DaveInSA

I think we should raid the lower leagues for players with ace names. Those three are brilliant. Might not be any good at footy. But does wonders for team sheet diversity.

What I like about Rugby is that there is a structure. A platform. And you can play the solid base, kick, chase, and rely on defences to make mistakes. But, you’ve got players now in the back 3 who rarely make mistakes. So it’s becoming less productive. from that structure, a little bit of magic can unlock defences and it’s enthralling

There was an interesting LinkedIn post I came across the other day, which I will summarise as : DATA is making the world more boring. They cited several examples, but a couple stood out. In the NBA, nearly ALL of the teams play the same way, points are scored from very specific areas of the court and it’s become dull and predictable as a result. The second was the music industry, within a given genre (pop, country etc) the diversity of music has decreased, there is less innovation and music is working to a “formula”. What does this mean for football. Well, probably something similar isn’t it? Football is becoming dull. I’m sure that there is a multitude of reasons why, but definitely a cause will be the statistics around “most likely methods to score from” - I think that is called xG for or something. What I’ve seen with my eyes is something completely alien to me at times. It’s structured. Ponderous. Boring. My enjoyment of football comes from chaos, a lack of structure and being able to thrive in the midst of all of this. I like passion. I like both teams going at it. I like rugby more than football now as a spectacle.

Now even I can understand and more importantly actually read those 3 charts Fevs. A decrease in 1&2 leads to an increase in 3, which in turn equals an increase in the excitement. Very good.

On screen that looks like you have Pring wide on the right. Almost on another pitch. Brave move. Don’t think Manning will go for that.

My brother was worried about relegation, but to me it wasn’t on the cards. Manning isn’t going anywhere - so I’ve lessened my “Manning Out” crusade, because, I can’t control that (and never could to be fair). So now I’ve resorted to prayer. Much more productive and real. And I’m praying: that Manning becomes adaptable, that he gets the players he needs, and we can have some excitement at AG for the first time since W-S M were tearing opposition defences new a$$holes

Someone at the club would have approved that yellow colour. These things don’t “just get made”. And if the colour in production came out as different to the standard, then the club would have negotiated a discount and taken the stock or they would have had the opportunity to cancel the order. Happens all the time in retail - it’s standard terms.

It’s Steve Lansdown. He’s the problem. He wouldn’t be able to recognise a window of opportunity if it painted itself red, and chased him around the golf course in Guernsey saying “Hey Steve, I’m a window of opportunity, I’m a window of opportunity”. In addition to the above he hasn’t one clue about how football clubs should be governed and run int he 21st century. There hasn’t been a consistent approach in what we do from a footballing strategy ever. Hence we don’t know if we’re overachieving or not, whether momentum is with us or not and whether to take a risk to achieve something. It’s pathetic. And amateur.

I’ve been getting e-mails from Hargreaves Lansdown for weeks. Almost every day saying “get your ISA allowance advantages for the 2023/4 tax year”. It’s now 2 April. I’ve got my ISA set up finally. And I want to pay money in. I’ve already done one transaction today. And I can’t do another one into my nominated account until Thursday, because of…. procedures. I can’t change my nominated account to my new ISA account because of…. procedures. So, I’m very likely to miss out on my ISA allowance for 2023/4. Partly because I am a nob and didn’t get organised fast enough. And partly because of annoying governance (which is way beyond what is regulated I believe). Why is this in the football forum? Well because - Governance. HL is (IMHO) over governed. Why can’t I do two transactions in a day - I’m hardly laundering money am I? Where is the risk? It’s utter madness. Compare that with BCFC. Where we have Jon, Brian and Manning making all the footballing decisions. With no oversight nor accountability. Overseeing millions of pounds of transfer business. How can both of these entities be part of the Steve Lansdown empire (I know he’s not involved actively with HL anymore )? It’s like chalk and cheese. And quite frankly demonstrates how seriously Steve takes the “asset” that is BCFC. It’s his plaything. A little annoying toy that makes a squeak now and again. Rant. Over.

7 more wins and we make the play offs?

Unfortunately we don’t play against teams that will take the game to us every week. Manning needs to absolutely find a way to deliver better results against those teams. its nigh on ridiculous if you can only beat the better teams in the league and will only lead to one thing. Mid table.

Yer man places too much emphasis on belief. When in actual fact, it was the method of playing, which improved the belief, which then led to the performance of the season against Southampton.

Why? In my opinion (which I spelled out), this is a slow motion train crash waiting to happen. So let’s rather fast forward the process. Fire Manning. Redeploy Tinnion. Bring in proper people to run the football side of the club and appoint a manger who can progress us upward rather than downward. If you’re happy to see us relegated next year then good for you. Because that is our current trajectory. And a summer won’t change that, because we can’t afford to buy a new squad of players to play the perfect football match.

I’ve experienced negativity in my time. And then there’s now. I’m a glass half full kind of person. But there’s literally nothing to be positive about at BCFC right now. I’ve changed my mind - hope we get battered today. We’re sleep walking into disaster, so let’s rather speed it up.

And a statue - replacing Atyeo.

But we don’t? We fire managers so infrequently. And partly because of this we often (always :laugh:) back the wrong horses, who then land us with a load of players who are surplus to requirements. We’re a cushy club (Marley “training is too much like hard work” Watkins for example). I don’t want to mention the lord god our saviour Nigel Pearson over the Easter weekend and all, but whatever you thought of him, he changed the culture of the club. We were no longer cushy Bristol City. And now, with JL and BT looking after footballing matters, we’ll be cushy again. Thus the cycle repeats under cyclical Steve. It’s all so predictable.

On the one had a massive defeat could hammer another nail in the Manning coffin. On the other hand I hate seeing us lose games and would love us to beat the best team in the division at home. And on my other foot Manning won’t be fired this year regardless.

Anyone bought an actual season ticket for next season? Because you’ll have this until at least October.

I am involved with a national charity that hold spaces exclusively for men and teenage boys. They’re out there. Teenage boys need adult male role models and we create safe spaces for them to explore what it means to become a healthy male adult. I agree though, male exclusive spaces are very hard to find. They even let birds in the pub nowadays.

I forgot this. When Brazil decided to play football, rather than kick the England players, we were second rate in the game. Didn’t look ever like scoring.

This is why we’ll be in a relegation scrap next season. And if Manning is still here we’re as good as bankers for the drop.

Some of the posts on here are laughable. Seriosuly, Watkins is one of the stand out players in the PL this season - had zero service tonight (like watching Conway), how is he supposed to score off scraps in and around the box. Foden and Bellingham are magicians with the ball, and work so hard without it. mainoo will be a player. rice looks like he never breaks a sweat. Chillwell and Gallagher were pants, that is true.

I watched that guys YouTube video - very interesting and all that. But isn’t it quite easy to screen grab a frame from a video of a match and present it as “fact” of how a team set up? in any event, I’d love a bit of chaos theory at AGate. Akin to the W-S-M days of us actually scoring goals would be nice.

Post of the day.

£84. People who buy this literally have rocks in their heads. The fabric is cheap, the labour is cheap, the shipping is cheap. Literally they cost about a fiver to make.