Lrrr

He's 17 so we wouldn't be sending him out on loan anywhere yet anyway until he's 18, a non league loan like Bath would have been the max.

Add the fact that there's more prospective test match grounds then there are test matches per year so you're not even guaranteed a return.

Perhaps they just don't like wearing City branded clothing while out scouting...? And I agree, a large part that is looked over is that even 5 years ago a lot of City's failed academy players would at best play in non league, now it seems to be every year that more and more are ending up in L1/L2, each of these will retain a sell on to City in future if they do well, so the more we churn out to this level over the next 5 years or so hopefully we could start to see a steady trickle of sell on fee income. Not to mention that its also good that we're helping young lads realise a career path of professional football, some may say 'who cares if its not City' but its still a good thing.

The HPC is plenty fit for purpose, the building is sectioned in first team and academy areas so you don't have crossover, not sure which side the womens team use but will be at times when the first team aren't using the same section. Every academy age group won't be inside, only 18's & 21's will be around day by day and then their pitches along with women and rest of academy (when light) will be based down on the old pitches, the top pitches are first team only barring the show pitch for matches. I won't comment on the 'saving the academy' stuff as I agree players flourished because of talent and opportunity, but take away say Leicester, Southampton etc who've spent plenty of time in the Prem and yes, our training facilities will be right up amongst the best in the league.

They apparently did it for running stories without giving the club a chance to provide their side of it. Having said that I'm not sure Sky are one I'd try and pick on.

Well it’s near impossible to have a squad without it given the average time a manager spends at a club

Played cricket since I was 8 and only got into archery at uni funnily enough because I got a broken toe not getting the bat on a Yorker.

Wonder if Parker would take the job

Think I could have a career in belly flopping archery, ended up being ranked around the top 60 in Britain but it involved a lot of driving due to events being spread around and some hotels for big competitions, whereas now I’d probably rather play cricket and have a good time playing sport with the same group of people week in week out and have a drink at the end.

Yep good luck with that one

Playing sport was one for me, I used to be pretty competitive in a more niche sport, after covid I struggled to have the same motivation for competing at a high level and the training required (being a sport where the more time you put in to training the more you got out of it) and now prefer to play sport for the social side and ended up changing the main sport I played.

I've always said academy teams shouldn't be built around the first team (perhaps U21's aside). When players are younger they need to learn to play a number of positions and roles for their development, he doesn't play for us anymore but an example being Towler, he was a CM for the most part and changed to being a CB as an U18, as a result he's gone on to have a professional career where he may not have if he stayed a CM. Players need to learn to play in a number of different formations and systems. If a player is in the U13's (I believe when they start playing full pitch in academy football) then by the time he's 21 and at the end of the academy system he could have easily had 4 different managers of the first team, imagine the upheaval if you allow your first team manager to dictate the formation the academy plays. You could have 2 really good promising centre forwards and for us lets just use Conway and Bell as an example. Could you imagine if we'd had someone come in and say 'Oh we're only ever going to play with one CF', either one then gets significantly less game time and probably gets released or you share the game time more evenly and both get less game time. Formation needs to be based around the players in your age group. Sure principles of play can change and thats completely different but I've never bought into the idea 'oh the first team plays 352 (for wants of naming a formation) so the academy must play it too'.

I can understand it about football during the covid era, how did it kill it for you once fans were allowed to return?

Perhaps but could easily be said in a way 'there's a culture here that we're not willing enough to be patient on the ball and try and force things when they're not on', therefore saying he's got to change the approach and mindset of the squad and what they buy into and in effect changing the culture. Its a many faceted word.

A case of short term pain for long term gain I feel, I think long term the move will be good for us as there are positive signs in gameplay style but as with the goals conceded Sunday just errors that need to be cut. If its a tactical overhaul that's needed then all you're doing is kicking the can down the road to when that change needs to be made. Realistically if he did as you suggest then the first real opportunity he'd have to commit the amount of training time required to changing system would be when this season is dead and that could be March, frankly its a waste of 4 months or so and a January window in the hope that we finish in the play offs by not changing too much. This season has essentially been sacrificed for players to get used to Manning's style inside and out for next season as much as its a pain for the remaining games for people going to watch. If we pick up results in the mean time and are somehow in the hunt still then its a bonus. I don't think he's questioning it as if its 'bad', he's just referring it needs to be changed to fulfil what he requires. A lot of the culture would fit what he seems to need and want in what Nige recruits physically in players, but it could be something like a culture change in terms of how willing you are to be brave in possession, how patient and recycle etc, so yeah I don't think he's said we had a bad culture here, just a change is needed.

Thing is there can't be an expectation for this squad to play the way he wants from week one, heck even week 4 or 5, it'll take months and the higher ups at the club know it as well so I can't see there being a genuine expectation to have hit the ground running.

If players can't get over a manager being sacked they won't make it in football

Funnily if we were looking for a new manager right now Mowbray would be top of my list. Be funny if he just goes down to Swansea.

For me we’re still a better pick than Swansea, their owners love to save money at every turn, they sold a few players and got big money in return and still had to go cheap. 5 loans will mean investment needed to replace them as well. Do people really believe Manning and those who came with him didn’t do their own evaluation of each of our players before they came in? Add the obvious fact they played us so would have done opposition analysis on us. They will have known exactly what squad they were getting when they came in and it’s in a better position then Swansea’s will be (if they are as of now barring huge changes in January).

At that moment in time? Probably not, the change of style to something like Manning’s isn’t an overnight thing to become natural, it takes weeks if not a couple of months for movements/patterns etc to become natural. The reality is we had a situation where Nige was never getting a new contract and the club clearly had highlighted Manning as the next one to approach, however we probably got worried that Manning would take Oxford up and we’d lose our chance so wanted to be proactive in getting who we wanted. Realistically i don’t think we can expect too much this season but im quietly optimistic for next season depending on how well we can operate in the 2 windows.

I agree that the club could do better and I hope they do improve, perhaps one way could be Twitter accounts like @BCFCCEO, @BCFCTechDirector etc, sort of like the POTUS account that gets passed on, an official account they use and Brian can continue to give out information. Which would mean that Brian would hopefully be allowed his personal account to not be messaged by city fans about work in a negative sense to allow him a separation, perhaps that’s too much wishful thinking.

Yeah I don’t necessarily agree with the ‘back when in the prem’ comment, but I read it more as just Brian’s general positive point of view

It would be through an injury crisis but I don’t think Knight-Lebel would drown at championship level if he was chucked in, he also suits Manning’s system.

It was an unnecessary and inaccurate comment in the first place that the guy made though. Is Brian supposed to not provide the actual fact of what we got for Wes where otherwise people could/would have believed what he said because of what his former position was. And Wes is a poor example for me, it’s taken Wes until he’s 28 to reach the championship and people said we held onto Bobby Reid for too long! As for leaving, it’s not a club account, it’s a personal one, there’s no requirement for him to have one. JL/BT got pelters for blocking abuse, now Brian is taking it for choosing to leave the platform, are they supposed to just be an open target for abuse? I appreciate a lot of interactions would be general questioning rather than abuse but if you get more abuse for blocking abuse in the first place what else can you do? A lot is made of mental health, it can’t be good for someone if they get hundreds of notifications, some criticism, some support, some abuse, but focusing on the abusive ones. Perhaps people just want to have a clearer head space. Fans will let the club know what they think one way or another anyway.

So what you’re saying is it’s your fault for watching