The seventh largest city in the country, the largest in the southwest with a margin, and towering over its rivals as the most populated place in England that still has to organize a Premier League match.
Bristol is the home of many great things. The Clifton Suspension Bridge. Wallace and Gromit. Banksy. It was mentioned in the Times in the Times in the United Kingdom in the United Kingdom in the United Kingdom in 2023.
Another potential attraction, top football, has been absent in the banks of the Avon river since the end of the 1970s, when the deteriorating financial situation of Bristol City saw them fall from the old first division to the fourth in successive seasons.
Even then it was only for five intoxicating years under the management of Alan Dicks that they rubbed the shoulders with the elite of England. Prior to that half decade you have to go back to before the First World War, when they became the first representative of the region at the top table of domestic football.
A significant part of the intervening century has been spent outside one of the two of the two divisions. In the 43 years since the Robins were last in the top flight, you can count on two hands how often they ended in the upper half of the second layer. You only need one digit for the number of times that amounted to reaching the play-offs.
At the same time, Swindon not only had time to become the only other top representative of the southwest, and the only one who plays Premier League football, but also to fall back to the fourth level of English football.
Things can change. With nine games to go, Bristol City has been with their first realistic play -off shot since Covid – 2019/20 was the last time they even finished within 10 points of the top six.
The Robins went under the radar this term, lying without much fanfare, but slowly confirm their claim with a series of 26 points of their last 14 games. The fifth and sixth places remain a lot for grabbing, and the Robins are only two points of both Coventry and West Brom, which currently occupy the last two play-off places.
They would start the weekend in the top six with a Friday evening victory on Norwich, who are one of the five other teams who are still inside with a realistic place to make their way to play-off position, live on Sky Sports.
The side of Liam Manning taps many boxes to suggest that they can go the distance. Form is their obvious possession, but even at their weaker moments, the city is largely resilient and difficult to beat. They have only lost three games than the second place of Sheffield United. Only Sheffield on Wednesday and Sunderland have picked up more points from behind.
“Internally I think we understand that we want to achieve that there at the end of the season,” Veteran -Spits Nahki Wells, who was promoted to the Premier League with Huddersfield in 2017, told Sky Sports.
“The manager is doing very well to stay soft, to stabilize the ship in terms of expectation and to almost undermine it from outside – but within the four walls we understand that it is where we want to go.”
Now 16 months after the term of office of Manning at Ashton Gate, he can see for himself that the Robins are thrown at his image. The same front-foot, possession based on football that admirers won at MK Dons and Oxford, is slowly shining.
City is in third place in the championship for both high sales and last third passes. They play most of their football in the same part of the field as the big weapons of the competition and have won admiration of opponents because of their willingness to bring the game to them.
After their point in Bramall Lane on Tuesday evening, Sheff Utd manager Chris Wilder admitted: “I don't think it was something they didn't really deserve. They checked the match against us in the first half.”
It has been a gradual process to get to this point. City was an incompatible unit among previous manager Nigel Pearson and with the adjustment to what is called 'Manningball', patterns of play and player roles in the early days were not always clear.
Now City is a match for most teams in the competition to the last pass, much owes to the complementary midfield pairs of the boundless energy of Jason Knight and the calmness and technical quality of Max Bird.
Yet there is a level of fear around the wider city fan base, precisely because of doubts about that finishing touch. If the Robins fails this season, it is more due to the failure of the implementation than in design.
Converting their possession into and around opposition 18-yard boxes into Doelen is not always that easy. They have the worst shot conversion speed on each side in the upper half and are one of the only three to find out their expected goals.
Manning takes some responsibility for this, since this is his team and his style. His parties have never been historically huge goal scorers. But he got a heavy hand with the road from last season's top scorer Tommy Conway, the most natural finisher in the club, was replaced last summer.
One of the two arrivals, Fally Mayulu, was so difficult to adapt to the championship that he was sent back on loan in January. The other, Sinclair Armstrong, shows potential as a rough diamond, but has only three goals to his name since he is a member of QPR.
A 1-1 draw last weekend against a hull side that played 75 minutes with 10 men and only 17 passes completed in the second half, perhaps the frustrations were best together, but wider there are signs that the tide is turning.
That is not least in their XG count in recent competitions and a series of score of at least two goals in four of their last eight games – their joint best enchantment of the season.
There is a visible cohesion that was sometimes missing in earlier periods of the season and Scott Twine, the summer signing of the showpiece driven by Manning after the couple had worked together at MK Down, begins to deliver the creative spark that promised his arrival.
A talented but porous Norwich side, which has admitted more goals than Derby of the third soil and dropped 30 points of winning positions, more than anyone else in the championship, offers the chance to extend the run of the Robins on paper and to finally convert them closer to that Premier League-Doom into a reality.
But this is the championship. In a competition this chaotic, it would be dangerous to predict whether the southwest will finally have his second Premier League representative, and a first since 1993, next season. But the opportunities have not been so good for a while.
View Bristol City vs Norwich from 7.30 pm on Friday on Sky Sports Football, kick -off 7.45 pm.
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