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The club finally admitted their plight telling shareholders they’d made a loss of £400,000 the previous year. In November, Gooch wrote in the programme appealing for help. 1981 ended with a defeat at bitter rivals, Bristol Rovers and City were 4th from bottom having won just 5 out of 16 matches.. In January 1982 the bottom club, Wimbledon, turned up at Ashton Gate and promptly came away with a 3-1 win. That was the last straw for Houghton who resigned, and Hodgson took overall management control.
Off the pitch the financial report had identified the huge debt the club had and suggested various options open to them to deal with it, including unloading the biggest liabilities, do a deal with creditors, do a deal with the Football League, do a deal with the old company on the sale of the ground and do a deal with the eight players who were on the biggest contracts and comprised the largest part of the liability. It must be said the Football League were unused to this sort of situation. Clubs had gone bust before this, but they had generally fallen out of the league first. Bristol City was a club who just 18 months before had been competing in the First Division. Now oblivion beckoned.
Hodgson’s first match in charge was a trip to Peterborough in the FA Cup Third Round. They won 1-0. His first two League matches were creditable draws at home to Huddersfield and away at Newport County. In between those two matches, they played host to Aston Villa in the FA Cup. Over 20,000 turned up for the game, a crowd not seen at Ashton Gate since the glory days. Gary Shaw scored the only goal of the game to knock City out, but attention soon reverted to their league plight.
At the end of January 1982, City were still in the bottom four, 2pts from safety when it all came crashing down around their ears. The Football League imposed a selling ban on the club, mainly due to the fact they still owed Newcastle £100,000 for the Harford deal. At this point the club announced that eight players had to leave for the club to continue. These eight players became known as the Ashton Gate Eight.
