PREVIEW: Bristol City have playoffs in sight in trip to Swansea | OneFootball

Gerhard Struber’s Bristol City travel over the Severn Bridge to Swansea City targeting a return to the Championship playoff places on Saturday.

The Robins currently find themselves ninth in the Championship table, having misses a chance to move into a play-off spot earlier this week as they drew 2-2 with fellow top six hopefuls Wrexham.

Meanwhile, the Swans sit 16th in the league and come into this one off the back of a 2-0 defeat to high-flying Derby County at Pride Park.

Swansea do however boast the league’s top scorer in Slovenian Zan Vipotnik, who has found the net 15 times in 30 appearances so far this term, averaging a goal every 132 minutes this season.

The Welsh side are also unbeaten at home since November, having lost only four out of 16 matches at the Swansea.com stadium, which head coach Vitor Matos believed is a great source of confidence.

He said: “It’s always good to be at home, playing with your fans and feeling close to them.”

Matos went on to speak about Bristol City with high praise, calling them “a really good team, they’re organised, really fast in the counter and good on set-pieces as well.”

The Swansea job is Matos’ first in English football, with his only previous managerial role coming at Portuguese 2nd division side Maritimo, having previously been an assistant coach at RB Salzburg for a brief spell in late 2024.

In contrast to Vipotnik’s fine form, Bristol City’s joint top scorers Emil Riis and Scott Twine sit on eight goals each, with the former a doubt after he was taken off at half-time on Tuesday night for the game’s man of the match Sinclair Armstrong.

Bristol midfielder Adam Randell was subbed off due to injury on Tuesday night, but has told Struber he’ll be ready for this weekend’s clash.

Scottish defender Ross McCrorie missed out on Tuesday following a concussion in training, with Struber stating after the match: “He has tomorrow [Wednesday] his next test in the concussion protocol, and we’ll look then how the test is going.

“We have to be really careful in this direction.”

The home side have undergone a change of manager this season, with Vitor Matos replacing Alan Sheehan in November and winning and losing eight of his 17 games in charge, drawing one.

The sides have met every year since Swansea’s relegation from the top flight in 2018, with Bristol City winning seven of the 17 matches and the side from South Wales only winning on five occasions.

The Robins’ last victory at the Swansea.com stadium came in September 2023 when Sam Bell and Mark Sykes netted in a comeback win.

The game will take place on Saturday February 21st, with kick-off at 12:30 (GMT).