Harry

I miss the embarrassing visit to the photo shop, wondering if there is anything rude/incriminating on my holiday snaps and getting funny looks from the staff

Watched on a stream tonight. It was serious backs to the wall stuff. Took the lead after 45 seconds and it was basically a defensive wall for the rest of the game. I watch a fair bit of FGR and I’ll tell you for sure - since Cotts has arrived there is a very clear difference in how bloody hard these lads are working. They still lack quality, but flip me, they are working their nuts off. I think it says a lot about my current mood that I cheered Doidge’s goal tonight more than I cheered our goal v Swansea on Sunday!!

Weird isn’t it. Why would they take the squad photo on 27th Feb (6 months late) and then wait another 2 weeks to publish it?? It’s not like it has to go to the printers to get developed these days! I find this all very very odd

It appears as though Cornick still had his moustache in this photo. When did he shave it off, was it prior to the Shef Weds game? This photo was not taken in the last few days, maybe even the last couple of weeks. Which makes it even more odd as to why now?

Does that include the contents of brown envelopes??

Community Notes from Piercy. Superb.

Nah. Cheltenham. Punchestown is in Ireland.

Already on that one Joe.

Periodisation is a method of training where you break this down to 3 cycles, macro, meso and micro. It’s about designing training plans to achieve goals but breaking it down into constituent parts to account for heavy workloads and lighter workloads. Maybe some of you ought to register on the course to be able to get a grasp of this methodology.

He said he wanted to take a break from management for a bit. In fairness to him on these webinars, he wasn’t sure how much interest there would be. He’d initially put a post on LinkedIn asking if anyone would be interested in such a thing, and he’d figured he might have a dozen or so interested and he was going to run detailed sessions to a small number. But the interest on LinkedIn was vastly more than he anticipated and so is running these free ‘all-comers’ webinars instead now. I appreciate that he’s easily ridiculed by many but there is clearly interest from people outside of City, Sunderland and Hibs as to drawing on his experiences in the pro game. He’s been involved in 1,000 pro matches at 15 clubs and is willing to provide that experience, for free, to aspiring coaches, managers, recruiters etc. Surely it’s a good thing that he is ‘giving back’ to the game.

Yep. I had a conversation with Tinnion back in early September and he mentioned this. Basically for a number of years now we’ve been playing our kids ‘up a level’. The 16’s play in the 18’s, the 18’s play in the 21’s etc. It’s designed around a progressive pathway and affording the kids opportunity at higher age groups and thus higher quality levels. You could argue it’s been quite successful. It’s also allowed us to loan out players from our 21’s, because we’ll have the 18’s playing for the 21’s instead. In September, I asked about the reason there weren’t so many 21’s out on loan this year as yet. The answer was because the focus this year was on winning the 18’s Youth Cup. Further reasoning was that, and I quote “we’re really proud of the academy and what we’ve done, but we’ve got nothing to actually show for it, so we want some silverware”. So yes, Kid, we have purposely sabotaged our successful youth model (with knock on effect to the 21’s loan opportunities and 1st team experience opportunity) because we want to win the cup. Who was it said that at that level it’s not about winning it’s about the development of the players? We seem to have said “bollox to that this year, we want the cup”.

30 years eh?? That reminds me….. We’re crap at home, we’re crap at home, for years now, City’s crap at home ……. cuz I remember.. A Robin on a shirt, Johnson’s Paint still gleaming, 30 years of hurt, never my pants I’m creaming

I don’t think Dickie takes too many touches very often. He occasionally may have 3 or 4 when an immediate pass forward isn’t available and he thus shifts to the left for a pass to Pring or the right to Vyner. Re Mehmeti. Very different. He’s a winger. I’d expect wingers to take more touches of the ball as they are attempting to dribble and beat a man or create space. TGH takes too many touches for a CM. It slows us down massively. CM’s at this level should be 1 or 2 touch, 3 at max. He did this under the previous manager too so it’s not instruction. This thread has been on my radar ever since he arrived but I didn’t want to ‘go early’ as it were. So when someone else has notified this too I now find it’s time for me to say my piece. It’s happened all season, it’s not a regression under the new manager.

It’s not instruction. That’s a terrible excuse. You can’t blame a manager for a player taking 6 touches to think about his next move. It also happened under the previous manager. It’s not instruction, it’s the players speed of thought.

Yes yes yes. That was the bit I forgot to add to my post earlier. He regularly takes 4, 5 or 6 touches before moving the ball on. Watch the best midfielders in this division, it’s all 1 or 2 touch. Occasionally 3. Generally the best CM’s in this league take 1 touch to control it and manoeuvre the ball where they want it, and the 2nd touch to pass. It keeps the play uptempo. TGH slows the game down like no CM I’ve seen before. When he does the 1 and 2 touch stuff he’s fine, but more often than not it’s 4,5 or 6 touches. It bugs the bloody hell out of me!

I don’t think he was very good under the old one either. But that’s just my opinion.

As @Davefevs will know from our WhatsApp chats, I’m not a big fan of TGH. He’s a player with decent technique but I don’t see much more than that. He’s not very quick. He doesn’t tackle well (he’s often easily manoeuvred past and resorts to attempting to grab or pull or soft fouls). He often switches off in terms of defensive positioning (there’s been a few goals conceded from this lately). He gives the ball away very easily too often - there’s been a few incidents lately where he’s not played the easy pass in an attacking position and the opposition have broken away and had a chance or a goal). His set pieces are kind of okayish. Not brilliant but acceptable. He occasionally sees a good forward pass but it’s all too rare and he’s mostly just a very ‘safe’ passer. Think about this - West Brom were willing to pretty much swap a 22 year old academy product for a 34 year old ageing Weimann. I think there were some who suggested that West Brom sold because they needed the money - but what’s £1.3m? They could have made that sort of money up in numerous different ways. Ultimately, Corberan plays a high tempo style and TGH simply didn’t fit. Corberan was happy to sell. I personally don’t see TGH as a regular in any other top 12 team in this league. Sorry. I think we could have spent that money better. He’s not a ‘bad’ player by any means, but he is rather ineffective and just very ‘meh’.

Rob - Fevs has done my work for me It’s the 4 plus the 5.6 = 9.6. As I said in my initial post. 10 points would be the XD (expected deficit) and we are 13, so a 3.4 difference. But also Fevs is very correct in that it’s the speed of the downturn which is a concern. With which I wholeheartedly agree - hence why last week I nailed my colours to the mast and said that it was time for LM to go. I’ve lost total confidence in him.

As I’ve said before. That game we were short at CB. So in my mind you don’t then play others in unfamiliar roles which then weakens further areas of the team. Hickman should have played RB. He’d done it plenty before. That means Knight would be CM. Sykes RM and move Weimann inside to the AM. That would have ensured we weren’t weakening the whole right side of defence.

Correct. But good teams tend to win more, bad teams tend to lose more and middling teams tend to be inconsistent. Of course, but we’re not taking a 5 game sample; it’s a 15 game sample. After 1 match, some teams will have 3 points and some 0 points. Would you expect that same 3 point gap between top and bottom after 15 games? Of course not. The gaps will gradually grow as the season progresses. In the 15 game example given, we were 18 points behind Leicester. Do you expect us to still be only 18 points behind Leicester after 36 games? If so then we’d be on 63 points. That’s 19 better than we are now. We’d be 5th. If that is your expectation then great. Truth is, the gap between teams will gradually grow as the season progresses. So a 4 point gap after 15 games will likely be a 8 point gap after 30 games. It’s just plain logic. Unless we had some crazy run of form, which for an inconsistent team like ours is highly unlikely, then I’d probably expected us to only be around 3 or 4 points better off than we are now. So yes, we have certainly regressed, but it’s not to a drastic level, it’s about 3 or 4 points worse off than we were after 15 games. By the way, I’ve nailed my colours to the mast - I don’t want Manning here any more. So again this isn’t a defence of him. But it’s just logic that over a reasonable block of games, most teams will probably consistently hit around about a similar number of points.

I’ve not said it’s a positive by any means but I also don’t think you can actually argue with my stats. If after 15 games we were 4 points off the playoffs, then, if the next set of 15 games carried on the same trend then you’d be a further 4 points off, equals 8 points off after 30. So on the same trend after 38 games you’d be 10 points off. There’s nothing to dispute - it’s just mathematics. We are currently 13 points off. So presently we are 3 points behind the trend set after 15 games. Is that good? Nope. Am I defending Manning? Nope. But the math is the math.

I guess what I’d say (and this is no defence of Manning by the way), is that you haven’t really factored in the relativity. Relatively speaking, if we were 4 points off the playoffs after 15 games, then under the same trends we’d be 8 points off the playoffs after 30 games. Now on 36 games, under the same trends, we’d be roughly 9.5 to 10 points off the playoffs (well, 10 would be after 37.5 games in that 15 game model). So we are currently 13 points off the playoffs, so the relative regression is only 3 points.

Sad news and thoughts with Scott and his family. I do have a question. I appreciate that flying is out of the question for 6 months but is there another way to get her home? Would she be allowed to travel by train or car? Just wondering if there can be a huge cost saving here rather than forking out thousands to a Spanish care home? Someone with experience of these matters may put me right, but would travel by another means than flight be possible?

Just along from Severn Beach, yeah?

Yep. Agree on both.