Johnson to move from Robins to Robins
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 4:27 PM | by Adam Gray 
At some point in the near future as Cheltenham Town aim to strengthen their League Two promotion push by adding former Bristol City man Lee Johnson to the squad.
Cheltenham boss Mark Yates has just nipped in ahead of Crewe like a skilled racing driver for the thirty year old midfielder and Alex boss Steve Davis has cited Johnson’s wage demands, and not that Yates drives a faster car, as the reason behind Cheltenham getting there first.
Even though Cheltenham sit perched pretty neatly in 2nd spot in League Two in what has been an unexpectedly successful campaign for the Robins, Yates has only 3 senior central-midfielders at his disposal following last month’s release of Dave Bird. He flew off, you see.
Marlon Pack, Russ Penn and Luke Summerfield have provided the backbone to Cheltenham’s ascent up the table but with Penn currently struggling with a back problem, Yates has seen it necessary to swoop into the market for re-enforcements and Johnson, with 150 games’ worth of Championship experience at Bristol City, fits the bill when it comes to performing in the business end of the season.
Johnson, who was a nepotism favourite of father Gary Johnson at Yeovil and then at Ashton Gate, fell out of favour when Keith Millen took over and now with Derek McIness in charge, he was deemed surplus to requirements, told to pack his bags and vacate the premises at the end of January.
Cheltenham are ready to rescue him from days of boredom at home on the sofa watching Countdown and Loose Women though and according to defeated fellow admirer Steve Davis, the deal to take him to Whaddon Road is all-but done.
“His demands were beyond us and he has now gone to Cheltenham” said Davis, but Yates has been rather more bashful on the subject, “there may be something in it, maybe not”, obviously joining Johnson in watching too much Countdown in order so set a conundrum.
Yates, who has a lot of respect from this page for standing up to the physically imposing Steve Evans in a defeat to Crawley on Tuesday, also said “It’s a case of watching this space and seeing what happens”, so yeah, what he said.
@AdamGray1250
