Play-off exit has to be a 'lesson'
Bristol City head coach Liam Manning says the club's play-off exit to Sheffield United has to be a "lesson". The Robins were beaten 6-0 on aggregate across two legs by the Blades, with Monday's 3-0 defeat at Bramall Lane confirming they will remain in the Championship for 2025-26.The appearance in the play-offs marked the first time Bristol City had finished in the top six of the second tier since 2008, when they lost to Hull City in the final at Wembley."I'm hugely proud of the lads for what they've done this year and tonight has to be a lesson for us," Manning told BBC Radio Bristol."Credit to players, staff, the fans were phenomenal again in terms of travelling all this way knowing it's such a difficult one."I think everyone's created that buzz around the club and for everybody we should be proud of what we've done. Of course there's things we can get better at but we've made huge progress I think in the past 18 months."
Bristol City went into the second leg of their play-off tie with a mountain to climb after losing 3-0 in Thursday's opening game with Rob Dickie being sent off before half-time.Manning and captain Jason Knight both lamented the way Bristol City conceded three of the six goals from set pieces. Kieffer Moore's opening header and Gus Hamer's shot in the second leg both came following corners, with Hamer also scoring from a corner in the first."It's definitely not the way you wanted to go out. I think [there was] maybe a bit of naivety in the two legs, three set pieces conceded - you're never going to get anywhere with that, I know they're a big unit of a team but it's certainly not the way we should be conceding goals," Knight told BBC Radio Bristol. "When we look back at the goals it's probably more us giving them the opportunities than them making it, so that's disappointing."Getting into the play-offs was never easy so we don't want to get too down about it but you want to raise the standard constantly and we know over the two legs we certainly weren't at it really."Knight echoed Manning's sentiment that the experience had to be built on over the summer. "This is just a learning, a lot of younger lads in there have not made many appearances so this is going to be big for the club, it's going to be big for us going forward and we're just going to have to take it as that," he said."[It's] obviously disappointing now but it's a season of real progress and we just want to keep moving forward."
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