'STUBBORN' STEVE IS SO HAPPY
TO STAND ON THRESHOLD OF
MAJOR CITY SUCCESS STORY . . .

By Simon Parkinson

STEVE Lansdown admits his decision not to quit the Ashton Gate top job when the heat was on has reaped handsome dividends.

The 55-year-old Bristol City chairman had taken a bellyful of criticism in his attempts to hoist the club out of the Football League’s third tier; more than he could stomach at times.

Mercifully that is all behind him and Lansdown has emerged from the gloom - pride and dignity firmly intact - to the brink of turning his underachieving home-city club into a top-flight one, however unreal that may seem!

Almondsbury-born Lansdown, who rose through the ranks of finance director and vice-chairman before taking on the chief post at Ashton Gate six years ago, insists he has now returned to terra firma from the carnival celebrations that marked City’s gutsy play-off semi-final victory over Crystal Palace.

But he maintains that regardless of whether the club he has supported as a fan for nigh on two decades wins promotion to the Premier League, or merely retains their Championship standing for now, the events of the campaign, and the Palace success in particular, will linger forever in his memory.

“I’ve come off it a bit now,” he smiled. “I was pretty useless where work was concerned the day after the Palace win because so many people wanted to thank me and tell me how wonderful it all was. The success we have enjoyed this year is great reward, not just for me but for all the staff at Bristol City who have put up with so much during some difficult years.

“Yes, I dictate the policy but these people who look after the football side of things; the admin, the contractual issues, the ticketing and media; it’s down to their perseverance, their polite handling of things, that has helped see us through some tough times.

“Last year’s promotion celebrations were borne of relief. Having finally got ourselves up the expectations going into the Championship season were lower but we’ve shown that for the first time in 28 long years we can compete at the higher end of the football spectrum.

“Tuesday night against Crystal Palace was a mega-night. The game was broadcast around the world and the players responded by showing such courage and determination, while the fans demonstrated that they have it in them to produce a wall of sound that I’d never before experienced at Ashton Gate.”

INTENSE EMOTION

Lansdown recalled: “The reaction from the fans in the last five minutes against Hartlepool in the second leg of the play-offs in 2004, when we came back with two goals to win through to the final, sparked intense emotion around the ground. But on Tuesday evening the volume of noise was from start to finish and it was awesome.

“This sort of thing can only attract people back to Bristol and we’re making up for a lot of years of hurt. It’s so hard to describe how you feel.”

Lansdown certainly knew how he felt when he and the club hit rock-bottom around the time Brian Tinnion, a player of immense talent in his pomp and desperate to make a name for himself as a manager, quit the helm on the back of a demoralising 7-1 thrashing by Swansea City just eight games into the 2005-06 League One programme.

The City chairman stressed: “I’ve never had regrets about appointing Brian. People have their opinions but you are there to make decisions as you see fit and if it doesn’t work out, you make another decision. I felt it was right at the time and that it could work.

“Danny ( Wilson) had got us to the LDV final and a play-off final but the upshot was it didn’t work out for him or Brian after him.

“We – myself and Keith Dawe - had the usual run of applicants after Brian had left and Gary Johnson was top of that list. I could see he was the type who would want to get involved with everything that moved at the club but above all he clearly wanted to be at the centre of building something big, and to see it through. That’s what influenced my thinking to appoint him.

“Soon after he joined we went through a run of nine straight defeats but nothing ever happened during that spell that made me think we wouldn’t carry on working together and the same applies now in much better circumstances.”

Lansdown revealed: “Both Gary and myself received our share of abuse during the difficult early days together. A lot of hurtful things were written and we took the brunt of a lot of cowardly and personal attacks. I can take people calling me unsavoury names but I can’t take people doing that to my wife and family.

“There were times when I thought, ‘Why am I doing this; I don’t need this abuse?'

“But I’m a fighter and a grafter and I always have been, and I’m a proud and stubborn man too, just as Gary is.

“Some people think you’re in it for an ego boost or to asset strip and I think I’ve shown people I’m not like that.

“There’s always an element trying to put you down but that’s not uncommon in football.

“Tuesday night’s win over Palace was, for me, a culmination of all the good and positive things that we’ve been striving towards and the fans have been very much a part of that.”

Johnson had already enjoyed phenomenal success with Yeovil Town and, to a lesser extent, as an assistant at Cambridge United before hauling Bristol City out of the doldrums and Lansdown thinks he knows why.

“It’s a lot about hard work with Gary. He obviously has skills and abilities but he is a willing listener and learner. Gary is an approachable man with a stubborn streak too but he doesn’t expect anyone to carry out anything he couldn’t do himself.

“There’s a mutual respect between him and his players and everyone else who works for the common cause.”

HUGELY SUCCESSFUL

Lansdown is a man perfectly used to handling the sort of money most of us can only dream of – it’s what he’s long done for a living, not least as co-founder of hugely successful financial advisory firm Hargreaves Lansdown.

Asked whether the prospect of Premier League football daunted him though, Lansdown’s response was emphatic.

“It doesn’t faze me at all,” he said. “It’s another challenge and a very exciting one, IF I’m lucky enough to experience it of course. My goal is not just to see Bristol City get there but to see them stay there for a very long time, and to get it in a healthy state for the next occupant to take on . . . not that I'm thinking of calling it a day just yet!

“We have a team that warrants respect now. It really cheesed me off listening to a one-time Lord Mayor of Bristol saying something to the effect – and laughing as he said it - that we could have two clubs joining forces together and the city would still never have a decent football team.

“It was a typical Bristolian-type comment and I’m pleased to say his words have proved unfounded, even if it has taken us a few more years than we’d have liked to get where we are today.”

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