Championship Dark Horse ........
Jan 03, 2025
A "dark horse" is an outsider with a better chance of doing well than odds suggest and last summer I put up one in both the Championship and Premier League and both have done reasonably well , one sensationally so and this week I wrote some updated notes on both and you can read both , first up the second tier team whom I covered on New Year's Day, before their 2-2 draw at Plymouth Argyle...........
Another team I mentioned in those July Championship notes were Bristol City and it feels like the perfect time to see how their first half of the campaign has played out .....
Dark Horse ?
Bristol City are one of the big underachievers in the Championship, the set up looks good, the owner is super rich and has been long term committed to the City of Bristol (which is the 11th largest in the UK and biggest in the West Country) and not just the football club. However, since promotion in 2015 they have only once finished top 10 (8th) and had been expected to at least compete in all nine of those campaigns. It has to be said they have made some god awful managerial appointments, a couple of whom I would not even let take charge of my dog if I had one! However, I suspect they have a good one now, with Liam Manning poached from Oxford United, he is very young (38) and perhaps only now coming to terms with the job after arriving in November. His team went into the final game of last season unbeaten in seven including two games against top 5 teams with automatic and playoff ambitions and the mood at the club is good. Attendances are averaging over 22,000 which is great for a mid table team with no real success for years and the highest they have been since the 1977-78 campaign. Season ticket sales have increased this summer, so every reason to believe that those attendances will rise again.
They finally finished 11th last season, their best finish since 2018-19 and, a circa 10 point improvement, which will be required to get into the top 6 feels do-able . The team that Manning built at Oxford earned promotion into the Championship after his departure and now he will have had his first pre-season and second transfer window at Ashton Gate and in the first he was still working out what was required. No team outside the top six won more home games than City, or had a better goal difference +10 and they should improve and circa 2.50+ for them to again finish top half of the table, feels big.
They are up to 10th after a decent, albeit still inconsistent run and have a 4 point buffer over the 13th placed team and are only 5 points off 5th spot. They are trading at 1.40 for a top half finish, so good value if you went with the 2.50+.
XP places them closer, 8th, with 35 points . Their next nine starts are against teams with an average league placing of 15.6 and they have the opportunity to kick on. They are quoted @ 8.0-9.0 to finish top 6, not sure if they are consistent or good enough for that just yet and supporters seem to have their doubts. However, I am pretty sure that they will be closer and quoted at lower odds after those next nine games and if they were to win say 3+ of the next 5 , I wonder how much could be made available to spend in this window and they do still have to host teams currently filling the six places immediately above them in the table and City are strong at Ashton Gate. It could be an interesting early 2025 for The Robins.
Good luck!
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