From hero to zero

Just a quickie post today. Weather permitting we welcome Bristol Rovers to Huish Park tomorrow for the nearest thing to a derby match that we've found since entering the football league. I say weather permitting because we've had heavy rain for the last 2 hours which is forecast to continue until tomorrow evening, more or less. Oh god, I'm turning into you-know-who.

The Glovers are narrow favourites to win the game at 7/5, a Gas win is priced at 19/10 and the draw at 23/10. My fiver's going on the home win. Running total: +£1.62p.

Skivo has signed on loan another young Premiership central defender with a good reputation. The only surprise is that Luke Ayling is on Ars*nal's books, not Spurs. Well, no-one's perfect. He's here to provide back up to Terrell Forbes and Steven Caulker in Stefan Stam's absence, good luck to him during his stay in Somerset.

Shock of the week, as far as I was concerned, came yesterday, with the news that Gary Johnson has left Bristol City after nearly 5 years in charge at Ashton Gate. During that time he took TBCUTR from the bottom of division three back into their more natural home in the Championship, and came within a losing play-off final of dragging them into the Premiership. Since then 2 seasons of mid-table mediocrity have been deemed unacceptable by both City's owner and fanbase and yesterday Gary paid the price with his job. It's astonishing really how soon fans forget the good times and indeed the bad. When Gary left us to go to Ashton Gate City had spent 9 years in division three and were in real danger of dropping even further to division four. To read their forum now you would think the 2 seasons since the play-off final that they've been mid-table in the Championship have been 2 seasons of complete purgatory, not amongst the high points of the last decade or so that they actually are. Impatience and short-termism rules, as always in football. City are currently a fairly comfortable 7 points clear of the relegation zone. I would laugh my socks off if that was to change by May, and they ended up coming back down to division three.

As for Gary, he's probably better off out of it. It will be very interesting to see what he does next. Who knows, while he's waiting for his next challenge he might come back to his old stomping-ground, to give Skivo a few tips and tricks. Whatever, I'm sure this is not the last we've heard of Gary Johnson.