Silvio Dante

See I both agree and disagree with this. I think undoubtedly we are in a worse position than we needed to be because Jon and Brian are morons. However, the point above is made frequently - and I think it’s made to insulate Liam from criticism. He’s now had half a season. We can see what he’s good at, what he’s bad at - crucially, as discussed elsewhere whether he “deserves” the opportunity to lead a rebuild. My absolute main ire is at Jon and Brian. But there has to come a point where Liam can be criticised if appropriate - and personally, I think that keeping powder dry on that until a pre season etc may be counter productive

And here it is:

And such devastating repartee as well. Truly, I’m in the presence of Oscar Wilde. Again, just please sod off. It’s tiresome. I can do that. I don’t get banned and have to reactivate my account every other week.

And unrelentingly shite each episode. Strange, sad little man

You asked to see the Bristol Sport employees signing up. There it was. Now, in the nicest possible way, please sod off.

You know this already. In the words of Keano - this is literally your job. But here you go:

See below - piece on him going out on SSN tonight…think Rons on here?

No problem, you know the drill, if you say something be prepared to justify it! I’ve said elsewhere that I quite liked our January window. I had a problem with the Twine signing as it was just expensive vanity to get us a couple of places higher. It appears from limited evidence that Medube may not be up to it so no harm done. Bird I think looks good business and he’s been on radar (at least with @Mr Popodopolous!) long term as has Murphy. Stokes I agree Manning is the deciding factor - Tommy Widdrington confirmed in an interview this week that LM coached him previously. But the fact is that two of those are looking at an enormous step up and are punts at best, so we’ve only got one real first team signing confirmed in Bird. That means to shape LMs side the way he wants, we will have to spend money so we’re back to the question of how good an idea that is. Id have to disagree on the management of games, and even a lot of “pro” LM posters have noted it could be better. You’ve missed from your list a load where IMO it’s been sub par (takes breath) including Millwall, Boro (H), QPR (A), Preston, Soton (A), Birmingham….we can agree to disagree but it’s been pretty glaring so far I’d say and it is an issue for him. It’s the thing that’ll do him in more than anything else and as long as the concern remains I’d be reticent to give him significant funds.

Ok - what was the irrational decision making from senior staff that led to the hole Pearson had to pull us out of? Because the answer genuinely is that we spent too much money and kept faith with a manager too long. I’m not saying Manning should be sacked. What would lead us exactly down the same hole though is spending loads of money on “his players” if the club are in any doubt as to whether he’s the man long term. And as this thread displays, there is significant doubt over that amongst a lot of the fanbase currently. The very worst case scenario is supporting him in the summer and then having to fire him by Christmas. Unless he improves his game management markedly, then that is a very plausible one though - and puts us down that hole.

For a happy ending…?

Ummm… Without saying he should go, we were in such a big hole that Pearson had to pull us out of precisely because we held onto a manager for too long and let him spend too much money, therefore ending up with a bloated and overpaid squad. The root cause was not making a quicker decision on Lee Johnson and ending up with too many players. Holden was then a continuation of that - we sacked him correctly quickly but the reason for the mess was entirely the opposite of what your post suggests.

Yep there is a lot of whataboutery creeping in here. The fact is taking over Sheffield Weds who were up shit creek is a different proposition from taking over Bristol City who were in a decent position with a motivated squad. On a similar basis, taking over City this season is a different challenge to taking over City post Holden where we were genuinely abysmal. The basic fact is that managers typically take over a side in one of two circumstances - a sacking due to poor performance or the old manager being poached. It’s really unusual to take over a mid table side with aspirations of the playoffs mid season with nothing majorly wrong. And once again, that is why comparing Liams first x games to Niges first x games or to Sheffield Weds (worse position on takeover) is futile and really just muddies things. Why people want to do that, who knows? It again comes down to the basic question: With what people have seen from Liam to date - and not comparing him with Nige - what confidence do they have that he’ll get it right bearing in mind what we’ve seen here and what he’s done elsewhere? And getting it right cannot be not progressing from the base and spending money to do so - you wouldn’t do that in any business. It has to be improvement. Everything else is just noise.

Unlikely as we can’t recall him from Newport Trained today, don’t know if back for the weekend yet, expected to train tomorrow per LM interview

Well they’ve put an 11 minute interview with Liam up today - it doesn’t really say anything but it’s unusual for them to do so particularly as there will be the presser tomorrow. Lots of questions about the schedule - it feels a bit defensive PR.

Phants. You have no idea how disappointed I am at you for missing the gag.

Confirmed out for season!

What’s this all about?

Us? I’M JOKING - EVERYONE CALM DOWN

Yeah @Davefevs

So that’s Swansea, Birmingham, Millwall and Sunderland all sacking managers after less than half a season this year….

It’s really not a summary of the topic. The discussion from most of us on here is nothing to do with top six squad, Pearson vs Manning etc. The discussion is around now we’ve seen half a season of Liam, how confident we are that he is the right man to enact a rebuild. Summary of your post:

Really, really good post and reflective of where I am. Regrettably I think even if the (unlikely) decision to get rid of Liam in the summer was made (not saying we should, but if it is the right thing then we should be brave), we have no chance of Tinnion also going. However, not trusting Brian and Jon to choose the next man should in no way be a reason to keep Liam if he’s not deemed the right fit for the reasons you identify. That would just set us back further.

I don’t know if you saw the “Coaches Voice” video with Liam that @Davefevs posted the other day but it’s well worth watching. Essentially he was trying to illustrate what you’re saying he’s trying to do - draw opponents into areas and create overloads. The problem is that the higher up you go the greater discipline opponents have and they don’t do what you want them to do. And again, that is really where his main problem lies and my instinct is that it’s ingrained and a pre season/recruitment changes nothing to resolve it from what I’ve seen thus far.

To be fair, there were some external factors - he lost Twine and Darling having lost O’Reilly mid season so had to do without his three best players from the season before. However, and this is a key point, he did have a full pre season to get his ideas across and to shape his squad. The prior year Russell Martin had done the pre season and Liam took over in August. There seems to be an accepted argument that Liam should have a pre season before he’s judged - I get the logic of that but it does belie the above problem, that with consistent “time on the grass” he has failed. This article I’ve linked to before is pretty interesting (and on balance the Dons fan does say he was more adaptable in game than Martin but we’ve not seen that here) https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/sport/football/liam-mannings-lessons-mk-dons-8897745.amp but this is the key quote about the MK Dons season:

I’m not sure it does (and that may be confirmation bias!) The examples I tend to give here are Johnson in 2017 and Osman in 1994. The performances under the former against Palace, Stoke and the Manchester clubs were in keeping with the league performances at the time and you could say were genuinely reflective of where we were at the time. The latter were an anomaly. What I’m saying is to remove any of the variables from the cup games (prem team playing reserve players, motivation etc) it is reasonable to judge on league performance only - good or bad when considering a wider trend of where you are as a club. As they say “the leagues the bread and butter”