Patience the key to Robins flying higher

TIMES like these and memorable nights like this are vindication for Bristol City owner Steve Lansdown.

His manager helped conquer Manchester United last night, but he could easily have axed Lee Johnson last season when a promising start turned into an alarming slump featuring a clubrecord eight straight league defeats.

Then, it seemed, the only place the Robins were flying to was League One.

But Lansdown kept faith with Johnson when so many of his twitchy Championship counterparts pulled the trigger and City are being rewarded.

Not only did Johnson mastermind an escape from the drop last term having been on the brink of the sack in March.

But Johnson, 36, a self-confessed managerial obsessive and workaholic with childhood dreams of coaching England, has turned City into third-placed promotion contenders and steered them into a first League Cup semi-final since 1989.

The idea of beating the might of United and Robins fans chanting ‘Premier League you’re having a laugh’ at Jose Mourinho’s men, as they did last night, would have seemed a million miles away a year ago.

In fact, things got so bad at one stage last season that Johnson (above) was forced to move home as he received so much abuse for City’s slide.

But the negativity of last season has been replaced with a positivity that is now oozing out of Bristol City – on the pitch, all around their impressive 27,000 all-seater stadium which Lansdown has shelled out £45million to upgrade, and from Johnson.

In his programme notes, Johnson described how his players are “putting the fun back” into following City after last season’s struggles and how a sellout crowd was a sign of their growth.

“We are in a good place at the moment,” he said. “Let’s try to continue to prosper in the future.”

With Johnson, regarded as one of English football’s brightest young managers, still steering the City ship alongside Lansdown, there is every chance that will happen.