firstdivision

9 minutes ago, formerly known as ivan said:

And we have been paying for it ever since! Those finishes were nothing to be proud of. The 11th place finish was the season we were top 6 around Christmas wasn’t it? Pearson has spent 2 and a half years digging us out of a Lee Johnson sized hole. Spent a lot of money and achieved nothing!

I don’t know. I quite liked finishing top half of the championship. And I quite liked beating Manchester United and some of the wonderful pre-Christmas football in that season. 

But I hadn’t realised until now that Lee Johnson got up every day and thought, ‘you know what, how can I run this club into the ground?’ 

3 hours ago, formerly known as ivan said:

Against the joke of a board and their decision to fire Pearson.

Show Pearson the backing he still had from the fans.

SL had let down Cotts and threw him under the bus and now the same for Pearson. While in between the two, allowed Johnson to run this club into the ground season after season.

Time to force his hand and move this club on to someone capable.

When you say he allowed Lee Johnson to run the club into the ground season after season, are you including the seasons we finished 11th, 8th and 12th in the championship, our highest positions for nearly a decade, and some of our highest for 40 years? 

Very ballsy decision that with quite a lot of fans supporting him. I’ll still be supporting the club though and paying to watch. Won’t be demonstrating either. Managers come and go. My hope is that we can find one that can encourage us to play some attractive football, maybe even pass to one another rather than lumping it up the field to 5’10 strikers. 

SL left us short this season. No doubt. Had to spend some of the Scott money on a central defender and a midfield player. So it’s a very tough decision, but football is a ruthless business. I remember the reaction when Brighton sacked Chris Hughton…

On we go - things might even improve. 

I don't think many of us expected to get anything today. I certainly didn't. It was an absolutely dire game, though. Boring as hell. Cardiff chased and harried effectively. I didn't think we'd score if we played all night. We tried hard, but we displayed a huge lack of quality. I thought we looked like a solid league one team playing in a cup match - no surprise with the injuries. But a general point: 'we'll outrun the opposition' is not going to cut it. We need more than that as a playing philosophy when/if we get players back.

23 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

It was a penalty.

I've seen it back a couple of times. No way a penalty. He falls over his own feet, aided by standing on the ball. Lacked balance and conviction. A cannier, older pro would have got a pen there, or scored.

2 hours ago, M.D said:

Some of these injuries we are picking up must be down to the small squad. with a small squad, when we have picked up a few injuries  we have no chance to manage the game time of players that are likely to pick up injuries, its a vicious circle.

Spot on.

I’m so disappointed by this news. His post-match interviews used to brighten up my weekend, especially if we’d lost. 

7 hours ago, Ian M said:

Won't happen. By the time we get 3 or 4 back, another 1 or 2 will get injured due to us not being able to manage their workload during games.

I think he was being ironic, the point being we hardly tore up the league before the injuries. See our home form.

But like you, It seems obvious to me that if we play a high intensity game, we’re likely get more injuries. That’s why we needed a bigger squad. We are at least two decent players light. To have Andy King playing centre back again within three months of the season starting is simply ludicrous. It drove me mad when we were forced to play him there last season and now it’s happened again.

Also, when you have a small squad, you can’t afford to get too many signings wrong, eg Roberts, Mehmeti, Cornick. And McCrorie is the unfortunate one. 4/7 of this year’s signings are not working. 

1 minute ago, Super said:

It's horrendous goalkeeping but the space he had was ridiculous 

Yes, it wasn’t just Max’s error. The tracking of Broadhead was non existent. Pathetic actually. 

I thought Leeds were the best or marginally the second best team we’ve played this season. Our only threat really was from corners.
In forwards areas, Leeds ran with purpose, passed it well, and looked a consistent threat. No disgrace to lose to them but again it shows the level we are at. We might have pinched a point with that header (cleared off the line) but it would have been sunlight robbery. 

Let’s be fair, they’re significantly better than us (whatever the reasons). Makes it easier for them when you hand them a goal though. Don’t know why we don’t just kick it in our own net sometimes. Had 3-0 written all over it. But that’s football. 
 

A night of profuse swearing ending with a moment of glorious quality. I think that’s about it. 

57 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Think that’s it, they had two good chances, a worldie strike (their first)…and that’s about it.

One of those days….effing annoying.

This is from sofascore showing balance of play.  It’s not perfect but a good guide to our dominance.

City (green)

Stoke (blue)

Yes, one of those days, Dave. Imagine if we’d played like Stoke, and Stoke had played like us. We’d all being saying ‘great win but not quite sure how we got away with that.’

Even so, desperately frustrating. I couldn’t help feeling that a good Championship side would have put Stoke away no trouble at all (especially from where we were after 15 minutes). 

1 hour ago, Davefevs said:

The challenge back is - do we need to go as far as Leicester?

They are a top class side. We can be worse than them and achieve our goals.

(I get what you’re saying though)

The big question is - what happens if you press high, you get picked off and end up losing by several.

Its all ifs, buts and maybes.

In some respects we hung in there, executed the game-plan as well as possible and used our subs to alter our approach.

In a very black and white view, the mid/low-block starters (up to 58 mins) drew 0-0.  The higher press finishers (last 32 mins) lost 1-0.

So, if you were to correlate “too much respect” you could argue that was the right approach???

Thoughts?

True, Dave, you might not have to be as good as Leicester to get promotion. But I feel you need to be at a certain level and we are not close enough yet. Not that I expected us to be. I just expected us to improve on last season. And I think we will, unless we have significant injuries. 

8 hours ago, sh1t_ref_again said:

Agree with most of this except the Norwich bit, we were excellent against Norwich and fully deserved a win, but lost.

In the match day thread, I was critical (whilst accepting the quality of the opposition and we defended well), that we gave them to much respect and did not press them high enough, thoughts of Rob Dickie

“Potentially we showed them a bit too much respect. When we went after them a little bit, when we were 1-0 down - it’s funny in football, sometimes it takes going 1-0 down to try something different. Maybe I would have liked us to be a bit more aggressive but, at the same time, I can understand the wariness of coming here because you can get picked off very easily.

For me, ‘deserved to win’ is the most meaningless phrase in football. You can ‘play well’ (nice passing, possession, a few chances) but only one thing matters. That night against Norwich, we gave them two goals (what do you ‘deserve’ for that?) and we barely threatened to score after it went to 3-1. Antoine popped up with a goal but that apart they held us at arms’ length. Attractive, entertaining match and all but…we lost. There’s a difference between playing well and deserving something. I tend to largely focus on how many times you can get the ball over their line compared to how many times they get the ball over ours when it comes to deserving to win. 

On 24/09/2023 at 10:13, petehinton said:

Weirdly felt even more sure and positive about what a good side we’ve turned into after going up yesterday. 
 

Threw bodies at everything, played good football, weren’t phased by them, kept the ball well largely, just wasteful with our final pass and chances when we had it.
 

Tanner and Pring were absolutely excellent, little old £200k Tanner and academy product Pring stride for stride against an £8m signing and loanee for Sporting Lisbon. 

Their side is basically lower half Prem, however is above them come end of May will be top 2 at the very worst.
 

Yeboah trusted to have 45 minutes against a side like that, and not looking out of place. TGH looks an excellent addition and one I’m fairly sure we’ll make permanent early on in Jan. Naismith and Dickie as a CB pairing… imagine thinking we’d have that 18 months ago. We have a lot to be positive and excited about for this season. 

I thought we looked a fairly limited, albeit hard-working, team that didn’t have the confidence to pass the ball and retain possession. Lots of long ball in the hope that are runners could get on the end of it.  Spent most of the match defending. Rarely looked like scoring. Ordinary final ball. 
I was interested to note their manager thought they’d played a perfect match. Controlled the game. Did what they had to. Thanks for coming. 
The reaction from our fans has reminded me of Norwich away last season when we played sort of ok but still lost. Underline lost.
Leicester did what they needed to. Their goal felt as inevitable as the sun rising. Our failure to score felt as inevitable as the sun setting. The match, for me, showed the distance we still have to go. 
 

36 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

That, without doubt, is his best game in a City shirt, don’t even try to convince me otherwise!

Seriously, really, really good.  His work without the ball between Nathan Wood and Josh Key was superb.  He sparked so many loose balls for us to contest, or stray passes from it.

With the ball, he did one turn inside his own half, which was what he did early last season, and his confidence oozed after that.

Mint finish, breaking ankles

And then the run and cross for Belly.

Well played Syko Killer.

Yes, Dave. His best display for us by a long way. Looked a different player today.

I thought Swansea were so poor though. They simply didn't work hard enough to close space. No energy or drive. Not that I care. I hope everyone plays like that against us.

My only slight regret is that we didn't win 6-1. In the first half, I thought us poor saints must have run over a black cat. But that was a different game, where the Black Cats ran over the Saints. 

12 minutes ago, 22A said:

I've mentioned in other posts that City appear to be trapped in a fifty year cycle. 1972-73 City won eight away games before their first home win.

From memory, John Galley scored in a 1-0 win over Sunderland for our first home win that season in December. Slid in at the back post at the Open End. I can still recall the relief. 
 

NB - just checked it. It was 25 November. 

1 hour ago, Cidre Monita said:

So you are happy with that? The likes of Luton, Brentford et al in the Prem and that sleepy little retirement home Bournemouth signing our best young players. I was saying to my mate that I actually prefer the old days in the early 80’s when Terry Cooper was in charge and we didn’t have a pot to p*** in. Who would have thought back then we still wouldn’t have made the promised land some 40 years later even with the involvement of a local billionaire. The things history teaches us, eh? 

'So you are happy with that?' Ah, that's a different point. No, I'm a little frustrated, but I have been for many many months of the 52 years I've been a supporter.

It was just that you brought up the historical context so I thought you might, on the off chance, like to see some facts to consider to go along with your opinion. I was merely pointing out that the SL's years compare extremely favourably with what we've achieved in our history. 

(Btw, my post should have read 'second most successful period...in over a hundred years' btw.' Apologies. It was a typo.

33 minutes ago, Cidre Monita said:

First proper manager we’ve had for years and he’s been starved of funding. As I said in a previous post NP has kept his part of the bargain which SL has seemingly reneged on. It annoys me that NP will ultimately be made the scapegoat and a lot on here will applaud that ,frankly, I believe, through their own ignorance. Please understand that SL is the one constant in the historical and ongoing underachievement of our club. 

Thanks for your articulate response by the way. 

We've spent 14 of the last 16 seasons in the Championship, which compares very favourably with our history.

 From 1965-1981 we were in the top two divisions all the time.

Before that, you have to go back to the period before and after the First World War to find a better run than now. So basically, this is our best consistent spell in terms of which division we are in for over a hundred years. The things history teaches us, eh?

21 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

The Weimann disallowed goal first half too, although that was much more marginal.

Didn't the Aston Villa player handle it in the build up the penalty.

I seldom wish it on clubs but I'd habe been quite happy had Aston Villa sunk into the FFP and admin morass in 2018..always felt like they were just a little too protected from reality.

Their bloke just fell over following a normal aerial challenge at the Holt End. It was cheating and the referee went for it. It was pathetic. 

28 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

His game at Aston Villa in 2019 was fantastic especially. Him v them at times!

That said we were robbed by officials that way, two huge and probably incorrect calls especially the penalty.

That penalty at Villa was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen given against us. It actually looked more than simply a poor refereeing decision. 

12 hours ago, Red-Robbo said:

I've seen us in lower leagues, I've seen us thrashed by more, I've seen us in a lot worse situations. 

But I don't think I've walked out down Winterstoke Road more pissed off, bored and thinking "why am I doing this" than the last two home games.

It isn't just me either. My neighbour in the Dolman said he thinks this might be his last season as a STH. He's been going for years. 

Given that we've had a lot worse sides than we have now, I've tried to justify my feelings. 

I think it's because we - the fanbase - had our expectations high this season and the AG results and the general atmosphere surrounding the club at present just seems as flat as ****.  Even Pearson's last interview after the Birmingham defeat sounded as boring and as uninterested as could be.

Entitled some might say. But my response is if you pay the best part of £600 + the travel, the time, the other expenses, to see your club, you are entitled to think those in charge of it at least give a shit. 

I'm long in the tooth enough to know that this ennui could soon dissipate with a couple of lively results. 

But my point is that the OP is certainly not alone with feeling it. 

'Bored' hits the nail on the head. I thought the atmosphere before the Preston game was great. Then, absolutely nothing to get excited about for 42 minutes (until Sam missed his chance). I can't remember a home game like this. We were all sitting there thinking 'really? Is this seriously it?' Then it happened again, but worse, last Saturday.

I suppose that's what happens when you sell Antoine and AS, and TC is injured, and the players you bring you in are limited willing runners. 

Room for improvement...and a little bit of excitement. Please.

53 minutes ago, IAmNick said:

Not quite - Gary finished 10th twice after his 4th place!

So it'd be Gary 4th, Lee 8th, Lumsden 9th, Gary 10th, Gary 10th.

So three of the top seven, not five, Nick, for Lee.

I somehow overlooked those two seasons for Gary - still getting over the disappointment of Wembley. 

1 hour ago, ChrisBW said:

Yes completely agree, I would like to see us with a coach with a clear footballing philosophy, someone proven at this level. LJ, Holden weren’t championship level managers and prior to that we had more old school type managers, with exception of SOD who clearly had lost the magic touch he has had.

I wonder whether Pearson is too reliant on his coaches, I would love to see a Lowe, Schumacher or Robins here next. Very unlikely I know.

Under Lee Johnson, Bristol City finished in three of their five highest league positions since 1980.  8th in the Championship (2018-19), 11th (2017-18) and 12th (2018-19)

Also in the top five: Gary Johnson - 4th in the Championship 2007-08, Jimmy Lumsden 9th in the 'Championship' 1990-91.