City chat: Form of Maynard and Skuse are big positives (From Gazette Series)

Bristol City fans’ panel by Will Collins

10:39am Thursday 19th November 2009 in Sport

LAST WEEK I returned to England after a few months of foreign travel.

In the time I have been away, since the last week of August, City have lost just one game in the league.

Reports I was receiving from friends whilst away suggested City were employing defensive tactics and thus becoming very hard to beat. Certainly, we’ve been clocking up the number of draws this season - now up to eight from 16 games.

We seem to be struggling to score goals and conceding late ones, and these are traits that seem to have been carried over from last season. On the positives local lad Cole Skuse has been in very good form and I have watched a video of Nicky Maynard’s nine league goals this season - and there have been some crackers.

Off the field City have recently secured planning permission for a new 30,000 all seater stadium to be built at a site less than half a mile from their current home at Ashton Gate. This is certainly excellent news and assuming it gets built will enable City to compete financially with some of the big boys in the Championship and give us the best possible chance of promotion to the Premier League.

On Saturday City visit West Bromwich Albion (3pm) and it’s no real surprise that this season the Baggies are one of the division’s early pacesetters. They play an attacking brand of football and score a lot of goals.

But they have slipped up a couple of times at The Hawthorns this season and I hope City can give a good account of themselves and take at least a point.

Our last visit to The Hawthorns two seasons ago on Boxing Day resulted in a 4-1 drubbing. We’ll be backed by over 2,700 fans up there and it would be nice to reward a large following with a positive result.

Finally, it was sad to hear about the death of Robert Enke last week, Germany’s international goalkeeper. I’m sure all football fans spared a thought for his family last week in what was a tragic incident.

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