Lee Johnson



Hi Sunderland fans,

Hope you're all keeping well. I've joined the board to attempt to give you a balanced view on Lee Johnson. I'm afraid I might find this hard though as I'm sure you find out on reading this post.

Lee Johnson was appointed following the sacking of Steve Cotterill. Cotts had just given us our best ever season, albeit it at league one level. We won the league at a canter amassing 99 points and just for good measure we won the Mickey Mouse trophy (Johnsons Paint). Regrettably things didn't fare so well in the Championship and at the first sign of trouble, he was booted out with us third from bottom, two points from safety with half the season gone. Our chairman, Steve Lansdown offered Cotts no backing whatsoever and was very quick to pull the trigger.

This brought about the appointment of Lee Johnson. Poached from Barnsley where he'd done quite well. They'd eventually get promoted off the back of his start to the season, although they had recently endured their record losing streak under LJ and so the reality is that the Barnsley fans weren't exactly massively upset to see him go.

Things changed dramatically when LJ was appointed. you may be aware of LJ's dad Gary. He was a legend of a manager for us and took us to the play off final in 07/08 with a squad that performed well above the level of the players contained within it (remember this point). It was during this time that Steve Lansdown (owner) struck up a lasting friendship with the Johnson family - alarm bells ringing at all?

A closed cheque book for Steve Cotterill suddenly opened wide and players that Cotts hadn't been allowed to sign (Lee Tomlin - 20k wages, our highest earner being on 13k) were suddenly given the green light. On the back of these signings, including your own (I think) Adam Matthews, Tomlin and Peter Odemwinge, Lee Johnson guided us to safety.

In the coming seasons we'd see signings authorised left, right and centre. For millions and millions of pounds. Money was thrown about like we've never seen before - some (including me) would say because of Lansdown's fondness for Johnson. And we established ourselves as a team that would flatter to deceive. It cannot be ignore that admit it all Lee Johnson stumbled across a formula to have us playing scintillating football and we were neck and neck with Wolves up until Christmas at the top of the league, including beating Manchester United in the league cup quarters and narrowly losing each of the semis to an injury time goal, until we'll crumbled away in extremely poor fashion that saw us go on a remarkable streak of results that looked like that welsh train station with the really long name, these runs included a record 8/9 L's in a row and another similar run. And a number of fans took to christening him streaky Johnson as he'd manage to paper over the cracks (my opinion) with a couple of wins and a draw thereafter.

Signing wise, Johnson signed a lot of dross. He signed foreigners that played next to no minutes, including the NZ goalkeeper who had arguably the worst performance any player has ever had for Bristol City ever, or maybe even any football team ever. There were a few like this. Players he talk up, pay a lot and then not play.

Things weren't all bad on the transfer front though. He'd sign Adam Webster for 4.5m from Ipswich and sell him to Brighton for up to 26m and he signed Josh Brownhill for a pittance and sell him to Burnley for 7m (although this was pretty obviously always going to happen given his obvious talent).

Johnson also played a pretty uninspiring midfielder (who I'd have happily let go on a free) up top. Bobby Reid was in his last chance saloon at Bristol City when an injury crisis saw Johnson play him up front in a very successful pre season. We'd go onto sell him to Cardiff for 10m and he now remarkably pays his trade with Fulham in the Prem. Johnson can take full credit for that.

He's also sell Johnathon Kodjia (15m to Villa), Aden Flint (7m - i forget whether to Cardiff or Boro) and Joe Bryan (6m Fulham), and whereas pro LJers would have you believe this was LJ's work, they were already at City (and had performed well) and so I'd suggest his credit in the transfers is extremely limited.

Post that defeat to Wolves, our football became awful. The worst we've ever seen at Bristol City. At the opposite end of the spectrum to what we'd seen earlier that season - hence why i used the phrase 'stumbled across a formula' earlier in this write up, it genuinely wasn't me being disingenuous. We were crap and Ashton Gate became anything but a fortress. We were weak, football was awful and more and more often fans would be calling for his head. But his good family friend Steve Lansdown stuck with him. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad, away from home we became masters of nicking a 0-1 win on the road, but this would (in my opinion) paper over the cracks of the dour home form.

We'd regularly enjoy a decent enough start to the season and then fade away dramatically to 8-12th spot and given the tens of millions of outgoings and then now bulging wage structure, Johnson left us with a bloated squad with players in it that we knew were quality (Tamas Kalas - 2 promotions to prom), but somehow they managed to look like sunday league players.

Don't get me started on playing players out of position, we'd see players shoehorned into the starting line up at the expense of someone who genuinely would play in the position that he needed to fill. Then there was the 'Johnson Tombola' - if you want a steady and consistent line up then I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place. Our star left winger - who'd finish last season at the top of the assist making charts, couldn't get a run of games in the team no matter how well he played - can you imagine his stats if he'd got a fair crack?

Then there's the credit taking. If we won "They players stuck to my plan brilliantly", if we lost he'd single players out. I seem to recall a game where we lost heavily. He brought on a sub at half time (or there abouts) with us 2 or 3 down, the proceeded to blame him when we lost 4-0. Our ability to hold a lead became nothing short of awful - do you recall when we were 3-0 up against you at half time and drew 3-3? Awful. Blaming players is something Johnson does equally as well as taking credit himself. And he's good at excuses, blaming Villa beating us on the positioning of the away fans and excuses too... there was a time when we got completely trounced by Brentford nd he said something like "After their third goal, we more than matched them" - we lost 3-0. You getting the picture yet?

Now comes my favourite point about Lee Johnson. The Johnsonisms. He is completely full of shit. As i understand it, there was quite a David Brent type character on STID? I never got far enough into the series to meet him, but LJ is more than a match for him. It got to a point where i couldn't listen to him. Win lose or draw I couldn't stand hearing what he had to say. It was just an embarrassment - I hope you'll learn exactly what it is that i'm referring to - but let just say you'd be well placed to start a thread on "Johnsonisms" on your forum and it'll be well populated very quickly.

I'm afraid I can't bring you much joyful news about your impending appointment of Lee Johnson. There were many points during his tenure where i'd have taken anyone to replace him - literally anyone - the football was that bad.

He does silly things, like measure the length of the grass, spend a shift in A&E, go to an army training camp, spend a night in the kitchen of a Michelin starred restaurant and his latest boast is to have sat down with someone who's amassed 9,000 hours of army interrogation - this is the sort of bullshit that might impress the newspapers, but in reality when he's playing a LB at CD, or a winger in CM don't really matter. He's calls them the 1%'s, but the 90%'s that matter, he couldn't seem to master.

So good luck Sunderland. I'm afraid to say you're going to need it. When you hear sky Sports refer to Bristol City playing a fast attacking expansive brand of football, the reality is that they're basing it on 4 months out of 5 years. The rest was rubbish. There came a point they'd say it every time we where on TV.

I hope that A Bristol City fan can come on here an give a good counter argument. As you can tell from above I'm absolutely no LJ fan, and I might have undersold some of his strengths (thinking about the opponent strengths rather than our own is another one). There are City fans who like him, but they tend to be the ones who deliberately ignore that he only got the job because the owner is essentially his god father and backed him with more finances that we've ever seen before.

Good luck lads and lasses. I fear you'll need it. Because at Sunderland he'll be without his biggest strength - Steve Lansdown.

Fordy
 
Last edited:
This is pure PR. The likes of Methven take as utter mugs. We know his track record and its utter rubbish. We know the fans of Barnsley and Bristol City couldn't stand him. The lack of awareness of our owners is breath taking. Johnson will be, rightly, an incredibly unpopular one. Very noticeable that in the article it was his Dad talking him up. Oh dear, what have these idiots done to our club?
Appointing either Cowley or Johnson smacks of SD & CM calling the shots well until those two scumbags f off we will always be in this division they are just taking the piss out of every fan
 
Some comments from our forum, not directly related to questions asked on this thread but re Sunderland & Johnson.

"Meh think he’d be as good an appointment for them as anyone else available to be honest.

Sunderland should be able to dominate teams at that level and if he gets them playing the way we did in 17/18 then sure they’ll be pleased.

Issue is no way will Sunderland fans have the patience that Lansdown did during his time here."


"Bloody hell, who do they think they'd get to take them over? Johnson achieved a few top half finishes with us, it'd be like us missing out on play offs a few more times, sacking off Holden and having a premier league manager who'd finished mid table a few times take us over and us pissing and moaning about it. "

"They've got one of our fans on there called 'Bristol City' and he's rubbished Johnson a few times.

I never thought Johnson would take us up and I would've got rid of him a lot sooner, but reality is he improved us year on year (until last season) whilst losing his best player pretty much every season.

He's at a much bigger side if he does get the job, and if he can get it right they could do back to backs."


"For me, Johnson gets a big club, and he gets the chance to earn his first play-off / promotion. I don’t care about whether Sunderland was a basket case, it’s down to him now and we will see where it gets him. I think it’s a no excuses appointment. One point off playoffs in 7th place with a game in hand, anything but playoffs is below par. 5 points off automatics. "

"Also, didn’t loads of people say Johnson should work under a DoF as he’s a good coach but needs guidance? Sounds like that’s what he’d have at Sunderland. I think he’d probably take them up."

"Can't see the hardcore support from Sunderland fans really taking well to the rubbish he comes out with. Our fanbase is tame compared to the fanatics from the North East"

"Yeah there's no doubting there were bad times under him but equally some very good ones and left the club in a far better position then he took it over."


"Massive step up for LJ in what is arguably a much bigger club than ourselves. Think he will do a great job for them tbh."

"Oh come on he did a far better job of that than any manager I’ve seen at Ashton Gate going back to Tinnion. (2003) "

"
OK eyes down, look in.............one line wins a pasty, a full house wins a pint of cider


Play LJ Bullshit Bingo



PEP



3 WINDOWS



RED ARROWS



DRONE



MEASURE GRASS



BOX ENTRY



JOSE WINE



RB LEIPZIG



SAS



POMO



PATHWAY



NHS



CULTURE



WORLD CLASS BASICS



3'A's

 
Last edited:
Some comments from our forum, not directly related to questions asked on this thread but re Sunderland & Johnson.

"Meh think he’d be as good an appointment for them as anyone else available to be honest.

Sunderland should be able to dominate teams at that level and if he gets them playing the way we did in 17/18 then sure they’ll be pleased.

Issue is no way will Sunderland fans have the patience that Lansdown did during his time here."


"Bloody hell, who do they think they'd get to take them over? Johnson achieved a few top half finishes with us, it'd be like us missing out on play offs a few more times, sacking off Holden and having a premier league manager who'd finished mid table a few times take us over and us pissing and moaning about it. "

"They've got one of our fans on there called 'Bristol City' and he's rubbished Johnson a few times.

I never thought Johnson would take us up and I would've got rid of him a lot sooner, but reality is he improved us year on year (until last season) whilst losing his best player pretty much every season.

He's at a much bigger side if he does get the job, and if he can get it right they could do back to backs."


"For me, Johnson gets a big club, and he gets the chance to earn his first play-off / promotion. I don’t care about whether Sunderland was a basket case, it’s down to him now and we will see where it gets him. I think it’s a no excuses appointment. One point off playoffs in 7th place with a game in hand, anything but playoffs is below par. 5 points off automatics. "

"Also, didn’t loads of people say Johnson should work under a DoF as he’s a good coach but needs guidance? Sounds like that’s what he’d have at Sunderland. I think he’d probably take them up."

"Can't see the hardcore support from Sunderland fans really taking well to the rubbish he comes out with. Our fanbase is tame compared to the fanatics from the North East"

"Yeah there's no doubting there were bad times under him but equally some very good ones and left the club in a far better position then he took it over."


"Massive step up for LJ in what is arguably a much bigger club than ourselves. Think he will do a great job for them tbh."

"Oh come on he did a far better job of that than any manager I’ve seen at Ashton Gate going back to Tinnion. (2003) "

"
OK eyes down, look in.............one line wins a pasty, a full house wins a pint of cider


Play LJ Bullshit Bingo



PEP



3 WINDOWS



RED ARROWS



DRONE



MEASURE GRASS



BOX ENTRY



JOSE WINE



RB LEIPZIG



SAS



POMO



PATHWAY



NHS



CULTURE



WORLD CLASS BASICS



3'A's


LJ bullshit bingo will be completely lost on them sadly... but they'll learn!
 
Hi Sunderland fans,

Hope you're all keeping well. I've joined the board to attempt to give you a balanced view on Lee Johnson. I'm afraid I might find this hard though as I'm sure you find out on reading this post.

Lee Johnson was appointed following the sacking of Steve Cotterill. Cotts had just given us our best ever season, albeit it at league one level. We won the league at a canter amassing 99 points and just for good measure we won the Mickey Mouse trophy (Johnsons Paint). Regrettably things didn't fare so well in the Championship and at the first sign of trouble, he was booted out with us third from bottom, two points from safety with half the season gone. Our chairman, Steve Lansdown offered Cotts no backing whatsoever and was very quick to pull the trigger.

This brought about the appointment of Lee Johnson. Poached from Barnsley where he'd done quite well. They'd eventually get promoted off the back of his start to the season, although they had recently endured their record losing streak under LJ and so the reality is that the Barnsley fans weren't exactly massively upset to see him go.

Things changed dramatically when LJ was appointed. you may be aware of LJ's dad Gary. He was a legend of a manager for us and took us to the play off final in 07/08 with a squad that performed well above the level of the players contained within it (remember this point). It was during this time that Steve Lansdown (owner) struck up a lasting friendship with the Johnson family - alarm bells ringing at all?

A closed cheque book for Steve Cotterill suddenly opened wide and players that Cotts hadn't been allowed to sign (Lee Tomlin - 20k wages, our highest earner being on 13k) were suddenly given the green light. On the back of these signings, including your own (I think) Adam Matthews, Tomlin and Peter Odemwinge, Lee Johnson guided us to safety.

In the coming seasons we'd see signings authorised left, right and centre. For millions and millions of pounds. Money was thrown about like we've never seen before - some (including me) would say because of Lansdown's fondness for Johnson. And we established ourselves as a team that would flatter to deceive. It cannot be ignore that admit it all Lee Johnson stumbled across a formula to have us playing scintillating football and we were neck and neck with Wolves up until Christmas at the top of the league, including beating Manchester United in the league cup quarters and narrowly losing each of the semis to an injury time goal, until we'll crumbled away in extremely poor fashion that saw us go on a remarkable streak of results that looked like that welsh train station with the really long name, these runs included a record 8/9 L's in a row and another similar run. And a number of fans took to christening him streaky Johnson as he'd manage to paper over the cracks (my opinion) with a couple of wins and a draw thereafter.

Signing wise, Johnson signed a lot of dross. He signed foreigners that played next to no minutes, including the NZ goalkeeper who had arguably the worst performance any player has ever had for Bristol City ever, or maybe even any football team ever. There were a few like this. Players he talk up, pay a lot and then not play.

Things weren't all bad on the transfer front though. He'd sign Adam Webster for 4.5m from Ipswich and sell him to Brighton for up to 26m and he signed Josh Brownhill for a pittance and sell him to Burnley for 7m (although this was pretty obviously always going to happen given his obvious talent).

Johnson also played a pretty uninspiring midfielder (who I'd have happily let go on a free) up top. Bobby Reid was in his last chance saloon at Bristol City when an injury crisis saw Johnson play him up front in a very successful pre season. We'd go onto sell him to Cardiff for 10m and he now remarkably pays his trade with Fulham in the Prem. Johnson can take full credit for that.

He's also sell Johnathon Kodjia (15m to Villa), Aden Flint (7m - i forget whether to Cardiff or Boro) and Joe Bryan (6m Fulham), and whereas pro LJers would have you believe this was LJ's work, they were already at City (and had performed well) and so I'd suggest his credit in the transfers is extremely limited.

Post that defeat to Wolves, our football became awful. The worst we've ever seen at Bristol City. At the opposite end of the spectrum to what we'd seen earlier that season - hence why i used the phrase 'stumbled across a formula' earlier in this write up, it genuinely wasn't me being disingenuous. We were crap and Ashton Gate became anything but a fortress. We were weak, football was awful and more and more often fans would be calling for his head. But his good family friend Steve Lansdown stuck with him. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad, away from home we became masters of nicking a 0-1 win on the road, but this would (in my opinion) paper over the cracks of the dour home form.

We'd regularly enjoy a decent enough start to the season and then fade away dramatically to 8-12th spot and given the tens of millions of outgoings and then now bulging wage structure, Johnson left us with a bloated squad with players in it that we knew were quality (Tamas Kalas - 2 promotions to prom), but somehow they managed to look like sunday league players.

Don't get me started on playing players out of position, we'd see players shoehorned into the starting line up at the expense of someone who genuinely would play in the position that he needed to fill. Then there was the 'Johnson Tombola' - if you want a steady and consistent line up then I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place. Our star left winger - who'd finish last season at the top of the assist making charts, couldn't get a run of games in the team no matter how well he played - can you imagine his stats if he'd got a fair crack?

Then there's the credit taking. If we won "They players stuck to my plan brilliantly", if we lost he'd single players out. I seem to recall a game where we lost heavily. He brought on a sub at half time (or there abouts) with us 2 or 3 down, the proceeded to blame him when we lost 4-0. Our ability to hold a lead became nothing short of awful - do you recall when we were 3-0 up against you at half time and drew 3-3? Awful. Blaming players is something Johnson does equally as well as taking credit himself. And he's good at excuses, blaming Villa beating us on the positioning of the away fans and excuses too... there was a time when we got completely trounced by Brentford nd he said something like "After their third goal, we more than matched them" - we lost 3-0. You getting the picture yet?

Now comes my favourite point about Lee Johnson. The Johnsonisms. He is completely full of shit. As i understand it, there was quite a David Brent type character on STID? I never got far enough into the series to meet him, but LJ is more than a match for him. It got to a point where i couldn't listen to him. Win lose or draw I couldn't stand hearing what he had to say. It was just an embarrassment - I hope you'll learn exactly what it is that i'm referring to - but let just say you'd be well placed to start a thread on "Johnsonisms" on your forum and it'll be well populated very quickly.

I'm afraid I can't bring you much joyful news about your impending appointment of Lee Johnson. There were many points during his tenure where i'd have taken anyone to replace him - literally anyone - the football was that bad.

He does silly things, like measure the length of the grass, spend a shift in A&E, go to an army training camp, spend a night in the kitchen of a Michelin starred restaurant and his latest boast is to have sat down with someone who's amassed 9,000 hours of army interrogation - this is the sort of bullshit that might impress the newspapers, but in reality when he's playing a LB at CD, or a winger in CM don't really matter. He's calls them the 1%'s, but the 90%'s that matter, he couldn't seem to master.

So good luck Sunderland. I'm afraid to say you're going to need it. When you hear sky Sports refer to Bristol City playing a fast attacking expansive brand of football, the reality is that they're basing it on 4 months out of 5 years. The rest was rubbish. There came a point they'd say it every time we where on TV.

I hope that A Bristol City fan can come on here an give a good counter argument. As you can tell from above I'm absolutely no LJ fan, and I might have undersold some of his strengths (thinking about the opponent strengths rather than our own is another one). There are City fans who like him, but they tend to be the ones who deliberately ignore that he only got the job because the owner is essentially his god father and backed him with more finances that we've ever seen before.

Good luck lads and lasses. I fear you'll need it. Because at Sunderland he'll be without his biggest strength - Steve Lansdown.

Fordy
could not have put it better fordy
 
There's a lot to cover there and I'm sorry you feel that way. Some of the frustration is understandable, and the club as a whole from top to bottom has to do more to get supporters back onside. It hopefully starts here with the next manager, if that is Lee Johnson.

I'm hoping 2021 will be a much better year for all of us. This club is a massive opportunity for the next manager.
Do you know the real problem is that I am what they call on here a happy clapper. I would have kept Coleman, didn't want MON or Bruce sacked. I liked JAck Ross. Until Parkinson I have always had a bit of lift with manager arriving, I could always see some logic . I was right about Parkinson, he was a predictable disaster.

The inescapable truth is that I have seen the following owners Cowie, Murray, Drumaville, Short and now Donald and co and Donald is hands down the worst owner. Everything about his tenure has failed - the youth set up is ravaged and we've now had 3 dismal seasons in League One which is the lowest we've ever been in 141 years. They need to acknowledge this. They should certainly not talk up Johnson's past history as a coach because its very flimsy indeed. The only possible way they can talk this stinking situation up is the model. But why anyone should have faith in them is anyones guess, They've been an utter disaster. So for me personally its last chance saloon. I hope Johnson proves me wrong but this is a new low and there's a way up. Donald and Methven in particular need to keep their mouths shut because their records to date is dismal.
 
Poor, poor Sunderland fans - especially then one who put us in the same bracket of attacking football with Brentford! Oh dear, oh dear.
 
Hi Sunderland fans,

Hope you're all keeping well. I've joined the board to attempt to give you a balanced view on Lee Johnson. I'm afraid I might find this hard though as I'm sure you find out on reading this post.

Lee Johnson was appointed following the sacking of Steve Cotterill. Cotts had just given us our best ever season, albeit it at league one level. We won the league at a canter amassing 99 points and just for good measure we won the Mickey Mouse trophy (Johnsons Paint). Regrettably things didn't fare so well in the Championship and at the first sign of trouble, he was booted out with us third from bottom, two points from safety with half the season gone. Our chairman, Steve Lansdown offered Cotts no backing whatsoever and was very quick to pull the trigger.

This brought about the appointment of Lee Johnson. Poached from Barnsley where he'd done quite well. They'd eventually get promoted off the back of his start to the season, although they had recently endured their record losing streak under LJ and so the reality is that the Barnsley fans weren't exactly massively upset to see him go.

Things changed dramatically when LJ was appointed. you may be aware of LJ's dad Gary. He was a legend of a manager for us and took us to the play off final in 07/08 with a squad that performed well above the level of the players contained within it (remember this point). It was during this time that Steve Lansdown (owner) struck up a lasting friendship with the Johnson family - alarm bells ringing at all?

A closed cheque book for Steve Cotterill suddenly opened wide and players that Cotts hadn't been allowed to sign (Lee Tomlin - 20k wages, our highest earner being on 13k) were suddenly given the green light. On the back of these signings, including your own (I think) Adam Matthews, Tomlin and Peter Odemwinge, Lee Johnson guided us to safety.

In the coming seasons we'd see signings authorised left, right and centre. For millions and millions of pounds. Money was thrown about like we've never seen before - some (including me) would say because of Lansdown's fondness for Johnson. And we established ourselves as a team that would flatter to deceive. It cannot be ignore that admit it all Lee Johnson stumbled across a formula to have us playing scintillating football and we were neck and neck with Wolves up until Christmas at the top of the league, including beating Manchester United in the league cup quarters and narrowly losing each of the semis to an injury time goal, until we'll crumbled away in extremely poor fashion that saw us go on a remarkable streak of results that looked like that welsh train station with the really long name, these runs included a record 8/9 L's in a row and another similar run. And a number of fans took to christening him streaky Johnson as he'd manage to paper over the cracks (my opinion) with a couple of wins and a draw thereafter.

Signing wise, Johnson signed a lot of dross. He signed foreigners that played next to no minutes, including the NZ goalkeeper who had arguably the worst performance any player has ever had for Bristol City ever, or maybe even any football team ever. There were a few like this. Players he talk up, pay a lot and then not play.

Things weren't all bad on the transfer front though. He'd sign Adam Webster for 4.5m from Ipswich and sell him to Brighton for up to 26m and he signed Josh Brownhill for a pittance and sell him to Burnley for 7m (although this was pretty obviously always going to happen given his obvious talent).

Johnson also played a pretty uninspiring midfielder (who I'd have happily let go on a free) up top. Bobby Reid was in his last chance saloon at Bristol City when an injury crisis saw Johnson play him up front in a very successful pre season. We'd go onto sell him to Cardiff for 10m and he now remarkably pays his trade with Fulham in the Prem. Johnson can take full credit for that.

He's also sell Johnathon Kodjia (15m to Villa), Aden Flint (7m - i forget whether to Cardiff or Boro) and Joe Bryan (6m Fulham), and whereas pro LJers would have you believe this was LJ's work, they were already at City (and had performed well) and so I'd suggest his credit in the transfers is extremely limited.

Post that defeat to Wolves, our football became awful. The worst we've ever seen at Bristol City. At the opposite end of the spectrum to what we'd seen earlier that season - hence why i used the phrase 'stumbled across a formula' earlier in this write up, it genuinely wasn't me being disingenuous. We were crap and Ashton Gate became anything but a fortress. We were weak, football was awful and more and more often fans would be calling for his head. But his good family friend Steve Lansdown stuck with him. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad, away from home we became masters of nicking a 0-1 win on the road, but this would (in my opinion) paper over the cracks of the dour home form.

We'd regularly enjoy a decent enough start to the season and then fade away dramatically to 8-12th spot and given the tens of millions of outgoings and then now bulging wage structure, Johnson left us with a bloated squad with players in it that we knew were quality (Tamas Kalas - 2 promotions to prom), but somehow they managed to look like sunday league players.

Don't get me started on playing players out of position, we'd see players shoehorned into the starting line up at the expense of someone who genuinely would play in the position that he needed to fill. Then there was the 'Johnson Tombola' - if you want a steady and consistent line up then I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place. Our star left winger - who'd finish last season at the top of the assist making charts, couldn't get a run of games in the team no matter how well he played - can you imagine his stats if he'd got a fair crack?

Then there's the credit taking. If we won "They players stuck to my plan brilliantly", if we lost he'd single players out. I seem to recall a game where we lost heavily. He brought on a sub at half time (or there abouts) with us 2 or 3 down, the proceeded to blame him when we lost 4-0. Our ability to hold a lead became nothing short of awful - do you recall when we were 3-0 up against you at half time and drew 3-3? Awful. Blaming players is something Johnson does equally as well as taking credit himself. And he's good at excuses, blaming Villa beating us on the positioning of the away fans and excuses too... there was a time when we got completely trounced by Brentford nd he said something like "After their third goal, we more than matched them" - we lost 3-0. You getting the picture yet?

Now comes my favourite point about Lee Johnson. The Johnsonisms. He is completely full of shit. As i understand it, there was quite a David Brent type character on STID? I never got far enough into the series to meet him, but LJ is more than a match for him. It got to a point where i couldn't listen to him. Win lose or draw I couldn't stand hearing what he had to say. It was just an embarrassment - I hope you'll learn exactly what it is that i'm referring to - but let just say you'd be well placed to start a thread on "Johnsonisms" on your forum and it'll be well populated very quickly.

I'm afraid I can't bring you much joyful news about your impending appointment of Lee Johnson. There were many points during his tenure where i'd have taken anyone to replace him - literally anyone - the football was that bad.

He does silly things, like measure the length of the grass, spend a shift in A&E, go to an army training camp, spend a night in the kitchen of a Michelin starred restaurant and his latest boast is to have sat down with someone who's amassed 9,000 hours of army interrogation - this is the sort of bullshit that might impress the newspapers, but in reality when he's playing a LB at CD, or a winger in CM don't really matter. He's calls them the 1%'s, but the 90%'s that matter, he couldn't seem to master.

So good luck Sunderland. I'm afraid to say you're going to need it. When you hear sky Sports refer to Bristol City playing a fast attacking expansive brand of football, the reality is that they're basing it on 4 months out of 5 years. The rest was rubbish. There came a point they'd say it every time we where on TV.

I hope that A Bristol City fan can come on here an give a good counter argument. As you can tell from above I'm absolutely no LJ fan, and I might have undersold some of his strengths (thinking about the opponent strengths rather than our own is another one). There are City fans who like him, but they tend to be the ones who deliberately ignore that he only got the job because the owner is essentially his god father and backed him with more finances that we've ever seen before.

Good luck lads and lasses. I fear you'll need it. Because at Sunderland he'll be without his biggest strength - Steve Lansdown.

Fordy
Thanks, mate. Its a heads up but I have a feeling we are going to get the top of our heads blown off. Good luck (but not too much😁😁)
 
If we go with a sports director/DoF or whatever it's being called do we really need a out and out manager? If the style of play comes from a DoF, the manager only really needs to be a head coach.

Is this Lee lad a good coach? If he is then maybe this is a good move. Weve all been saying there should be a revamp and we should have a focus on bring through youth. You do that by having a system in place at all levels with a DoF telling recruitment who to find to fit that system. Kristjaan was head of Birminghams academy.

Its more about how well Johnson can work with Kristjaan. And how good they both are at their jobs.
 
Hi Sunderland fans,

Hope you're all keeping well. I've joined the board to attempt to give you a balanced view on Lee Johnson. I'm afraid I might find this hard though as I'm sure you find out on reading this post.

Lee Johnson was appointed following the sacking of Steve Cotterill. Cotts had just given us our best ever season, albeit it at league one level. We won the league at a canter amassing 99 points and just for good measure we won the Mickey Mouse trophy (Johnsons Paint). Regrettably things didn't fare so well in the Championship and at the first sign of trouble, he was booted out with us third from bottom, two points from safety with half the season gone. Our chairman, Steve Lansdown offered Cotts no backing whatsoever and was very quick to pull the trigger.

This brought about the appointment of Lee Johnson. Poached from Barnsley where he'd done quite well. They'd eventually get promoted off the back of his start to the season, although they had recently endured their record losing streak under LJ and so the reality is that the Barnsley fans weren't exactly massively upset to see him go.

Things changed dramatically when LJ was appointed. you may be aware of LJ's dad Gary. He was a legend of a manager for us and took us to the play off final in 07/08 with a squad that performed well above the level of the players contained within it (remember this point). It was during this time that Steve Lansdown (owner) struck up a lasting friendship with the Johnson family - alarm bells ringing at all?

A closed cheque book for Steve Cotterill suddenly opened wide and players that Cotts hadn't been allowed to sign (Lee Tomlin - 20k wages, our highest earner being on 13k) were suddenly given the green light. On the back of these signings, including your own (I think) Adam Matthews, Tomlin and Peter Odemwinge, Lee Johnson guided us to safety.

In the coming seasons we'd see signings authorised left, right and centre. For millions and millions of pounds. Money was thrown about like we've never seen before - some (including me) would say because of Lansdown's fondness for Johnson. And we established ourselves as a team that would flatter to deceive. It cannot be ignore that admit it all Lee Johnson stumbled across a formula to have us playing scintillating football and we were neck and neck with Wolves up until Christmas at the top of the league, including beating Manchester United in the league cup quarters and narrowly losing each of the semis to an injury time goal, until we'll crumbled away in extremely poor fashion that saw us go on a remarkable streak of results that looked like that welsh train station with the really long name, these runs included a record 8/9 L's in a row and another similar run. And a number of fans took to christening him streaky Johnson as he'd manage to paper over the cracks (my opinion) with a couple of wins and a draw thereafter.

Signing wise, Johnson signed a lot of dross. He signed foreigners that played next to no minutes, including the NZ goalkeeper who had arguably the worst performance any player has ever had for Bristol City ever, or maybe even any football team ever. There were a few like this. Players he talk up, pay a lot and then not play.

Things weren't all bad on the transfer front though. He'd sign Adam Webster for 4.5m from Ipswich and sell him to Brighton for up to 26m and he signed Josh Brownhill for a pittance and sell him to Burnley for 7m (although this was pretty obviously always going to happen given his obvious talent).

Johnson also played a pretty uninspiring midfielder (who I'd have happily let go on a free) up top. Bobby Reid was in his last chance saloon at Bristol City when an injury crisis saw Johnson play him up front in a very successful pre season. We'd go onto sell him to Cardiff for 10m and he now remarkably pays his trade with Fulham in the Prem. Johnson can take full credit for that.

He's also sell Johnathon Kodjia (15m to Villa), Aden Flint (7m - i forget whether to Cardiff or Boro) and Joe Bryan (6m Fulham), and whereas pro LJers would have you believe this was LJ's work, they were already at City (and had performed well) and so I'd suggest his credit in the transfers is extremely limited.

Post that defeat to Wolves, our football became awful. The worst we've ever seen at Bristol City. At the opposite end of the spectrum to what we'd seen earlier that season - hence why i used the phrase 'stumbled across a formula' earlier in this write up, it genuinely wasn't me being disingenuous. We were crap and Ashton Gate became anything but a fortress. We were weak, football was awful and more and more often fans would be calling for his head. But his good family friend Steve Lansdown stuck with him. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad, away from home we became masters of nicking a 0-1 win on the road, but this would (in my opinion) paper over the cracks of the dour home form.

We'd regularly enjoy a decent enough start to the season and then fade away dramatically to 8-12th spot and given the tens of millions of outgoings and then now bulging wage structure, Johnson left us with a bloated squad with players in it that we knew were quality (Tamas Kalas - 2 promotions to prom), but somehow they managed to look like sunday league players.

Don't get me started on playing players out of position, we'd see players shoehorned into the starting line up at the expense of someone who genuinely would play in the position that he needed to fill. Then there was the 'Johnson Tombola' - if you want a steady and consistent line up then I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place. Our star left winger - who'd finish last season at the top of the assist making charts, couldn't get a run of games in the team no matter how well he played - can you imagine his stats if he'd got a fair crack?

Then there's the credit taking. If we won "They players stuck to my plan brilliantly", if we lost he'd single players out. I seem to recall a game where we lost heavily. He brought on a sub at half time (or there abouts) with us 2 or 3 down, the proceeded to blame him when we lost 4-0. Our ability to hold a lead became nothing short of awful - do you recall when we were 3-0 up against you at half time and drew 3-3? Awful. Blaming players is something Johnson does equally as well as taking credit himself. And he's good at excuses, blaming Villa beating us on the positioning of the away fans and excuses too... there was a time when we got completely trounced by Brentford nd he said something like "After their third goal, we more than matched them" - we lost 3-0. You getting the picture yet?

Now comes my favourite point about Lee Johnson. The Johnsonisms. He is completely full of shit. As i understand it, there was quite a David Brent type character on STID? I never got far enough into the series to meet him, but LJ is more than a match for him. It got to a point where i couldn't listen to him. Win lose or draw I couldn't stand hearing what he had to say. It was just an embarrassment - I hope you'll learn exactly what it is that i'm referring to - but let just say you'd be well placed to start a thread on "Johnsonisms" on your forum and it'll be well populated very quickly.

I'm afraid I can't bring you much joyful news about your impending appointment of Lee Johnson. There were many points during his tenure where i'd have taken anyone to replace him - literally anyone - the football was that bad.

He does silly things, like measure the length of the grass, spend a shift in A&E, go to an army training camp, spend a night in the kitchen of a Michelin starred restaurant and his latest boast is to have sat down with someone who's amassed 9,000 hours of army interrogation - this is the sort of bullshit that might impress the newspapers, but in reality when he's playing a LB at CD, or a winger in CM don't really matter. He's calls them the 1%'s, but the 90%'s that matter, he couldn't seem to master.

So good luck Sunderland. I'm afraid to say you're going to need it. When you hear sky Sports refer to Bristol City playing a fast attacking expansive brand of football, the reality is that they're basing it on 4 months out of 5 years. The rest was rubbish. There came a point they'd say it every time we where on TV.

I hope that A Bristol City fan can come on here an give a good counter argument. As you can tell from above I'm absolutely no LJ fan, and I might have undersold some of his strengths (thinking about the opponent strengths rather than our own is another one). There are City fans who like him, but they tend to be the ones who deliberately ignore that he only got the job because the owner is essentially his god father and backed him with more finances that we've ever seen before.

Good luck lads and lasses. I fear you'll need it. Because at Sunderland he'll be without his biggest strength - Steve Lansdown.

Fordy

Well, I was underwhelmed before but now I’m beyond excited.
 

Back
Top