mozo

City have taken control this half. Much better.

Sykes just totally off it. 

It's a strange one, because we clearly look like the better team technically, but they're doing the basics better and both teams wasteful in the final third. 

I think if we up our game by 10% we walk away with a forgettable 1-0.

Just now, old_eastender said:

Take Williams off, drop Knight back to centre midfield, Twine to no. 10 role, Mehmeti on to give them something to think about.

It's a sign of the times that we're now thinking about Mehmeti as being a good option. I'd bring him on now.

1 minute ago, Sir Geoff said:

Doesn't change the utter dross of that first 45 minutes.

No, but a win would make your apologist comment look a bit daft.

Just now, Sir Geoff said:

Yet another bore fest. Still at least the apologists can point to another clean sheet. Yipeee

I must remember to quote this post when we score the winner 

10 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Well done Sykes, did enough.

Enjoying Carey on co-Comms.  Excellent insight…although both him and main comm haven’t worked out we are playing a back-3.

Besides that he's been sloppy. Feulling the Sykes thread atm

Finally some good play, probing down one wing back and round to the other wing and attack.

We praise O'Leary when he does things well, but his kicking isn't his finest quality and letting us down today.

3 minutes ago, redkev said:

Shame he never started that way

Manning started strong if you look at the fixtures mate!

It was something like 14 points from the first 8 games.

Just now, Silvio Dante said:

He has - but an unbeaten run will be forgotten if we start next season poorly. Hes got a great opportunity to “be brave” and look at players to help him gauge things. Use it!

(FWIW I think he will go cautious. The pre Blackburn presser when the question was asked about involving U23s he wasn’t keen to engage and talked about the players in the senior squad which indicates he will go with “tried and tested” - hopefully im wrong)

Agreed, I would definitely give JKL the opportunity.

I suppose making McCrorie or Tanner sit out is a little harsh, but still, this is an ideal game for a young player.

7 minutes ago, PHILINFRANCE said:

I may be wrong, but doesn’t Huddersfield also have the largest number of public toilets in the UK?

Again, at the risk of confusing Huddersfield with another northern town, is this where the most ornate public toilets are located?

Oh, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got this one right, they also have a beautiful railway station.

No you've probably heard that Huddersfield is the biggest public toilet in the UK?

2 hours ago, wendyredredrobin said:

Which City are we going to see against The Terriers tomorrow?  The City that just annihilated Blackburn or the Manningball City we have seen of late?

Huddersfield are only out of the relegation zone on goal difference so will be playing for their survival and I am not sure which team we will be putting out or what they will actually be playing for other than new contracts and places in the starting 11.

A repeat of the Blackburn game will suit me fine, but I would be surprised if Huddersfield were as bad as they were.

I really don't know how to answer your question. Will Huddersfield pose a different threat? Probably. Will we adapt? I don't know.

5 hours ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

Still not seen anything which suggests this guy can take us forward and beyond. 

 

Still worries me greatly that he's going to be allowed to shape the squad.

 

Has he managed to get some decent results of late? Yes so credit for that.

 

But the reality is its all too little too late. When it mattered he was found waning. 

 

What people havent factored in is that the results have come against teams that dont play with a low block. It remains to be seen if he can sort that problem out. 

 

The Sunderland performance was almost as worst as youll see and the Blackburn game was the opposite of that (with a huge helping hand from a very poor Blackburn) 

 

It seems the issue of pressing was brought up with him, we then start pressing. The issue of not being pro active with subs was brought up with him and then he starts to be pro active with subs. He shouldn't need to be told how to do his job. 

We can't afford to be a learning ground for a young 'head coach' it's just LJ all over again. Streaky and will just constantly change the plan until one works and then when it stops working will keep trying to find a new plan until he lucks upon one that does work. 

He has simply not shown me what Liam Manning football looks like.

Ultimately Manning has failed this season. We are better than where we are in the league. Without results clouding my judgement, it has largely been poor, dull and difficult to watch.

He has not managed to get the maximum out of this squad (with good availability) and certainly not managed to get them out performing their ability. 

We are obviously not going to sack him now and neither will we this season. But I think we should. We are looking at an October sacking in my opinion.

I fear that he will recruit players that are suited to his preferred possesion based style.

What do you do if you build an F1 car that has decent ability and potential but the driver can't extract that ability and potential? You don't rebuild the car to suit the driver do you? No you get rid of the driver and bring in someone more suited to the car and the teams philosophy. 

I think that's fine so long as you're open-minded and reasonable enough to give Manning credit if by October we're in or around the top 6.

I didn't follow this. Did we get relegated or not?!

That would be such a sweet end to the season

2 minutes ago, Tony Tootle said:

I’ve said this to other city fans I know. Given his versatility and his athleticism , if he was a few years younger I also think he’d be in with a shout of Premier league.

Even if he can't get there, he should absolutely be aiming to hit those levels. That what Nige and Co were trying get out of him I'd imagine. He's one that needs a carrot not a stick perhaps.

6 minutes ago, Malago said:

I think he goes into  the summer with one season remaining of his contract.  It will be interesting to see if the club offers him something this summer or lets him run his contract down.  I get the impression, and it’s my personal opinion, that he thinks he’s better than he actually is.  I see him as an average championship player and can’t see there being a long queue of clubs desperate to sign him.   Happy to see him resign, but won’t be a disaster if he doesn’t.

 

 

I spoke to one of the NP coaching staff about Sykes and he said that they made a point of bigging him up because the player was too modest, and maybe didn't realise he had the potential to play in in the Premier League. 

10 minutes ago, Dredd said:

PS there are some 'why the hell have we appointed Steve Cotterill' or 'Lee Johnsons taking us up' posts if you want to go back far enough to really rub some salt into some wounds.  

That's a great suggestion, I'm just going to dig them out now and indulge in some after timer ridicule 

3 minutes ago, transfer reader said:

Yes and no 

Yes, that level of ppg is what would likely get you relegated at the end of the season, but it is only relegation form if over the same number of games (rolling 10 in this case) there aren't 3 teams who are worse.

Teams have stayed up with under 1 ppg before (Reading 21/22, Derby 20/21, Millwall 18/19, Reading and Bolton 17/18), because 3 teams were worse than that.

That's 5 times in the last 6 completed seasons.

A better phrase would have been shit form  

4 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

Cheers, that’s an interesting angle. Is the GW19 ending around the WBA game? That was really the nadir of Niges reign and - can I say it - relegation form?

I think what it probably shows is that these players (much like a lot of teams in the division) can go on hot streaks. Realistically man for man and squad for squad there’s not a lot between 4th and 18th, it’s about getting them to hit that form regularly (or conversely not hitting the opposite of that form regularly) - that’s the challenge 

The most frustrating thing during LJ's reign was that the same set of players could look like promotion candidates for a spell, then the exact same players would look meek and disjointed for a spell. Infuriating and unfathomable. They're the same bloody players!!

The other weird thing about this, is if we think of the post-Easter form as proof that Manning finally hit upon the right formula, that's implying that we could have stormed it in those first 20 games too, which means promotion was there for the taking. I can't accept that to be true!

My head hurts...

31 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

I don’t hate Manning. I doubt him as a manager. But we’ve just proved we were in relegation form this year pre Easter. It’s not controversial it’s factual. And yes, if you extend it to Watford or Hull then we go up that table - I’m happy to accept that. 
 

We were in relegation form pre Easter. We were in relegation form in 2024 prior to Easter.

Anything else is fundamentally dishonest.

Any reasonable person would say that 13 games from start of year is a reasonable gauge of “form”  - and “form” by nature can’t be infinite. Check how often journalists, and this forum even, use form since x date. And the start of the year is quite an established date - ie “Liam you’ve been in good form this year/bad form this year”

But you carry on. I’m not going to convince you that 13 points from 11 since the start of the season is relegation form. Hope we don’t have to explain the offside rule next, that’ll blow your mind!

Interestingly, between GW 9 and 19 last season, we picked up 8 points from 11 games.

Later, from GW 25 we went on a run of 17 points in a block of 10 games.

So we had a lesson last year in patience.

I find the symmetry quite telling, particularly as most of the players are the same.

12 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Yes, always. Did we always execute?  Nope.

Execution and consistency are the tricky bits, I guess.

6 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

It’s hard isn’t it!

Despite my desire for a “winning season”, I’m beyond points, wins, losses, etc.. I mainly have been anyway, because I’m mainly about the underlying performance will eventually equate to results.  If we play with the kinda intent we have since Easter (which frankly is a big difference from pre-Easter) then we will create all types of chances, and be backed up by a decent defence, if sometimes overworked.  But I can accept the shift from sterile with the ball / passive without it, to what we’ve seen since Easter.  That football was taking us backwards.  This football gives us a chance, hell, we can even give Leicester a run for their money and come out on the right side.

There will always be inconsistency in execution, but there doesn’t have to be in intent.

Maybe not as blunt as you, but as above, that “style” was getting bloody hard to watch, and results were not looking either.

Just out of interest, do you think there was a consistency of intent last season? 

1 minute ago, Silvio Dante said:

If you want a bigger sample, since the start of the year up until Easter it was P13 W3 D2 L8 Pts 11

Over a season that’s 39 points.

Whatever way you cut it, that gets you relegated. 
 

 

Relegation FORM pre Easter.

I was just responding to your point about that run of games, but I think I've said a few times, I personally think that even 6 months is a small size (within reason!)

For me, the fact that the effort levels were high, that we had spells of good play, a handful of very promising games and were only being edged out of games (WBA the only two goal margin), was enough for me to not give up hope.

It's strange really, because despite neither of us having any particular prejudice for or against Manning  we saw the performances so differently. Funny old game!

6 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

And when.

There is definitely a case for “sterile games aren’t the right way” though.  The 60 mins v Swansea a case in point.

This caught my eye earlier:

Variety / Mix.

I talk about disrupting the opposition.  Not just high pressing either, turning a back-4 around by going in behind gives you that “unpredictability”, disrupts your opponents set plans.

Yeah and my high press comment is not aimed at you or the more analytical fans!

23 minutes ago, Numero Uno said:

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.

You definitely wouldn't have scored the Mehmeti goal!