Silvio Dante

The Day We Caught The Train - Ocean Colour Scene

@sh1t_ref_again - in respect of the “hmmm” here please look at LMs presser from today, particularly in respect of the last paragraph above at about 8 minutes in. That might answer your confusion.

Which is good - but again, I’d question why they didn’t know that questions like this would be coming. Several people on here made the link between Banks and GoSkippy (understandable as local), and although you and I will see that disclaimer those not on social media won’t. I can’t see it will be a big deal. But it won’t sell any more shirts and also puts the club in a negative light. It just looks horribly naive.

**** sake. As our French scouting system seems to consist of signing Angers top scorer every year, let me be the first to say, welcome Lois…

Go on someone’s Twitter profile Search for keyword Will bring up any tweet by said individual with that word in. i.e.

Still, pints of wine eh?

I’m just disappointed you forgot David Rennie (not the physio but the balding midfielder) - IIRC not only did he play for both but also produced the finest ever near post flick on (I know, that’s niche) to lead to a goal in a 4-0 win for us at St Andrews!

I believe you know I have a number of embarrassing relatives but even I draw the line at admitting any kinship to that **** thankfully!

It’s worse than that Dave. Go Skippy is ultimately owned, I believe, by that bastion of integrity and not making up shit at all Arron Banks Snap!

No fire at all apparently, just orange netting blowing in the wind….

I would imagine it’s quite a difficult development because of what’s gone on with AG and the future sporting quarter development. From a planning perspective, you’d want anything that happens on the Wedlock’s to be complimentary to AG, so you’d want the quarter finalised before you did too much. Also possible there were S106 agreements tied to the quarter around the Wedlock’s. From a developer point of view since it was closed it’s gone through a recession, AG being rebuilt which reduces desirability of site in that period, Covid and now a COL crisis. The banking isn’t a huge shock in view of that.

I don’t think anybody did. The nuance here is that the way we play has fundamentally changed in the last three games - the stats in terms of possession and passes alone evidence that. Again, it’s massive credit to LM that he has shifted the way we play. But comments such as “needing to get ideas across” or “it’s taken this long for the players to get it” arent the gotcha people think it is. If we’d won the last three playing a possession heavy approach then that’s totally valid. But we’re playing a different way. And that is down to LM tweaking it - but it is wholly reasonable to say he got it wrong to start with and is getting it right now chiefly by changing the way he wanted us to play as opposed to “taking time to get ideas across”. I don’t care how he’s got to this point - but he’s got there and long may it continue. But things ain’t as black and white as the “taking time to impose ideas” argument. He’s adapted - and that was my main concern about him from the first games.

I don’t have an issue with the thread being resurrected, because I think (and it’s not about results), the Blackburn game was a real line in the sand moment. You had senior pros slating things on Robins TV, you had a manager looking defeated post match, you had bizarre decisions like taking off Sykes and Knight. If it looked chaotic and sliding towards bad things, it’s because it had every indication that’s what it was. And had that been followed up against Sunderland with a defeat, then trouble may have been ahead. Whether LM decided he didn’t have the players for the heavy possession game, whether the slightly gung ho second half that nearly yielded results changed his mind who knows. But since about 50 minutes in vs Blackburn we’ve played differently - we’ve played with intent, desire, purpose. Our possession stats have gone down markedly and we’re back below 50%. We’re doing over 100 passes less per game. The “Swansea” trajectory isn’t being followed - a trajectory appropriate to the players is. There was a quote I highlighted earlier in this thread where LM expressed a view that maybe he’d overloaded the players. I viewed it post match as him trying to be a bit too clever. In hindsight, and considering the stylistic tweaks since, it may well have been him saying he’d got it wrong and acknowledging that the overloading to his initial preferred style hadn’t worked.

Trouble over Bridgwater I think you mean.

With us heading to St Andrews Friday, it’s bad timing that Wayner appears to have gone extreme in his motivation methods.

I’ve got a two way split on this. I broadly agree with the logic behind it (IIRC Liam said the players can’t hear him so he had to trust them), but it is also an easy excuse - I told them what to do guv and they didn’t. I firmly believe a manager/coach earns his corn in the heat of a game and an issue Liam had at the start of his time here is that he didn’t. So broadly yeah I’m with this but I think as with so many things the nuance is different.

@Davefevs. Every time this comes up I’m reminding you!

Seems like some kind of behaviour…

The chairman changed during the summer, and a new commercial manager also came on board. There is a lot going on there at the moment - the pitch gigs, the link up with Yate United, Iron Acton playing there, Frampton Ladies etc. Lots of things hopefully in the pipeline as well which I can’t go into, but there is a definite desire to make it a mor regularly used facility.

They should have kept that up! It’s an easy criticism of Manning to do the “Chat GPT” stuff so a clip like that showing personality is golddust!

Yates finances aren’t helped by not having had a home game for seven weeks before Bashley. Each game brings in (assuming attendance of 250) probably around £4-£5k and you’ve probably lost 4 expected games in that time - some will be rescheduled but lower midweek attendances and one was due to a withdrawal so that money has gone. Im pretty close to what’s going on off the pitch there and the commercial side is really ramping up. The problem is that takes time, and in the meantime a loss of income like that is a real killer for teams at that level.

Tbf mate we all need to have a degree of arrogance to post on here and put our opinions out there! I’m happy that LM has identified the reasons why things weren’t right in the first six, and it’s not arse covering to state that a lot of us identified the issue early. To be fair, even though Liams a self confessed football anorak, he hasn’t had the benefit of watching the side for years and knowing - as I think yourself, Harry, Fevs and me amongst others stated - we didn’t have the players for that. And I maintain that in the first games because he wanted to implement that style we got combatted too easily - it’s not revisionism, just what happened. As for why he has (definitely) produced our best performance of that type for a number of years then I do think it’s minor tweaks. The overloading of the Watford right hand side today, the showing great courage by having the guts to play in their half (both today and Hull where it was nobody even within our half), the making Conway hold position more. All coming together well and doubtless some I haven’t seen. It’s definitely a reign of two halves to date as the pathway (Swansea-ish) we were going down wasn’t working. As I said earlier, immense credit for seeing it but those signs definitely weren’t there at the start as it was a fundamentally different style!

Watched Yate on Saturday - didn’t look like scoring if they’d been there all week. I’m assuming that tit Tooze gave it large at the final whistle

To be fair, he showed no sign of it in any of those games. And it was the first six. We’re not playing the style that LM tried to enforce on the side. If we were, I’ve no doubt we wouldn’t have won the last three. He dropped a ball by doing what he did to start with and it’s why teams figured us out mid game and he couldn’t change it. There was much excitement in some quarters that we were moving up the possession charts but it’s always been - and always will be - about playing to your squads strengths. In fact, I’m sure I started a thread titled that post Boro! He may go back to the heavy possession game. But I think he himself would admit he tried to change too much far too quickly. This is really going back to what plan A should always have been.

I’m going to say again - less possession (42%) and less passes than the opposition but doing a lot more with it. Playing with pace and winning the ball high up the pitch. It’s a different team stylistically from the Boro, QPR, Norwich, Hudds games. That Blackburn game was the rubicon - senior players moaning on Robins TV and when we played more assertive second half, we looked like something. Its to LMs huge credit that he’s realised plan A wasn’t working and wasn’t likely to work so played to the strengths of the squad. That really gives confidence that a key question over him has been answered. Fantastic stuff today.