TDarwall

Just now, italian dave said:

How dare you come on here with your sense of perspective and proportion?

Fear not, it will soon get lost in a sea of hyperbole & bias.

Just now, MelksRed said:

That's jinxed it 

If it makes you feel any better I was convinced Coppell would lead us to promotion.

The serious point is, after the Coppell debacle I tried to avoid any pre conceptions about future managers. Nothing is guaranteed, sometimes a sensible appointment fails & then a strange one works.

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

Cup games are one off games. They have no relevance to the bread and butter of the league. 

Maidstone are not Championship promotion contenders because they've beaten Ipswich. 

 

 

No one is suggesting Maidstone are better than Ipswich. You said Piercey wasn't being impartial- there is zero evidence of that. He is just saying something you don't agree with, however it's a perfectly valid view that people are entitled to agree or disagree with. 

Just now, W-S-M Seagull said:

I like Piercy but to include the cup games shows he's not being impartial. 

No it doesn't, it just shows he doesn't agree with your view. Some allow the cup games, some don't, there is no right / wrong answer. 

No reason at all for Piercey to be impartial, he's a good journo, not afraid to ask tough questions.

We are no more getting relegated now than we were getting in the POs before QPR. There's too big a points buffer & far too many teams that have been average to poor all season would need to hit stellar form whilst we capitulate.

2 minutes ago, 1960maaan said:

That's an understatement 

Common sense says see the season out , end of contract and no real issues with the fanbase . 
I doubt they could have handled it worse if they tried.

Pearson was doomed from the start really.  As with Cotterill he's not Steve's cup of tea so it was only ever a matter of time.  Sometimes I think SL can't cope with confrontational characters or it might be he's more comfortable dealing with corporate types that he's built his successful career out of. As many have said, he should have got in the best people he could afford to run the club & got out of their way.

4 minutes ago, petehinton said:

I’ve never ever been able to shake the feeling that the powers that be want our promotion to the PL to be perfect and pure, in the sense that it’s everyone’s ’first time’. 
 

 

It was oft said that LJ preferred working with younger players as they were more malleable & less likely to question him. I think you can apply that to the next level too, the "board" prefer someone grateful for the opportunity at this level who is less likely to rock the boat.

It is odd that post Cardiff, he's never really been given that role again.

I actually feel a bit sorry for Mehmeti.  Came here with a really good reputation & it (so far) hasn't worked out.  Hopefully he's not Smozdic v2.

Personally I don't think he's been as bad (overall) as some make out, but clearly he has been underwhelming.

Thing is, look at the team yesterday, you basically have a keeper, 9 strong runners & Mehmeti.  Other than him, who is going to beat someone & create something (feel free to insert your own punchline that he doesn't do that either).  We're incredibly predictable to play against so I can understand persisting with him because at least there is the chance he may do something different (think he may have had our only shots on target v Leeds & QPR.

How's this for a sliding doors moment - I think Anis & Harry C made their debuts in the same game, Cornick is thru wide right, if he squares it to Anis, HC gets an assist om debut, Anis gets a goal, the fans are happy & both players get a lift.  Obvs what happened was Harry went for goal & it was a routine save.

I think the last 4 demonstrate that it's hard to predict.

1 minute ago, Ryan_BCFC said:

2 awful performances and results in a week, all this after beating Southampton. Why are we always the same? 

That's the danger of looking at 1 game in isolation. Yes we played well that night but Saints were at the start of a slump..  almost lost to Hudds the Sat before & have been in poor form since.

Sometimes in the immediate aftermath you don't know which team the result says most about. 

Been going the Gate since the early 80's. In all that time a very small no. Of opposition players have got standing ovations when subbed off. JET did, he destroyed us for Donny that day.

If I hear that Kidderminster have a penalty, I'll jump in the car. By the time I get to the ground JET will be about half way through his "run" up.

18 minutes ago, italian dave said:

Blue Moon…..Billie Holiday

And Stones ..... Blue Aeroplanes.

9 minutes ago, RollsRoyce said:

So any news on season ticket prices ?

Not ITK but reliably told that Nige wanted them discounted, but Manning wants 50% price hike but more cheap kids seats in South Stand.

1 minute ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Well I dunno it is and it isn't 

Putting aside the individual merits and demerits, GJ, Cotts and NP to varying degrees were both experienced and I assume not patsys as such, thanks in no small part due to this.

Plus were rather successful in their own ways for us.

When Manning was appointed I joked that if it goes wrong we'll flip again & appoint a gnarly seasoned old manager (which as you say is usually more successful!).

I think what is clear post Cotts & NP is that the Lansdowns don't want to work with a bombastic type, so to an extent NP (who has a history of falling out with people) was doomed from the beginning.

49 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

 it feels more like the Liverpool season than the Forest one to me!   The Forest season & the 1 after are probably the seasons I watched most games & to be honest, at the time, the Forest season felt like the Liverpool season!

2 minutes ago, Merrick's Marvels said:

 

Of course, we got our recruitment spot on the following summer and were promoted the following season.

I wonder what the odds are on history repeating? I'm a betting man but won't be taking the odds, whatever they are.

I always think recruitment is "relatively" easy for us in LG1 - we're a big draw at that level. That's not to diminish what the likes of Jordan or Cotterill achieved but at Championship level there's far more attractive options than us.

Re entertainment value, I think it boils down to the 2 golden rules of football:

1) the result is everything 

2) never forget rule #1

As City fans, we claim to be purists  but we'd soon take to a long ball merchant * if they got us promotion.

* not Warnock, that's a step too far.

9 minutes ago, Nogbad the Bad said:

It's a very well written article but I'm afraid I don't share Dave's fascination with tactical aspects of the modern game. 

High block, transition, possession percentages, passes per sequence etc etc leave me cold. I just want to see City set out to play attacking football at AG with as much goalmouth action as possible. In other words to be entertained.

 

 

I think that's fine Nogs, there are numerous ways to "consume" Bristol City, none of them are more or less valid than any of the others imo.

The bit I really agree with in the article is I thunk people have over stated the change in styles between the ex & current manager. On the whole, I'm not coming away more / less entertained or happy than I was previously.  It was pretty middling, it remains so & expect it will be for the near future.

23 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

On this point (as it’s one of mine!) I think you have to in large part take the cup as an exception as motivations, team selections etc are so varied. Did George Elekobi outfox Kieran McKenna etc? In Forests prior round Blackpool took them to a replay and extra time. The motivation factor here is huge and cup performances are often outliers - to give a great example our Liverpool games were in 1994 where Osman outfoxed Souness for three games but was dogshit elsewhere!

That isn’t to downplay we did excellently on those games against West Ham and Forest - it’s to say that you’d generally look at the league to remove external factor bias when considering performance trends

Just typed & lost a long reply due to iffy train wifi.

I think this comes down a bit to confirmation bias; if someone.  wants to big up Liam they include the cup games, if someone wants to talk him down, they exclude them.

Just now, Silvio Dante said:

I know there was a lot of bad feeling when he left Oxford and find it hard to blame them as he wasn’t hot property when he arrived there but left at the first uptick of good form (and it wasn’t a sustained good season, it was a good first few games akin to how PNE started the season). As you say though, who knows how that would have panned out longer term (if you read Oxford fans views they were getting more points than merited), and I don’t think anyone can blame him for taking a step up - jobs don’t come up weekly at the next level up.

I’d also add in that AFAIK there was a mutual clause in LMs Oxford contract because he was a bit “damaged goods” on appointment allowing minimal compensation either way - so I don’t think again him exercising that should be criticised.

What can be criticised is the due diligence on either side. I think, irrespective of which side of the debate you sit on, pretty much everyone acknowledges the squad/style is not set up to how LM wants to play and it’s a rebuild. Tinnion and Lansdown didn’t do their due diligence on Liam (his lack of adaptability is a golden thread through this managerial career) and Liam didn’t do his due diligence on us as a club or on the squad. Again, not blaming him for moving up but he may have been better longer term keeping powder dry and waiting for a better “fit”

 

In terms of due diligence, unless you're a top manager who will have the best choice of jobs, I don't think many perspective managers do much due diligence at all. I think they would just look here & see a regime that is "generally" supportive of managers & think that'll do for me.

I'm confused, I thought the elephant in the room, was the big thing, everyone was thinking but not discussing. Turns out, it's the thing we discuss at huge length after every defeat.

Having said that at 3pm on Sat I didn't think top 6 was in our own hands mind.

I'm amazed anyone could go "all in" either way.  I don't because things develop over time, LJ was terrible/great/terrible/great. Cotts was fantastic..... until he wasn't.

Some of the criticism I find really odd. Questioning his integrity  because he made (on paper) a good career move. Managing a football club isn't like working for an insurance firm, there are relatively few opportunities for progression & you need to take then when you can. Had he turned us down & Oxford had the mother of all injury crisis & their form dipped, he could have been out on his ear with little chance of managing at this level again.

The game mgmt theory is interesting, but is he getting his game mgmt right when we win or is he lucky that the opposing managers game mgmt is even worse? Why does he so often get outfoxed by Championship managers but across 4 games, not once by a Prem manager?

2 hours ago, Mike Hunt-Hertz said:

Nuclear Device (Wizard of Aus)...Stranglers

Suspect Device - Stiff Little Fingers

2 hours ago, A Horse With No Name said:

on a similar note, did anyone else notice the weird wall set up by QPR, for Nahki's free kick, which is still travelling incidentally. It was so far off center, it literally gave him the whole goal to aim at, although I suppose the keeper wasn't unsighted. Just looked strange.

Yes, I thought it was an optical illusion from the South St! Luckily, Nahki saw through their ruse to tempt him to go for the far side of the goal (opting instead for the far side of the moon!).