Lee Johnson has lifted the lid on a conversation he had with Steve Lansdown when he was appointed as Bristol City manager, revealing the Robins’ owner was keen to bring him to Ashton Gate as “number two” following Steve Cotterill’s exit.
Johnson, who spent part of his playing career in South Bristol, managed the Reds between 2016 and 2020. While he was never able to secure a top-six place during his time as City boss, he brought the Robins as close to the play-offs as they had been since his father Gary’s tenure in charge while also leading the club’s run to the Carabao Cup semi-final.
The now 43-year-old arrived at Ashton Gate in February 2016 with City in the midst of a relegation battle at the foot of the Championship having been promoted from League One the year before. Although the former Barnsley boss managed to guide the Robins away from the dropzone, Reds’ owner Lansdown wanted to delay his appointment as manager until the start of the 2016/17 campaign.
“Steve wasn’t sure originally because Bristol City were in the relegation zone,” Johnson told the Business of Sport podcast. “He was like, I want to bring in another manager, I want to bring you in as number two and then you take over from the start of next season, hopefully in the Championship. I was like no. No chance, because if I come in, I’m coming in to keep you up.
“I was manager of Barnsley, we were in the equivalent of the Papa John’s final, we’d just beaten Fleetwood to get into the final and we were just sort of knocking on the play-off door. We had a really good side as well, we’d built a really strong side. I said look, I want to come to Bristol City because I feel it is my club, but I want to do it under these terms and I think Steve probably appreciated that sort of bullish nature if you like and at that point probably trusted that I was ready.
“The bid came in, I remember the CEO was really upset with me, came in and gave me a big verbal bashing in the office which was a little bit harsh but we’re friends now. It felt right for me to go back to Bristol City, it was a club that I’d always wanted to manage, really good ownership and I believed we could be successful there.”
Although Johnson was never quite able to secure City’s place in the play-offs, he took charge of some of the more memorable nights in recent years at Ashton Gate. He was in the dugout for the Reds’ win over Manchester United, their semi-final clash with Manchester City and several important Championship ties before he was sacked in 2020.
Bristol City Live on Whatsapp
Join Bristol City Live’s Whatsapp community for all the biggest Bristol City stories sent straight to your phone
Bristol City Live is now on WhatsApp and we want you to join our community.
Through the app, we’ll send the Bristol City news, live match coverage, team news, transfers, fixtures, analysis and more straight to your phone.
To join our community you need to already have WhatsApp. All you need to do is click this link and select ‘Join Community’.
No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Bristol Live team.
We also treat community members to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. If you don’t like our community, you can check out at any time you like.
To leave our community, click on the name at the top of your screen and choose ‘Exit group’.
If you’re curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
Although several of the players who featured under the 43-year-old in BS3 have gone on to have impressive careers at Championship and Premier League level, he believes the Robins’ cup heroics worked against them in the long run.
In the end, we were almost a victim of our own success with the amount of players we developed and sold, Johnson continued. “I always felt we were a team for tomorrow. The team and the year really I think we should have gone up, we had a few injuries but everybody has that and the games really just caught up with us with the cup run we went on.
“That was the pinch point really for the club to potentially go up or like we did, go on that run. Once the players were exposed to those big occasions and played well in those big occasions there were a lot of sales off of that. [Aden] Flint, Bobby Reid, [Adam] Webster, Lloyd Kelly, Joe Bryan, a lot of these players left off the back of that. You break up a team and you have to build a new one.”