Bristol City 1894

Friday night ruined, again.

Friday night, under the lights has all the elements for the perfect start to the weekend. It takes care of everything; there is no need to wonder what you might be doing. Anyone who asks what you are up to gets the same answer, seeing City tonight. We’ve had some brilliant Friday evenings at Ashton Gate. Beautiful, elated evenings that spring to mind include the 96th minute winner against West Brom last season. The rest of the weekend feels dreamy, time to do other things, full of positivity after the binary outcome and the W in the form column.

By the same metric, Friday under the lights has all the elements for the worst possible start to the weekend, compounded by the positivity heading in, the walk to the ground. It’s a unique experience, and there is a remote analogy to the kind of purgatory experienced on a night when things fall apart. Imagine the response to someone at work asking what you might be doing, and you said, oh, going to see a film, and they said, oh what film, and you said, oh the film I’ve chosen is really bad and makes everyone really angry, in fact everyone in the cinema gets angrier and more frustrated, first with the actors, then the projectionist, and then the people around them, but they won’t leave because they have a peculiar loyalty to the cinema, they will just become more and more puce with rage, until they start swearing at the screen, at the popcorn seller, anyone. And then they’ll go home angry and be miserable to others, and this will bleed over into Monday, and where normally they would read every review, everything written about this film, and tell everyone about it, this time they will mentally pretend it never happened, never look at a website, or discuss it, or even acknowledge it.

Truly, mind-destroying awful films this year have included City vs Derby, a faith-destroying 5 goal mauling at the hands of a fairly average team. The worst one I can remember recently was against Leeds a couple of seasons ago, we only lost 1-0, but it was the worst 1-0 I had ever seen; there was more chance of City getting a foothold in the Derby match than that miserly thrashing. We argued on the way home and I didn’t take them to another evening game for ages.

City vs Watford is straight into the pantheon of shit Friday nights. The club is in a curious state, somehow aiming for the playoffs, but utterly inconsistent and fragile, which hasn’t helped by losing not one, but three centre backs to injury for the rest of the season.

The walk down was lovely; the sensation of movement, fans walking to the ground, powered by post-work beers and optimism. E ran down the road, doing football exercises his coach told him to do, a feint and a skip, side to side. He’s in the right of the picture above. To be ten years old, and living and breathing football, absorbing every statistic, to the extent that the wizened fellow ST holders around us turn to him when they need the answer to a player related question, it’s a joyful, pure age where things are binary, there is only football, and those that know football, juxtaposed with those people who don’t know football. I have cursed them, my kids. They are destined to follow City forever, like their Grandad and Derby County – but without the League wins and great European scalps – he was there that night, 50 years ago, watching his heroes tear Real Madrid apart.

His 92 number is somewhere in the 50s, and he hasn’t even tried to tick them off. He studied in Manchester in the 60s and went to Old Trafford regularly. I asked him if he saw George Best play, and in a moment, in an instant, something flickered in his memory, a daguerreotype of George Best doing something and he said yes, week in, week out… and it wasn’t even what he did when people were watching, it was his movement all the time, even when walking during the game, waiting, it was the balance, you could watch only him and come away feeling awestruck, that you’d seen something in that moment, in each moment, you would never see again.

We bumped into some Danish Watford fans on the way to the match. They were fully garbed in the away fan casual regalia; Fred Perry, CP company, Adidas, with box-fresh Watford scarves. We chatted and it was convivial; they had flown to London, then got the train to Bristol, arrived two hours before, and were following Luca Kjerrumgaard, their striker on loan from Udinese. I pointed out that we also had a Danish striker (or E did the pointing out, because he is the resident statistician) but it was clear they preferred this Dane to that one.

It made me want to go to a European fixture. Last time I was in Belgium to do some research and writing there were no matches on, but I might try again soon.

Watford scored super early. It was chastening. it had all the cliched hallmarks of a hot knife through warm butter. We gathered, and we were decent, and before half-time Scott Twine managed to equalise. He’s on 10 goals for the season, I think. He still divides opinion. I think he gets a tough time, referees seem pre-disposed to not give fouls against him – in the last two matches he’s been pulled down in dangerous areas, to be greeted by a pious ref spreading his arms to indicate in his esteemed opinion there was nothing wrong with that. It’s of a piece with the penalty issue. As a club, we don’t get them. It’s coming up to a year since the last one at home. We didn’t get a clear penalty against Wrexham, they’ve had five in the league this season. Same for Blackburn.

The last away penalty – I can’t remember – was it against Sunderland maybe? Nakhi Wells? That came after a gap so long that the New York Times and the Guardian wrote about it wrote about it. Anyway it’s been three years. I think that makes us an outlier.

Having got back on terms, played fairly well against a distinctly average fellow mid table team, we then invited Ngakia to have a stroll around the edge of the box, have a look at goal, put through his domino’s order for when he gets home, and maybe if there’s time, have a thwack and see if he could score. He did. They won.

I think for me, this was the moment where reality impinged fully on any dreams of the playoffs. I can’t see it happening. We lose to frequently against the teams we should beat, and win against the ones we shouldn’t. I wonder if – and I know very little about tactics but I’m going to say it anyway – our style of ideal play, hot on transition, translates into better away performances that it does home. Either way, we can’t lose 7 times at home and think we’ll still be in the mix.

Next match is the rearranged Cup tie against Port Vale on Tuesday. We were going to go, but now we can’t. If we get through, it’s Sunderland at home on Saturday. Anything could happen.