Bristol City confirm first friendly of pre-season with crowd-pleasing fixture at Ashton Gate

Bristol City have announced that they will host Dutch side Willem II at Ashton Gate in a pre-season friendly on Saturday, August 3 with both sets of supporters building a strong relationship that dates back 20 years.

Robins fans have regularly taken trips to Tilburg, home of the newly-promoted Eredivisie side, since the mid-2000s with supporters of the Dutch outfit coming over to Bristol to do the same at Ashton Gate.

The match will be Liam Manning's side's final fixture of their preparations for the 2024/25 campaign with the new season set to start on the weekend of August 10 and fixtures to be released on June 26.

As for Willem II, they will be preparing for their first season back in the Dutch top-flight after securing promotion from the Eerste Divisie in which they can be crowned champions with a final day victory over Telstar on Friday night.

For Robins supporters, the news will be additionally pleasing as it will be the first friendly to be played at Ashton Gate since City hosted Aston Villa in 2021.

City are yet to confirm any further plans for their pre-season calendar but Manning revealed before the campaign ended that their schedule has already been planned fully.

"Every day is planned already," the Robins head coach said. "We obsess on planning, so the six weeks, the return dates, the testing, the staff meetings. The six weeks are planned in terms of what session we do on each day, what running activity they're doing each day, what distances need to cover.

"There's no excuse not to plan that stuff and then when you're in it you have to be a little bit reactive and tweak certain things but at least you've got the nucleus of a plan to work off.

"The big bit is that it gives you an opportunity just to get some of the core principles and build on some of the stuff we've done and especially how we work. The volume of content and the decision-making element which I've spoken about before, players being able to make good decisions and problem solve.

"That you can replicate on the grass and kind of go through that review process in a slightly less pressurised environment but it's easier to recreate certain pictures in the game so one that we've done recently is four v three practice so when we do regain it, we counter-attacking and we get these pictures of three v two or four v three so we can design a session and deliver it.

"So we'll periodise it tactically. We'll spend a week on each of the phases and then we'll link the phases and then you get the opportunities of the games to try and bring it out.

"The matches are all pretty much done now as well," the City boss added. "The whole 45 minute thing, we'll just do an internal game and then we build them up so the aim is to try and get every player an internal 45 and then a 60 and then two or three 90s ultimately."

The club have stated that ticket information will be revealed in due course.