IAmNick

Looking forward to the "Can't create any noise in the Dolman, it's far too open. Why we're stuck up at the top where we can't even see the away fans is ridiculous. How are we meant to get the crowd going there? Give us a proper corner in our home end, City fans all around us, safe standing rails, and the club will start to see some atmosphere. We always used to be at the far side, why can't we go back there again??" threads in 2-3 years.

There was one very noticeable time in the first half Naismith started coming forward out of defence to put pressure on a Swansea player who wanted to receive the ball. As he got halfway to him, Pring steamed past him heading way upfield to pressure someone else, and Naismith visibly threw his hands up in frustration and had to retreat back into the space now left behind him. Small things but you can see what Pearson means, and how some of the youth/inexperience means lots of these learned behaviours will take extra time to embed.

Why aren't they just loaded onto our season cards or whatever?

Thread about the next presenter obviously turns into a bunch of blokes complaining about the tiny handful of women around, hahaha, you couldn't make it up

Me too. I went for a pee just before half time in the toilets between the Dolman and East End. Can remember standing by the corner flag watching the last few mins of the first half as a ball swirling in the wind was misjudged by our keeper (Basso probably) and flew over his head to make it 1-0 to them. Second half was brilliant, a genuine draw that felt like a win. Adebola was an absolute beast that game.

Yep you may well be right there. The word "should" was probably doing a bit too much heavy lifting in my sentence!

I agree with your post in general, but I'm not sure about this. Lee should have been well aware of the squad dynamics, personalities, and the effect of adding more people to a stable (or unstable) group. As well as considering how they'd train or how he'd address and utilise them as the group gets larger and larger. For someone apparently so well read/experienced it'd be surprising if he really accepted any player into the group, even if they were good. When I've managed teams in the past at times I've actively protected a smaller group from being disrupted with additions, even by someone as or more skilled than some individual members due to the affect it'd have on them as a team.

Crypto idiots haven't got a clue - who'd have thought!

I like him a lot and rate him highly but probably wouldn't offer him a new contract. I don't think he's what we need right now. Ball at his feet, in tight spaces, quick passing, he's about as good as any in the squad I think. He's technically excellent and I really enjoy watching him play. I think players like Scott are probably enhanced by having a few like Jay around them. I said earlier in the season I'd like to see him tried in midfield, but I get why we haven't. I could see him going elsewhere, playing slightly different football, and doing very well - and I hope he does. Easy to forget how young he is too... Real shame we won't get anything for him.

City goal (Semenyo): https://dubz.co/v/2vyawj

Coventry goal: https://dubz.co/v/fmas2z

Given it was Pearson's decision to sign him, Pearson's decision to play him in the way he has and when he has, and Pearson's decision to put him back in the team now, if we've basically only seen good performances maybe that implies he's made quite good choices regarding Atkinson?

Wells has made such a difference since he came on

So? Millwall have played 57. Blackburn 49. Boro 48. Wigan 52. Sunderland 54. It's not a crazy amount.

Yep, you're right: https://streamja.com/0ZPEA

Antoine needs to be a little sharper but I think we're doing fine so far. We've matched them for the first 20-25m and are now growing into the game and playing a bit more football.

Much better passage of play there

There's a hefty exclusion list tonight, check here: https://www.bcfc.co.uk/news/robins-tv-stream-millwall-v-bristol-city/

City unfortunately

Well go on then. Tell us our best team (not what you think Pearson will select, your best team) and we can compare. Easy to type all that waffle but you haven't managed to answer the question in the thread.

What Gould said was: "Now we are bringing the salary levels down, we don't have lots of cash we can throw at things. If you looked at what we did last summer, we were targeting the very best players who were out of contract that year. We think that is quite a sweet spot for us because we would always be looking to be in the top 10 in terms of salaries that we can pay in the Championship. Therefore for the best players coming out of contract in the Championship or League One we are very, very attractive." Bolded bit mine - that's very different from saying we have a top 10 wage budget. He's saying we're looking to be able to be in the top 10 of salaries we can pay. That's not the same thing. To me that reads as, for the right players we can offer them a competitive salary with other clubs they might be interested in - but not that we'll have a squad on 15, 20, 30k+ like other teams... and us more recently. I also think there has been a lot of variance in our salary structure, as Pearson has talked about too. Players on 20k+ not playing, others on 2k playing every game. That's not good or healthy for the environment in the club imo. I think if you looked at our median or mean wage of our starting 11 there's no way it'd be top 10 in the division. There are teams with worse financial positions doing better. Until recently there were some with much better positions doing worse. That's football as you well know! I think Pearson should be doing slightly better with what he has available currently. I don't think it's a good or fair comparison with LJ's term though.

I tend to agree, and I think he should be doing better. That doesn't mean I think it's fair to compare the squad 1:1 with Lee's though! I think it's a lot easier to do that stuff you mention of you have more ability to change the people as well though - not wholesale, a manager can't expect a new squad at every club obviously, but there's a balance.

The longer a manager is at a club, and the more of the squad that is his, the better they should be doing. The fact is that Lee had a remit to reformat the squad exactly as he wanted (a few times over) so I'd absolutely expect him to be doing as well or better than Pearson with a similar squad. They were and are his players. The fit the formation he liked, the tactics he liked, behaved how he liked, trained how he liked, they were his. You'd absolutely expect him to be doing well with them. Pearson doesn't have that luxury. He's mashing together someone else's players, academy kids, and some scraps of free or low fee players. Now that's obviously the lot of a lot of managers at the moment - but it also means it's not a fair comparison in my opinion.

Blimey. I saw the title, heart skipped a beat, opened and read it, smirked. Some people take this all way too seriously is what I'm getting from some of these posts...

To me throwing someone under the bus is blaming them specifically for a loss (or big error) which was a team issue. It's not just saying someone was poor or whatever. Something goes wrong and one individual is named as the reason unfairly - that's my understanding of it. Bentley had been poor and quite a few were saying Max should be in. Why's that frozen out? He's just been dropped, no? I'd probably have Bentley in personally but I can explain why without saying things like thrown under the bus, lost the dressing room, frozen out, or whatever. I'm only "defending" him because I think there's a lot of legitimate and reasonably objective/fair criticism that could be levelled at him currently, but I don't think adding those kinds of things are it so I push back on it when I see it.