Chris Hogg has hailed his Bristol City squad’s work ethic as preparations for the 2024/25 Championship season were stepped up with two friendlies on Tuesday against Newport County and Aldershot Town, both of which the Robins won 2-0.
Second half goals from Nahki Wells and new addition Sinclair Armstrong earned the first City side victory at the HPC against League Two outfit Newport while a stunning lob from Sam Bell and a powering header from Cam Pring either side of half-time secured the win at National League Aldershot.
It may have raised some eyebrows that Liam Manning and co. opted to have their players back for three weeks of training before playing any friendly matches as the season opener at Hull City on August 10 continues to creep up. However, the Robins assistant head coach believes that progress is being made.
“They’ve done a great job and it’s been great coming back to work with them,” Hogg decleared. “Obviously we had a solid three weeks training before we started the games which was intentional and what you see is game rhythm starting to come back. I’ve mentioned that quite a bit with the players.
“You can do all the training you like but getting back in the game and testing some of the tactical concepts and seeing the players dealing with the emotions that football brings again is the challenge but I think they’ve done a good job today staying level and working through some problems that we had and coming out on the right side of the games.
“It’s been a solid day’s work for the group. Obviously two mixed teams with two games today so two different team with different challenges. It’s never a bad thing to win football games and try and get in the habit of winning.
“Lots of things to work on still. We’re trying to build up some understanding of game rhythm with the boys and that can sometimes take a while to get going but as we get closer to the season in two weeks time then obviously the team will look a bit more clear and the boys will fight to get their names on the team sheet. Competition is always good for places.”
After a relatively stagnant start at the EBB Stadium, City benefitted from the first real flex of their Championship muscles as a long ball over the top by Rob Dickie was brought down on the edge of the area expertly by Bell who then lobbed the Aldershot goalkeeper, beating the offside trap.
However, the Shots gave their second tier visitors plenty to be concerned about, getting in behind on both flanks on occasion while Cameron Hargreaves missed their best opportunity early in the second half when he somehow skewed what looked to be a tap-in well wide.
The visitors took advantage of the miss by doubling their lead soon after as Jason Knight put in an outstanding delivery for Cameron Pring to head home with the game then largely uneventful for its conclusion.
On enduring a tough match despite the three division gap between the two sides on Tuesday evening, Hogg added: “That’s the beauty of football, right? No matter the level there’s always challenges and problems to overcome and I think that’s one thing that we’re trying to work on with the group as much as we can is that ability to problem solve and the decisions when we have the ball and also don’t have it and different ways of dealing with opposition set ups.
“Slowly but surely the lads are working towards it and they’re a great group to work with. They really are full of effort and enthusiasm and endeavour and they’re willing to learn so we’ve had a really solid couple of weeks at the start of pre-season.
“I think you could see tonight physically, even with changes with the young boys coming on who I thought did great, the boys stayed pretty consistent with the physical outcomes.”
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