Johnson: Bristol City facing biggest challenge

GARY Johnson reckons Bristol City are facing their toughest challenge since assuming Championship status two seasons ago.

Play-off finalists only last May, the Robins are finding life rather more difficult this time around.

Beaten in three of their last five games, City have slipped into the bottom half of the table for the first time since achieving automatic promotion from League One in 2007.

And following Saturday's 3-0 reverse at Sheffield United, manager Johnson admits he faces a battle to restore lost confidence.

"This is our most difficult time in the Championship," admitted the Londoner. "We've met every challenge thrown at us, but this is probably the biggest one so far.

"I think some of the lads have lost a little bit of confidence and we have to try and get that back quickly. The only way you can do that as a footballer is by winning matches and we're going to have to wait another two weeks.

"You can leap or fall like anything in this league and we have to be careful."

City now enter a two-week break for international matches before tackling Norwich at Ashton Gate on October 18 and Johnson conceded: "We need to find a way to turn things around.

"At the moment, we're not quite good enough. I have to sit down with my staff and look at that.. It may be that we need something between fine tuning and a major overhaul."

He added: "If we had won this game, we would have been saying that we'd had a good start and that we weren't far away. But we've lost and we have to hold our hands up and say it hasn't been a good start."

James Beattie scored twice and Liam Fontaine put through his own goal as City were sent tumbling to defeat by three set-piece routines. Johnson afterwards admitted his team had been second best.

He said: “We can’t makeexcuses. We weren’t clever enough and didn’t show enough guile in the final third. We got there on a few occasions, especially in the first half, but we never really made their goalkeeper work. It’s not just the strikers, it’s our midfield and our defenders as well.

“We did what we set out to do in the first half, which was to stop them putting us under pressure, but we didn’t show the quality we needed to when we got into the top third.

“There weren’t enough shots or crosses to put Sheffield under pressure. The workrate was there until we let in the first goal and then we looked as though we lost a bit of confidence.”

United’s opening goal, delivered in first-half injury time, altered the complexion of the game and appeared to knock the stuffing out of City.

Johnson acknowledged. “You need leaders out there to make sure that doesn’t happen and we didn’t have enough leaders.

“Losing stays in your mind a lot longer than winning and we need to learn from this.”