What a mess

[TheReds]

1 hour ago, Kid in the Riot said:

It will be very interesting to see, when all is said and done and the Lansdown's depart, how much of a "loss" they really will have made on the club (including the real estate), if any. 

One reason why I love listening to the blue few. A mate of mine seems to think we now lose 30+ million per year, no matter what gets explained that's what happens in his head. Then we have others regarding a huge figure that SL has apparently just peed away over the years, it's as if he has nothing to show for it whatsoever. Add in (assuming it all goes ahead) the new plans for a basketball arena, hotel and housing and even with the outlay for that, then it would be interesting if they do lose anything at all. 

[Tin Soldier]

30 minutes ago, TheReds said:

One reason why I love listening to the blue few. A mate of mine seems to think we now lose 30+ million per year, no matter what gets explained that's what happens in his head. Then we have others regarding a huge figure that SL has apparently just peed away over the years, it's as if he has nothing to show for it whatsoever. Add in (assuming it all goes ahead) the new plans for a basketball arena, hotel and housing and even with the outlay for that, then it would be interesting if they do lose anything at all. 

Someone did a financial Bristol Sport accrual (estimate obviously) on here a while ago to its worth and think it is safe to say SL will do OK financially when he sells up.

[LondonBristolian]

Well, now it is official. We are screwed. Where on Earth will our next win come from?

[AshtonRobin21]

4 goals for city on a Wednesday night against a decent championship side, and into the next round of the cup. 

- Competition for places heating up, and players proving their value to the club. 

- An academy product scoring twice. 

- And a dominant performance from start to finish. 

Yet some describe us as "a mess". 

Too all the fans who stayed positive - enjoy that one, and let's look forward to the next one on Saturday. 

And too all the negative 'fans' - there doesn't seem to be much noise coming from you tonight...

Up the City!!

[Top Robin]

11 minutes ago, LondonBristolian said:

Well, now it is official. We are screwed. Where on Earth will our next win come from?

Hope it lasts

[redrob]

8 hours ago, AshtonRobin21 said:

4 goals for city on a Wednesday night against a decent championship side, and into the next round of the cup. 

- Competition for places heating up, and players proving their value to the club. 

- An academy product scoring twice. 

- And a dominant performance from start to finish. 

Yet some describe us as "a mess". 

Too all the fans who stayed positive - enjoy that one, and let's look forward to the next one on Saturday. 

And too all the negative 'fans' - there doesn't seem to be much noise coming from you tonight...

Up the City!!

I wouldn't call the team Cov played last night "a decent championship side". 

[Johnny Musicworks]

51 minutes ago, redrob said:

I wouldn't call the team Cov played last night "a decent championship side". 

And neither would most OTIB critics call us a decent Championship side either. We even played a player who some said should never play for us again. We beat what was in front of us so let’s just enjoy the moment. The next excuse for negativity will be along soon I’m sure. We are Bristol City after all !

[Murraysrightplum]

You’re once, twice, three times a looney

[Northern Red]

If we'd put out an under strength team and lost to a more first choice Coventry team then I highly doubt the "but it wasn't their best side" brigade would be offering the same excuses in our defence.

[Bodiesaffer]

They made the changes last night second half which finished in a draw.

[AshtonRobin21]

1 hour ago, redrob said:

I wouldn't call the team Cov played last night "a decent championship side". 

We made 5 changes ourselves, so the arguement goes both ways. 

[sh1t_ref_again]

14 hours ago, Tin Soldier said:

Someone did a financial Bristol Sport accrual (estimate obviously) on here a while ago to its worth and think it is safe to say SL will do OK financially when he sells up.

Well if someone said it on OTIB it must be fact then

[IAmNick]

9 minutes ago, Bodiesaffer said:

They made the changes last night second half which finished in a draw.

Oh nice, so are they through to play half a game in the next round then or..?

[Bodiesaffer]

11 minutes ago, IAmNick said:

Oh nice, so are they through to play half a game in the next round then or..?

Why not, it worked last night.

[Port Said Red]

25 minutes ago, Bodiesaffer said:

They made the changes last night second half which finished in a draw.

A draw you say? Away from home you say? Excellent.

[RudiRed]

16 hours ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Funny isn't it, you look at the headline figure of £170m spent in a single decade, the stadium redevelopment and the HPC, and you assume that all along the aim must have been to reach the Premier League.

Then you consider we settled for Academy Cat 2 status, when we could have gone for Cat 1 (outside of FFP spending too), and look at the managerial appointments - particularly Millen and Holden, and we can argue about a few of the others - the lack of any football direction off-field, and the self-sabotage of the summer transfer window of 2015, and think, was the aim really & truly to reach the Premier League? 

I have never been convinced it was, and still am not. If it had have happened then I think it would have been more by luck (2008) than design.

It will be very interesting to see, when all is said and done and the Lansdown's depart, how much of a "loss" they really will have made on the club (including the real estate), if any. 

I think the aim was to get to the PL but he wanted to do it on the cheap - and by that I don't mean the boom or bust method that some sides have done, but in terms of appointments and wages.....the only time this slipped was during the MA era and that was more to do with not having his finger on the pulse.

Employing the likes of Millen and Holden are pretty scandalous when you take everything into account.

[DaveF]

33 minutes ago, Bodiesaffer said:

They made the changes last night second half which finished in a draw.

And we nearly lost it had we not equalised in injury time!

[Bodiesaffer]

4 minutes ago, DaveF said:

And we nearly lost it had we not equalised in injury time!

Nearly.  

[Davefevs]

2 hours ago, Johnny Musicworks said:

And neither would most OTIB critics call us a decent Championship side either. We even played a player who some said should never play for us again. We beat what was in front of us so let’s just enjoy the moment. The next excuse for negativity will be along soon I’m sure. We are Bristol City after all !

2 hours ago, AshtonRobin21 said:

We made 5 changes ourselves, so the arguement goes both ways. 

Yep, it was two rotated Championship teams, neither manager fielded a full strength eleven.  We fielded at least 3 players (King, Vyner and Massengo) who aren’t fit to wear the red and white according to some on here.

 

[Port Said Red]

As part of my training consultancy I had a few different courses I attended on Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). One of the things that always stood out to me was how the practitioners, (often high level psychologists) were able to show that humans were very bad at focusing on the negative of a statement. E.g. If you see a motorway sign that says "don't drink and drive", many peoples first thought would be, "I'd love a drink right now", where as a sign that said "drive sober" would be positive reinforcement of the idea of not drinking and driving.

This is my only explanation as to why SL's statement of "I am not looking to sell the club" is being taken as a clear indication that he is in fact, looking to sell the club. Shame he didn't say, "I will continue to own the club, but potentially in combination with other parties". (The NLP version).

[Lanterne Rouge]

On 09/08/2022 at 23:35, billywedlock said:

You are so far wrong . And devoid of any understanding of the current challenges and situation. Pearson will get an extended contract. That should shake you up you negative soul . 

A wise man once said `A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest`

[Johnny Musicworks]

It seems to me that the mess is largely being cleared up and IMO that is what Nigel (and Gould) were brought in to do. It’s no coincidence that MA conveniently moved on soon after.

Financially as other have said the MA/LJ era got us into that mess. Ironically really after failing to back Cotts. Forget the sound bites’Premier League in 3 years’ because as we now see that is not likely nor feasible. Gould came in to steady the financial ship rather than plan for a cruise into the Premier League and it seems that he is doing that. If we take a points deduction then it will be part of the ‘steadying strategy’ where a limited hit could be manageable.

Nigel has probably come in with the same ‘ship steadying’ philosophy along with several targets and I doubt that promotion is high on the list. His job involves getting rid of the deadwood which is progressing nicely. At the same time reducing the wage bill, now down to under £20m pa so also progressing nicely. Having shipped out the deadwood then it’s to then find bargains (ie Sykes, Naismith, Wilson and hopefully Bajic) and to improve the Pathway from Academy to first team. Not going bad either on that front at all.

With all this the key ingredient is not promotion but maintaining Championship status and if that is seriously threatened then no doubt plan B is Nigel gets the bullet. If we avoid relegation and achieve the rest then what do we have ? We have a Championship club just possibly moving towards a profit making situation in a couple of years (the real 3 year plan) and a much more attractive prospect for investment or takeover.

Being a similar age to SL I know thoughts turn to legacy. SL has probably realised Premier League football is unlikely to be his legacy now and let’s face it even if we did make it then relegation and another restructuring would probably follow 12 months later and that involves several more years commitment. Instead his legacy will more likely be a fairly strong business model with excellent stadium, training ground and Academy. That is where I believe we are at. Not so much a mess as preparing for the next owners to pick up the baton in the next couple of years.

 

 

 

 

[Rich]

1 hour ago, Johnny Musicworks said:

It seems to me that the mess is largely being cleared up and IMO that is what Nigel (and Gould) were brought in to do. It’s no coincidence that MA conveniently moved on soon after.

Financially as other have said the MA/LJ era got us into that mess. Ironically really after failing to back Cotts. Forget the sound bites’Premier League in 3 years’ because as we now see that is not likely nor feasible. Gould came in to steady the financial ship rather than plan for a cruise into the Premier League and it seems that he is doing that. If we take a points deduction then it will be part of the ‘steadying strategy’ where a limited hit could be manageable.

Nigel has probably come in with the same ‘ship steadying’ philosophy along with several targets and I doubt that promotion is high on the list. His job involves getting rid of the deadwood which is progressing nicely. At the same time reducing the wage bill, now down to under £20m pa so also progressing nicely. Having shipped out the deadwood then it’s to then find bargains (ie Sykes, Naismith, Wilson and hopefully Bajic) and to improve the Pathway from Academy to first team. Not going bad either on that front at all.

With all this the key ingredient is not promotion but maintaining Championship status and if that is seriously threatened then no doubt plan B is Nigel gets the bullet. If we avoid relegation and achieve the rest then what do we have ? We have a Championship club just possibly moving towards a profit making situation in a couple of years (the real 3 year plan) and a much more attractive prospect for investment or takeover.

Being a similar age to SL I know thoughts turn to legacy. SL has probably realised Premier League football is unlikely to be his legacy now and let’s face it even if we did make it then relegation and another restructuring would probably follow 12 months later and that involves several more years commitment. Instead his legacy will more likely be a fairly strong business model with excellent stadium, training ground and Academy. That is where I believe we are at. Not so much a mess as preparing for the next owners to pick up the baton in the next couple of years.

 

 

 

 

This is far too sensible a post for this site, can it be removed please.

[sh1t_ref_again]

1 hour ago, Lanterne Rouge said:

A wise man once said

sorry what did he say?

[chinapig]

3 hours ago, Johnny Musicworks said:

It seems to me that the mess is largely being cleared up and IMO that is what Nigel (and Gould) were brought in to do. It’s no coincidence that MA conveniently moved on soon after.

And it's reasonable to expect that it will take at least as long to fix the mess as it did to create it. If not longer since creating it was easy but fixing it is hard.

[Rudolf Hucker]

4 hours ago, Lanterne Rouge said:

A wise man once said 

 

2 hours ago, sh1t_ref_again said:

sorry what did he say?

I said … 

Edited August 11, 2022 by Rudolf Hucker

[sh1t_ref_again]

Are we in such a mess?

Because we have not reached the premier league? whilst its easy to chuck names of teams around who have reached the prem, reality under recent years financial restrictions of FFP, its very difficult to do particularly when not on a level playing field due to parachute payments, or you go down the Derby route / villa route and gamble, but does not always work out well. Some may say, SL should have gambled and spent big years ago, before the FFP restrictions, but at that time perhaps we did not have the infrastructure, so the plan was to get the stadium and off field activities in place ready for the prem push, then FFP bit. 

I am happy to be a mid table championship team, where we are competitive and maybe push towards play offs. If we do one day go up, then I would want us ready for it and not every ones whipping boys, I go to Ashton Gate to see city and hope for a win, not to watch how good were Liverpool etc as they put 5 past us.

Because we up for sell?, not sure we are just up for sell, but SL is seeking other investment, if he received the right offer from someone he could trust to continue and take his vision forward then he would hand control. SL may also have an eye to the future with possible changes to the way clubs are funded that may remove some of the current FFP shackles.

Team not big enough or good enough? we all can see the problems created by MA, I think MA sold SL a vision of how he could trade players to generate income and over all improve the quality of the squad to complete at the top end with clubs having millions in parachute payments. We had some success of selling players for big money i.e Webster, Flint, Bryant, Brownhill, Reid etc (I know they were not MA's, but was the principal), he then tried to up the anti by not just picking up the young and cheap, but start paying £1 million for young talent to nurture, unfortunately the talent spotting or playing plan was all disjointed and failed leaving us with expensive wages and little to sell on. Enter NP, where we have now reduced the wages, have 2 of the brightest most valuable players outside the prem, and several others with good value or potential and once settled and injuries returned will be competitive. If we are ever to challenge as a club without changes to FFP / investment, it will be by developing our own players, keeping hold of them (difficult with some of the money talked about) and building a team that is stronger than its individual parts.

Its easy to think the grass is greener on the other side, but that's often not the case. I have been a season ticket holder for 35 years and supported longer, SL has invested and taken the club forward massively on and off the pitch and with SL funding the club, I know I will still have a team to support, with a great ground, even if it may not be alongside the prawn sandwich brigade in the prem.

[downendcity]

5 hours ago, Lanterne Rouge said:

A wise man once said 

 

3 hours ago, sh1t_ref_again said:

sorry what did he say?

Was it, " I'll only believe it when it's on the OS", or am I getting befuddled in this heat ?

[downendcity]

posted twice in error.

Edited August 11, 2022 by downendcity

[Redtucks]

5 hours ago, Lanterne Rouge said:

A wise man once said.....

 

3 hours ago, sh1t_ref_again said:

sorry what did he say?

 

14 minutes ago, downendcity said:

 

Was it, " I'll only believe it when it's on the OS"

Couldn't have been a wise man, it was Robbored that said that!!!