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LondonBristolian

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Everything posted by LondonBristolian

  1. Ah - with you. They look great in the photo so imagine you must be delighted with them!
  2. I’m going to be at the Belgium friendly next week. I’m not anticipating a classic but could be surprised!
  3. I know he has his detractors but I for one think England would be very lucky to have Jon Lansdown as a kit designer. In fact, I would go far as to implore the FA to act in the national interest by securing him to the role on a long term full time contract. Not only that but I would urge them to ensure his dedication by including a non-compete clause that prevents him from having any club level roles.
  4. I like this a lot. It's very classic looking.
  5. Absolutely but I think it also lacks a leadership structure. As @Barrs Court Redsays, it's "petty fiefdoms". The CEO role has been essentially replaced by a handful of people in charge of different bits but nobody in charge on an executive level. And that can only result in different areas competing with each other for power and a lack of overall decision making.
  6. I just don't get the sense anyone has enough control to rectify anything or rein in anyone. Maybe I'm wrong but the situation looks to me from the outside like there are three or four people who've sort of got control of various bits of the club but nobody is fully sure who is in charge of what. And hence nobody knows if they've got the authority to act in a crisis. And so nobody acts and the crisis escalates.
  7. I find this plausible. I just don't think there is reason to believe the club will be anywhere near as patient as they were with Lee Johnson, who was so obviously a protege of the owner. It's obvious from the panicked media conferences after Pearson went that that the Lansdowns had realised they had utterly misread the fans' mood and were concerned with how negatively they were being perceived. They were always going to try to dig in and prove Manning was the right appointment but they are also going to be very aware the evidence is looking very different and they've nothing to gain from persisting with a manager who devalues key assets or risks relegating the club.
  8. It all adds to a sense of a situation running out of control and nobody having a handle on it. I'm sure whoever decided to use Ian Gay as a conduit for leaks has underestimated his complete lack of filter but it feels like the club are misreading and misjudging everything at the moment.
  9. Sure. And I certainly don't want to absolve Tinnion from responsibility on the sacking. And certainly not on the appointment. But, whilst I think Pearson's sacking was a terrible decision and certainly motivated by personality clashes from at least some people's perspectives, I don't think that automatically means that every single person involved in the decision was acting out of personal agenda. And, in terms of Manning, I'd quite happily agree with anyone that said it proved Tinnion should not be allowed to recruit another manager. But I also think people can mistakes without necessarily needing to be sacked to put those mistakes right. There's obviously a certain irony in standing up for Tinnion on those grounds given what happened to Pearson but I'd feel inconsistent if I demanded Tinnion's sacking on the basis of a few errors and some perceived character flaws. Undoubtedly his role needs to be changed for it to work but I don't think it necessarily requires a sacking.
  10. Quite. But I think a lot of that is someone with no media training, no clear guidance on the club line of what he can and cannot say and a lack of confidence on radio. Ultimately he should not be doing any interviews where he hasn't got the questions in advance and it'd be absurd if the club put him to do that a third time.
  11. Now would make sense. Realistically, I do not think there is any way it will happen before 2 April (the day after Plymouth) and I think it more likely it would be after Sunderland, Blackburn or Huddersfield if we failed to win those games.
  12. I do agree with this. And it is worth noting that - up until the beginning of the season - I don’t recall anyone ‘in the know’ on here ever even hinting at problems between Tinnion and Pearson. But suddenly he seems to have become the prime mover behind Tinnion’s sacking and responsible for everything that has gone with the club, whilst it seems that everything positive he has been credited with since he returned to the club is a sham and an illusion. As with so many things, I suspect there are elements of truth and elements of interpretation. Certainly I think it fair to say that the current structure, and his role within it, has some major problems. There is a lack of experience throughout the senior roles at the club and that is really showing. And there also seems to be a major lack of PR savvy and ability to read the room. It is very obvious from the panicked hastily arranged interviews and multiple inconsistent explanations that followed Pearson’s sacking that the senior figures at the club did not anticipate the strength of fan reaction that followed Pearson’s sacking. However what I find even more revealing was something said during the SotC interview last week - essentially that Tinnion wanted to come on to talk about the youth team but then got told by Radio Bristol that he would need to answer questions about the first team too. The whole idea that the Technical Director of a Championship genuinely believed in the first place that he might be able to go on the radio and NOT be asked about the first team shows a massive lack of awareness of what the fans and media are want. It is also fair to say that Tinnion’s first major recruitment has been a disaster and is not succeeding on the terms either the fans expected or the club set out. But ultimately any organisation needs to make sure the appointments they make - even at a senior level - have the support they need to succeed. Tinnion has been at the club long enough that the Chair, owner and board should know his strengths and weaknesses. And it seems like nothing has been put in place in the new structure to help him develop or offset his less strong points. I suspect that Tinnion actually does have a skillset that is good for the long term future of the club. There has obviously been a degree of strategy and planning around youth development and long term continuity that he should be credited for. But it is also obvious that PR and press interviews are not his strength and the learning from Manning should be that, if he is trusted to recruit a manager again, he needs support at the very least to ensure that the manager he finds meets the expectations he has set out. But personally I don’t think the above is necessarily a reason to sack a long term employee before at least trying other solutions. The club urgently need to look at the top end structure and get some additional experience and knowledge in for sure. I do not think that necessarily means Tinnion has to be sacked but it does mean, as with any employee in any structure, the club need to find a way to utilise his strengths, offset his weaknesses and ensure he is not left exposed to become the scapegoat for every decision taken.
  13. I don’t think education or accreditation is to blame for how people apply it. The problem isn’t giving coaches a standard of knowledge and testing it - which is in itself a good thing - but that prospective employers of managers need to assess who has learned the basics by rote and who can apply them practically. I think, in any walk of life, you get the same conflict within vocational training and learning. Some people learn instinctively and need no formal training at all but, without any training or accreditation, you have no measure of recourse for people who are appalling at their jobs. At the other end of the scale some people take training, combine their learning with practical experience and are incredible at their jobs but others learn all the theory but lack the flexibility to apply it well with practice. Ultimately this should be picked up in any effective recruitment process.
  14. Very harsh in my view. OTIB is much better than most fans forums. And today’s security update was done before most of us even noticed it was happening! I say we give the mods some credit.
  15. I find this thread completely disrespectful and disproportionate. Hasn’t everyone seen how well we are doing in the under-18s cup?
  16. True! And, come to that, I forgot Millen too. I do think there is a key thing here though. There’s a perception amongst as fans that Lansdown tends to go for inexperienced managers due to a desire for “yes men” or cheap options. But, whilst I am not saying either of those things is entirely untrue, I suspect we massively understate and underestimate the degree to which managerial appointments are driven by a desire for the club - and, by extension, Lansdown - to get publicly recognised for an ability to spot a talented but untested manager, show patience during rough patches and ultimately not only succeed but succeed with a talent we “found” first. Unfortunately it has so far only resulted in us giving the wrong managers far longer than we should have done and I fear the cycle is currently repeating.
  17. I think the moment where we might have appointed Robins has long gone but it does make you think about the quality of managers who have an association to us vs the quality of manager we have appointed. David Moyes, Sean Dyche, Gary O’Neil, Mark Robins, Liam Rosenior and Luke Williams all have enough of a connection to make you think, at one time or another, they might just have fancied the job. But they have all been given their managerial breakthroughs by other clubs whereas the inexperienced managers we have appointed have never panned out. It seems to me - from the McInnes, Johnson, Holden and Manning appointments - that Steve Lansdown is desperately keen to be credited for giving a young manager a breakthrough and getting the kudos for the club seeing their potential. But, time and again, we appoint the wrong young managers whilst legitimately promising managerial talent slips through our fingers.
  18. “It’ll be cheaper to order one pint and pour it into two half pint glasses. But shall we go a bit wild and get some ready salted crisps, too?”
  19. It’s a favourable run of fixtures and we should be getting at least 12 points from the 24 available. I fear we will not achieve that but, if not, it should certainly be seen as an underachievement.
  20. At least we now know there is at least one player who would benefit from taking the emotion out of his game…
  21. I might be wrong but I don't think the club will be as patient as many think. Don't get me wrong - I certainly think they will try to give Manning every change but I don't think there would be a repeat of the bloody-mindedness when Johnson lost ten on the spot. I reckon Manning bought himself time with the performance at Ipswich and win against Swansea and I don't see him gone this side of Easter but I reckon he could be gone by the time we play Norwich if we fail to win any of our next five. That said, we are playing fairly inept teams so I suspect he will just about get the results he needs to stay in post but I don't think it is a given.
  22. It's really hard not to see it as a massive failure of due diligence. If I recollect correctly, I feel the club set out the following criteria for a new manager: 1. Be closer to promotion than we were under Peason, which at the moment has to be seen objectively as not a success. 2. Get the best out of players in terms of level of performance, which has to be seen as not a success. 3. Play attacking, expansive front-foot football - again not a success. 4. Continue to bring in and develop young players. Not a success. 5. Continue to play the style of football the club has brought in the players to play. Harder to assess objectively but the impression seems to be Manning wants the team to play in a way that the team are not comfortable with. 6. Reduce injures. Again, that has not happened significantly enough. Ultimately I just cannot see that Manning is hitting any of the club's own defined success measures.
  23. I know it was said by someone on here that there was some sort of falling out behind the scenes but, whether that's true or not, the fact the club actually helped develop a genuinely talented young manager who fitted the criteria the club laid out when Pearson went and then couldn't or wouldn't recruit him and went for someone who appears not to fit the criteria at all is frankly a shambles.
  24. This has been annoying me for a while. I also think it's symptomatic of a manager whose approach is rooted in theory and following a coaching manual rather than someone who's learned the skills to apply learning flexibly. Ultimately the best managers - in any walk of life - are those that treat their teams as individuals and think about the different skills and approaches needed to get the best out of them. I've no doubt there will be players that perform to their best when they take the emotion out of their game and purely focus on the job in hand but I don't in any way think that that's the right approach for every player, or even most players. I think there are a lot of players - Flint is the most obvious recent example that comes to mind - who are at their best when they impose their character and personality on games. If you removed Flint's personality from his game, you essentially got a competent but technically limited centre-back. Add the emotion into the mix and you got a committee leader who could raise his game beyond his natural abilities and get that type of goal scoring return you'd expect from a midfielder or striker, to boot. Similarly, it's hard to imagine Adriano Basso would have been a better goalkeeper without the emotion. And those are just the really heart-on-their-sleeve players. On the flipside, I think Callum O'Dowda probably managed to take the emotion out of his game and I'm not too sure it helped him. I'm sure there are players that do need to be told to keep their emotions in check to produce better performances but I don't think it is most players and I don't want to watch a team of robots week in, week out. I think what often happens if you tell people to take emotion out of their game is that your get a flat, underwhelming team that are unable to express themselves. Mind you, in fairness to Manning, if that is what he does want then achieving it is the one metric where he is actually succeeding.
  25. I'd rather Manning go. Sacking a manager is never nice but I just don't think he is the right person for the club and I feel, the longer in stays in post, the more our progress over the past three years will be undone. I'm going to be controversial and say that I don't actually want Tinnion out. I think we need an experienced CEO and/or Director of Football above him and I think it is in everyone's interests for him to have someone else to do the bulk of the media pieces for the club but I'd rather his role be configured than him moved on. For all of his flaws, I do think there is a value in having someone inside the club championing and developing the academy in the way he has done and all the evidence to suggests he's someone who was previously doing a good job who has got a bit out of his depth.
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