BrizzleRed

Bear in mind the ST’s are only available in the South Stand to existing ST holders and you can bet there are a good few who haven’t renewed. The whole idea was to keep as many seats as possible free in there for potd. There’s a lot of spin going on from the club atm and I’m sure Marshall has bought into that. The only way I can see a big need for potd is if we were pushing capacity most games. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush as the saying goes, so I would have thought it appears here. I really can’t see why the club would turn down full payment for a ST before the season begins and instead, hope that seat gets occupied by various potd people for every game and only get paid gradually, on a match-by-match basis. Being a bit of cynic about our board, I suspect it’s more likely the so-called ST limit would only come into play as an ass covering excuse, if ST uptake fell well below expectations.

Sorry, why would we cap at 15k? That guff about potd supporters spending more money than season ticket holders just doesn’t hold water. Can’t see the club turning down money from someone paying for a whole season and instead, keeping the seat empty, in the hope it gets sold every match to a potd. Just doesn’t make any sense.

That's certainly my fear. Depending on what happens during the summer, it'll become clear whether SL plans on progressing this club, or is just happy with us as a bang average, mid-table Championship club. We'll soon be finding out.

Agreed It just feels like we're reaching the point where excuses are running out for SL. He's run a fairly steady, though generally pretty dull ship for over 20 years and it's feeling pretty stale now. All credit to Liam Manning on how he's now getting performances from the almost full squad and better consistency and results are following, so that's a definite positive. What better time to build on the very solid foundations we have now. Not wanting to reopen the old wounds of the pro and anti Nige battle, but Lansdown is the one holding the purse strings, and he chose to not back Nige when we needed strengthening in the same areas last summer. That's his prerogative, but he also has to own those decisions. We're now at the point that he has his own man in, so if he fails to back Liam Manning too, that confirms to me that SL has no intention of moving this club forward. For me, he either chooses to back the club properly again, as there probably won't be a better chance, or admits he no longer has the will, or enthusiasm. If it's the latter and he genuinely cares about this club, his best legacy would be to do everything he can to pass it over to someone with the ambition, vision and energy to breath some fresh impetus into us. It would feel like a right kick in the nuts if he holds back again and blows another opportunity!

I understand what you’re saying and agree we haven’t got stand-outs like Semenyo and Scott atm. What do have is a rock solid defence and I’d argue that as a unit, they’re the best we’ve had in decades. Take a couple of the likes of Vyner, Dickie, Atkinson, Pring. Roberts, or even Tanner out of that defence, it could make a huge difference. I see Dickie as the biggest danger. He was awesome at QPR, then had that dip and moved here and has recaptured his form again and is like a rock in the centre. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a lot of interest in him for starters So yes, I completely agree that prolific striker is needed and a Twine type, if not Twine himself. Trouble is they won’t come cheap and we needed both those type of players this time last season too, but they weren’t delivered! If we have a couple of other vital current players going out of the door as well, we’ll be back to playing catch up. Knowing how it works here, we’ll probably end up with another couple of ‘ones for the furure’ as replacements, so we’ll never get to that finished team who can actually kick on and we’ll continue being promised jam tomorrow.

Yes, you’re most likely right and the big player sales are reducing the amount SL is putting in, rather than adding to the pot. My point is, after all our cutbacks over the last couple of years, we should be well placed to now use that to our advantage. If SL want’s to impose his own new financial squeeze on us, we’ll be losing all that advantage. At the risk of sounding ungrateful and to put it crudely, if he’s not going to sh*t, he should get off the pot. If he isn’t interested in the club any more, then it’s best he finds someone who is. If he’s just looking at his bank balance, that will only get worse, the longer he owns the club. Selling is completely in his own hands and it all depends on what price he puts on the club. We’ve finished the season really well, but we know that will mean zilch if the wrong decisions are made over the summer. With the right retentions and additions, we could make some genuine progress next season, but only if he’s fully on board with that. If not, we are stagnant at best, and could easily start going backwards.

….. or the nest egg that it was inferred that some would be given back to help fill the gaps left after the departures of Semenyo and Scott!

I don’t look at it as Lansdown’s nest egg, it’s the clubs, along with the debts we owe him. We either invest some of the money that transfers like AS and AS bring in, or we go backwards, simple as that As for losing millions, nobody with sny sense would expect to buy a club like ours and do anything else but lose money surely?

I wouldn’t get too excited if I were you. Credit to Manning on how he’s now starting to get the results and some consistency and he’s doing a very decent job. Don’t forget that he isn’t the problem though. We’re Bristol City and to bring in a couple of new faces in the summer, we could easily lose several of our top players to fund it, to avoid cracking open the nest egg. We’re perenially mid-table for a reason, and I just can’t see past us in 12 months time lamenting the sale of players X,Y & Z and contemplating what we could have achieved if we’d kept them. I’d love to be proved wrong, but I just don’t see SL resisting the chance of increasing the nest egg and I think that’s far more important to him than a push for the Premier League.

Exactly and as we were in the lower leagues, it was totally appropriate for our position. After seeing that Terry Cooper interview with him in tears of pride after us beating Bolton, I'll never doubt the value of that competition to him, especially when you look at the honours he enjoyed with Leeds. That was us rising from the ashes of 1982 and there was nothing embarrassing about seeing the club beginning to find its way back to a respectable place again. Whilst I'd never want to see us in that competition again, it was just what we needed at that time to give the club a huge lift and some self-belief. Everyone to their own though.

There certainly are BT and I guess all us City fans come into that category too. How else can we keep coming back every year with renewed hope that this year could be the one when deep down, we all know what the reality with this club will be

For teams in the lower leagues, it was great if you got to the later rounds. Although crowds in the early rounds were crap, it got a lot more serious when a trip to the twin towers started to loom ever bigger. Let's be honest, that was the only way lower league clubs were going to get to Wembley in those days and I view those times with real fondness. Ok, there was that element of standing on the Wembley terraces and looking out onto the pitch, and wishing you were actually at the FA or League Cup Final, rather than the Freight Rover Trophy, but I certainly wouldn't have missed it, or the Hereford semi's .......... that said, there's nothing that would have persuaded me to stump up £454 quid to by a ringer shirt purportedly associated with it either!

Interesting. Looks like that winning bidder waited until the last minute of the auction and slammed a massive bid in. All the bids after that were automatically getting blown out the water by that huge winning bid. Makes you wonder what their top limit was?!

Obviously some people put a lot more value on the 'Mickey Mouse Cup' than you do RR

Yes, completely makes sense what you say. I notice the seller amended their listing just after the discussion on here. They changed the description to say it was a match worn shirt, but wasn’t actually worn in the Final. I can’t imagine anybody bidding anything like that price for any old shirt of that era though, so either someone put on an early auto bid before the listing was amended, or they haven’t read the description well enough. Agreed!

I was watching it at the end and it certainly looked like a bit of bidding fever going on. There had to be at least two people who were desperate to get it, to be able to push the price that high. Wonder if there’s someone thinking ‘what the hell have I done’, when they woke up this morning. Being super-competitive, or prone to getting bidding fever are the two most dangerous things in an auction.

You’ve got a nice little mini nest egg there if you manage to find it then Phants!!!

Well, we could easily name a few on here that did.

Well, that certainly caused some interest and a bit of a feeding frenzy. Final price of £454.00!!!

That single match sale of vacant ST seats is the perfect solution. That would involve some extra effort from the club to make that possible though. At present, they seem to prefer putting their effort into pointing a finger at non-attendees, even though the club have already been paid for that seat. The only time these vacant seats really become a problem is on the rare occasions of a sell-out match. Seems like a lot of noise from the club about nothing.

As you say, it is a lottery and for all the guidelines, the officials often interpret stuff so differently. The offside situation is getting silly now though, with the matter of millimetres being measured. It's like those songs about 'Aguerro, your teeth are offside', or 'Ozil, your eyes are offside'! Joking aside, nobody gains an advantage with a couple of mm, so should it really come down to such small fractions? One of the better suggestions I've heard is to say there needs to be clear daylight between the last defender and the attacker, maybe measured at the waist, being the centre of the body. Ok, that certainly gives the advantage to the attacking team, but the defending team may be less likely to be constantly playing the offside trap, because if they judge it wrong, that really hands a significant advantage to the attacking team. We already see advantages given to keepers in any body contact at present, so giving advantages in the game aren't unprecedented. Don't know how difficult that type of offside decision would be for a lino to judge, but it must already be difficult enough to judge these fractions at present. The problem with VAR is, it seems to be the first point of reference, rather than leaving it to the officials to make a judgement first and leave it to them to ask for VAR if they aren't certain. It just feels like VAR is becoming a massive hindrance to football at present and arguably, causes more controversy than before it existed.

Couldn’t agree more Max. In theory, if VAR was employed properly, it could possibly be a valuable tool, just like goal-line technology undoubtedly is. Sadly, the combination of crap offside rules and the completely flawed employment of VAR above the match officials, has actually made it a blight on the game, rather than a benefit. Higher end football needs to sort itself out, before it actually destroys itself.

Good ol Jon! I know it’s a delicate balancing act with supply and demand and income for the club, but the amount of gaps in the Lansdown particularly, tells me they’re priced too high. Could find even more gaps appearing there once potd people start moving to the SS..

We’ll have to see how it pans out. The prices for all stands are obviously set by the club, so they certainly aren’t forced to price the Lansdown and Dolman so high. Would be interesting to compare our current income to the sell ‘em cheap and stack ‘em high pricing structure at clubs like Bradford City, who apparently manage to average around 18,000.

Good heads-up and wonder how many are thinking it’s midnight tonight. I did mine a bit after midnigt this morning, as I don’t trust them to not have a website crash today.