BrizzleRed

That single match sale of vacant ST seats is the perfect solution. That would involve some extra effort from the club to make that possible though. At present, they seem to prefer putting their effort into pointing a finger at non-attendees, even though the club have already been paid for that seat. The only time these vacant seats really become a problem is on the rare occasions of a sell-out match. Seems like a lot of noise from the club about nothing.

As you say, it is a lottery and for all the guidelines, the officials often interpret stuff so differently. The offside situation is getting silly now though, with the matter of millimetres being measured. It's like those songs about 'Aguerro, your teeth are offside', or 'Ozil, your eyes are offside'! Joking aside, nobody gains an advantage with a couple of mm, so should it really come down to such small fractions? One of the better suggestions I've heard is to say there needs to be clear daylight between the last defender and the attacker, maybe measured at the waist, being the centre of the body. Ok, that certainly gives the advantage to the attacking team, but the defending team may be less likely to be constantly playing the offside trap, because if they judge it wrong, that really hands a significant advantage to the attacking team. We already see advantages given to keepers in any body contact at present, so giving advantages in the game aren't unprecedented. Don't know how difficult that type of offside decision would be for a lino to judge, but it must already be difficult enough to judge these fractions at present. The problem with VAR is, it seems to be the first point of reference, rather than leaving it to the officials to make a judgement first and leave it to them to ask for VAR if they aren't certain. It just feels like VAR is becoming a massive hindrance to football at present and arguably, causes more controversy than before it existed.

Couldn’t agree more Max. In theory, if VAR was employed properly, it could possibly be a valuable tool, just like goal-line technology undoubtedly is. Sadly, the combination of crap offside rules and the completely flawed employment of VAR above the match officials, has actually made it a blight on the game, rather than a benefit. Higher end football needs to sort itself out, before it actually destroys itself.

Good ol Jon! I know it’s a delicate balancing act with supply and demand and income for the club, but the amount of gaps in the Lansdown particularly, tells me they’re priced too high. Could find even more gaps appearing there once potd people start moving to the SS..

We’ll have to see how it pans out. The prices for all stands are obviously set by the club, so they certainly aren’t forced to price the Lansdown and Dolman so high. Would be interesting to compare our current income to the sell ‘em cheap and stack ‘em high pricing structure at clubs like Bradford City, who apparently manage to average around 18,000.

Good heads-up and wonder how many are thinking it’s midnight tonight. I did mine a bit after midnigt this morning, as I don’t trust them to not have a website crash today.

Happy St George’s day folks! Proud to be English and Bristolian

Let’s hope so NU, as I’m running out of years left for it to happen!!!

Apparently not. The mere mention of Nigel Pearson in a positive tone seems to be a massive trigger!

3 points for a win and the play off’s were a couple of other notables that boosted entertainment and increased attendances. At the moment, there’s loads of TV money sloshing around and clubs seem focussed on that and don’t appear to worry about providing entertainment. If that TV money dries up, you can bet your bottom dollar that clubs’ attention will turn back to pleasing their fans and getting them through the turnstiles again.

Definitely green shoots. I wasn’t at all impressed when he first came in and immediately imposed a different playing style we didn’t have the players for. At that point, he looked like a one trick pony. He’s now shown he’s pragmatic and has adapted the tactics to something more suited to our current squad. Although we still get the occasional stinker thrown in, he’s starting to play to our strengths and getting more consistency in our performances and results. Although we’re all well aware of some deficiencies in our squad, if we can strengthen over the summer, I’m certainly more optimistic that he can improve us than I was when he arrived. Credit to him for showing some resiliance and self-belief and hope it continues.

I recently tried to have a sensible convo with you on here, in the hope that you actually possessed an element of common sense. Won’t happen again after seeing this moronic, attention-seeking post.

I’ve got no love for Man City, but after seeing that today, I hope they totally humiliate United in the final. Absolutely gutted for Coventry. They can hold their heads high, but to go out like that is so cruel and another example of technology killing the spirit of football.

Sounds very plausible. You just get the feeling that he could be the last person left on the bench and we’d choose to play with 10 men, rather than bring him on!

Makes you think a bit more scouting was needed with this one, as it didn’t seem to take very long to make a decision on him once he arrived. Must have had something about him to interest Rangers and Man City, but it’s looking like he could be one of those really promising kids, who doesn’t carry on progressing in the adult game. Hope for his sake he gets back on track, but can’t imagine it being with us.

This is the really odd thing. If he looks good enough in training to get on the bench, why is he not getting on the pitch. If he’s just on the bench to just make up the numbers, why was he brought here in the first place and that really doesn’t reflect well on our U21 alternatives either. As some have mentioned, it does make you wonder if there’s some contractural reasons for these bench appearances. Whatever the reasons, this has certainly been a very strange loan and hasn’t benefitted either party.

So true GC and I suppose it takes all sorts to make a world.

There’s always going to be differing opinions and that’s how it should be. It’s the extreme opinions that totally ignore the facts that cause the issues I think and that goes for both sides. I certainly sympathise with LM as he’s been set up by the morons above him. That said, he still needs to actually outperform NP to provide any kind of vindication for Nige’s sacking and so far, he hasn’t achieved that, either in terms of performance, or results. I still maintain sacking Nige was arguably the biggest **** up SL has made at the club, but that’s done now and can’t be changed and Lansdown can’t hide from that decision. I think that’s why there are some attacks on people who appear to be BS employees, or Lansdown apologists and unfortunately, some of the fallout can then land on LM, which is unfair on him. What does jarr is when some people get carried away and claim how much things have improved under LM, when the facts confirm they clearly haven’t. That sort of thing is just stoking the fire. Hopefully when this season is put to bed, we can all just focus on next season, but my concern is, there will always be comparisons being made between NP and LM, so I just hope Manning’s got enough about him to stand up well in those comparisons!

Yeah, reckon you’ve nailed it there

They certainly played like that against County for sure!

It’s weird isn’t it? I know there’s been a general suspicion that the anti-Nige views on here are generally being posted on by Bristol Sport employees. It’s pretty clear there are a few guilty of that, but I’m beginning to wonder though if we actually have a significant element within our fanbase who just have a completely different and skewed view of reality. It seems their negative views are so deeply entrenched that regardless of any evidence presented to them, they’re determined to view Pearson’s time here in a negative light. They play down or deny the restrictions he was working under, or the very real danger of us crashing out of this division, due to having to throw so many inexperienced youngsters in at the same time. Their determination to view Nige maintaining our Championship status at a time of massive cost-cutting and squad upheaval as some kind of failure, rather than an undoubted success is really odd. Possibly they expected Nige to be some kind of miracle worker, who could wave a magic wand and instantly wipe away years of mis-management of this club and it just wasn’t happening quickly enough for them. It’ll be interesting to see if they show the same degree of impatience with LM, particularly as most of the heavy lifting has now been done. I still can’t get my head round how some fans can still hold on to such negative views about a bloke who somehow dragged this club out of some really deep shit, caused by the very people who eventually sacked him! Prior to Nige arriving here, if I’d been compiling a list of the most potentially divisive managers we could bring in, he wouldn’t have been anywhere near that list. It’s a strange old world!!!

I never had a kids shirt, as I’m from the lethal wooden hand rattle era, so shirts weren’t on the menu!!! I’ll have to get my stuff out of the loft one day and check what I’ve got, but I think my first was probably the special Wembley ‘87 shirt. Probably just nostalgia, but they felt more special back then, but that could just be because of what happened in ‘82. To me, out stuff now feels a bit cheap and nasty in comparison.

Cheers Sleepy I think the first replica shirts were sold by Leeds around ‘76 and it was a while before other clubs picked up on the trend and only in kids sizes at first I think. Maybe it was only the adult sized shirts that were introduced in the mid ‘80’s at City. I always used to get the new adult sized shirts and I think the first one I got was around ‘86. I definitely wasn’t aware of adult sizes being sold in the City shop before that, though I stand to be corrected on that. I’d always been under the impression that before the mid ‘80’s, if you wanted to get hold of a team shirt, you had to drag it off a player’s back during a pitch invasion!!!

You’ve got a load of info there, so seem the perfect person to ask. I’ve always really liked this particular shirt design, but I can’t remember this design ever being available for fans to buy, because I would certainly have bought one myself. I thought replica shirts first became available to buy from around ‘86 or ‘87, but do you have any info on that? I’m guessing this ebay shirt was part of the batch supplied to the club and would have been numbered by the club when required. With the number being stiched, it won’t have been officially done by the club, but there must have been a few un-numbered spares knocking around at the club and this could be one that someone has acquired and numbered themselves, couldn’t it? From what’s been discussed on this thread, it certainly isn’t one from the 1986 Wembley Final for sure.