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Losing The Public Relations Battle


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I said something very similar, far less eloquently on a different thread.

Steve C, is a good manager. Let me be clear on that. Last season was awe inspiring. Everything he touched was gold. Everything we did in the last transfer window, is polarised from this window, leading to one question. Why?

I mentioned naivety. But I find it so hard to believe. We are talking Steve L; billionaire. Steve C; football manager. Keith B; director of football. Where is the disconnect? When SC gives an interview its blood and thunder, snot flying passion. Heart on his sleeve stuff, that we all came to adore. With one caveat. When we are successful.

We have problems clearly. I am not ITK. You don't have to be. We have gone from a "crest of a wave" club, to the rumblings of "something is not quite right", perhaps worse. I personally, don't want see us come out and say things like: "they wanted 9m for a player", scoff. Or "we couldn't agree personal terms". he not worth it. We have to start to conduct our business like a championship club.

We wanted to be in this division, yet we are acting like League 1, "they wanted too much", or "his wage demands are ridiculous". Whilst I am all for being prudent and recruiting sensible, we look wounded, battered and unappealing. This has to change. SC whilst lovable, needs to keep that stuff to himself. Or let someone else talk for him, or better yet say nothing. 

I have said many times let's walk before we run. We recruited so well last season, which has given us the bare bones to compete. But running around the transfer market like headless chickens, makes us look amateur. We obviously have ambition, a brilliant owner and a management team that can be successful.  We cant go from, SC saying  "I made an enquiry for a player and they wanted 7m 8m 9m" one week, for us to bid the same amount a week later.  We need a consistent policy, which is the point the OP made and I completely  trampled all over, but agreeing in my own way.

Next two weeks crucial. Lets learn from our mistakes, be ruthless, back SC and go and get the players we need to make this squad success, without all the "money drama" played out for all to see.

Steve.

PS rather nice New Zealand "Sauvigon Blanc" was consumed writing this.

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It's not a new phenomenon that some players don't want to sign for City.its a problem most previous managers have had,

I asked John Ward once why he thought that was so and he said in the football world Bristol and the West Country are not seen as a "football" areas in the same way as the North and Midlands are. Manchester, London and Birmingham are far more attractive to players.

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It's not a new phenomenon that some players don't want to sign for City.its a problem most previous managers have had,

I asked John Ward once why he thought that was so and he said in the football world Bristol and the West Country are not seen as a "football" areas in the same way as the North and Midlands are. Manchester, London and Birmingham are far more attractive to players.

 

Norwich, Ipswich, Southampton, Brighton, Crapdiff. Swansea?

 

Bristol is a far nicer place to live and a lot easier and faster to, aggregately, reach London and Birmingham.

 

I don't really buy that argument at all and even less so when Ashton Gate is fully re-developed.

 

Oh and do we really care how a fairly unanimously worthless sports programme with presenters who really are awful present Bristol City to the public? I suppose we should because its on air but we have far more important things to worry about and far better tools in which to sell the club; the team we have at the helm are pretty competent at doing that and certainly i would listen to them far more than a couple of numbingly poor TV people trying to look and sound like experts and failing abysmally. And if a player does listen to them we really don't want airheads playing for us now do we?

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Norwich, Ipswich, Southampton, Brighton, Crapdiff. Swansea?

 

Bristol is a far nicer place to live and a lot easier and faster to, aggregately, reach London and Birmingham.

 

I don't really buy that argument at all and even less so when Ashton Gate is fully re-developed.

 

All those places have clubs with a decent history which sadly for us City don't have. We've always been a small club in the eyes of the footballing world. Whenever I meet other football fans either abroad or here in the UK they nearly always have the same perception.its no surprise that potential players do as well.

SL realises this I'm sure and has a vision of establishing City in the Championship and then the PL in a similar way to the way Swansea did. The redevelopment of AG is one of the first steps. Having a well designed and modern stadium is essential in improving City's stock value.

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Because someone on a ( rubbish) football programme expresses a few that you aren't an attractive option, doesn't mean your PR is bad.

 

TV and the media have to 'say something'. It's normally a load of old bollocks, but to use City as an example, if Kelly Coates says to Adam Virgo 'So, Adam, what's wrong at Bristol City?', he can't really get away with saying ' Dunno really, but it is only August, so probably just best to see how it pans out for a bit, and give an opinion then'. Social media would go into a meltdown !

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All those places have clubs with a decent history which sadly for us City don't have. We've always been a small club in the eyes of the footballing world. Whenever I meet other football fans either abroad or here in the UK they nearly always have the same perception.its no surprise that potential players do as well.

SL realises this I'm sure and has a vision of establishing City in the Championship and then the PL in a similar way to the way Swansea did. The redevelopment of AG is one of the first steps. Having a well designed and modern stadium is essential in improving City's stock value.

Tend to agree with this.

Norwich, Ipswich and Southampton all have history of their side. Even Brighton to a smaller extent, who also have both the closeness to London and a completed new ground. Swansea have done well in the Prem in recent times - Cardiff is the only outlier but they have also been in the Prem and had parachute payments.

Spot on with the Swansea commentary as a blueprint for SL's approach ... that is the way to change the conception of the wider audience and hopefully will change prospective players preconceived views.

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I have no concern with this 'PR battle' you mention, I don't think any such thing exists in the game of football, to be frank.

 

I am only concerned with our ability to win games this season.

 

To put things very simply, we have clearly tried to sign the wrong type of player this year.  We tried to run before we could walk in the Championship, and subsequently we have fallen over onto our face and bloodied our nose a little bit.

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I have no concern with this 'PR battle' you mention, I don't think any such thing exists in the game of football, to be frank.

 

I am only concerned with our ability to win games this season.

 

To put things very simply, we have clearly tried to sign the wrong type of player this year.  We tried to run before we could walk in the Championship, and subsequently we have fallen over onto our face and bloodied our nose a little bit.

And you draw this conclusion 5 games into a new season in a higher league?

Yeah right......

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Do you watch a lot of Channel 5? It's programming seems to be directed at morons, produced by morons. I wouldn't take any notice of anything CH5 has to say!

True Channel 5 is poor, but it has national, if not international, coverage and whether we like it or not, people who want to watch what's happening in the Championship have to watch Channel 5. No bad publicity is welcome, and there is a real risk that the impression that is developing of us will become universal. We would be very, very naive to dismiss this as a load of rubbish just because it isn't Sky or the BBC. If the organisation I work for started getting negative publicity like this on a national TV channel there would be a major flap on and a strategy to reverse the situation would be being planned as a matter of urgency.

City's PR has been poor all summer. is this Adam Baker's responsibility? If so, I'm surprised because I've always thought Adam was a credit to the club.

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True Channel 5 is poor, but it has national, if not international, coverage and whether we like it or not, people who want to watch what's happening in the Championship have to watch Channel 5. No bad publicity is welcome, and there is a real risk that the impression that is developing of us will become universal. We would be very, very naive to dismiss this as a load of rubbish just because it isn't Sky or the BBC. If the organisation I work for started getting negative publicity like this on a national TV channel there would be a major flap on and a strategy to reverse the situation would be being planned as a matter of urgency.

City's PR has been poor all summer. is this Adam Baker's responsibility? If so, I'm surprised because I've always thought Adam was a credit to the club.

Perhaps the best course of action is to contact the show direct. I'm sure they talk a load of rubbish about every team, but we don't notice because it is not about us. They were talking about TWO potential signings out of we don't know how many - SC likes to keep his cards close. One didn't want to drop down to the Championship and the other went to a former prem team. As SC said, he has done everything to sell the team to players etc but he can't compete with that! 

As for AB, I guess it is very difficult to create spin when there isn't any! 

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Nothing to do with our PR, more to do with our fickle fan base.

Ive been going nearly forty + years and agree that pr can be better. Bristol Sport themselves have said they need to work more on the Bristol City brand. they have professional media people who can do the pr while the football people do the football.

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All those places have clubs with a decent history which sadly for us City don't have. We've always been a small club in the eyes of the footballing world. Whenever I meet other football fans either abroad or here in the UK they nearly always have the same perception.its no surprise that potential players do as well.

SL realises this I'm sure and has a vision of establishing City in the Championship and then the PL in a similar way to the way Swansea did. The redevelopment of AG is one of the first steps. Having a well designed and modern stadium is essential in improving City's stock value.

So does our lovely Bristol City council have a lot to answer for here. We'd be in that shiny new stadium now if it wasn't for them.

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The reason is quite simple. Not bad PR, or location, or history, or Steve's accent. It's money.

We have no parachute payments and relatively small crowds - not helped by the building work this season and last - we cannot afford to pay the over-inflated wage demands of some of the fancy Dans in this division.

If we could, they'd flock here. History doesn't come into it. Gretna got plenty of top Scottish players when they could afford to pay top dollar.

Though, in the case of the utterly anonymous on Saturday Gray. I'm glad we didn't find the cash to meet his demands.

We will be better served by picking up top lower league prospects, good foreign players and youngsters who are surplus to requirements of PL clubs.

Totally agree. I think what is baffling most fans right now is to why we haven't done that and why we've gone for targets that are out of our league financially?

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All those places have clubs with a decent history which sadly for us City don't have. We've always been a small club in the eyes of the footballing world. Whenever I meet other football fans either abroad or here in the UK they nearly always have the same perception.its no surprise that potential players do as well.

SL realises this I'm sure and has a vision of establishing City in the Championship and then the PL in a similar way to the way Swansea did. The redevelopment of AG is one of the first steps. Having a well designed and modern stadium is essential in improving City's stock value.

 

I still don't buy this image or history thing.

 

I don't need to reel off the clubs but there are plenty competing in this league and, at the same time, attracting the talent they need. We are no different. Its all about money. That is all.

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So does our lovely Bristol City council have a lot to answer for here. We'd be in that shiny new stadium now if it wasn't for them.

The council backed it and put money into the world cup bid. this could be the type of thing that Bristol Sport can improve on highlighting to the public in future where BS and BCFC and the council community fans work together. Bristol is a fantastic City to live in. Bristol Sport should be showing off how Bristol City are part of that fantastic City to live in.

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Because someone on a ( rubbish) football programme expresses a few that you aren't an attractive option, doesn't mean your PR is bad.

 

TV and the media have to 'say something'. It's normally a load of old bollocks, but to use City as an example, if Kelly Coates says to Adam Virgo 'So, Adam, what's wrong at Bristol City?', he can't really get away with saying ' Dunno really, but it is only August, so probably just best to see how it pans out for a bit, and give an opinion then'. Social media would go into a meltdown !

 

You really are quite sensible, and write balanced and intelligent comments on here. 

 

This begs the question, why on earth do you support that lot?! ;)

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