Mendip City

My concern is that everything is “textbook” rule-based football. Do the players have the freedom to break those rules? To take risks? Does the manager have the creativity to break or bend his own way of doing it? LM keeps talking “bravery”… personally, I havens seen much of it.

JL will sack Manning for not giving them enough time off.

So we’ve planned and celebrated the 30 year anniversary of a third round win over the worst Liverpool team in generations…. But…. Still no “fitting tribute” to Terry Cooper, as promised at the time of his passing. Tinpot, clueless and classless are the hierarchy running “our” club.

Hopefully we’re not heading back to the future and collecting number 10’s….

For balance….. be careful what you wish for!

Idehen, Taylor-C, Pearson and Kadji despite all being young feel like “blasts from the past” to me. Wonder whether any of them have a future here?

I think the fact that goalkeeping has changed makes it confusing. Max seems to me a very modern style keeper. Commanding your box and claiming crosses now seems far less important than the ability to play the ball, start moves and be quick about it. I like him and never understand all the fuss. Realistically there’s no reason he shouldn’t be our keeper for many years to come. I’m happy to go with Shay Given’s view!

Let’s just be grateful this didn’t happen 6 weeks ago. I’m sure the hierarchy here still believe in him!

Difference between the united situation and ours is that their new money/people will come in and run football operations. The Glazers have effectively admitted they aren’t experts in this side of things. At Ashton Gate, I can’t see a scenario where the current owners give up control of football to a minority (or any) investor - so we’d have the same structure and people running football. Why would anyone invest?

They keep talking about a museum…. Why not combine the two!?!?

Surely more time in press conferences is less time to “mentally overload” the players? (or whatever his phrase was).

Why is it the “managers” always do well here compared with “head coaches”? More to the point, why do those running the place keep going back to head coaches??

Umm not the first… surely the man before him not only worked on the health of the club but kept it alive and there’s no way Jordan would have come anywhere near Ashton Gate without Terry Cooper being here.

He took the job, he knew the expectations…. It’s all their faults. Manning cannot be excluded. We all know it’s not a top end squad. We all know Manning isn’t experienced enough…. but he didn’t have to take a job employed by deluded owners or a job above his experience level. They are all to blame.

With the charisma of SOD

Ahhh maybe that’s the Manning plan? Get us into freefall ready to bounce back!

That reminds me… where’s our new manager bounce? I think I missed it.

I’ll bet! He could easily damage his career. He’s jumped around a fair bit already.

And worse still he’s damaged us defensively…. he inherited a solid side defensively… call me old fashioned but isn’t that still the starting point of building a good team?

Exactly. Massive challenge for manning. Can he adapt his philosophy to meet this squad’s ability/strengths? I don’t understand why, having inherited a squad not struggling, he chose to immediately completely change the style of play rather than evolve it over a period of time. Oh hang on Brian and Jon told him to.

Me too. Got a really bad feeling. From his post-match interview he looks startled and like he doesn’t want to be here. Bitten off more than he can chew?

Agree with all that. On the MK Dons point, I’ve heard lots of people (not you) say he was unlucky to lose his best players and that shouldn’t really count against him… which I understand to an extent but we’re Bristol City, Bournemouth’s feeder club. He’ll have his best players sold here… so another reason he’s not a great fit for us.

He’s becoming an horrific combination of Lee/SOD.

He is to blame, they all are. He bought into the idea we were under performing… the remit was to improve us. He must have believed it was possible otherwise why take the job? If he’s only realised we’re mid-table squad after arriving then he’s done a very poor job of researching us. Brought in to take us forward. So far he’s taken us backwards and softened us up - how many goals are we conceding now?

Good job we’ve got a top end squad. I don’t want to go too long without hearing from him.