Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Adam Randell was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Boardroom21 Sep 2026
Nobody left the Bristol City dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑4 defeat, delivered by Jason Smith to a room that had heard them before.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Neto Borges’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Bristol City needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Nobody at Bristol City is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
The offer from Newcastle United for Tomi Horvat was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Jason Knight and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Marked 8.13. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Bristol City.
The dugout31 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑2 Jason Smith left the room before anybody could ask which.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Bristol City will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Racing Santander keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
A squad is not eleven players and a wish. Joe Gelhardt arrives from Hull City to make the number up properly, and the value of that will be argued about in March rather than today.
Jason Knight was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Bristol City and Stoke City in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Joe Gelhardt was the name on every phone-in, and the club has gone and signed him for $22.2M. For one week the board can do no wrong, which is a week most boards never get.