Silvio Dante

It probably explains why Nige hasn’t been able to have a conversation with him!

I did wonder whether SL had seen what was going on at Ipswich and convinced himself that he was right all along - Ashton with a progressive young coach was the way to go. He’s already let Ashton into the henhouse twice, he was clearly sorry to lose him and I wonder if the job McKenna is doing is viewed by SL as some sort of vindication, and the longer Ipswich go on, the more he errs towards “let’s go there again” and away from the very good job Nige is doing. He’s made the same mistake twice. When there is cause (however misguided) to think you were right, it’s easy to make a very similar mistake. Wednesday feels huge for a lot of reasons….

Ah ****

I think lumping all into one thread is unrealistic - you’d get Massengo comments next to a reply about John Galley and it’d be unreadable. The other thing is many ex-player threads, as I’ve said, veer onto other things. The Lita Undr The Cosh one veered into discussion about that pod, the Massengo one about Burnley’s transfer strategy generally (with contribution from a visiting Claret, which would be less likely in a sub forum and for which the thread was richer). An “ex player” thread isn’t always an “ex player” thread. Your first comment is the clincher here. And I’d also note, albeit it’s a small sample, that the new forum had a post about Bas Savage - two responses, including one person saying it justified the forum. Yesterday a post re “rise like a salmon” was made on the main forum - about Cheese, hasn’t been moved, lots of engagement. Proves the point. It’ll make engagement worse. If there is no harm in a trial, then there’s also no harm in having a poll before splitting the forum into sub sections and surely that would have been the best thing here? As it stands, we’ve given a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

I think more than anything it’s shown the value of engagement. Taking into consideration confirmation bias (ie people are more likely to moan than agree), if you look at this thread there aren’t people agreeing with the decision. The original post has very limited likes and the feedback is pretty much overwhelmingly negative. Considering all the things where sub forums have been suggested (Women’s team, Rovers, non city football etc) it’s an odd hill to die on. This is before you get into the judgement piece. I think the intent may have been for “memories of Liam Robinson” or “Where is John Shaw now”, but anything mentioning an ex player seems to have now been dumped there. And even that’s 11 active threads in 21 days so it’s not even causing major traffic here. By logic, if I were to start a thread on todays opposing manager it could be dumped there as with the Keith Millen thread - which is madness. The beauty of this forum, and why it’s been so good for so long, is simplicity and ease of use. I’ve gone on other forums and they have multiple sub forums for everything and it’s a mess. That we appear to be making an unpopular decision without consultation and for no good reason that gets us nearer to that position is something I regret.

If you cared that much about how the forum was made up you’d have put your fiver a year in. Just saying.

Out of interest, what’s the success criteria?

Yeah not sure of the need for this myself. Ex player threads aren’t exactly a daily occurrence (other than for Lee Johnson) and the more sub forums there are the less the threads in the sub forums are used. By nature ex players fall into city chat and people can just ignore the subject on the main forum. The other thing is that when the ex player is recent the thread often includes observations from things still relevant to the club. So, not really sure of the point here. Can see a lot of threads being moved for no real reason and it making the place less user friendly.

Is that the Kevin Mabbutt who’s contributed to getting the Mural done?

Thats not Ian Rush.

Whenever anyone says Keith learnt nothing from Gary Johnson, they’re wrong. Just wrong.

Yes - with the exception that they can fly to Hartlepool on the proviso they leave before the game.

So, what you’re saying is that if you were running a project, and had done everything right, including amending your plans to satisfy someone, and those plans had been independently approved through the formal processes,you would then, when a spurious challenge is made, give that person a million quid. Nobody would do that in business. Not one person. Yes, BS can pay it, but it sets a precedent and is wholly unwarranted. It’s a nonsensical point.

I’d say you’re wrong here. Bristol Sport don’t get the development they want by paying for a roof - they get a revised development with less houses, so don’t make the £ they expected when they put the “roof offer” out and it doesn’t cost pride, it costs a lot of cold hard cash. The scenarios are simple. - BS pay for the roof and have development as approved go ahead - BS c£1m out of pocket - BS pay for the roof on the condition that plans revert to original - delay in planning, reopening of conditions, delay in construction and additional cost - BS likely still very much out of pocket even if permission approved - No roof paid for and judge kicks out what is clearly a vexatious claim. Small delay, lowest cost (but to BCC and not BS) It’s not about “pride” - it’s about ETM not wanting houses near to them but also wanting BS to pony up for a roof. The only logical business decision for BS is scenario 3 here.

This guy might be ITK:

That’s not just coming out punching, that’s coming out prime Mike Tyson. I said a few pages back that considering the persons involved I expected ETMs case to be shoddy and easily pulled apart. This statement (assuming it’s all correct) validates that. There will be record of when ETM installed their current structure, there will be record of the plans being revised for the housing. Hell, considering how strong they’ve gone on that statement I’m also willing to bet they have a lot of documents around the offer that was turned down. This has all the hallmarks of a cowboy exercise and frankly, you can colour me unsurprised by that.

He is - now been confirmed.

When do Leicester play Birmingham? Asking for Hello magazine….

Dan really, really, really wants Joey to talk to him and the evening post again. There’s no other excuse for this nonsense.

Burnley, I think I said in the summer, are a real strange case. They closest remind me of Fulham when they went up, spent £100m and came straight back down. It seems as if Burnley got addicted to signing after signing - while not signing players like Tella who’d done well for them and was available. They got great social media traction from each signing but ended up with a bloated squad of indeterminate quality, of which HNM is at the lower end. I don’t know why they signed him other than the “hits” to be honest, and from Hans perspective, he’d have been far better playing in ligue one. Nice kid by all accounts but this move made no sense and makes me question his desire to actually be a footballer, or is just happy to “be a footballer”.

This is well worth five minutes of your time. It’s a bit of an insight into the mentality of the group and not typical “footballers” answers:

Knight, Sykes and O’Leary all in the ROI squad. Have we ever had three players all called up at once by a national team??

From QPR TV. They do have a point mind…

I think we’re roughly where we deserve to be. It’s notable (but also a sign of resilience) that two of the four wins have come through injury time winners - no doubt Millwall and Rotherham will feel we got more points than we should there. I’ve watched all games bar Millwall and my feelings on what was merited from each game are: Preston - Draw, possible loss Hull - Draw Birmingham - Loss Swansea - Win WBA - Draw Plymouth - Win Leicester - Loss Stoke - Win Rotherham - Draw That says to me we’ve broadly got what was merited each game, drawing and winning games against PNE and Rotherham we probably could have lost and drawn respectively and losing a game we should have won against Stoke. Bizarrely, had the points come as merited we’d have exactly the same number now. With Conway and Weimann now fit, Vyner, McCrorie and Atkinson to come there are lots of reasons to be optimistic from a solid base.

Tinns