Steve Watts

7 minutes ago, IAmNick said:

Why's the centre circle / middle strip of the box a different colour? Just as it gets more wear so has newer/harder wearing grass there or something?

I think they were the parts of the pitch that would be re-turfed at various times due to wear, as you suggest.

Haven't seen either of these pics before that I can recall.  Thanks for the share.  Love things like this.

23 hours ago, Red Billy said:

The signing reminds me a lot of the Lois Diony loan from the outside. Had performed well in the past but had struggled leading up to us signing him. Bring him in and hope you can get the better version playing for you. I’d rather we loan these players first and take a look at them than sign them like Gustav Engvall and never play them and have them stuck on a three year deal nowhere near the first team set up. 

Well.....one was dire and one is Dire...other than that.....

13 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Did a good job at Dons. RIP 

This. Never a fan of his football, but if ever there was a manager/club marriage made in heaven it was him and Wimbledon.

2 hours ago, firstdivision said:

I think this league is brutal and there will be crap games and some poor performances. (I see myself as a realist.) We should kind of accept that , however frustrating it is.

Whilst I agree, the desired split is more decent than poor. The reality is that the pendulum swings sooooo far the other way that it becomes impossible to kind of accept that. 

Today was just more of the same and we can thank Max for the point. It was just a dire performance. All that rubbish on the pitch... And a fair amount of litter too!

He has improved massively, but he still needs to work on his judgment when releasing the ball (Friday to Zak was an extreme example but not the first time he's put his defence under pressure) and also his command of the 6 yard box. All too often the ball passes through that area without him claiming it. 

However, as said, it's still a massive improvement from where he was, so hopefully he can improve on these things too.

On 13/12/2023 at 12:03, Miah Dennehy said:

Where was that?

And why is it Roy Hodgson!

Because Roy's (now) high profile and tanked in Bristol....

On 25/03/2024 at 17:10, Ealing Robin said:

Lets see how many actually do attend this fixture, but I was looking to take my partner to this game, geuinly didn't think this would get anywhere near a sell out especially considering how many were at the most recent fixture. 

So I'm hopeful that there may be a spare knocking about I could take off someone's hands at face value. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

What on Earth has she/he done to you to deserve this?!?  I'm sure they didn't mean to upset you - you should give them another chance to make up for it!

1 hour ago, Robbored said:

Every time I hear one of his interviews I think how similar he is to LJ - same technical speak that hardly anyone understands, hot air and waffle and equally as boring……………

His football is the same as well - dull and uninspiring with no flair or instinctive play.

I hope the rumours are true that he’s got 8 games to save his job and it’ll be 7 after Fridays defeat. I can’t see us getting anything at Home Park either.

Yeah, but at least with LJ he said it with emotion, unlike the great automaton that's currently in situ.

1 hour ago, Ian M said:

He won't be free if he stays in England at the end of his contract (and technically not if he goes to a UEFA club either but far less compensation). If we keep him, it's in our interests to play to his strengths and get a goalscoring season out of him.

I know people hate Pearson vs Manning comparisons, but it's not really in doubt that Pearson created value in our players and I argue that Manning is actually devaluing them.

Genuine question... Is that England or the UK... Because if it's the former then Rangers and Celtic may well be circling.

1 hour ago, CityReds said:

Keep at what cost though? Clearly Conway hasn’t signed because the number isn’t high enough. But how high do you go for a striker that has 9 goals this season, 3 of which were penalties. Tinnion did say it was someone abroad they were eyeing up.

Considering how economical with the truth they've been lately it's probably Seb returning from his loan in Wales.

30 minutes ago, Parkwaymom said:

If no new season tickets will be sold in the south stand and no transfers in permitted, does that mean current south stand season ticket holders effectively have until 3rd of May to renew their existing seat? Once the seats are released, if no one else can purchase them surely they will remain available to the existing ticket holder?

It's a good point.  However I guess it does allow for seat moves still, so someone can purchase your seat if they are an existing South Stand STH

13 hours ago, spudski said:

He should take up commentating on horse racing...he's got projectile verbal diarrhoea. 

Makes me want to vomit every time I hear him. 

I feel for our players listening to him every day. 

Really?  What on earth makes you think he'd find passion in his voice to commentate on horses?  Cricket, perhaps....

13 hours ago, redsquirrel said:

someone needs to press his settings button and change the language to japanese,no fecker would understand a word and we would start winning games again

As opposed to..........?  You don't need the language to change for that!

28 minutes ago, AshtonGreat said:

I'm not a troll. I thought he spoke well

I'm not a troll. I thought he spoke well

Don't feel that you have to justify yourself Liam.  You just keep doing you.....

16 hours ago, Silvio Dante said:

Notes from it:

- Matty James is fully training as is Twine. Williams not as yet

- They’ve had some physically tough sessions which in turn develop mental toughness - have now given them days off as recharging is very important (at this point I believe I saw Jon Lansdown smacking his head against a wall)

- The large volume of games we’ve not won or drawn we’ve been in them. The culture is good and it’s important to stick together

- Questioned as to how much of the plan is set game by game and how much is based on how he’d like us to play. Answer was that the behaviours needed to be right, had to run and had to compete, but he very much sees football as cat and mouse (….sake) and if the opponents are struggling against us then they will change and it’s about having a culture when the players solve the problem and that’s the big bit. 
 

(NB - major issue here. He’s right that opponents will change but the problem is he doesn’t and he can’t expect the players to solve the macro problems. They did when they went off piste vs Swansea but that’s in spite and not because of him)

- Bit about the fans, the youth cup, nothing else major. New phrase is “we need to do us” which is very romcom.

Not worth 8 minutes of your life.

Thanks for the summary.  I switched off after 2:30 when asked "The last few weeks have seen results drop away.....  Have you seen enough in our performances to assure you that results will turn around again?".  I gave him until the second word of his answer, which started "Yeah, definitely...." and exited immediately because I knew that what would follow would be either dishonest or delusional.

Another thing of note for me was that he's been banging on about getting the players "on the grass" to work on the processes and behaviours (), and so with an international break they've worked on getting the players fit physically and mentally and "done some work on tactics".  Surely this should've been the ideal time to focus on the tactical side.  There were no matches that the players had to recover physically from etc, so why, when given time to work on tactics does he relegate them to an "also" afterthought?!?

1 hour ago, Superjack said:

Well, presumably they do try to win every game, Dave.

Does Manning?

Well that would involve attacking, so I may stretch to he tries to not lose every game, I guess!

11 hours ago, slartibartfast said:

Never mind plastic pitches, they could do with a decent set of lights, went Thursday night, could hardly see a thing , surprised they are deemed suitable !

Do you think we could borrow them?  Not being able to see a thing at the match is a really attractive proposition right now!

12 minutes ago, LondonBristolian said:

Not convinced by the slogan. Pretty certain that if my Mum, brother, Aunts and Uncles played against Manchester City, my family would not come out on top...

Depends if Man City were managed by Dumblebore.

9 minutes ago, 2015 said:

The club seem to think tacky and cringey slogans will push the club into the Premier League.

Premier League bull*******

When will they learn that you can't just throw a "catchy" slogan out there without a hashtag preceding it!

Saw the title and thought "Bloody hell they're getting desperate for season ticket renewals!"

1 hour ago, Show Me The Money! said:

Sad thing is though if you look back over those 40 years you will have most likely felt despondent at many times, div 4 times, Pulis era, Tinnion as manager, McInnes era, end of Johnson senior era, Johnson Junior losing streaks, Holden era and even some of Pearson’s era. 
 

Are you more despondent now than any of those times?

Or have I just made you even more despondent about supporting City in general? 

Yep. Much more despondent now. We've gone from being on the cusp of something to whatever fresh hell this is. And it was all so unnecessary.

46 minutes ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

What often annoys me is the cries I hear of "what about Man City" mainly from them Everton fans. 

But what people don't realise is that these charges are very different to the charges that Everton and Forest admitted to. 

Man City deny any wrong doing. 

Look how long it took to deal with Everton and its one charge which meant other clubs were relegated instead of them. Why ain't people talking about that? 

115 charges that are all denied take a very long time to be dealt with. The hearing will probably last for months and months. Imagine the amount of paper work that is involved? I think I heard there was thousands of pages of paperwork for Everton for just the one charge! 

When people say "what about Man City" I just switch off as its such an invalid arguement and shows a lack of understanding about what is actually happening.

Whilst not untrue regarding the complexities of the charges brought against Man City, it's frankly reprehensible that these weren't dealt with as they occurred rather than more than a decade later.

The Premier League have been massively negligent here and have effectively created a situation whereby "What about Man City?" is asked so often.

2 hours ago, Selred said:

I personally think you're a bit short in the memory.

We are mid table, yes going backwards, but highly unlikely to be relegated. It's not like the days under S'OD / McInnes of late.

We have a squad who played with pride earlier in the season. Again, not like the massive wages we had on dead wood earlier in the season.

We have multiple academy players in the squad, it's not like under Gary where we didn't have any youth.

Even as a squad, we are fairly young. It's not like we have lots of older players on longer contracts.

Yes Manning-ball is dire. Tinnion and JL are out of their depth. But there's also so much potential here, as seen in glimpses under Nigel.

 

Absolutely no short memory in play here.  Feelings are feelings, and like I said, I've never felt so despondent about the club.

No, we're not likely to be relegated this season, but it's not even about that. 

You say about the academy players in the first team.  None of those have been blooded by Dumblebore, and considering Tinnions comments a year or so ago about the next batch, then where are they?  He's not even giving them matchday experience to fill the bench. The pride and belief has been sucked out of the players and the supporters.  There's no expectation that we're going to win any match and there's no expectation that we'll be at least entertained by trying to. 

The whole club is rudderless.  Communications are clumsy at best, season ticket price increases inflammatory and fans being told that we have to suck it up and support the club whilst being driven away in our thousands.

The trouble with potential is that in it's current guise the club is stripping all of that potential away.  

Unless big changes happen then this club is only going one way.

3 hours ago, Cole Not Gas said:

So in a sport of passion and opinions certain tools who love their own opinions only, not to mention welsh-sounding names and auto-signatures so full of self-importance, certain  posters wish to 'silence' the views of others; if that's attempts at marxism or dictatorship on a football forum, then crack on Jack. I actually like one or two of your hundreds of comments but not the ones trying to silence others nor those implying anyone who doesnt hate the current manager, have pics of Pearson on their walls etc must be employed by B.S. Growing up would be good for you.

1 hour ago, Gert Mare said:

Isn’t silencing the views of others the intention of your original post?

I'm so glad you said that....I was about to post the same thing.  The hypocrisy of moaning about others trying to silence peoples views on a thread they started that was trying to silence people's views is quality even for him! 

Pun completely intended, but the OP has (once again) had a gert mare here!