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Congratulations to the happy couple Nathan has had it rough recently, about time he had something go his way

The concussion is worse than I thought.

His health comes first. For now, let's leave it at that.

Not sure how the Post stirring up violence makes for a good article but whatever floats your boat...

Usually you’d be correct but given who the OP is…..

...or even insightful.

As usual, an excellent article from James Piercy. Think some of the proof in the pudding will be how the team perform (and the results fair too) over the coming weeks with a few of players back from injury and once they are fully up to speed. James wasn’t on Saturday, or certainly didn’t look sharp. Was Massengo on the bench because he needed a rest, had his form just tipped over the edge in the last game or so? With Atkinson back, Tanner in the coming weeks hopefully, we may get a good opportunity to assess better. I suspect summer plans are already well in motion….but at this stage predicting a tough summer.

He got married yesterday

Everton boardroom - meeting between the owner and Manager. Owner: Well, the Spurs performance was a disaster. FL: It was and I can only apologise Owner: If things don't improve, and quickly, we will be relegated, which we must avoid it at all costs, because you know what relegation would mean don't you? FL: Me being sacked? Owner: Possibly, but no not that. FL: You mean the massive loss of income that would result from playing in the championship? Owner: Well, yes, but it’s not that. FL: You mean scrapping the new harbourside stadium? Owner: Yes, but no it’s not that. FL: You mean the humiliation our fans would suffer from Liverpool fans? Owner: Yes they would , but it’s not that. FL: You mean that European football would be even further away than it is now? Owner: Well yes, but it’s not that. FL: If we are relegated, then what could possibly be worse than all those issues? Owner: Mr Popo-bloody-dopolous would start up an Everton ffp thread on the Bristol City fans forum and surely our fans have already suffered enough!

Everton relegated to the championship and subject to Mr Popodopolous's ffp inquisition? Can't wait!

If, if, if. You sound like a Saghead. They played the bottom team in our division a couple of months ago and lost. If we play any team from L2 in a one off game theres a chance we could lose no matter what our form is like. No game is a guaranteed victory. Why would you give him such undeserved credit? Zero budget? He was allowed to sign a completely new team. ? They’ve had none of the difficulties that we’ve faced this season and will do again next season. For a side that was the bookies favourites with absolutely everyone at the start of the season they’ve made a right slog of it so far whilst clubs like FGR and Northampton (also relegated from L1 last season) have run away with it. Yes, they’ll probably go up, but they’ll still be ‘Barton Rovers’ managed by a volatile cretin, with L2 support playing in a Non League ground.

Whenever the ‘biggest club’ question comes up I always think it’s based on three things (in order): 1. Trophies won; 2. Time spent in the highest division(s); 3. Fan base. Based on this then yes, Arsenal are bigger than Spurs and Chelsea.

He'll be going into the last year of his contract this summer..... Fwiw, my priorities at CB would be: 1. Aerially dominant 2. Excellent communicator 3. Leader Not sure how many of those boxes Kalas ticks. Well I do actually - not enough of them. Given that Tanner and Pring look like the future at full back and given at least one, if not more, of Scott, Massengo and Benarous will make up our midfield for the foreseeable - that's a lot of young, naive, promising apprentices in the team. What young lads learning the ropes need more than anything is older heads guiding them through games - and when I say guiding I mean talking to them, non stop, for 95 minutes. That's why, for me, the team needs at least one, if not two, CBs who are excellent communicators. I'm not sure we have a single one. The absence of leaders - vocal leaders - in a team that is relying so heavily on it's young players, is a major negative for me. And just another example of a dysfunctional set of players who don't gel as a squad.

I hate Cardiff, just as I hate Swansea. But then again I hate Boro, and Forest, and Millwall, Hull, Bournemouth, WBA, Reading, Liverpool, Man Utd etc etc etc. To be honest I hate every other team. However nothing, NOTHING compares to the utter loathing I have for those vile csnut from north of the river. I struggle to even find words to express my true feelings. For that reason for me there will only ever be one true rival, and forever may they suffer, struggle and hopefully endure a long, lingering, painful death. CTID

The brag wasn't about beating Sutton 2-0, it was about cashing out for £1600 for a £2.60 bet! Which would have been £4300 if I had held my nerve ;(

? There you go.

It's not a different opinion, it's a matter of fact. The players take the knee because they want to, not because they have been ordered to. If you are going to repeatedly spread lies then expect people to get pissed off wirh you.

If Anderson and Broad aren't sat at home watching this and either laughing hysterically or wanting to put their feet through their tellies in anger then they're better men than I am.

If Burnley get relegated & there is Prem interest in Brownhill, then all the best to them in trying to get him to stay. FWIW I think a strategy of expecting sell on clauses is flawed, far better that they are a happy bonus.

Nothing like playing Cardiff now. Rovers will always be our main rivals Cardiff doesn't even come close.

Agree. Structural issues in the way we defend as a team. Easy to think of a basic 442 shape w/o the ball, the two banks of 4, shuffling across to the side, never allowing overloads, etc. Which is what we had early season. Then I look at the recent games with a diamond / front-sweeper (call it what you like) and the shape w/o the ball is bad, the midfield too narrow, leaving either FB exposed. We aren’t stopping the opposition CBs / FBs getting forward. In my simple world, our strikers should be splitting and we should be driving them into the centre of the pitch, into congestion / numbers. The Forest game wasn’t just Spence (RB) getting forward, but McKenna (LCB) too…so it wasn’t an issue on one side only. That points to a team issue. Then the 352 / 3412. At times we’ve seen both WBs isolated. The games (only a few games back believe it or not) where we played well in that system were games where we got our WBs high (to stifle our opponents building out) and our CBs were comfortable to play wide and cover the channel in behind. Kalas is an athlete and can do that no probs at all, as can Pring. I was surprised how well Klose did in wide areas defensively. I’m still not comfortable with Weimann in the hole, but that’s a pros and cons debate, because we might lose his goals / assist output if we constrain him. But overall the early season stopping our opponents getting to the halfway line and building territorial pressure seems to have gone in the main.

We definitely have a bit about us at the moment and I am very much enjoying watching a team play with a bit of passion and so obviously enjoying winning games and yeah maybe, if we played you right now, we MIGHT give you a bit of a game. However, it does seem likely that a couple of the players Barton gave a chance to shine will look to improve their lot in the summer - and why shouldn't they- and even Barton himself is unlikely to be around for years. It's good fun going to watch Rovers at the moment, I imagine it isn't watching City, but that's football and within a very short space of time things can change. I won't be getting 'we're coming for you' tattooed on my forehead just yet.

Is this a joke, they’re currently 9th in the basement division in a league where Forest green rovers have run away with the league.. they play complete piss teams every single game.. they should be in the top 3 at the very least another super difficult game for them this Saturday.. Harrogate town

Good point and don't forget the large support the Gas receive in the North East, that's not been taken into account.

Agree with almost all of that, but I don’t necessarily agree that it needs to be “older heads”…I’d go for experienced…and that might be younger than we normally associate, if they’re good enough to have played enough. Nothing wrong with Caulker ??? I’ve been mentioning for a while we have no natural CB “screen”…neither Williams or James are screens. Both can play deep, but their positional discipline is weak compared to someone like Pack. A good CB has to be a good communicator, they also need to tell their screen where they want them too. It’s a two-way thing!

Worse? Palmer £3.5m, huge wages, we still can’t get rid, Engvall £2m, striker who never scored a goal for us, sold 2 years later for £200k. Adelakun, Watkins, Walsh, Wells, El-Abd, Ryan Fredericks, Hegeler, Geifer, Diony, O’Neill, Jody Morris, Richard Foster, Mark Wilson, Gilmartin, Brunt, Nicky Hunt, Styvar. That enough for you?

Hiya. A few of us who now reside up in the family stand are taking our young kids on their first ever away trip to Blackburn on Saturday. We’ve organised a minibus, which I will be driving, but due to a family bereavement we’ve had one of the dads and his 2 kids have to drop out. Which means we’ve got 3 spare seats now. If anyone was stuck for transport who fancied joining us please let me know. Obviously we’re looking for ‘sensible’ folks please - we have 5 under 11’s on board so it won’t be a lads battle bus ? So really looking for anyone who might be a dad & son/daughter combo who maybe didn’t fancy the long drive. Will be looking to set off from Bristol at around 8am and will likely stop en route for a bit a food and drink (we’ve found a decent pub just outside Blackburn). At the moment, rough cost might be around £25-£30 per head - depending how much diesel rises between now and filling up the bus ? So if anyone was kinda stuck for transport, and are of the sensible variety, please let me know.

I’m struggling with the concept that anyone sensible would want to go to Blackburn, in their current form, to watch City, in our current form! (I’m still going mind!)

As others have said if we end up losing 15 of our last 16 matches we deserve everything we get and even then it might not be enough to see us get relegated. That's how bad points deductions and a couple of terrible sides at the bottom have made it this year. 3 points from 48 won't happen but if it did we would be better off in League 1 starting again anyway with a new Manager, Owner, CEO, players the lot. I can see us scraping another 10-11 points with maybe a couple of consecutive wins when the pressure finally lifts nearer the end of the season. People always say "can't see where our next win is coming from", well of course you can't when the team is in shit form but we always pick up a win somewhere and it's rinse and repeat. Things need to change next season though, not dramatically but losing two goals a game every sodding game and getting bullied twice by Birmingham will not bring back the fans we are no doubt going to lose next season. 10K tops on season tickets imo, TOPS.

Sell on clauses are like doing a Euromillions lucky dip on a £100,000,000 roll over, you don't expect it to materialise but you hope it does come in come in. Our plans should be based on what we can control like how much we would demand for Scott or Semenyo or, given his contract situation, how much we can get for Massengo. As a club we are, at the moment, a financial mess. Selling off our prized assets and trimming off the dead wood on the wage budget looks to be the only options to restore us to an acceptable financial level. No one likes to see their best players sold and especially so just to balance the books that have been mismanaged or to overcome the effects of the pandemic but this is the real world and as it stands that is what will be required. Let's hope we can uncover some gems like those we have to sell.

What happened to Chris Wood or Ben White? If a bigger club wants any of those clubs’ players, they’d be gone. Unless we hit the heights of a Premier League winning side, we’ll be a selling club. Every one is.

Of course I could be, but Pearson has been here over a year now, Dave Rennie joined him last summer & Curtis Fleming early this season, so my hunch is that if we were seriously trying to bring Walsh here, then it would have happened by now. I agree with your other point but have no idea if it is the owner, the chairman, Gould or Pearson who seems reluctant to act, it could be a combination of those people, too.

Our recruitment has been so bad, I would take Louis Walsh as things stand!

It's an interesting question, seeing as they are 38 places below us in the league standings. I assume he also thinks we are closing the gap on Man City then...?!!

When someone constantly looks for a reason for a dig at Pearson they will share anything

The ref got injured and had to be substituted. Joey wasn't anywhere near him at the time - honest! ?

I disagree that centre back is the root of our problem, though clearly our problem this season is that we are conceding far too many goals. While I don’t absolve the defence from blame, if a team is conceding too many goals I always look at the team as a whole. Are the wide players linking and covering for each other, or are the full backs being left exposed? Are the midfielders protecting the centre halves? Are the attackers holding up the ball and preventing it going backwards all the time? Are the team as a whole defending set pieces effectively? Sadly I suspect the answer to most of these questions is ‘no’. Look at Saturday. Sam Bell had a torrid time but if you look at the first Birmingham goal, ok he is caught upfield, but who is covering for him? My son plays right back in his youth team, but if he pushes up then other players know it is their job to tuck in behind him. It really was a schoolboy error, but not necessarily on Bell’s part. You don’t concede as many goals as we have this season solely because of dodgy centre backs. We’ve tried various combinations and formations at the back and we still concede goals, so the problem seems to me to be the way the team as a whole defends, or the way the team is set up. i don’t have the stats to analyse this in detail, but I suspect that the problem is more in midfield than in defence.

Don’t kid yourself in thinking that if we played Rovers now we would win,,at this moment in time we are not worlds apart

Some would regard it as that, but I just view football very, very differently to how I used to. I don't worry about success as such, I just want to enjoy a good game and atmosphere, just have a good day out. I still want Rovers to win and City to lose, but **** getting stressed out about football any more. If we get n the play offs great, a couple of away days that might be fun, if we don't, we don't. I used to take football far too seriously, I'm glad I don't any more.

I think you have to factor in timescales, anything in the last 20 years has to count more than 20 to 50 years ago which has to count more than 50+ years ago which is almost irrelevant IMHO. e.g. Villa or Forrest winning the champions League 40 years ago has less effect on the club being big than say Chelsea winning it 2012.

Good on 'em. Hope they make it

Sorry but if Nige thinks we're okay at CB we're in trouble. To my mind it's the route of our problems, especially with regard to leadership. We need a Wes Morgan. Personally I'd accept a reasonable offer (£1/£2 million):for Kalas in order to sign a captain and leader at CB. Kalas is not the long term answer.

I’ve never cared for them as their fans have always acted like d***s at the Gate, most notably during an FA Cup tie in 1995. Trip to Goodison would be good, though - would be first visit for City on league business (or any business for that matter) since 1979!

Burnley are the biggest supported club in the land per head of population. Preston are big if you factor in trophies. And Bolton used to have a massive supermarket at every home game. Does that count?

So if Hull played Port Vale you’d expect them to lose, would you? They are beating teams like Crawley & Barrow, FFS.

Yep, my only caveat to the article would be that as Pearson, Gould & the recruitment set up know all of this, we should be planning now with realistic, affordable targets. I did have a wry smile at NP’s comment that we “don’t have a defensive midfielder on our books” following my suggestion of Pack, who seems increasingly to fit the bill to me, plus as you know the player I mentioned to you that I think would be suitable to solve the RB issue is probably available & definitely is affordable. Coventry, Luton, Millwall & Preston all operate within similar recruitment constraints, I appreciate that they don’t have the drag of Palmer or Wells on their wage bill, but whilst making every effort to shift them, we need to have a plan as to how we conduct our transfer business if we can’t. Final point, even with Simpson gone there are still a few others who are out of contract this summer, so some room to make changes whatever happens.

HNM for sure.... Scott is the only one of that group I'd be desperate to cling to.

I have never liked “biggest club” debates. It always feels like something fans trot out when their team is crapper than their rivals on any objective level and so they want to find some subjective criteria to desperately claim a false sense of superiority. Ultimately football is a game that is about results. How you do on the pitch matters, what division you are in matters and what trophies you win matters. Every other measure is just noise. If a team is doing crap now but draws large crowds or used to win trophies in the past, it does not prove what a big club they are - it simply amplifies the extent to which they are underachieving.

I prefer “ The manager getting banged up for domestic abuse at Wimbledon Magistrates Court in a few weeks” scenario myself.

Pearson hasn’t said we’re okay at centre back. JonDolman did. You quoted it. His post starts “I think” and you’ve turn that into Pearson thinks, so we’re in trouble. Amazing.