Red Exile

Tickets sorted for the first few games I can attend. For POTD folk the membership is good value. Already paid for itself. Smooth ordering process. Impressed.

I don’t see much connection between the two - other than the obvious familial one! Whatever else he may have been GJ was a proven winner. Multiple promotions at almost every level. Brilliant at getting a tune out of often quite limited players. Not so good with others. His son, despite opportunities his dad never had - money vs loose change - Sunderland vs Yeovil & Torquay - has won diddly squat, zero promotions in a managerial career of hundreds of matches. GJ was a giant in comparison. Personally I loved GJ’s time with us. Could forgive him a great deal.

Good for him. What a reboot his career has received.

...impressed, seemed very level headed. One observation - of how many cities in Britain might it be expected that a 22 year old footballer could use the word 'gorgeous'. I know we all take it for granted that incoming players will say positive things about eh ground and the facilities...but as an exile it's nice to hear people appreciating Bristol itself.

Not a replica kit buyer myself - but clearly that is Arsenal's kit - or alternatively Rotherham. We play in red shirts. However, if we stroll through a season of glory I won't care what the players are wearing.

Sunderland are one of the great clubs in English football whilst my impression of Wycombe in the semis was a bunch of anti-football cloggers. Sunderland all the way for me.

Sad news. A familiar face indeed down the decades.

No need to rewrite history- he wasn’t awful but just not what we needed and failed in the stated mission to get us in the play-offs. Good luck to him. He will have different objectives at Hibs.

Personally not a great LJ fan in his time here! But he doesn't have to win promotion up there...something he seems incapable of. Might be just the job for him...and them. Good luck to him.

Agreed. We didn't didn't renew for a variety of reasons but if our seats are taken up by folk buying STs for the first time that bodes well for the future.

It's interesting to reflect on when that fellow feeling ended. I'm in my 7th decade (just!) and I can't ever remember a time when folk supported both clubs. Personally I've always hated Rovers, despite having met lots of perfectly nice Rovers fans down the years.

Whilst it's always hard to be fair to them...loathe Rovers with a passion...what a day for their supporters if this ends 7-0. Much as I rejoiced that afternoon they dropped out of the league you have to say that today is a remarkable achievement. FGR, Exeter and Rovers all up...not a bad day for West Country football. That said, a Scunny goal would make it a better day!

I can happily let you two argue it out! - but on the question you pose... Looking back, in a different world SL would never have turned up, and given that relatively few football clubs go belly-up something else would have happened. We have no way of knowing what that would be, we might be Burnley, we might be Bradford. Looking forward, assuming that SL controls his departure, there will be a successor - whether it's another local billionaire (unlikely!) or some other structure we have no way of knowing and no control over. It'll be presented to us, by SL, as most things good and bad have been during his time in charge. Where we can have a more informed opinion is an assessment of SL's stewardship. His bricks-and-mortar legacy can't be knocked. He can be more critically judged on his decisions regarding the playing side of the club and there I think he made some poor calls. First, having taken the bold move of approaching Coppell to build on GJ's achievements, a 'been there and done it' manager, he failed to stick to his guns when it rapidly turned sour. Second, he failed to build on what Cotts and Keith Burt had achieved and gambled on a family friend. Hindsight suggests they were poor calls, many considered them so at the time. This thread has been diverted from its original subject, and to bring it back, a third bad call was handing the keys of the club to Mark Ashton, a man whose talents and experience were again questioned at the time. Whatever we may think of him, and I have a great deal of respect, I'd be surprised if City had achieved what SL hoped for 20 years ago. It's been hard to identify a consistent strategy...if such a thing exists at City. Maybe things are changing, one would hope so.

Spent my first wage packet on that trip to Carlisle...a very long journey! They had a young Peter Beardsley playing for them as I recall.

Couldn't follow the match today - delighted to read the result! Just watched the highlights. Delightful first goal and delighted for AW whose talents seemed lost on many at one point but has had an outstanding season.

No, and we won't be. Like @Lanterne Rouge it's the sheer slog of a whole day travelling for a 'matchday experience' that has usually been one of extreme frustration. Apart from the chat with @GrahamC it's rarely been worth the effort. It'll be POTD next year, as it often has been in the past, we'll buy memberships. On the upside our last POTD season was 2014-15. Very happy to be out of pocket if next year turns out to be as good as that!

I was at Torino v AC Milan last Sunday. Great atmosphere. Home and away fans in the curvas singing non-stop beginning to end, but all very well organised - searches, ID checks, masks...the works...all endured with patience. In normal life I'm a boringly sensible, sober, grey haired professional man. Pitch up at a football match in England and I'm marked out as a potential hooligan...thanks to the legacy of the actions of the 'top lads' 'back in the day'. It was embarrassing enough 40 years ago, thought it had died out, sorry @RedM to read that they are still around.

Great night. So glad to have been there. One of the most joyous City occasions I can recall. Perfection!

There were indeed a lot less of us back then, and in my youth I was very happy to be one of the die-hards when opportunity presented. As @spudski says that seems like a different world where the fans, players and folk who ran the club were much closer together.

Yep. We’ll be doing that.

We will I'm afraid. We've given up our STs before, when Millen was entrenched and the club slipped to a similar level of mediocrity. What did we miss? Most of McInnes and all of SOD bar the Rovers cup match...so not much! Of course we've returned, I don't mind paying good money to be entertained - I was POTD home and away for the 2014/15 season and was more than happy to fork out. But it doesn't make any sense to have a pair of STs, as we do, when a trip to the match is a full day round trip and what's on offer isn't merely dispiriting but downright frustrating! It's supposed to be an entertainment...as you say several seasons have passed since that was a word associated with watching City.

I fully respect everyone who renews. Been a ST holder more years than not in recent times, but the way I currently see it is that I hand £500 to a billionaire who laughs at my gullibility and proceeds to burn it in front of me! If the football is good I'll be back every week, at the moment I'm quite sure that SL can manage without my little upfront contribution.

This is the key for me. Been in Italy this week. Watching Torino v AC Milan this evening. Money and time well spent. Same can’t be said of being at the Gate for several years past. Most of the entertainment has come from seeing familiar faces Was planning to renew at least one of our two STs - but no longer. Used to think of it as an investment in the club - keeping it going. Back in the day it felt that investment meant something. Sadly the club has been so poorly managed that I guess my £500 now pays for a mornings wages for a player we’ve signed but will never play. Shambles. It’ll be back to pay on the day - still, won’t be a problem finding a seat!

I thought that regardless of his talent - and he wasn't bad! - he was a talisman for that GJ side. Lovely relationship with the crowd. We've been lacking that of late. Good luck to him. One of my favourite City players. A real character. He gave one of the boots he wore at Wembley to my eldest as he walked off the pitch at the end of the match. It's in a case on our bookshelf. Still got a bit of Wembley turf attached. Always believe and all that - not that it has been easy of late...

Really enjoyed listening to that chat. Thank you!