Before we get into the nub of the issue, some context.
Jon Lansdown, along with CEO Richard Gould, Ashton Gate managing director Mark Kelly, CFO Gavin Marshall, director of communications Lisa Knights and various other high-ranking Bristol Sport employees, was in the Heineken Lounge at Ashton Gate on Wednesday to announce the company’s new partnership with Bristol-based logistics company Huboo.
For the first time, the shirts of Bristol City men and women, Bristol Bears men and women and Bristol Flyers will bear the same sponsor and, crucially, this was a local and modern company offering a departure from the often divisive and uncomfortable, given expected government legislation, relationships with the gambling industry.
It was a relaxed affair and, it has to be said, a friendly and warm atmosphere; there was a short presentation and speech from Lansdown followed by a series of interviews, either conducted on the balcony overlooking the pitch or inside where members of the written media gathered.
Over 28 minutes, Lansdown fielded questions about the sponsorship and what it meant in a corporate and wider sense, the importance to the community, the wish for a unifying partner across the five clubs, the implications regarding financial fair play and whether or not it was a concerted effort to move away from betting companies.
Lansdown answered them all politely and thoroughly when he could; revealing it’s “certainly not less” when asked about the monetary value of the Huboo deal compared with MansionBet and was just about pushed enough to concede that up to seven clubs could be in a similar situation to City regarding potential breaches on the horizon of the EFL's Profit & Sustainability rules.
About halfway through, a rather throwaway and largely non-specific question by a member of the national media about the season so far, then elicited this response: “It's not like you can change from A to B straight away, you've got contracts, you've got to work your way to it but there's no reason why you can't improve while you're doing that.
“We should be competitively better than we are doing at the moment in the league.”
We’re yet to hear from Lansdown Jnr on the season so far, with the most recent board-level comments emanating from a brief Steve Lansdown address before Christmas and Gould in November, therefore it was of interest and carried news value.
You’re struggling to find any great controversy in those words but, then again, it did tap into a guiding narrative throughout this season: what constitutes success?
There are a number of fans content to slightly overlook the league position, render it irrelevant even providing relegation is staved off, providing there is visibly progress in a tangible sense with individuals and the team, and an intangible way with the overall culture of the club.
There are those who quite simply look at City’s place in the table, the goals against column, the points deductions incurred by Reading and Derby and voice extreme concern about what could have happened this season, and what might further down the track.
There are plenty of supporters who sit roughly in the middle of those two camps - they would like to be higher in the table, of course, but there is an awareness of the restrictions and challenges Pearson is working within, whether that be in a financial and/or sporting sense, and he’s earned himself time and the right to try and navigate such obstacles.
Based on his words - and if you were hyper-analysing them in the context of his feelings towards Pearson, there was more not-so positive stuff than there was positive stuff - Lansdown is probably lingering between the latter two parties.
After all, he could have been effusive in his praise of the way Pearson has worked through his health issues to turn City into a mostly exciting attacking team, has vastly improved the market value of a number of individuals and kept the Robins head above relegation waters.
His words could be viewed as either direct criticism of apparent under-achievement, or under-performance as Pearson recognised it, or a message to the manager that the desire for progress up the league table is anticipated over these remaining 14 games of the season. A sort of subconscious reminder of what’s expected, if you like.
What transpired just over 24 hours later, at around 1pm probably wasn’t what the chairman envisaged in answering that question and has created a storm partly of his own making, but also one that raises fresh questions of the club in the present, past and future.
Sitting down for his weekly pre-match press conference at the High Performance Centre, conducted via Zoom, Pearson was in a chirpy mood as he answered questions about injuries, Middlesbrough and Chris Wilder, the Ashton Gate Eight before the subject of the Robins defensive problems was discussed.
Pearson can go on interesting tangents when answering questions and did so in response to this one: “that intangible mental characteristic, is that the main reason for the defensive flaws or are they technical problems you have as well?”
After discussing the mental challenges of academy players making the step-up to the first-team environment, the manager then pivoted to a very direct criticism of the transfer model that has guided the club for the last five years or so.
“I think the chances of us continuing to produce players is going to be good but we’ll need to because we’ve got ourselves into a mess as a football club by having a previous strategy to build within a squad and that is spending too much money and having to sell to stay viable which is bonkers.
“Who does that? Now hopefully we’ll get to a point when our wage bill is manageable and we’ll still create players who will be great for us and we will at some point, I never intend to stop a player’s long term ambitions of playing in the Premier League but our aim is still to get there. It might take longer than we hope but what is important at the moment is that we get the foundations right. The foundations haven’t been right.”
Now, Pearson has spoken before about fixing the problems of the past but that’s nearly always been caveated by the pandemic and various mitigating factors supposedly out of the club’s control. Yet, here he was directly criticising a banner policy of the Lansdowns in how they wanted to run Bristol City in the Championship.
It was especially pertinent because in his interviews on Wednesday, Jon Lansdown had spoken about that very process being, “a perfectly valid way to operate for a number of years and we’ve done it pretty well, along that sense.”
In that context the, “who does that?” seems particularly stinging.
Then later on, as topics moved onto Matty James, Dan Bentley and Andi Weimann, a largely open question about how he reflects on his first year in charge drew the gallows humour of, “I’ve been here a year and aged probably five” before the slightly strong and obviously revealing statements that he didn’t realise how chaotic it would be.
Then came the confirmation, and it was said in a relaxed and almost comedic tone but also with sincerity: “he’s the chairman so he’s allowed to have that point of view, I don’t agree with it personally” only to then be repeated after he had detailed some reasons why with another telling line about the club potentially not knowing what it wants its identity to be. And with that Nigel was gone.
The agreement, as is now commonplace, was for the press conference to be embargoed until 3pm which usually coincides with City then publishing the press conference on YouTube.
But 3pm came and went and as the stories were filed there was no accompanying audio and visuals until 5.30pm when, after Weimann’s press conference had been aired, 19 minutes and 45 seconds of Pearson appeared on Twitter, Facebook, the club’s YouTube channel and Spotify, with the above passages not broadcast.
Given the press conference lasted for 34 minutes, you can do the maths surrounding that delay, the "lost" 14 and a bit minutes and the sort of discussions that must have been conducted internally.
And for the record, the question that drew the final answer from Pearson was by University of Gloucestershire student and Bristol Live contributor Dan Carter, who deserves recognition given his contribution has been effectively erased.
The club are, of course, well within their right to publish what they want - albeit the concept of “full press conference” slightly overselling things - but there was, of course, always an acknowledgement that these quotes were going to be published elsewhere.
Unfortunately what that has done, in effect, is potentially make this issue bigger than what it is… admittedly dependent on your perception of how big it is in the first place. The internet is an incubator for conspiracy and it didn’t require much of a whiteboard, a map, some headshots and coloured pins and thread to put this one together.
Clearly, either what Pearson said wasn’t received well at boardroom level and/or there was a desire to protect the chairman from further condemnation by not airing it.
In fairness, you can see where City are coming from here: actively advertising criticism of one of the most influential figures (and he is, whatever your personal views are) on a channel he effectively owns which he has been a significant force in fostering and driving. There were no good options available to anyone yesterday afternoon.
But returning to what was said and perhaps why it was said, of course, what stands out loud and clear is that Pearson was clearly peeved at Lansdown’s assessment of the team and therefore his job so far this season, and wanted people to hear.
We know this not only because of what he said but because he told us without really being asked about it. And said it twice. While also having a public dig at a system of running a club that the Lansdown had, and still do to a certain extent, been proud of; trying to be “sustainable” and swimming slightly against the tide.
“We must stick to our knitting” has been a Steve Lansdown favourite throughout numerous transfer windows, when the wish had been to mirror the transfer spending of some of their rivals.
Unfortunately the sweater that was being constructed has unravelled and it’s not a stretch to say that, like a particularly garish Christmas themed number with your name on you maybe once got from your Nan, Pearson has ridiculed them for its design.
What was initially a slightly naïve, but also slightly telling, mild critique of City by Lansdown has now turned into something of a test. Not only of the chairman but also the relationships between the senior figures at the club.
Pearson unquestionably has the backing on the fanbase in what he said. Going back to the idea of “camps”, there are many who have grown tired of the inability to recognise that the financial model of old was eventually doomed to fail (that being said, the very vocal proportion of the fanbase demanding proven Championship players seem to be curiously quiet of late following the publication of those £38.4m losses) and in Pearson they have their very public orator of this train of thought.
Likewise, there has always been underlying suspicion of the family’s football credentials (whatever that means and, in some ways, should even necessarily be a bad thing given the inertia that shackles the game at times) and an established figure like Pearson sticking it to the man, always goes down well. Especially as it was something Lee Johnson and Dean Holden were so reluctant to do.
But in the context of that red meat in the water, Pearson may soon need a bigger boat because 12 wins from 48 games isn’t the mightiest of vessels, irrespective of all the context and nuance he so understandably raises in assessing his time at the club.
In the latter stages of his reign at Ashton Gate, the relationship between Johnson and the chairman was at its lowest ebb; the head coach eternally frustrated at an apparent lack of football smarts from above, the chairman exasperated by a play-off challenge rapidly deteriorating following two transfer windows of significant spend.
The two cases are vastly different because Johnson was well down the line in his project and had a quantifiable KPI to hit - the top six. He didn’t and with a lack of significant public support, as the wolves were never far from the door in that case, he was gone.
Nobody is suggesting that happening to Pearson at this moment in time, but it’s a bold call to so publicly call out, and effectively embarrass, one of your paymasters when you’re 17th in the Championship. You can only tip your hat to the brass cojones on the man.
There could be more to it. City are planning for the summer transfer window in earnest, a subject Pearson also raised, and surprisingly so, on Thursday.
Meetings have been held at the High Performance Centre over expectations, budgets and parameters. Does that feed into the apparent confused concept of “identity”? Having weathered two windows of extreme austerity, is Pearson particularly enamoured with the prospect of a third, given the requirements he has for this squad for them to achieve his wish of becoming, “a team people hate to play against but with talent”?
It's hard to overlook that this was said in the same week when he very publicly called out individuals in his squad for a lack of hunger. Yes, that exasperation and anger is in-part related to a match in isolation, but it's also the culmination of several weeks of suppressing such emotions, potentially over more than just on-pitch matters.
Or, likewise, there could be less. A difference of opinion is no bad thing and City’s chummy reputation has been cited as their downfall at times. Pearson himself even said that he and Gould don’t always share the same opinion and, rather tellingly, he irked at the claim of the way, “he wants to run the club”. “I’m not a control freak. Please don’t phrase it ‘how I want the club to run’ because I’m a part of the football club,” was his quick response.
The Lansdowns also shouldn’t be particularly surprised by this. If you employ a manager with Pearson’s abrasive reputation and character to shake things up and try and force a culture change, then he’s going to make the occasional comment that shakes things up.
The whys and whats exist in the hypothetical for now but, what is clear is that it’s added a new narrative to the season and made a potentially flat final 14 games of the season come to life, for better and potentially for worse.
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