Kid in the Riot

Thanks for letting us know and thoughts with all friends and family. Rest in peace, @B1ackbird.

Yeah, I was there. A very enjoyable afternoon at The Creek.

This forum is getting more mental by the hour. King is leaving in the summer ffs because he wants to continue playing.

On the subject of gigs I saw the brilliant Gruff Rhys again last night. Superb set in an intimate venue I'd not been to before: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/gruff-rhys/2024/strange-brew-bristol-england-53add7d9.html His new album is well worth a listen.

Great - let's hope the gig is better than the new title of the album!

Yeah, I'll be on a residents ticket for LSTD. Did it last year for Fatboy Slim. I actually thought the crowd was alright. Lots of young uns wearing practically nothing as it was a hot day but no hint of any aggro. Didn't rate Fatboy Slim at all though. Some of the acts we saw in the day were good though.

That would be amazing. Will definitely be doing LSTD for The Streets too

MATT LE TISSIER, FRANCIS BENALI, THEO WALCOTT, JASON DODD, TIM FLOWERS, KEN MONKOU, CRAIG DAVID YOUR BOYS TOOK ONE HELL OF A BEATING

Sunak and Russell Martin. Hope we murder them.

Absolutely. A surprisingly arrogant set of supporters given that other than one FA cup in the mid-70s and a football league trophy they've won **** all. Which for a club of their size and given the amount of time they've spent in the top flight is a bit shit.

Fair play never knew Harry Cornick was a street artist

That sounds amazing. Coincidentally I had a glass of Picpoul with my oysters at Noahs - L'Abeille

Right, so you aren't talking about controlling possession; just having a bit more of it. That makes more sense, though you'll be aware "passing it around the back four" carries a fair bit of risk too i.e. one misplaced pass and the opposition are in. Strikes me that with no league win this year until today, Manning took the pragmatic approach and decided the result was more important than the performance. Also bear in mind he has literally had next to no sessions on the training pitch since the new year due to the number of games we've had. He clearly doesn't think the players are quite there yet to be fully confident with a possession based game, tho we are seeing some promising early signs imo. Fair enough. We'll have to disagree on the performance of the defence, which I thought was v good (tho note on another thread you name three of our defenders as your performers of the day??), and also that Boro didn't really cut us open too often imo, and that it was a deserved win - I think it was fully deserved.

You said it felt weird that we didn't come out and try to control possession. My question to you is do you think this team is capable of doing that in a second 45 away from home after god knows how many games in January and Feb? If you do, then what evidence have you seen to make you think that would've been a better approach, which would've invited less pressure?

You think we could've come out and simply dominated possession? Come on....

That's fine. Claiming the vaccine had dead fetal cells in it, amongst other horseshit he shared, is not.

I think we were just trying to defend a lead, which isn't exactly an unusual or controversial tactic. Especially for a squad that has played a lot of football, and is playing away from home at a decent team. To defend a lead you need either more defenders on the pitch, more players in defensive positions, or both. I assume that's what Manning had in mind, and ultimately it worked.

Sorry Dave, but your post comes across as joyless. We've just won at a top 10 side away from home and one with a bigger budget than us. We could, probably should, have been 3 or 4 up at half time. We aren't in a place where we're capable of playing at an intensity like we did in the first half in the second as well, particularly given the amount of minutes in players legs. That's presumably part of the reason the change was made. I agree we ceded some control of the game, at the same time I thought we defended very well - and we have that in our locker. I don't recall many Boro clear-cut chances, they had their first goal correctly ruled out and then scored a fluke. If you're angry about that then you must've missed a lot of very bad City performances over the years. Either that, or experienced a lot of anger!

Anger

Obviously enjoys playing against them as thought he was very good against Boro in the home game last season.

I note the same people that were deriding Manning for not being tactically flexible enough are now criticising him for changing formation. You've gotta laugh.

GET IN!!!

Harry Cornick's dancing feet

Distraction of the cup out the way, now time to win the league