Numero Uno

1 minute ago, E.G.Red said:

I'm no Manning apologist but it always amazes me that if we play well the opposition must be s**t or having an off night. Think the team deserve a lot of credit, 4 clean sheets and we stopped the opposition playing their game

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................

1 hour ago, Northern Red said:

Blackburn were meant to be desperate for the points, though you wouldn't have known it.

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.

2 minutes ago, mozo said:

It's an interesting result in the context that a lot of people were hoping for Eustace over Manning. I wonder how he would have done here.

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.

20 minutes ago, Cole Not Gas said:

Max has improved significantly since the autumn and that co-incided with other changes! If a big bid came in for him of course the owner has to consider it and then its the same question as every summer; does SL think we have the right squad and coach to have a go for top six? The next question then is can the books be balanced to avoid the financial penalties which now determine where the club ends up just as much as results on the pitch.

I like Max, hope stays but have to be realistic that, local lad or not, all players want a Premier League income and opportunity to progress. Liam has had to do without Scott and Semenyo this season with little money to spend on quality replacements. What we'll see in August depends on how the owner sees our prospects as above.

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.................

3 minutes ago, Cole Not Gas said:

Join the other forums if you want to enjoy our successes. What odds on another 5-0 on Saturday? Huddersfield havent lost as often this season as Blackburn but early goals will destroy their confidence so who knows?

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.

8 hours ago, glynriley said:

Again, I said in the pub pre match, Max is a top, top keeper. Kudos to Nige for seeing he was a better, and cheaper bet than Bentley. 
 

Best keeper we’ve had in a long while for me.

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.

35 minutes ago, Alessandro said:

A little run of good results is nothing particularly new, we’ve been streaky for years.

Can Manning make us more consistent? 

Personally (not getting heady after winning 5 nil) I’m reserving judgment for a longer sample of games - especially as in the last few results we’ve been on the right end of some awful finishing (Vardy), Max at his best on multiple occasions and a Blackburn side that gifted, literally handed us 4 goals tonight. 

False dawn or not? Eitherway, we’ll find out next season as Manning will have his shot…

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".

15 minutes ago, Robbored said:

I can’t be bothered to listen. His pressers seem all the same to me. No doubt he mentions ‘time on the grass’…….…..

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.

3 hours ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Gosh. An owner actually being candid and honest about the reasons for dismissing a manager.

Cc: Jon L, Steve L, Brian T

.........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.

1 hour ago, AshtonGreat said:

Where are you getting that timeline from?

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.

12 hours ago, Alessandro said:

Really? Why do people keep saying they never said this?!?…..:

“We all wanted Nigel to achieve our ambition to be promoted but, with our recent results, feel that now is the time to make a change to give the club the best possible chance of success.” - JL

‘We want to get promoted this year' - Bristol City board on decision to sack Nigel Pearson - from Gavin Marshall

 

https://www.bcfc.co.uk/video/interviews/jon-lansdown-talks-about-coaching-change/ 

Takes JL 30 seconds to mention premier league and best squad we’ve had here in my time - to name a few quick quotes.

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..............

14 hours ago, AshtonGreat said:

Well, that may have been his remit at the beginning

Two and a bit years, the majority of his tenure, not just a couple of months "at the beginning". Nothing like minimisation................

12 minutes ago, TV Tom said:

I would normally always prefer performance over result at any time of the season, I want to be entertained, unfortunately there has been very little ‘entertainment’ in the last five years irrespective of who the manager is, I’d like to see Manning make some brave team selections and display some bolder tactics in the last few games  though I’m not sure he has the personnel to change much

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).

55 minutes ago, RoystonFoote'snephew said:

I'll take results over performances for the last 5 games. Finish as high up the league as possible and instil some confidence for something to build on for next season. We have plenty of time in the summer to work on style. 

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.

20 minutes ago, petehinton said:

A striker to replace outgoing Conway, probably another one on top that’ll be the ‘physical 9’ from abroad. 
 

Bird is James’ replacement, another CM probably needed on top as King is off & Murphy probably won’t be fit for the start of the season and no one has any idea how good he actually is yet. 
 

Need another backup to replace Bajic. 
 

An AM that isn’t Twine as I would be amazed if he comes back. 
 

Other than that, I really can’t see too much happening unless we sell more of the Crown Jewels again. I genuinely believe January was the bulk of the bigger summer business. 

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.

14 minutes ago, Fontaineofallknowledge said:

Not sure a couple of dead rubber games are going to have any bearing on that decision for me. 
 

im expecting a transformed style next season after Liam shapes his squad and has a pre season to implement his methods. This season largely irrelevant for me 

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!!

10 minutes ago, Fontaineofallknowledge said:

So you'd still sack manning?

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.

5 minutes ago, transfer reader said:

Course it was

And how many hours ago was that?

Rent free in your head because I don't over hype every single save made, but instead give credit to the actually good ones made.

 

Obviously.

7 minutes ago, transfer reader said:

Obsessed.

I've said he made one exceptional save, clawed another off the line although Sykes also had it covered and was our best player today.

The majority of the shots he faced today were ones where questions would be asked had he let them in, and yet I've still called him our MOM but you still want to misrepresent what I've been saying for some pathetic wind up.

 

Approximately an equal level of obsession as your comments on this thread earlier............which is why they got noticed!!

4 minutes ago, Fontaineofallknowledge said:

It wasn't that bad given the conditions. Ground out a decent point on the road. 7 points in 3 games since the bed wetters called for manning ahead-hope there's enough humble pie to go round!

You're going too early to be honest. If Manning brings his own players in and struggles to improve performances in the first third of next season his job will not be safe. Calling people bed-wetters and talking about others eating humble pie after a record of 33 points in 26 games and 19 points in the last 17  (mediocre but not humble pie levels in truth) would then look a bit daft, especially if he goes on another "run" of poor results. He's still got plenty of fans to win over whether you agree with it or not.

11 minutes ago, Northern Red said:

 

Why? He saved 36 pea rollers and made just the one decent save so I'm led to believe. The Sunderland Manager, the Bristol City Manager and the Sunderland fans who attended the game and commented on their forum were all lying through their teeth when they said he won us a point. Clearly trying to upset someone on here I reckon...................

13 minutes ago, Dastardly and Muttley said:

Top six, I thought.

Did you really? I didn't. All that tells me is that the hierarchy needs a revamp.

The Manager? Well, as it's clear he isn't going anywhere, whether you agree with it or not, he needs to produce something to give those who are dithering on season tickets a reason that makes them renew. If Liam had achieved his 33 points in 26 games with a better spread of performances I wouldn't be bothered. Had a certain ex-Manager produced his results we would be seeing words like "streaky" bandied about. In particular he has a real issue beating and even avoiding defeat against lower end teams in the division and look what we have on the horizon, a very comfortable run-in in terms of opposition league position bar Norwich away. So for me he's got to produce performances against this type of team now to show people he can do something more than tread water or worse next season.