ExiledAjax

I agree that AG strikes a very good balance between quality of stadium, location, size, facilities. It's not perfect, it's not what it once was, and it's not the absolute best that it could be. But you'll never build something that please everyone. My understanding is that away fans often compliment it and TV companies like it (boo hiss, but this is important). Basically it seems popular with outsiders of all persuasions.

I'll be honest and say that in addition to the factors you point out - sight lines, comfort, tight to the pitch - a huge part of it for me is the area surrounding the ground. Stadiums that are set in the heart of a city, surrounded by characterful pubs and bars, a variety of food options, within an interesting walk from a railway station, those are special. Places like the old Griffin Park, Kenilworth Road, St James Park (both Exeter and Newcastle), the City Ground, even somewhere like Stamford Bridge or the Emirates. The atmosphere at these grounds begins outside the gates and it's often wonderful.

It's because Liam Manning, Howard Webb, and Nigel Pearson are actual involved in a bitter and twisted love triangle involving a piece of Mendip woodland, David Moyes' holiday home in San Sebastian, and Mark Clattenburg's box at the Gladiators filming set. It's messy, and I've already said too much really, but the long and the short of it is Pearson doesn't get penalties and Manning gets them like confetti.

It depends how long any negotiations and legals take. Generally I'd expect the sale of a business of the value and complexity of Bristol City/Sport to take around 6 months to complete. If the hypothetical deal has already been hypothetically agreed then completion before next season kicks off is possible if people pull 80 hour weeks, don't piss about, and the EFL is happy with the new owner/investor. If not...well go look at Everton and 777 for an indication of how long things can take!

@Numero Uno yeh he's ticking most of your boxes isn't he. I looked at mine as well as above. 2 ticks, one cross, one looking good, one tick so far but could drop off potentially. Not bad really.

I can't imagine he's got much love for Bristol City.

I think we'd start a waiting list before we got to 20k. 20k, plus needing to allow for a maximum away allocation of about 3,000, leaves only about 3,000 for POTD. I reckon at around 18.5k we'd start taking about waiting lists, loyalty points etc.

Sure, that's an option too. My original statement would still apply.

Absolutely is. I have a suspicion that Steve's presence at a few recent games isn't just about him wanting to see how Manning is getting on.

While the club is seriously up for sale I don't think we're going to get many interviews that go into much depth. They won't want to contradict (deliberately or accidentally) in public something that a prospective buyer might hear privately. Certainly don't expect to hear from Steve or Marshall. We might get Jon doing a pretty glossy puff-piece about how great it was to see the U18s lose to Man City in the semi-final. Probably our best hope is to keep hearing from Tinnion and hoping he just accidentally tells us all how much the budget is, who we're bidding on, what the menu is for the end of season dinner, and what Steve eats for breakfast.

Fair play to people who have a life that allows them the time to watch constant football. Genuinely I'm happy for you to have the time that allows you to indulge your hobby. That's not meant to come across as facetious. I guess so long as there's enough of you guys around (and there clearly are) to watch the adverts during the game we'll keep going with more and more football shown on TV.

Can only really talk to this as I'm not up on L1 and L2. Can't argue too much with the front 6, although Whittaker has gone off the boil a little in the second half of the season. Davis is correct imo, and it's good to see Hermansen get the shout in goal, although I think Rushworth would have an excellent case to make as well. Johansson has had an incredibly tough gig at Rotherham as well, but I guess they can't put the guy who's conceded 85 goals in, even if he's also saved 175 other shots! I'd probably have Ng for Walker-Peters as well, but I assume they felt they had to have a Southampton player in there? Greaves ok, but Ampadu as the CB partner is... intriguing and probably where most of us would have a bit of a debate. With a healthy dose of City bias coursing through my veins I argue for Dickie but I think there's probably a bit of contention in those positions?

Personally yes it's too much. I've all but stopped following the Premier League now that it's on all the time, by extension I don't watch European football either, and honestly have very little interest in the Euros, partly because I don't know the players. I've gone from following pretty much all of that, plus City, ten years ago, to following City plus a bit of the wider EFL. Football being on every day isn't the only reason, but it's definitely harder to follow the overall league when games are on all the time. You don't get those couple of days to digest the full round of games anymore, because the games from last night are immediately out of date and focus shifts to tonight. Likewise a show like MOTD either shows just 3 or 4 games, or covers games from 3 days ago. With life, work, kids, and everything else, its incredibly hard to follow a soap opera that's on every day. Just my experience, at my age, in my situation.

And I've said before that we got a good steer on this from Tinnion on SoTC when he said we should be "about ten points better off". Given what we were on at that time this implied that 1.54ppg is the target. 1.54 * 47 = 71 points. Which happens to be a total that gives you a good stab at 6th place in an average season.

But not exponentially. The points required to finish 6th is not going to constantly keep improving until it hits 100. There is a level, probable by looking at the history of this ancient league, that we know will give us a good chance of finishing 6th. Yes, we have to improve relative to both ourselves and the other 23 teams, but I believe that when we compare present Bristol City to past Bristol City it makes sense to look more at raw points return and finishing position than it does to look at gaps to 6th or 22nd place.

Ok. I strongly disagree. What if we finish on more points, but the gap to relegation is smaller? Hell what if the gap to both promotion and relegation is smaller? Are either of those signs of progression? Just like the discussion some of us had about form, I don't think it's right to measure progress against an arbitrary and moveable level achieved by another team.

Haha. Probably because he's been in charge for 2/3 of the season!

But, to use your analogy, next season Red Bull may well be slower. So, if we just keep getting faster ourselves, then eventually one season, we'll be fast enough to beat them. The average for 6th place is what about 73? So just concentrate on getting closer to that and we'll get our chance at some point.

I'd say yes. The number of points achieved by the team in 6th is something outside of our control. Next season it could be 68, maybe one season it might be 75. I don't think it's the best yardstick to use to measure year on year progress. What is in our control - so far as it can be when we play other teams who have their own ideas - is our own points tally. That's probably going to very slightly improve on last season. So yeh it can be argued to be progress in terms of raw points output. The more interesting discussion is around the reasons for that very slight improvement.

Yeh, extend it by one game and we slip to 3rd, then obviously the further back you go through our losing run, the worse we get. It's still a very good little run of results. No taking away from that at all, and it's nice to have a third little run this season. We had the first under Nigel right at the start of the season, then the 3 festive wins over Sunderland, Hull and Watford, and now this little flourish at the death. Not enough really, but nice to look at.

It's low for a short-term single set of any 5 games. Fairly often you'd see at least one team winning 4 or even 5 in a row and so posting 12 or 15 points across 5 games. But, if we were able to maintain that form over all 46 games, we'd hit 101 points, so it's very high in terms of actual games -> points conversion.

What is interesting - to some - is that Manning is showing a consistent knack of delivering results well above what underlying numbers such as xG show. I discussed this with old spreadsheet boy @Davefevs last week and said the following to him, this was written before the Blackburn game. "The xG differentials [under Manning] at times have been as bad as they were under Holden, relegation style numbers tbh. Had we not already amassed the points we had I'd not have been so bullish about not fearing the drop. In his comparatively short spell here (beware small number bias) LM has us over-delivering across the board, we've scored more, conceded fewer, and in my "turn long-term xG into expected points" model, has a staggering 7 points more than my xG system reckons he should have - that's an extra 0.25ppg (three times as good as Pearson's total 0.08ppg extra per game). Notably, he did this at Oxford as well. NTT20 were always on about how Oxford were out of position as compared to underlying numbers. Since Manning has left they have regressed to their more natural position. Is Manningball the secret to shoving xG where some think it should go"?"

xG is not best used to say whether we should/shouldn't have got certain results. But. I do record it in that way as by doing so I can look back at the longer term trend. It's also the best measure of "luck" that I know of. With those caveats in place, here is what I have for the past 11 games. xG suggests that for the past 5 games, 6 points would have been "par" based on chance creation. We've received 11. For the preceding 5 that you identify, it's again 6 points for "par". We actually took 3. So for me, yes that suggests that the past 5 have seen us receive an element of fortune that we didn't get in those previous 6. Overall it's a 17 point haul from 11 games where as my xG measure suggests 12 would be what we'd get on average based on the chances created.

Thanks China but I think I need to clarify my opinion. What I was more getting at is that I think he does set us up quite consistently, and seems (to me at least) to approach games in a similar manner. What I see is that the extent to which that set up is actually effective is entirely determined by the attitude of the opposition. I think that can make it look like there's no overarching style, because we're not actually capable of imposing our desired style on a game (unless we're allowed to)...so what we see as fans is a reflection of the opposition du jour's style. Hope that makes sense.