ashton_fan

I think we have moved forward in the last few years but off the pitch rather than on, the new stadium and training facilities allow us to focus on the playing side now. Those years with the Ashton Vale planning etc. all the effort was going to off the field projects and the playing side wasn't getting enough attention, that's the main reason why we got relegated and have been trying to recover since, COVID didn't help either due to the collapse of transfer values. We're about back now to the stage we were at the end of the Gary Johnson era only hopefully on the way up rather than down, I'm reasonably optimistic next season will be a significant step forward.

It seems a bit mental over there, club officials seem to think they know better than the refs, his club will probably get a hefty points deduction or worse

Wells won't start today but it would be great to have him available

Sunderland fans don't seem happy at the moment, too many tickets allocated to Newcastle for their FA Cup game and not inspired with the proposed managerial change so should be a cheery atmosphere today!

Here's that 0-4 win at Brum

He was trying to put some fresh legs on the pitch and save those two for Saturday as they've played so many minutes recently

Naismith's comments implied he'd not been to the team talk as he said something like "perhaps they were told to play long"

I think Manning has been changing the style of play for each game not "stubbornly maintaining" anything, the style of play in the Blackburn game was quite different from previous matches, not that different from NP's style.

So he lost 10 of his first 13 games, why not a fair comparison? I was just making the point it's far too early to judge the new manager.

Gary Johnson had a terrible start, lost about 9 in a row after an initial win, yet he turned out to be one of our best of recent times.

He's got a bit of learning to do but is obviously very intelligent and I'm sure will be able to adapt quickly.

The loss of form of these players pre-dates Manning's arrival. Bell and Conway have struggled since Nhaki was injured, they both play better when he's alongside. Tanner needs to be rested but can't be due to McRorie being unavailable, he's played too many games and needs a break.

Shaun Goater was a similar player, you always fancied him to score from anywhere around the penalty box.

Certainly against Norwich they changed tactics after half time pushing more players forward and playing the ball longer over the top of our high defensive line, they had more joy doing that than trying to play through us. Since some of our defenders aren't that quick other teams are likely to do the same once they've sussed us out so we may need to adjust our formation when that happens.

I don't think the change of coach is the reason for our inconsistent form, we've struggled to score goals since Nhaki got injured, once he's back things should get better

As discussed in another topic, at the q&a recently JL said they were looking for an investor who had expertise that would benefit Bristol Sport and that the Lansdowns aren't going to "walk away" so some of the discussion on here appears to be wide of the mark.

Having watched on Robin's TV we should have taken one of the chances in the first half and 1-1 would have been a fair result. At least the goal we conceded was down to their good play rather than a gift like we've given away in other games. The only disappointment was that we didn't go all out attack in the last ten minutes, we have to be prepared to gamble if we're losing late in the game. If we beat Norwich then 6 points from those 3 games would be a decent return.

Working now

I've got the same. Also get an error looking at "My subscriptions" once logged in. Obviously some fault at their end.

If you don't think it's blue what would you call it?

I have managed to get midweek Robins TV games on our Panasonic TV but it did buffer quite a bit and wasn't as good as watching on our desktop PC.

Yes, December 2011

Remember this victory at St Mary's when we played in blue and LJ scored the winner?

Of course it's all speculation as we don't know what discussions have taken place but JL said the Lansdown's weren't going to "walk away" and that they had a long term commitment to the club.