Dr Balls

Until we beat Swansea last weekend the odds had dropped to 50-1 with a number of bookmakers. The longer we go on a losing streak again (I can’t see us picking up any points in the next 2 games) the more the odds will drop, especially if a large number of punters starting placing bets on it. Its just the way it works!

The Birmingham situation has so many similarities to our own. Well-liked Manager/Head Coach doing pretty well with the team in challenging circumstances sacked by the owners against the wishes of supporters. New coach brought in has something of a media profile but no tangible success and in fact coached a team that was subsequently relegated. Both new coaches struggle massively and results deteriorate as does the league position. One then ditches the out-of-his-depth coach and replaces him with a wise old manager who initially seems to improve things but then needs time away for health issues (part of the reason the other club cited for getting rid of their well-liked manager) in which time results again nosedive. The risks are similar at pretty much the same at every club in the Championship without parachute payments and not riding the crest of a promotion wave of confidence - get your top footballing position wrong through either naivety or stupidity and things can easily end badly. As for City we are lucky that 2 out of the 3 promoted clubs this season haven’t been good enough to survive at this level, while other “established Championship clubs” I.e. Stoke, Birmingham, Swansea have been similarly poor for long periods. You can’t just expect that to happen every season because eventually bad decisions will catch up with you.

But anyone with more than 10 minutes of management training knows that working harder rarely achieves much, it’s working smarter that’s far more effective. And from what we have seen from Manning, thinking and working smart just isn’t happening. Doing something just because you have a read a book on tactics and seen a top coach with the best players and decidedly dodgy, but massive, funding play that way successfully, does not mean that you can do the same in a lower division, with a set of players that clearly don’t suit that way of playing plus far less cash to splash. That’s definitely not smart. In fact, it’s the complete opposite and it’s also extremely unlikely to be successful, as we have now all seen. Bit that’s what you get for dispensing with an experienced manager and replacing him with an inexperienced coach. And the same could be said about sacking an experienced CEO and not replacing him at all, but instead relying on the son of the owner (one of only 2 board members and the other is the company accountant) and the development (academy) manager to cover that role. Nobody in their right mind would run a business big or small like that, so why has Lansdown Snr let it happen?

Lansdown Snr should be worried. The form table is getting worse not better. Only 2 teams below us in the league table doing worse than us at the moment and one of those is Rotherham… https://thefishy.co.uk/formtable.php?table=2 Given the fixtures coming up it’s hard to see where the next points are coming from. Suddenly those games against Blackburn and Huddersfield look huge. Get nothing from those 6-pointers and we are in big trouble.

Absolutely. It’s clear that Manning has certain personal characteristics / tendencies (another thread suggests OCD) but clearly is not comfortable communicating and dealing with emotion. He talks about wanting to take the emotion out of the way that the game is played, but the one emotion that has clearly been lost is confidence. Confidence makes a huge difference to performances and results. And the lack of it has adversely affected our players and the results in the past 2 months. And of course the majority of supporters have now lost confidence in both Manning and the club owners. Just like trust that will be very difficult to win back.

Just cut the “management speak” BS and try some plain English? I have yet to find anyone on the receiving end of “management speak” who has really appreciated it, and I doubt footballers are much different. Certainly football fans don’t like it but unfortunately it would seem our owners are keener on someone who appears to have swallowed one of those management self help books!

I don’t have a problem with “lifelong learning”. I am sure anybody doing any role can and should learn as they go along. The real issue is whether they met an appropriate standard to do the job in the first place, and what experience they had. That defines what they might need to learn. Then we get into “is the person learning and are they applying it?” If there are questions about individuals at the club regarding the minimum requirements, there are certainly concerns about anything being learnt and from whom!

From an owner’s perspective it’s not the most ridiculous thing to say. BT has been bigging up the u18s age group for a while, saying how special they are. SL thinks that winning the FA Youth Cup would add some more prestige to the Academy, which to be fair it might. BT goes along with it because if the u18s did win it, it would be a massive ego boost to him. Whether or not it delays their progress is a fair point, but I am sure that the lads themselves would be excited to win something. Who wouldn’t be? The bigger picture is why should we be thinking our u18s are needed to bolster our first team squad anyway. Why do we have so many first teamers missing that we can’t name a full subs bench? And having looked back at the results in the FA Youth Cup, Swindon can’t be that bad as they knocked out Man United. Also unlucky to draw Man City in the semifinal as the other one is between Leeds and Millwall.

Not all managers don’t play 3 attackers. I think you will find one “Mr J Klopp from Liverpool” plays 3 up front all the time, and it seems to be working out alright for him!

Nope like playing an LP on 45rpm. Must have been a while since you have been near a turntable! As for BT, busy working so couldn’t listen in and don’t think I will bother trying to catch up on BBC Sounds!

Yep. If in doubt, the club position does appear to be blame poor Pat!

If there was a prize for “Persevering despite a change in the coach and tactics” could go to almost any of the squad but that was part of my reason for nominating Tommy as a runner up!

Dickie is a shoo-in. Runners up? Jason Knight, Cam Pring and Tommy Conway.

The most incredible part to me was how empty S82 was. Never seen it like that before with huge gaps. Also explains why the volume was down so much. Plus it’s not as if this was a late change like the Cardiff game. We knew for months that this was a Sunday lunchtime kick off I know that we have such a supine set of fans that even throwing tennis balls on to the pitch would be beyond us as a protest, but could those who are going to renew their season tickets just leave it as late as possible to do so, just to make a point that we aren’t happy with the way the club is being run? If after 3 weeks, no one had signed up that would give the owners a scare and hopefully get the message across.

Not 70% of possession. Both teams look to hit quickly on the break so will be quite happy for us to keep the ball as they know we won’t threaten to score a goal against them. We have had the odd good result at the Hawthorns over the years, plus presumably Weimann won’t be able to play against us, so we might scrap a draw against West Brom but I can’t see us getting anything against Leicester as they will score goals, the same as Ipswich.

That really indicates why he should be kept as far away as possible from the footballing side of things! Yes we were looking to get promotion this season from a financial and selling Bristol Sport point of view, but in no way was that related to anything that was happening on the pitch. A more realistic expectation would have been keeping the Women’s team in the WSL, but a lack of ambition and investment scuppered that as well. But then why treat the women any different to the men?!

Discussed on Saturday that our biggest loss recently in terms of personnel wasn’t even necessarily Nige, it was Richard Gould. The lack of a proper CEO is really what’s killing us, because basically all the footballing decisions at the club are now between just Jon Lansdown and Brian Tinnion. If that doesn’t worry you about the state of the club, nothing will!

You do realise that our last 3 wins in 13 games have all been when we have played teams that have had 70% possession? If you can find 4 more teams out of the ones we are due to play in the next 9 games that will have that much possession good luck! The only home game that I am in anyway confident about is Rotherham because by then they will be relegated anyway. Leicester will need a win to maintain their push to win the league, so will come on strong, while Blackburn and Huddersfield will both be scrapping for a points. I would be amazed if we get more than 10 points from the remaining 9 games based on recent form.

I accept we don’t have a traditional centre forward but we don’t lack goal scoring strikers. But as I have said before, playing Manning’s system, any striker would struggle to get more than 10 goals a season. It’s the tactics and set up more than the players and that’s on him.

In simplistic terms, the barest minimum expectation for Manning should be 63 points at the end of the season, on the basis that we we had 21 for 15 when he took over, and a top half finish, as that’s where we were in the league table when he was appointed. Anything else would suggest a regression even if you ignore the shockingly bad and boring way he has the team set up and playing, where the scoring of goals seems to have been forgotten somewhere along the line. And no I don’t accept the “it’s not his players” argument. Good managers and coaches can use the players they have and amend their tactics accordingly and successfully. Bad ones blame the players!

Well at least in League 1, SO’D brought on some of the youngsters, acquired Pack, Flint and Fielding, plus whatever the situation, there was always JET, just in case it was getting too boring!

There will be a bigger crowd against Leicester because it’s Good Friday, they will bring a load and people will come out to see us play Leicester. However the last 3 home games are Blackburn midweek, Huddersfield and Rotherham. Play like we did for the first 65 minutes today, plus more bad results in between and I wouldn’t blame anyone for saying that they might have something more exciting to do instead of going to Ashton Gate!

Well it did until McGinn was sent off and Villa were 3-0 down!

4th equal best defence in terms of goals conceded. 6th equal worst attack in terms of goals scored. You can see where the problems lie and it’s not at the back. We are not a front foot team as set up by Manning and we struggle to make goal-scoring chances.

Having heard his press conferences would Manning inspire you? Nope thought not and I can’t see him inspiring the players either. Instead it would seem that he overloads them with information, rather than setting up a team of players playing in their best positions and in a formation that best suits them, then encouraging them to play their natural game. Not so much “coached” as inhibited!