Bristol City signed Lee Tomlin from Bournemouth in the summer of 2016 but it didn’t work out at Ashton Gate for the attacking midfielder
After first joining BS3 on loan in January 2016, Tomlin announced a permanent move to the team during the summer transfer window, with the Robins paying an alleged cost of more over £3 million.
Tomlin’s signing proved to be a thrilling move for Robins supporters, who rightly expected big things from the player even though things hadn’t exactly worked out for him at Bournemouth in the Premier League.
To be fair, though, Tomlin was a disaster at Ashton Gate, and the fact that he left the team only a season later enraged Robins fans.
Lee Tomlin’s time at Bristol City
After leaving Middlesbrough in the summer of 2015 to join Bournemouth, a freshly promoted Premier League team, Lee Tomlin found it difficult to secure consistent playing time at Dean Court. Of his ten appearances, only six were in the Premier League.
Because of this, Eddie Howe, the manager of the Cherries, was pleased to loan the player to Bristol City in January 2016. Tomlin made an impression at Ashton Gate during his loan period.
In the second half of the 2015–15 season, the attacking midfielder made 18 Championship appearances for the Robins, tallying two assists and six goals, demonstrating his ability to be among the top performers in the league at any given time.
That summer, Lee Johnson, the manager of the Robins, saw enough to spend more than £3 million, earning him the club’s second-highest record signing.
“I think we’ve signed the most talented player at Championship level in terms of ability,” Johnson declared upon his signing. He does daily acts in training that bring a smile to your face, leaving you to wonder, “How on earth has he done that?”
This demonstrates that while there was a great deal of anticipation surrounding Tomlin’s signing, he never quite lived up to the hype.
He had a respectable debut as a long-term Robin, making many appearances. However, after the new year, he was more frequently used off the bench and occasionally even left on the bench.
He made 42 total appearances for the team in the 2016–17 campaign, scoring seven goals and dishing out just six assists. This meant that even though he had played 24 more games, he had only improved his total from the previous season by one goal.
When he made the painful decision to join one of the team’s main competitors in the summer of 2017, his career at Ashton Gate started to fade.
In July 2017, Tomlin made a reported £1.5 million move to Cardiff City making himself very unpopular with Robins’ supporters in the process.
Lee Tomlin’s career since leaving Bristol City
Tomlin was unpopular in Bristol after moving over the Welsh border to join Cardiff City, as the two teams were fierce rivals and played in the Severnside Derby.
But Bristol City fans can be confident that Tomlin’s career took a nosedive after leaving Ashton Gate, save for a brief comeback at the Bluebirds in the 2019–20 campaign.
Tomlin, who only joined Cardiff in the summer of 2017, was loaned to Nottingham Forest in 2018 and then to Peterborough United when the Bluebirds were promoted to the Premier League in the same year.
Tomlin became an important member of Cardiff after their relegation to the Championship, despite spending a considerable amount of time away from the first team, and he was rewarded with a new contract.
But this was just temporary, as he was quickly cut from the starting lineup for the 2020–21 campaign. By mutual consent, he departed the team in October 2021 and signed with Walsall, where he appeared for just five games before being let go at the end of the year.
In the summer of 2022, he moved again, this time to the Doncaster Rovers, although this too was short-lived as he only played ten games before quitting football in October of the same year.
Although Tomlin was a great player at the Championship level in his day, his inability to play to his full capacity over an extended length of time was caused by both injury issues and conditioning issues.
An ideal illustration of this was his tenure at Bristol City. He was outstanding while on loan, had a strong start to his permanent stint, but eventually faded out, much to the dismay of all those associated with the team.
In the end, Tomlin’s tenure at Ashton Gate will be viewed as a failure, but only because he was so close to fulfilling his immense potential.
