Bristol City fell just short of a play-off position as Derby County and Middlesbrough won their final fixtures of the season and City could only play out a 1-1 draw at Hull City. The results meant Derby took the remaining play-off position to join Leeds United, West Bromwich Albion and Aston Villa.

The headline for City fans however is that this season represents the fifth season in a row that we have progressed up the league ladder. No other club in the football league has achieved this.

The progress has been steady, but finishing three places higher and being three points better off than last season is a decent achievement given we sold three of our best players last summer, were unjustly missing our main striker for the first five games of the season and had key players like Korey Smith and Niki Maenpaa out injured for much of the season.

The areas in need of improvement are clear: home form and goalscoring. Our inability to beat some of the lower teams at home including Ipswich, Millwall, Reading and Wigan cost us dear. We struggled to break these teams down and so a new approach is required for next season. That will mean the recruiting of attacking players that can beat their man and an out-and-out goalscorer. Diedhiou is not the best of finishers and cannot take the full weight of goalscoring himself.

The areas we need to remain very good in are our away form and defence. We need to try and tie up deals for Chelsea loanee’s Kalas and DaSilva – that would be a signal of intent. We also need to keep hold of the excellent Adam Webster.

Fielding and Pisano have already been released to help free-up wages for incomings this summer. I expect Taylor and O’Dowda to leave as well. For the first time in nearly ten years there is now an expectation that we will be challenging for the play-offs next season and I expect Lansdown to release funds commensurate with a club vying for promotion – we are entering exciting times.