The elephant in the room has been replaced on the Ashton Gate turf by a giant woolly mammoth that is impossible to ignore.
It is so prominent that the catastrophic consequences that might sweep before it have been accepted by the manager after referencing continuous individual errors could cost him his job in the long term.
When Nigel Pearson chose to throw his team under the bus after their 3-1 defeat to Swansea and hold them to the sword in three separate post-match interviews on Sunday, he knew it was a risky strategy. Bristol City’s defence is in a dire state and with the lack of depth for cover, the worry is that they won't stop leaking goals anytime soon.
The Robins season may well be in limbo, but with 14 games left there isn’t room to give up on the campaign. There are signs of promise that keep supporters clinging on to a long term hope and it’s difficult to foresee a world where Pearson isn’t given his time to oversee this summer and beyond.
But if there are to be the improvements that the manager needs to challenge further up the Championship table then it will have to be carefully navigated. This time the discussion of players coming and going was brought up by the manager, not by enthusiastic transfer mill journalists and the manager’s own future was a topic of conversation he embraced himself.
Amongst the horrible south west Wales weather and what might become of his infamous press conference, here are the moments missed from the Swansea.com stadium.
Profiling Pearson
Swansea has one of the closer press boxes to the touchline. Mix that nicely with the animation of Pearson in a tight game and it'll keep you entertained.
Never one to temper his words or put on a false face, the post-match press conference is more than enough to tell you that, being sat just behind Pearson was the perfect spot to witness his every mood and hear all of his shouts.
Sit down and buckle up, this is the 1pm IMAX screening of ‘Nigel Pearson: Touchline Menace at Swansea’. In honesty, the early scenes from this Hollywood classic were slow going, but we assure you, it picks up.
The boss spent a large majority of the first 20 minutes slouched into his black chair, delegating the berating of both sets of players and all officials to Curtis Fleming who was happy to play his role of joint protagonist.
There were brief expressions of content from the boss still in his chair, clapping Jay Dasilva’s energetic pressure and even more so for a smooth back heel off the boot of Han-Noah Massengo before Andi Weimann slowed the move down with a calm backpass.
It would have been easy for Pearson to join in with his assistant, but instead, he left his big reveal for later in the half, maintaining a content circumspection on the bench. As the half grew on he gradually emerged into the character that is more often seen. Paroling the boundaries of his technical area with vigorous intent.
As his team’s solid start continued to fall short in possession he supported them with pleas to ‘calm down, calm down’ when Cam Pring misplaced his rushed pass forward to Semenyo, gesturing with his hands as he did so.
Shortly after this there was a distinct lack of calmness as Dasilva was sent tumbling in the Swansea area but no penalty was given. Pearson bounced towards the unfortunate fourth official to give his own version of events, interrogating Josh Smith.
When his response wasn’t good enough for the managers liking he let burst ‘is it a coming together or has he caught his f****** ankle?’. That alone wasn’t enough to please Pearson who then commanded Smith ‘when I’m talking to you, look at me!’
Displeasure aside, there was reason to celebrate before the half closed out. With bedlam in the away end and goalkeeper coach Pat Mountain in the air with delight, Pearson allowed himself a sly nod, accepting the quality of the goal, accepting in an understatement, ‘it’s a good goal’.
The search for a first clean sheet in 11 games would go on though and there was as much response to this goal as there was to his own team. Although frustrated he took it for the defensive switch off that it was.
Straight back into the methodical planning of the game he was seen urging Weimann to stay in the left channel rather than searching for the ball and furthermore he supplied a helping pat to Dan Bentley on his return to action in the second half. Whilst the captain was back on, O’Leary received a warm embrace for his struggle.
Watching his team cave in during the final 20 minutes there wasn’t an overload of anger, but given what followed, the strong words were certainly stewing as Pearson was helpless to stop the City away day slump.
Williams' half-time fun
Outside of the raging rampage that Pearson projected after the game towards his players and the press, at half time City were pulling off a well deserved perfect away performance. Ahead at the break and without being troubled too much from open play, City had justified their gameplan, remained resilient and worked hard to shut down spaces in front of their backline.
There were specks of praise for this much from Pearson as he admitted “collectively we worked hard to keep our shape” and “we’ve been in a winning position, they’ve had loads of possession but we had nine attempts in the first half, five or six in the second as an away side.”
A positive energy must have come out of the halftime changing rooms and it seemed embodied and spearheaded by Joe Williams.
The youthful bench stepped onto the pitch to do a steady warmup that consisted of a family game of two-touch. Williams was the architect of the fun, clicking his fingers gleefully in the air when the ball was put down by Bentley.
He tip-toed jovially over to the captain to flick his ears as punishment before jumping back into the circle to take part again. That wasn’t his end of jolliness, when Tommy Conway was the unfortunate next recipient of the ear flicks Williams looked as happy as he could get.
The players weren’t to know that the second half would go far beyond dampening their mood, but it was nice to see Williams involved in some happy mischief nonetheless.
Kadji travels
Given that Duncan Idehen was the surprise name on the teamsheet there was expected attention on the 19-year old centre back. He could be seen on the outskirts of the action when his teammates warmed up, making short passes on his own with fellow youngsters Conway and Bell.
He also spent time with another new face to City’s matchday travellers, Dylan Kadji. The 18-year old defensive-minded player wasn’t part of the 18-man squad but did go out to warm up and take his place on the bench with the rest of the team. It’s the first time he’s had that honour.
Kadji hung around with Idehen on the outside of the drills but still took part in the passing exercises that saw him exchanging short touches with Nahki Wells and Ayman Benarous as City moved in a clockwise circle.
Given that Kadji is signed on as a current Bath City player at the moment he won’t be part of City’s squad anytime soon, but after not appearing in any of their last three matches he was kept in the loop at his parent club by his inclusion in Wales.
Foxy friends
Pearson is often a ghostly figure on a matchday, floating around with the attempted invisibility meant to oversee rather than influence before the game goes ahead.
The warm-up coaching has long been left to Curtis Fleming and Alex Ball but in the second stage of Pearson’s own development this season he has made an active effort to be more of a face of the team.
He now sits – though it’s really a barrage of explosive moves towards his team or the officials – in the dugout and is visible throughout the match. The same goes for his participation in the pre-match warm-up.
He made his way out at the Swansea.com stadium with the rest of his management team and the players but shortly after he took a beeline back towards the tunnel.
Not that this is massively surprising however his return a few minutes later was notably funny. For a man as strong and outwardly macho as Pearson, coming back to the grass with a long, thick coat on and gloves was a nice human touch. It was a blustery wet day in South West Wales to be fair to him.
His day out didn’t stop there though, after inspecting the early passing drills he took on a more passive screening for the remaining drills. Choosing to stand on the touchline instead.
There was a moment of memorable catchup as well. The 58-year old has a long list of ex-players but one that would slip through on a lot of lists is ex-Leicester City goalkeeper Ben Hamer.
He’s currently the Swans’ backup stopper and couldn’t escape his former managers gaze when on kicking practice in the City half. Pearson saw his previous Foxes gloveman and approached, embracing him in a tight hug, exchanging a few words in the process.
There was then a strange couple of moments which we may be reading too much into. But as Pearson was conversing with owner Steve Lansdown on the sideline, several of City’s players started to leave the field to go back and get changed.
Max O’Leary bounced past his manager and got a slap on the gloves, when Dan Bentley went past moments later there wasn’t the same reception.
We might be looking into it far too much as the boss genuinely might not have noticed his skipper whilst he was in conversation but it was still something that very much could be used when analysing the current relationship.
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