By Tony Leighton

Bristol City head into the 2008-09 campaign aiming to defy the 'second season syndrome' that tends to afflict clubs who perhaps over-achieve in their first year after promotion but then fade during the following season.

There were good examples of the syndrome's affect last term, most notably in the Premiership where the runaway 2006 Championship winners, Reading, were relegated 12 months after finishing eighth in their first top flight season.

In the Championship Colchester United, who followed their 2006 automatic promotion from League 1 with a 10th place finish in the higher division, ended up bottom of the pile second time around.

Those are ominous precedents for Bristol City, who after climbing back up to Championship level for the first time in eight years last season went very close to achieving back-to-back promotions.

The Robins finished fourth in the table but then lost 1-0 to Hull City in the Play-Off Final, a bitterly disappointing end to a campaign in which Gary Johnson's team had surprised the pundits by even making a promotion challenge.

The pressure will now be on for City to better than last year rather than slide towards mid-table obscurity or worse. But manager Gary Johnson, forever positive, says: "We'll use the so-called second season syndrome as motivation.

"Last year nobody expected us to be involved in the promotion race, so we went out to enjoy playing in the Championship and our motivation as the season went on came from the people who kept saying the bubble would burst.

"Now we've got a different motivation, and we'll need it because the Championship is going to be harder this season. There aren't many teams in the division who haven't been in the Premiership, so we'll be facing lots of opponents with a Premiership mentality."

The Robins have not been in the top flight since 1980, a dozen years before the establishment of the Premiership. It's where they want to be, however - and in record signing Nicky Maynard they might just have the man to shoot them there.

If the 21 year-old striker, a £2.25 million July purchase from Crewe, can score as prolifically for City as he did for the Railwaymen then goals - which Johnson's team found hard to come by at times last season - will not be a problem.

Maynard hit 32 goals in 59 League appearances - seven of them as substitute - for Crewe, ending last season with 11 in the final nine games and then kick-starting his City career with a debut hat-trick in last Friday's pre-season 4-0 win against Royal Antwerp.

Johnson says: "Nicky's only been around for a couple of years, but he's got an incredible scoring rate and I believe that if you're a predator like he is then you'll get goals in any division - and he can certainly help make us very competitive again this season."