Merrick's Marvels

Chris Vui. Yann Thomas.

Well done City. Happy Easter!

Won't be missed. Unlike some of the other rumoured departures. Cheerio.

I stand corrected. Larry never won the Gloucester Cup. Loser. Shankly, Ramsey and Clough rated him, though. And Fred Ford. And you can't knock that. Also, I'm amazed to discover the Anglo-Scotch cup actually is on Cloughie's CV.

A Pat Lam phrase. Just repeated, parrot fashion, by the football side of the operation these days. Blah blah blah.

Warm up the vocal chords, you say. What are we singing? "You don't know what you're doing"? "You can stick your Manning boreball, stick your Manning boreball, stick your boring boreball up yer..."? "Sell up, #### off. Sell up, #### off"? "One Nigel Pearson, there's only..." Plenty to choose from.

Don't do social media so not aware of this. But if they've really chosen a player, who we all know is refusing to sign a new contract, to try and persuade people to renew their season tickets... They must be stone deaf, willfully stupid or pig arrogant. Just beggars belief. Why should we renew Tommy, when you're not? We're all in agreement, mate - the new bloke's football sucks and there's better times to be had elsewhere.

Gloucester Cup more like.

Our club is run by second rate individuals, making second rate decisions. It's no wonder we're a second rate team. For now.

That's not how it works though. He should have done things differently if he wanted his money back because you don't get that for a mediocre debt laden championship football club. And we're that because of his decision making. 20 years is long enough to have got those decisions right. Enough is enough. Time for them to f off.

You do know it's not either or, don't you? 20 years and still no progress on the pitch. 20 years is long enough to havedone so. They've had their opportunity. Time for someone else to have a go. Thanks for the bricks and mortar. Fair play. Now its time to f off.

Who from? That's the question. Nothing to see here. So that's either a lack of knowledge on their part, poor communication or misinformation.

Not if you enjoyed a night out.

Good point, well made. And on the basis Tinnion was tasked with identifying Pearson's successor, a condensed version of your point might be: Tinnion is out of his depth. (Polite version.)

It would be typical, typical City if - just as we commit to playing tippy tappy, possession based Guardiola-ball, the zietgeist moves on to something else - just as we think we're being terribly modern and "with it", the best teams are actually doing something different. I mean, it's already happening - here we are with full backs bravely pushed high and wide and the best teams are playing inverted full backs/full backs as central midfielders! Here we are developing "wide strikers" and old school wingers are back in vogue. Here we are playing tippy tappy out from the back and the top teams are going direct, by-passing the press by hitting pinpoint 50 yarders from back to front! Laughable.

This is the crux, for me. I thought after just a few Manning games that - iirrespective of having a "modern", "progressive", "young", whatever, Coach - we had appointed someone whose style of play simply won't be tolerated by this club's paying supporters. Never mind the fact that this style of play is "the most difficult style" (source - Liam Manning!) and so requires the best players - the sort of players that are hugely expensive and so likely to be out of our reach (we can't even afford Scott Twine!). Never mind that, even though it already renders the appointment of Manning absurd, unintelligent, barking. More than that, his preferred style is anathema to the paying Bristol public. Only a Geordie and a bloke who knows nothing about football, never mind the history of OUR club (not his), could fail to understand that. If either of them think there are 20,000 Bristolians interested in paying through the nose to be bored shirtless by dull possession football in the hope of winning 1 or 2 nil, they are going to be massively disabused and found utterly lacking in understanding what Bristolians are interested in from THEIR sports teams. Funnily enough, Guernsey was happy this season to poke his nose into rugger affairs and tell the Bears' Coach to play in a more attacking style. This might just be the time to do likewise with his Bobins' Coach, before season ticket sales go through the floor.

I think it's a bit late for Guernsey to be worried about losing credibility! But believe me, I hope your prediction is right and mine wrong, even over the next couple of games - that would be a good Easter in my book!

Sadly, I tend to agree. They're desperate to give him time in the summer with some new players and even more time on the grass. There seems little evidence this is actually the answer, certainly not to be top 6, which seems laughable. But like you say, Guernsey will be determined to say "I was right". What did he allow Lee Johnson - 9 defeats in a row? So, hey, why not Liam Manning? Still struggling up to Xmas next season, though, and things change - even in Cloud Cuckooland where our Suits reside (tax free).

We've always had potential - it's why we turned professional in 1897. Fulfilling it would be nice - 125+ years and counting!

Cheers. Now to go back to your post: Do you think the signing of Bird will be sufficient to halt the current negative trajectory? (The chances are the likes of Stokes and SB-H will be peripheral players at best). The strategy appears to be - get to the end of the season, any which way we can, then buy a couple of young midfielders. Is that really going to be the answer, given what we've seen? I'm sceptical, to be honest.

That long?

Out of interest which old journeyman on high wages were you thinking of?

Always? How long has this been a thing?

Don't do social media but I'm sure someone knows how to tag this as a reply to the promo vid the club have just posted about ticket renewals.