of optimism. Over the past decade it hasn’t been synonymous with attractive football. Why would you go there? It’s like visiting an elderly relative in hospital who is too ill to come home, but not ill enough to die, caught in a doom loop of misery and slow, terminal decline. 15000 unsold tickets on each matchday is a massive hit on revenue, and it’s also a generation of supporters from the town who are either avoiding football entirely, or going elsewhere, with Preston, Burnley, Accrington and Bolton all nearby.

In terms of the match – and the stuff I write tends to be as much about the stuff around the match, people and impressions, as the match itself – we won 2-1. It was badly needed. They scored first, which was terrifying, but it seemed to spark life into the team and midway through the first half we were ahead, and then managed to hold on in the second half when Blackburn were much the better side.

This Friday is Watford at home. Watford look lively, excitable. We haven’t lost at home to them since 2012. We have also shipped 7 goals in the past two matches at Ashton Gate and we’re missing Rob Dickie and Rob Atkinson, who was on the receiving end of a horrible tackle from Ohashi, who should have had a red card. Anything could happen.