downendcity

...and solidarity with Everton and their fans for how unfairly they have been treated by football administrators For breaking the same rules that applied to all premier league clubs i.e. they were cheating!

Speculation? You're really going out on a limb there Sam!

I've posted this before, but it does seem to accurately reflect the mood swings on OTIB since Manning's appointment and particularly over the last 3 months.. Fans on my generation will recognise it from Junior Choice, younger fans...... well, just accept that some of us are old and that the world didn't used to be in colour!

If!

That's climate change for you!

Now he's at Leeds he can't be called a smalltown boy.

Gerry Gow. With modern refereeing he'd struggle to stay on the pitch for more than 45 minutes, but he'd still manage to affect a game more in 45 minutes than many of ours do in a month. I know it only said one choice, but cheeky second would be Cheesley - he'd scare the 5h!t out of modern day defenders. Edit: Just read the qualification " still in the game"! In which case it has to be Alex Scott - the best natural talent I've seen at City in over 50 years. Him alongside Gow would be some midfield!

So it's a mathematical certainty that the Pearson v Manning debate will continue into next season!

I remember a story about Alan Hansen when he signed for Liverpool. Shortly after signing he was stood by Bob Paisley watching a full scale practice match. Paisley asked him what he thought and Hansen replied, saying that watching the game he hadn't realised that Liverpool was a long ball team. "We're not" answered Paisley, " we don't play long ball, we play the right ball".

If it's a Bristol City player it's not!

Playing devil's advocate, for some on here it will be whatever we don't have. Good performance then it's the result that's important. Good result then it's the performance that's most important. That's assuming, of course, that we don't have both together!

Caught a Talksport interview the other day with the guy who invented Hawkeye, from which I think VAR was developed. He said that he is disappointed at how VAR was introduced into football as it was not intended to be used in the way it is.(I hope my interpretation is accurate) I'm sure he said that it was intended to be used on a challenge basis, as are reviews in American football. I used to say that Rugby had it right, but the last world cup changed my opinion, as you could sense that the review panel were looking to get involved in the game. That is the problem with football VAR - the VAR involvement is too often a bigger story than the incident in question.

The model for football's financial regulations....

I'm getting Dutch boy with his fingers in the dyke vibes about this ....... in the financial sense of course!

They're ****ed?

A bit disingenuous Natch. SL spent his business life working in the heavily regulated financial services sector, where for the majority of that time, and certainly when HL reached their market leading position, penalties for breaching the rules were severe, so compliance was a huge factor in the management of the business. I am pretty certain that he could not , and cannot now, abandon his attitude towards regulation compliance. I've commented before that, with the benefit of hindsight, I think that when it was first mooted, SL foresaw the impact that ffp would have on clubs and it was this that prompted his strategy to make the club more self sufficient. That was widely derided on here, with many fans seeing it as an excuse for the owner no longer being prepared to put his hand in his pocket - it would probably qualify as hiding behind ffp, as you put it, in fans' eyes. With hindsight perhaps SL has been proven right, and we've been lucky to have such a careful owner, given what we have seen with the likes of Derby and Reading and are now increasingly seeing with even premier league clubs being penalised for breaching financial rules. Interestingly, rather than hiding behind ffp, SL used ffp rules to benefit the club financially in the long term . While ffp limits how much an owner is allowed to put into a club directly for transfers , wages and the like ( not forgetting that SL is putting £20+m a year into BCFC just to keep us going) he recognised areas that ffp does allow an owner to invest without breaching ffp. That is why we have the revamped stadium and the HPC. Having been redeveloped, AG now generates more income, and especially on non matchdays than did the old stadium, and that additional income can be used towards investment in the team, player wages etc. Similarly, the HPC is important in helping the club's academy. Better facilities attract better young players, the success of academy players like Kelly, Semenyo, Scott, Pring, Vyner, Conway, Bell etc, breaking into the first team only reinforces that, and they all cost nothing in transfer fees. Also, and as we well know, the sell on fees when academy players move on add massively to the clubs financial position. All of that because, rather than hiding behind ffp, SL has put his hand in his pocket to invest huge amount as ffp does allow, to generate money for the club that ffp would not have allowed him to invest directly. There are plenty of things and decision we might like to blame SL for, but I don't think hiding behind ffp is one of those.

I think the old adage applies to Scott. " Form is temporary, class is permanent".

Surely that is why any properly run business has contingency plans - for when things go wrong. Then again, I've said many times before the wealthy owners of football clubs would almost certainly never run the businesses from which they made their wealth the way they run their football clubs. Mind you, the businesses from which some wealthy club owners made their money might not bear too much scrutiny! Do they not understand that football's financial rules are in place for exactly the situation that fan describes. It was Portsmouth's relegation from the premier league, having overstretched themselves financially, that almost saw the club go out of business completely when their owner was no longer prepared to foot the bills. We saw it in the championship when Derby overstretched themselves attempting to gain promotion - and let's be honest, they really did breach ffp in so doing- and having failed to do so their "lifelong fan who'd never leave them in the 5h!t" owner decided he was no longer going to support them, letting them go into administration and within a whisker of liquidation. Fans of every club, and especially so those with very wealthy owners, thinks it could never happen to them - until it does! If Leicester don't get promotion, languish in the championship and then, as a result of much reduced income, let's say they go into administration, suffering yet more points deduction, you can bet those same fans will blame football's authorities for not protecting clubs from profligate owners!

It keeps Bournemouth in the premier league!

So had Pearson stayed, would you have wanted him to not be able to add to the squad in the summer so that we could perhaps be more than just a counter attacking team?

Hello my darlin'!

Looks nothing like him!

I admire Pep's Man City because they play highly controlled and effective football, but enjoy watching Klopp's Liverpool because they play exciting football. If I had to choose between a season ticket at The Etihad or Anfield, it would be Anfield.

The EFL have added to their April 1st bulletin by announcing the new championship VAR panel.

Just what I was thinking China. Everton fans bemoaning the punishment meted out for P&S breaches, are kidding themselves and missing the bigger picture. How far away are they from being insolvent? It seems everything hinges on the 777 takeover ( although from the little I've heard/read about 777 it seems to me that their track record would seem to indicate a case of out of the frying pan into the fire). Also Everton is looking increasingly like a basket case that's only getting worse, and there has to be a danger of any party interested in a takeover getting cold feet. At the very least Everton's sale price must be taking a nose dive!