City Chat: Home form will be key in fight for survival (From Gazette Series)

Bristol City fans' panel: Reaction to Championship win over Barnsley and look ahead to games against Blackpool and Brighton

8:00am Friday 1st March 2013 in Thornbury Sport By Will Collins

CITY maintained their 100 per cent winning record at Ashton Gate under new manager Sean O’Driscoll with a 5-3 victory over fellow strugglers Barnsley in a thrilling encounter.

In an open game both teams created plenty of chances and in truth the scoreline could’ve been even higher. We’ve now scored 35 goals at home this season, with only Leicester and Palace having scored more.

Our home form will be key in the fight for survival and it’s encouraging to see Ashton Gate becoming a fortress once more.

It’s a sign of what an end-to-end game it was against Barnsley that our two best performers on the day were striker Jon Stead and goalkeeper Tom Heaton. Stead led the line magnificently, ably supported by Davies. Barnsley’s defence appeared to be quite weak physically and their defending from set-pieces was dreadful with all five of City’s goals coming from set-pieces, which is not really one of our strong points.

They were much better going forward though and Heaton was forced to make a couple of good stops. After going 5-1 up O’Driscoll made some substitutions that didn’t really work out for the best, and we seemed to lose our shape and discipline. As a result Barnsley bagged a couple of late goals to make it 5-3 which was probably a fair enough reflection of the whole game.

With our home form greatly improved, attention must now turn to getting results on the road starting with Saturday’s visit to Blackpool (3pm). We are yet to get a single point away from home under O’Driscoll and this must change if we are to survive in the Championship. Blackpool, who recently appointed Paul Ince as their new manager, have been in a rough patch of form, winning only twice in their last 12 games. We must look to capitalise on this and get something from the game.

Next Tuesday we host Brighton at Ashton Gate (7.45pm). The Seagulls are one of the best passing sides in the division and it is sure to be another tough match for us, maybe our hardest of the remaining home games. That said, we did a job on Watford, who play similarly, a few weeks back. Here’s hoping for a repeat performance of that night.

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