Players will face a hard week's work, warns Bristol City boss Johnson

Frustrated Bristol City boss Gary Johnson is promising to turn up the heat on his players in training this week after seeing them drop two points at home to Sheffield Wednesday.

A third consecutive victory would have moved City into a share of second place in the Coca-Cola Championship and Nicky Maynard's 59th-minute opener looked to have put them on course for another three points.

But the Robins paid the price for a disjointed display when Luke Varney grabbed a 75th-minute equaliser, and Johnson afterwards admitted his misfiring team had been fortunate to escape with a draw.

Still unbeaten at home this season, Bristol City remain in the play-off zone. But the manager knows his players will have to show a significant improvement when they visit Nottingham Forest on Saturday, and he is promising them a hard time on the training ground this week.

He fumed: "We didn't get our game going from start to finish. It's been a long time since we've been that disorganised as a group and I was disappointed with that.

"If I hadn't been at the game and seen it with my own eyes, I would not have recognised my team.

"As far as I'm concerned, we've nicked a point, and we've had a strong talk about that back in the dressing room after the game. We were all over the shop and, in the end, I was grateful for the point.

"Nothing should surprise you in the Championship, because all teams have players who can cause you problems. But I was surprised by our performance.

"We didn't do our job as a team or as individuals and we're under no illusions – we know we need to do better if we want to compete with the top two."

Johnson has five days in which to put things right, and he admitted: "There is a lot of work to do.

"We have a big month ahead of us and we have to put things right quickly because we're in a right old state at the moment.

"They can expect a tough week because I have to remind them that this league is not a stroll in the park.

"I need to get things back to normal and get the lads playing like a team which is in the play-off positions. We didn't look like a team which is fifth in the league.

"We have a week to put it right and the games at Nottingham Forest and West Brom will tell us where we are.

"I want us to start competing for the top two and I'm raising the bar. We didn't clear that bar on this occasion."

Bristol City's performance was especially disappointing given the problems Wednesday faced before kick-off.

The viral infection which hit the Hillsborough dressing room last week meant Owls boss Brian Laws was without five first-team squad players, while three others played despite not feeling 100 per cent fit.

Johnson reasoned: "Sometimes when teams experience adversity and everything seems to be going wrong it helps bring them together. That's what Sheffield Wednesday did.

"They kept things tight within a 4-5-1 system, broke quickly to support the lone striker and caused us problems. We were at sixes and sevens and our goalkeeper has kept us in it."

Johnson made two substitutions at half-time in a bid to force victory, replacing Lee Johnson and Louis Carey with Paul Hartley and Alvaro Saborio and switching from 3-5-2 to 4-4-2.

The changes appeared to have worked when Maynard put the home side ahead with his 10th goal of the season.

City's manager explained: "One substitution was tactical, the other because of injury. Louis had a bit of a knock and, in my opinion, Lee was having a poor game.

"I wanted to switch system and put someone on who could stay out of the midfield ruck and spray the ball around. But we still couldn't keep our shape and things didn't really get any better."

Johnson sought to put things into perspective when he said: "Thank goodness we're up there in fifth and moaning and not near the bottom.

"Ipswich won for the first time in 15 games and are happy – we're in the play-off positions and unhappy with a poor performance.

"We have to remember there are a lot of teams worse off than we are."