Numero Uno

I think he tried to do a "Iheanacho" (disallowed goal the other week) and discovered he doesn't have the talent...............

Not knocking Tommy at all but it was as simple a finish as you will ever get in a 1 v 1. Because of the mistake by Hyam the keeper was in a poor position and literally gave Tommy the whole side of the goal to aim at. A player of his ability literally could not miss........in fact I would have been disappointed to miss that myself (accepting it would be a possibility)!! I felt sorry for Pears to be honest. Any keeper playing behind that back-four deserves some sort of bonus to make up for the short term harm it will do for his career. Even on back passes he had balls played back to him and then the player would "hide" behind the line of a City player so he couldn't receive it back. He would have walked off last night absolutely raging and probably had a right rant in the dressing room afterwards. There was so much "wrong" about Blackburn last night it was untrue. If they were trying to get Eustace sacked they might have made it less obvious...................... Agree on Mehmeti that whatever the rights and wrongs of the defending it was a very good bit of play that opened up a second half that had been a bit drab to that point.

Whether it's a rarity or every day it's a compelling reason he shouldn't be in post imo. Happy to give Liam the time to show us what he can do but not the TD I'm afraid. That's not something I will be budging on even if Manning wins us the Champions League.......in five years, obviously.

Very true.

They were poor though and yes we made them that way. You can't blame the keeper but the centre halves (all three who ended up playing) put in a League 2 display. What it does prove though, is the level we are at. Put in a display like that in the Championship and you get heavily punished. Blackburn have won one game in thirteen, that 5-1 win at Sunderland people are referring to, otherwise have been mediocre for months. Looking at their run-in they really need to beat Sheffield Wednesday otherwise it might be curtains for them. Our players showed, again, that give them room to play then they will play. I would like to see at least one game out of those remaining where we play through an opposition that not only set up defensively but ALSO compete well. Saturday may give us that opportunity. That's Manning's last challenge this season for me................

I have never seen a more obvious example of a team totally letting down it's travelling fans.......like ever. The bit I couldn't fathom was simply how much more aggressive WE were than them, the team with effectively bugger all to play for. We pressed, harried, stuck our foot in, looked like we were mildly interested in performing and winning the game etc. etc. the complete opposite of them who looked like they were in Bristol for a kickabout to fulfil their obligations to the league and get out and get home as quick as possible. They have Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday, Coventry and Leicester in their last four games.................if we were in their position this board would have us relegated after last night.

Blackburn were so passive. It was noticeable that we were by far the more aggressive team which for any Blackburn fan who travelled must have made them feel physically sick. I know it's a bit "old school" but I expect us to get bullied by some of these Northern teams and it was the total opposite, we bullied them for 90 minutes whilst they failed abysmally at trying to look easy on the eye.

I note you did credit Pearson on another thread and the simple explanation is Max has benefitted from simply staying in the team and his experience and confidence levels have improved enabling him to improve his game from "steady and reliable" to "occasional match winner". Yes, he makes mistakes but half the dopes who post about keepers think they aren't allowed to make a mistake simply because they are a goalkeeper and not a "real footballer". Complete and utter thick as mince Bellends.................

We won't win 5-0 on Saturday, we might win but it won't be that one sided. Huddersfield will 100% compete and conceded four on Tuesday chasing the game at the end whereas I don't know even know where to begin describing Blackburn's output last night. If you had transported a Premier League glory supporter to the Gate and said one team needed the points and the other had nowt to play for they would have made an obvious and wrong choice. If I was the Blackburn Keeper I would have went back to the dressing room and slapped all three centre halves who "played" last night because, notwithstanding the fact we pressed superbly at times, I haven't seen anything that bad at this level in years.

Those of us who saw it a year ago were shouted down every time Max made an error. "He's a ******* clown blah blah blah"................ For all his outstanding saves Bentley made a few of those errors too, and even worse from my perspective, plenty of times where he wouldn't make a mistake because he didn't come for the ball when it was being loaded into the penalty area and therefore put himself in the firing line to make a mistake. "Let the centre half deal with it, not my problem" - unfortunately for Bentley it is a very big problem when your manager is an ex-Centre Half who knows exactly what you are doing!! When you consider that, at a time when Nakhi was significantly reducing his wages, Bentley wanted a rise to something over £15K per week it was a brave, not overly popular but ultimately very beneficial decision made by an experienced manager to introduce Max who started off being steady and unspectacular, which wouldn't have looked as good as our shot stopping "liner" to begin with, but has now elevated his game to start producing points winning performances.......and Liam is very much benefitting from that because in two of our last four clean sheets we actually defended fairly poorly, getting sliced open on numerous occasions, and had the keeper to thank for the clean sheet.

Exactly this. A few have predictably decided to go all in tonight and fair enough you’ve got to enjoy a 5-0 win however achieved (he put a crap side to bed and that’s what I’ve wanted him to do so no complaints from me) BUT the serious football and expectation levels start all over again in August. Get off to a good start and it’s happy days. Poor start and the club will be under pressure. The next transfer window and how Manning integrates new players will determine how long he’s at the Gate. His recent impressive run of results has bought him that opportunity.

We’ve beat a steaming pile of turd at last. Well done Liam, been a huge hole in your record. 5-0 was the right result tbh. Could have been 7 quite easily. As for Blackburn, I’ve never seen a side let their fans down like that for a long time. Back four were League 2. Felt sorry for the keeper playing behind that.

Hope to see a decent game of football and a scoreline that isn't Binary.......

You've gotta laugh at 50 year old blokes doubling down on their support of the Joey Bag though. Totally agree with laying into 17 year old lady goalkeepers (until their old man got involved and he totally shat his Y fronts obviously) but have a pop at a 15 year old lad and you've really gone and done it this time......................."I used to respect you when you were laying into Birds Joey".

Think he mentioned Southampton again. It's embarrassing but I suppose if you were an artist whose body of work was limited to one decent painting you wouldn't stop mentioning it..........at least change the record and mention Leicester City for the next 167 press conferences.

.........whilst you have club apologists on this board, on radio phone-ins and in the function rooms of Ashton Gate who genuinely believe the club have no obligation to be either of those (it's their money etc.) the likes of Jon, Steve and Sid will crack on being dismissive, evasive and plain dishonest with the general fanbase at times. Just pay your money and pipe down.

Quite simple, it's the timeline that we had significant FFFP issues. It was widely recognised by almost all on here that it wasn't until the end of last season that we had navigated through FFFP and we could relax a bit.

Because Liam's performance has also been nowhere near what the suits expected Nige to deliver it is causing quite a few who supported Nige's sacking to pretend things were not said which are obviously a complete embarrassment in hindsight and were called out as such at the time by the many.............. Two and a bit years, the majority of his tenure, not just a couple of months "at the beginning". Nothing like minimisation................

Agreed. If the promise from the club management is that they will produce a shocking game of football accompanied with a 1-0 Binary Ball win or a 0-0 Binary Ball Draw or a 0-1 Binary Ball Defeat I can watch that without being as disappointed on the BBC Website at 4:55pm on a Saturday. Not to mention that if you produce good performance levels consistently this will almost certainly be followed by positive results and GOALS (the whole sodding point of football) consistently. Doesn't matter who replaced Pearson one of their tasks is to improve the football on offer - if you don't like it then shouldn't have taken the job (not saying that is Liam's view on it).

As somebody sitting through the next 270 minutes of football at Ashton Gate I hope Liam gives us something worth watching tbh. If it's like Swansea I'll be ******* off early again. Not watching that shite.

Bentley had some superb games for us but come the end of his time he was a liability that HAD to be replaced for both our and HIS benefit. He was playing crap and glued to his line. That game against Birmingham away was one of the weakest performances a City keeper had put in for years. He didn't have any intention whatsoever of coming for a high ball and, personally, I can't have that from a Goalkeeper. It's a surefire sign that your bottle has gone at that particular point. However managerial experience that has totally bypassed Jon and Sid decided "this clown is letting team mates and myself down and not only that has no intention of signing next season so I've got a number 2 and he's playing for the rest of the season". He didn't shit his pants when Max made a few mistakes, stuck with it and the long term benefit for the CLUB is we now have a keeper that is certainly at the level and playing above it occasionally too. It surprised me but Nige came out earlier this season and said Max is a better keeper full stop. It seems that Liam rates him very highly too from comments over the last couple of weeks. For me, the difference is that Max is now putting in 8-10/10 performances occasionally now whereas for the first 12 months or so of his run in goal I would say he was a steady 6-7 pretty much every week bar the odd poorer game. He would rarely win us points but now that is starting to occur. A great lesson in patience and proof that these football types aren't totally clueless in terms of what they are seeing.

The Technical Director seemed to hint that we were doing our business early. However, that business won't be anywhere near enough as it stands imo.

It is for you, I and anyone else who will ultimately renew anyway but some have made it clear they don't have "trust" in this manager yet (I don't to be honest because his output has been so varied between the sublime on a few occasions and the ridiculous on significantly more than a few) and are holding on. I do think it's important that we win at least one of the next two home games and make sure we beat Rotherham. Getting done by that mob in our last home game of the season will certainly upset a few!!

It's not about whether anyone on here would sack him or not. That's not our decision and in reality we all know he isn't going anywhere whatever we might or might not do personally. The issue is that a number (and it's not a tiny number) still need to be persuaded to buy season tickets next season. I will get round to buying mine regardless right near the deadline for reasons I've already gone into but others need to see Liam produce something that they can get on board with. That's why performances in the next three games, two at home against the type of lower ranked teams we so often struggle against, before the deadline are crucial.

Obviously.