italian dave

Like planning consent?

Thanks Dave. Interesting. And, genuinely, my first thought, before I read your note or opened the link, was that the last time we had a real target man it was Milan Djuric! His goal at Sunderland is still one of my top memories of the past decade or so, and a real number 9s goal in the mould of John Galley!

Very different - and for much of the time in a lower league too. But relatively. We just hadn't been good at it! And even with Maynard, part of the skill is negotiating something that will satisfy the outgoing player too. But - as I've said above, I'm not trying to defend MA - just to suggest that there were reasons, early days, why SL might have though he'd made a good call.

Completely...and an unsettled squad with the risk that potential stars don't flourish. Which is why it fell apart (and why my praise through gritted teeth is very qualified!)

It almost seemed like it was done on a kind of percentage basis. We've bought from lower league/France and made money before. Therefore, buy 5 from lower league/France, and if 4 fail, but one makes a 6x more than he cost then we're in profit. And it didn't go much beyond that!

But, nevertheless, and for whatever reason, we DID sell them for a huge profit. In contrast to previous regimes where, from Goater, through Marvin Elliott to Maynard, we didn't do so at the right time or in a canny enough way. I find myself saying all this through gritted teeth because I can't stand the guy, but back at the time we thought we were doing well to get the money we did for all of them.

Thanks - bit more than I'd imagined. Presumably the lower end is for Monaco/Frieburg (I know that's a fixed amount). I don't imagine that will worry them If the £1m is Burnley then that might affect how they view it.

It’s not going to be much though, is it? In the overall scheme of things, not an amount that will make a huge difference to the decision for those three clubs?

Yes, but the point is that in the past we had good players and we failed to capitalise on them. And yes, it came unstuck towards the end (Nagy, Fam, Paterson etc). That’s why I was very careful to explicitly say “in one respect and for a while”.

Yep, agree. The strategy of buy cheap, sell high isn’t bad. It just has to be balanced with a football strategy. We had an objective - top 6. I’ve no doubt LJ had a strategy but I suspect that he felt it was repeatedly sabotaged by the financial strategy.

Yeah, I don’t argue with that. I think it’s just semantics. Clearly LJ had control over what happened on the pitch - selection, tactics and so on. But my point is that MAs financial objectives were allowed to take precedence over the ‘on the pitch’ objectives. And he is a financial man, not a football man (whatever he may wish!).

And great response Ole! I think I’d add/suggest one thing though, in an attempt to be entirely objective and fair. And that’s that - for a while and in one respect - he was quite good at it. The one thing he did well was to extract maximum value from our assets. That was something that SL had always been clear was an objective for him, and it was something we’d been pretty poor at. We had a long history of turning down generous bids for players at what turned out to be the peak of their career - we’d expect them to take us to the next level and usually they’d end up the following season getting injured and/or losing form. Or allowing players to wind down their contracts. There’s no doubt that - in purely financial terms - we couldn’t have done much better than we did with the likes of Kelly, Kodjia, Webster, Brownhill. I think that impressed SL. I think you’re dead right about him being a wannabe footballer who actually had no idea about the football side. @Davefevs talks about SL leaving him to run the football side: my view is that SL left him to run the financial side and LJ the football side, but failed to manage the balance between the two when those objectives came into conflict. Either way, a mistake. And, ultimately, I agree - I for him it’s all about him, his income, his status, his objectives, and LJ wasn’t strong enough to stand up to that (and possibly also had a more balanced view and did actually recognise the financial drivers). And the way he stitched us up with the Americans was unforgivable, and surely must have made SL see the light? Even if too late. Finally, and again trying to be completely objective, I can understand why our friends from Ipswich might be a little baffled: we must seem oddly obsessed to the outsider. Right now, the top two threads on our Bristol City football forum are about MA/Ipswich and LJ/Leeds - three years, a whole pandemic, two managers, a whole squad after both men left us!

Jumping Jack Flash……..Rolling Stones

European Son…..The Velvet Underground

?? Portishead might be doing OK too!!

Living Next Door to Alice……..Dr Hook and the Medicine Show

Good Vibrations……The Beach Boys

Alice’s Restaurant……..Arlo Guthrie.

Man in a Shed…….Nick Drake

I’m not going to debate this on here, because it’s a football thread in the football forum and I know that people dislike them straying into politics. But there’s a whole thread on this subject over in the politics forum so please join us over there to debate this……we’ve been looking for ages for someone to tell us some (even one) of the benefits of Brexit.

Even if the English side was one Bristol R*****s?

Nope…..just ours. ?

Toreador......Georges Bizet

You started it……?