Producing our own youngsters is the difference between here and the Sheffield Wednesday situation."Wilson admits that encouraging a young team has involved "some hard decisions" over letting older players move on to find first-team football elsewhere. But the decisions have paid off, with City still within reach of a play-off place and several of the young players now fully established."Matthew Hill, Aaron Brown and Simon Clist have come in and stayed, and the young goalie Steve Phillips has done particularly well this season. Simon has chipped in with goals from midfield which always takes the pressure off the strikers if they have a bad patch. He's very mobile and has terrific technique for a young lad."The manner of Wilson's departure fromWednesday after the club failed to give him the promised financial backing and four local MPs campaigned to get him removed would have been sufficient to make most managers cynical However, Wilson said: "That's not me I've put it all behind me I don't want to talk about it any more. You need to have a consistent temperament in management, because that stabil- ises the team. I suppose in a way the Sheffield Wednesday experience probably helped me retain my balance."He is fairly confident Bristol City will be (or, through financial constraint, have to be) more patient with his proposal that the club look upon a youth policy as the right investment Defeat by Kingstonian could put that faith to the test..

Pinned to the noticeboard in the office of the manager of Kingstonian is a picture of Ron Atkinson. Except that the suit is a bit sharper and the shoulders a bit broader, it could almost be Geoff Chapple himself There is the same firm jaw, the same jaunty air. Atkinson has the better voice, but Chapple boasts the better managerial record, in his own sphere at least. Pinned to the noticeboard in the office of the manager of Kingstonian is a picture of Ron Atkinson. Except that the suit is a bit sharper and the shoulders a bit broader, it could almost be Geoff Chapple himself There is the same firm jaw, the same jaunty air. Atkinson has the better voice, but Chapple boasts the better managerial record, in his own sphere at least. When asked at an FA Cup draw once what it was like to lead a team out at Wembley, Alex Ferguson replied, "Don't ask me, ask him", pointing at Chapple.

The former man from the Pru has led his team to five Wembley finals and won the lot.But it is the FA Cup which has defined the career of Geoff Chapple, to the exclusion of his remarkable seasonal exploits in the netherworld of the non-League. Chapple has become the acknowledged keeper of the great Cup shock, all the more precious now that the oldest knockout competition in the world is in danger of being treated by some of the big clubs as just another inconvenience on the road to Euro-wealth. In acknowledgment of his deeds, the Football Association presented Chapple with a replica trophy last month, and no one has deserved the honour more thoroughly.On Saturday, Chapple will take his Kingstonian side to Ashton Gate for the fourth round of the Cup, where Danny Wilson's Bristol City will potentially be the eighth on a roll call of League stooges. Wilson is an old enough hand to be wary of playing the reputation of the manager, not the reality of a side currently languishing second from bottom of the Nationwide Conference.But the Cup unleashes particular demons and distorts rational thought. "Yeah," Chapple admits, "I suppose one or two managers might think, 'Blimey, we've got to play Geoff Chapple's mob'.

A radio interviewer said the other day, the opposition aren't playing Kingstonian, they're playing Geoff Chapple."If anyone should know the secret of the Cup upset, it is the man sitting behind the unpretentious desk of a neat and largely unregarded little club, wondering which of the three telephones ringing in front of him he should answer next The Falstaffian joviality masks an acute tactical eye. Chapple is surprised sometimes by the rigidity of League thinking. Kingstonian went a goal ahead in the third round, had a man sent off and still Southend kept pumping the ball into the box for Kingstonian's three big centre-halves to head away. But this season, the magic of the Cup is driving him quietly dotty."I've never known anything like this lot," he says, the sweep of the hand dismissing his Cup heroes. "We played keepball for fun against Brentford, we beat Southport away, who are the best footballing side in the Conference, and beat South-end, but we can't buy a point in the League.