Premier League chief executive and Bristol City fan Richard Scudamore has backed Gary Johnson to do the business and take the club into the top tier of English football.
The man in charge of the world’s richest league has praised the work of the City boss as Johnson closes in on a second promotion in two years.
Scudamore’s plan for a 39th Premier League game failed to fly, but his other passion, the Robins, could soon be a welcome addition to the division.
Scudamore’s plan for a 39th Premier League game failed to fly, but his other passion, the Robins, could soon be a welcome addition to the division.
The Premier League chief has been a City fan for as long as he can remember and believes the club can hold on to automatic qualification.
He said: “Gary Johnson is an excellent manager and he's doing a great job for City. He took over at a difficult time and that early difficult patch (of nine successive defeats) counts for nothing now.
“Champagne corks on or before May 4th is all I am concentrating on.”
City top the table with five games to play and, in Scudamore’s opinion, can capitalise on the mistakes of their competitors.
“No other teams seem to want to grab the automatic places and nobody has put a "Champions run" together,” he said. “The one that does at the business end of the season will secure promotion. It may as well be us.”
Like any other fan, Scudamore, a qualified Bristolian referee, has been pouring over the fixtures predicting City’s chances of pulling off promotion after almost 30 years in the lower leagues.And he has highlighted the games at home to Wolves and away to Stoke as the key contests in City’s run-in.
“They will have a big say in determining how the top of the Coca-Cola Championship looks at the end of the season,” he said.The former local referee and chief executive of the Football League has had a long association with an under-achieving City side.
He said: “I first attended a game at the end of the 1965/6 Season when I was five years old. “My father used to take me. When he couldn't I went on my own and travelled on Don's Coaches of Soundwell. One of the older men on the coach looked after me. How times change.
“Watford at home was the last game I saw, but the game I have most enjoyed was the away game at Coventry very early on in the season. We beat them 3-0 and showed a real maturity in our play.
“Liam Fontaine and Louis Carey both had fantastic performances in the heart of the defence.”
He remembers the last time the Robins played in the top division, long before the Premier League’s inception, but believes it is hard to make comparisons.
“This team have been put together in a relatively short space of time,” he said.“The 70’s team had played together and been built over a longer period therefore seemed more familiar, or maybe as a teenager time passed more slowly then.” Either way, Scudamore and Johnson will be desperately hoping the current City side can make the fast lane of the Premiership.
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