The Dolman Pragmatist

Murray Jones, promising striker signed from Palace in 1990. Never made an appearance.

We didn’t spend a lot of money on him , but I was always bemused by the case of Jim Harvey, a very good midfield player who we signed in 1987 and who only played three times for us. I remember him saying at the time that he couldn’t understand why Terry Cooper signed him if he didn’t think he was any good. There was also the strange case of Laurie Pearson, a left back who we signed from Hull in the summer transfer window of 1987, and then swapped for Russell Bromage before the season even started.

In France if there is a two-division or more gap between the clubs the lower team is automatically at home.

Yes we were poor today, but not as bad as your post suggests. Playing without any centre halves is always likely to be interesting and I’d have taken a point as soon as I saw the lineup. It was clear that we were being protective of the back line, which was hardly surprising. Yes, of course we missed Vyner, but we got a point which we probably just about deserved.

Don’t think it’s been mentioned, but John Galley’s debut for City in 1967 was a hat-trick at Huddersfield. Best ever debut by a City player?

What makes you happiest when you are walking away from a match at Ashton Gate? Having played poorly but scraped a victory; or having played well and lost. I know which I prefer.

Me too mate. Two on the same day. I don’t live in Bristol and I missed the sign completely.

The easiest games at this stage of the season are likely to be against teams with nothing to play for. Three of our games are against teams needing points to avoid the drop who will be fighting for their lives.

Who knows? If you’d asked me in Dicks’s first season if he could take us into the top flight, I’d have thought you were mad.

If social media had existed in the sixties, a section of the fans would have been screaming for Harry Dolman to sell up as we fought off relegation from the second tier several times. At least the Lansdowns (as far as we know) haven’t resorted to some of Harry Dolman’s more - ahem - unorthodox business practices…

Alan Dicks has a lot in common with Liam Manning. He was a young coach who no one had heard of when he was brought in as manager, and a very vocal section of the fans were screaming for him to be sacked in his first season at the club. Luckily Harry Dolman resisted that temptation, held his nerve, and eventually it paid off, big time.

Absolutely fantastic that this post got a face palm from one poster. Says it all about the current climate on OTIB. So much easier to be negative about a situation than to look for positives.

I’ve been a supporter for 60 years and there have been some difficult periods but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I’ll go into next season with a season ticket and with optimism, as usual.

If you’ve been supporting since 1971, you will have seen a lot worse than this season.

‘Rarely’, not ‘never’.

Average of 25 is a young squad. Only two squads in the Prem (Chelsea and Burnley) have an average age below 25. B*gger

Why didn’t Pearson play Cornick centrally then? He appeared to also have had little use for Mehmeti once he signed him.

They got about a third of the way across the pitch and realised the match hadn’t finished and looked at each other in total confusion, then turned round and tried to run away.

One mistake a game’s not a bad record…

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway… Genesis

How do you know he wouldn’t have done?

But at the time, if I remember correctly, we were hugely excited by the signings of Nagy and Massengo, and few seemed heartbroken that Pack was leaving. Hindsight is a great thing…

I remember Sean O’Driscoll (who for all the stick he used to get was actually a very interesting and able coach) saying something very similar. He said that however much he prepared players for matches, once the game starts it’s a question of the players making the right decision in the moment. Of course a coach can make substitutions and tactical changes, and of course these can be hugely influential on a game as we saw on Tuesday night, but it is still down to the players to make the right decisions and then execute them effectively during the game.

I always look closely at goal difference when thinking about who might be relegated. It’s interesting that all but one of the teams below us has a goal difference of -11 or worse (Plymouth are -7), with Sheff Wed on -23 and Rotherham on -42. By contrast our goal difference is -2, actually better than Preston who are only 4 points off the play-offs. Of our 16 defeats this season, 13 have been by a single goal and the remaining three by two goals. It shows just how close the margins are. Before the Ipswich match people were talking about us being hammered, but the truth is that no one has hammered us all season, including two Premiership teams. That, if nothing else, must give some cause for optimism.

Well said mate.