Simster

They've done it. :laugh:

I have to agree with you here. In those days there were so many games where you feared for your safety just by attending. In 1987 we got promoted to division 2 and I remember going to the boxing day game with you at Ashton Gate and still remember the attendance being an enormous 16,058. (Great game, where you beat us 5-2). Anyway, that season Sunderland were streets ahead of everyone in the division - averaging 17,500. Yours were second (12k) and ours third (9.5k). Now look at attendances - five non league teams average over 5,000! People like going to football again - which is why I really can't be particularly impressed at Swindon doing what literally every other provincial club would do and sell out their allocation with something riding on the game.

Expect the thug to throw on about 8 strikers, win 5-0 and miss out. He'll then blame Barrow's players for rolling over, because that's the sort of class act he is.

Exactly. Imagine winning 6-0 after being five goals behind at start of play, and still missing out. This place would be chortling all week.

It would be quite funny if Rovers won 6-0 and still missed out.

But nor had we since 1986 until the Amex got built: England historical attendance and performance (european-football-statistics.co.uk) . I think you have to be a bit careful talking about attendances - they weren't remotely comparable to modern day gates from the 70s to the 90s. I think that bloke's delusion begins and ends at talking about a 35,000 seat stadium - anyone with any self awareness would surely talk about a 15-18,000 stadium and pray that it was a modular build, just in case things took off.

I'd laugh except I'm a Brighton fan. We went from a ground that was somehow even worse than theirs is, to pretty much what we have now having averaged 27,000 in the Championship for 3 seasons.

Yeah I should have mentioned Brentford. I knew they'd stay up - wish I'd layed their relegation on Betfair, they were 2.04/2.06 to go down. Brentford and Brighton are owned by arch rivals and former colleagues (Benham and Bloom) who made their fortunes in gambling syndicates. They are two guys who know about extracting value (expect them to both to sign value players rather than what everyone else thinks they need) and who recognise the importance of their whole organisations. They are cut from the same cloth in that way. Brentford won't have second season syndrome either IMO. Big clubs who are a total shambles have never been so vulnerable. Everton put the feelers out for Potter and were met by lols everywhere, including Potter himself (reading between the lines). I think that says it all.

Both teams to score

We have progressed because the club have thrown millions at the right things. A proper infrastructure (not just a stadium but also the training facility and an extensive behind the scenes hierarchy.) For this reason, I'm genuinely more worried we will lose our head of recruitment Dan Ashworth to Newcastle than of losing Yves Bissouma in the summer. I always looked at Bristol City as a club who are going in the right direction, but then you brought in Nigel Pearson who seemed a baffling appointment. Mind you, success at a football club doesn't begin and end with the manager these days, that's for sure. There's no doubt that clubs like our two clubs can compete at the top level simply by being very well run.

Interesting reading that BC fans consider him one of their.best centre backs. We paid you a lot of money for him and while he took half a season to get up to speed, he has been an excellent signing. He is now on a par with, maybe better than Lewis Dunk now - a complete two footed centre back with pace and dominance in the air. I reckon he probably needs to do one more season here and if he has another season like this, well a top 6 club will throw money at him. I don't have any faith in Southgate looking at him in the meantime though, but he really should.

Indeed Mel Morris bought Derby in May 14 - 7.5 years and the best part of a decade ago!

On our forums Reading tend to draw the same ire as they do everywhere else - plastic nothing club etc (not entirely fair to the 4,500 who used to regularly frequent Elm Park, but there you go). But to be fair to the smug soggy biscuits, they've been quite sombre and level-headed about the whole thing compared to the legions of Derbeh fans who have talked utter crap since this shitstorm first blew at the end of last season. That club has spent a decade cheating the rest of us who've spent any of that time in the Championship and have spent months denying it or blaming whoever else could be blamed. I hope they get relegated two divisions.

Are you lot still blaming Brighton fan Kieran McGuire for the fact that you can't keep your own books in order? You know, for having the temerity to point out that your club were cheating blatantly?

Fair enough, there's very little animosity from our side (although Swindon remain a club I personally don't like very much) but I remember all manner of bitterness in 2004 and later when we bought Greer off you. Strange as Brighton have always been a bigger club than Swindon IMO (not that it matters). I am genuinely pleased you've got that nob out of your club though, and I hope Oldham manage the same soon. Yeah it's a decent forum here (I put it down to liberal but fair moderation), but I will say this sort of thing goes on with loads of football forums. It certainly does on ours. Why wouldn't it?

He's been excellent for us, to be honest. Started off shakily in his first half season (perhaps to be expected) but now firmly part of a very good Premier League defence. Shame he's injured for the next four games as we will undoubtedly miss him.

Yes, I've calmed down a bit since then though. ? Oh and the Palace forum is as bad as GasChat in terms of moderation - they ban you for trivial reasons there.

Hello SJ, First of all, that is a hilarious tale and exactly the sort of arse-licking I'm railing against, even if I was probably a bit harsh and it did seem odd me interjecting on a Championship forum about two league 2 teams. Brighton and Swindon - hmmm. Well we don't really like each other for sure, but it's nothing like Gillingham and Swindon. To be fair, that is more from the Gillingham side going back to their play-off with Swindon in 1987 or something (a bit like Colchester and Wycombe) although I suspect there was a bit of needle before that. As I understand it, Swindon are a bit more ambivalent towards Gillingham as they do have proper rivals of their own whereas Gillingham are like Bournemouth - fans who hang around like a bad smell desperate to be disliked because nobody cares about them. Back to Swindon and BHA, we don't like them much but Swindon dislike us more than we dislike them. This goes back to our glorious 2003/4 promotion season when we absolutely robbed them* before going on to beat you in Cardiff in a game that was tighter than a gnats chuff. * we didn't rob them at all. They were the better side in both games, but what irritated them was that we equalised in the last minute of extra time. In a situation like that (if we had lost to you at Cardiff, for example), I'd have consoled myself that the team that finished higher in the league won through, so fair enough. They didn't - they whined like bitches forever. I remember coming on here and chuckling at a Swindon fan saying how desperate he was for you to beat us. A few years later, we signed Gordon Greer off them. They couldn't understand why he went and were absolutely fuming - a sideways move apparently. Except we were a year from moving into a new stadium and had built a side that was about to win the league and they were about to head into division 4 again (where they belong). Swindon are a joke club with utter bell-ends as fans. But in recognising that ultimately we're all just fans of our own clubs, I am nevertheless pleased and delighted for them that the ***** running their club into the ground has been booted out. I've just remembered another reason I don't like Swindon. In 1989 some Swindon ***** snatched my Albion ski hat as I was sat on the train home from Bristol Rovers away in Bath. Their demise is delicious schadenfreude for that little ***** as far as I'm concerned.

As I said a couple of posts ago, I'm really not bent out of shape, it was merely an observation.

I think I'd respect you more for saying that than your original post where you accused me of being an arse licker for saying I like both Bristol clubs, when anyone with a brain could see that if I really was arse licking I'd have said I much preferred the red half or some such drivel. Anyway, by way of an olive branch, I'll leave it there. Nothing crappy or little about NSC, by the way. So moving on, perhaps you could answer a question for me: my sister moved to Brislington a year ago. Is this historically City or Rovers territory?

I am quite tired, to be fair. Blame my youngest's sleep issues! That's why I can't be arsed to do any work, or even talk or read about what a class act our new left back Marc Cucurella is or what a good job Potter is doing, so I ended up on here (after a quick chuckle at OwlsTalk). Your final sentence made me chuckle though - I can imagine that happening. Although, are you actually sure it wasn't Shaun Taylor moaning about how bad Rovers are?

I don't actually care, it was just an observation. i.e. that I'd never seen such cringeworthy arse-licking on any football forum anywhere. ? I'm genuinely quite surprised this observation had such an impact tbh! Anyway, I'll let you get back to taking the piss out of your cross city rivals.

Thanks for the explanation - very interesting as an outside observer. I'm not actually doing that, fella. I'm "moaning" that one particular Swindon fan does nothing but post on this thread in the most cringeworthy, embarrassing arse-licking manner you could imagine. I only know his posting history on this thread, because I have been a lurker here for some time. A quick check on my posting history on NSC would clear it up for you - I'm as Brighton as you are Bristol City. Careful you don't say you also used to like Crystal Palace as well! Sir Leigh of Somerset might cry: Seriously, pissing your knickers over that? What an embarrassing cock you are.

Not really. He generally comes on here, derides Rovers (which obviously gets lapped up) and throws in titbits about how wonderful his own club's support is (usually by throwing in more arse-licking comments about how nevertheless it isn't a patch on City's support, of course). He's a boring, arse-licking bell-end.

Certainly a lot of truth in this. Of course he's an absolute legend at Brighton, but Forest like Newcastle is a poisoned chalice at the moment. His first 6 months were ok, where he steadied their ship and kept them up. Their big problem was their recruitment over the summer - it was a shambles. I'll explain: a key criticism of Hughton is that he is too defensive - insist on protecting slim leads, play one up top against the best sides etc, but that isn't actually fair. It's just that he is a pragmatist. Give him the tools to assemble an attacking side and that's what you get. What I think happened at Forest is that they watched 6 months of necessary but pragmatic, dreary football to ensure safety, and as a consequence the chairman was unconvinced about loosening the purse strings. So the summer has seen 4 players promoted from their U23s, all of whom have been crap/underwhelming, and hardly anyone decent has come in. The result was more pragmatic boring crap football.