Bristol City loan deal flop will have left Birmingham City and AFC Bournemouth relieved | OneFootball

Lois Diony never hit the heights expected of him at Ashton Gate.

For a team that has struggled to break into the upper echelons of the second tier, Bristol City has boasted some superb goalscorers in recent years.

Since securing promotion from League One in 2014-15, they have spent the majority of their time in the midtable reaches of the Championship yet have seen players like Tammy Abraham, Bobby Reid, Famara Diedhiou and Andreas Weimann all grace Ashton Gate.

Despite this attacking success, it is bound to go wrong occasionally and their January 2018 pick-up over Lois Diony was a disastrous deal.

The French striker arrived off the back of a poor first half of the season and endured an even worse six months at BS3. In hindsight, AFC Bournemouth and Birmingham City, who were in the race to sign the Saint-Étienne forward earlier that season, may have counted themselves lucky to have missed out.

AFC Bournemouth and Birmingham looked at Diony addition in the summer

Having completed the signing of Diedhiou from French side Angers in the summer, for a club record fee reported to be worth around £5.3million, it was somewhat of a surprise to see Bristol City turn to France again for Diony.

In the summer, the young striker had been subject to a great amount of interest and both the Blues and the Cherries were keen on bringing him to the shores of England.

This came as no surprise, given his impressive form in Ligue 1 the previous season, where he registered 11 goals and ten assists in 35 appearances for Dijon.

However, neither club secured his signature, as Saint-Étienne opted to keep him in Ligue 1, spending £7 million to bring him on board in what ultimately proved to be a sideways move for the striker.

Les Verts struggled to get much of an impact out of their new signing in his initial six months at the club and were willing to let him depart in January after his only contribution was one assist in 17 games.

This alerted many clubs, and it was Bristol City who made the most of it, snapping up the 25-year-old on a loan deal until the end of the season. Within the agreement with the French club was a clause to make it permanent, but this was never going to be utilised after they witnessed his minimal impact on the pitch.

He made his debut for the club in the first match after his arrival, coming off the bench in a 2-0 win over QPR. However, the bench soon became a familiar sight for Diony, as he started just one of the next ten games - a 2-0 defeat to the Robins' bitter rivals, Cardiff City.

The final six fixtures of the season saw the striker excluded from the squad altogether, and it was a similarly miserable time for City as they slipped out of play-off contention with just one win during that period.

A 3-2 defeat at home to Sheffield United called time on the campaign, and it was also the end of the Frenchman's loan spell as they opted not to make the deal permanent.

In total, Diony accrued just 199 minutes of action across seven appearances for the Robins. Birmingham and Bournemouth would have been delighted to see this minimal impact and would have felt a sense of relief having missed out on him during the summer.