Bristol City chairman Steve Lansdown has backed new signing Nicky Maynard to help the club win promotion this season. The young striker signed from Crewe Alexandra this week for a substantial fee of £2.25m and is expected to believer the goods for his new club.
Steve Lansdown believes that he could be the ‘missing link’ between Bristol City and the automatic promotion places. He also believes that the amount of money they spent on Nicky Maynard shows how far they have come as a club.
He’s not wrong. This time last year after winning promotion to the Championship, a look at the football odds would have told you they were expected to be relegated. Instead they only just missed out on promotion, losing in the play-off final to Hull.
The key to them going one better this season is quite simply – scoring more goals. Remarkably, they scored 34 fewer goals than West Brom last season and even Colchester United – who finished bottom – scored eight more goals than them. That maybe highlights the competitiveness of the Championship more than anything else, but Bristol City could certainly do with upping their goal tally. They can’t always rely on 1-0 victories.
It seems that Nicky Maynard is the man they believe will solve this problem. The 21-year-old striker – who attracted interest from Ipswich Town – scored 15 goals in League One last year and certainly arrives with a positive reputation. Whether he can score goals at Championship level remains to be seen, but I think it is clear he has the ability. He would have been brought up well at Crewe and will be relishing his new challenge. I presume he has an ambition to play in the Premier League one day, so this is the start of his journey to doing just that.
The big question is though – will he make it with Bristol City this season? Well, as much as I am unsure about their automatic promotion credentials, they certainly have a chance of securing a play-off spot. Should they do that, they will have as good a chance as anyone – it is a lottery at that stage after all!
One thing for sure is that it is not going to be easy. The Championship is stronger than ever and if Bristol City are to recapture the form that saw them finish fourth last season, they are going to have to up their game even further. Nicky Maynard will be hoping to help them do just that.
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