LondonBristolian

Really interesting points Allardyce makes about the confidentiality clause. Quite shocking that Pearson learned about the views and results on deconditioning via the interviews rather than anyone raising it before...

I think the problem is that, however many players you sign, there's always a risk of an injury crisis. Admittedly we are quite prone to them though! For me, a lot depends on some other questions 1) Are Murphy and Stokes part of the squad next season? 2) Is Knight-Lebel seen as a long-term squad option rather than a short-term bench filler? 3) Is Backwell, Seb Palmer-Houlden, Yeboah or anyone else going to be becoming part of the squad? 4) Can we get Naismith, Atkinson and Benarous fit and playing regularly? 5) Will Conway stay? In theory two new additions could take us to around 27 players and that could be enough. Certainly many more than 28 and the squad starts to be over-filled with players who aren't playing if there isn't an injury crisis and that can be a bad thing. I think two players is enough if there are no departures beyond James and King, we're confident on Atkinson and Naismith's fitness and four of JKL, Murphy, Stokes, SPH, Benarous, Backwell and Yeboah (or others) are ready to be squad players. But if we're not able to get the numbers up through those players who are missing or not ready, two won't be enough.

I'm going to play Devil's advocate a little here. Whilst there's plenty of good reasons to be sceptical of the board's willingness to spend, bringing in "one or two" doesn't automatically equate to spending less. The "one or two" are presumably a striker and a permanent solution to the Twine loan (i.e. either Twine or a player who can play the same role). Strikers and attacking midfielders are the two most expensive positions to sign and there is a valid argument for saying "let's concentrate all our resources on those two positions" rather than spreading the budget thinly and therefore spending less of the budget - whatever that budget is - on the two key positions. With Bird coming in and if no departures, I honestly think that our defence, full backs and midfield are not in urgent need of signings and - whilst there is certainly a case for competition for Max O'Leary, I think O'Leary is good enough as a goalkeeper. Everyone is upgradeable of course but I'd be relaxed going into next season with our current defence, our current goalkeeping options and our current midfield (plus Bird, less one of James or Williams, with a possibility Murphy or Stokes will be ready to compete for a place). However I think we need to get the striker and attacking midfielder correct and I think doing that is far more important than several signings. Obviously all this depends on how much the board are actually providing as a budget and if it is sufficient but I'm going to judge the club on how much we're prepared to spend rather than how many players we're prepared to spend it on.

If Conway signs a contract, brilliant, but I think the more interesting question for me is what we do if he doesn't. Do we cash in now, when his stock possibly isn't at its highest, or do we give it a year and hope he has the kind of season that pushes a tribunal fee up to the level of what we'd currently get, whilst taking the chance that a move to Scotland or abroad would mean losing compensation entirely?

The problem with James is that the only people who thought he was good enough as a footballer were multiple Premier League managers, multiple England managers and the professionals who voted him into the PFA team of the year on three separate occasions. And what do those idiots know?

I always wonder if there was a hidden mental health component. Coppell had quit Reading a year earlier and I remember the Secret Footballer - quite possibly Dave Kitson, who was back on loan at Reading in the last months of Coppell's tenure- talking about playing under a managerial legend who'd fallen out of love with the game. I always felt him joining us was a final test to see if he could rediscover his love for management, which he obviously couldn't. I actually think a bit too much is made of the David James signing. Yes, Lansdown went all in for a player without talking to the manager but I'm not convinced most Championship managers would be that upset their Chairman buying the (then) England goalkeeper. I wonder if the issue was not so much Coppell being over-ruled so much as he saw it as a lower profile job with a bit less pressure and then suddenly found us under scrutiny by the media as a dark horses for promotion.

“Would an assistant referee stood in line with play be able to clearly judge the attacking player to be closer to the goal than the defending player?” If yes - and the assistant isn’t in line with play or is but somewhat misses it - VAR corrects the decision. If no, there is no clear and obviously error and the attacker gets the benefit of the doubt. For me, it is the benefit of the doubt to the attacker that is the element that is lost. No decision will ever be 100% clear cut. But the role of VAR should be to correct things the ref and assistants should have picked up but did not rather than to try to add a level of precision that isn’t realistically possible to achieve.

Obviously not. You're making the exact point I made in my original post. But my point in my second post is that it becomes even more ridiculous when it is a player who has never played with VAR before. The line needs to be drawn somewhere but it needs to be drawn somewhere where players can know they are in the wrong and avoid it in the future. If it was "whole body" or "most of body" in front of a player then a player could reasonably do their best to avoid having their whole body or most of their body in front of an opposition player but it is clearly unreasonable to expect a player to be wholly certain that no single aspect of their body is closer to the goal than the last opposition defender. Hence the current law becomes ridiculous and unfair once VAR is applied to it.

It's not about "intent" but "ability to learn and avoid". Generally in any situation where there are rules - be it a sport, the workplace or the legal system - you can only be penalised for infringing a rule if you could have reasonably taken steps to avoid doing so. That might mean you broke it on purpose but it might also mean you were careless or negligent. Either way, you being penalised is a corrective step to discourage the rule-breaking and to encourage you to be careful and follow the rules in the future. If you take a foul, for example, a player might not always mean to foul a player but a player who commits a foul will always have made an error in the timing or speed of a challenge, which they can learn from in the future. Historically this has bene the case with offside too. A kid playing as a forward for the first time will regularly find themselves offside until they learn to time their runs and part of the joy of watching a quick forward - such as Michael Owen or Ian Wright - was their ability to time their run to get ahead of the defender without being offside. In training, a player would work on their timing and work out the exact moment to get forward. However, a player on a training pitch does not have access to VAR. In fact, I'm pretty sure Haji Wright's entire experience of playing with VAR in his career before today has been one start and three sub appearances at the last World Cup and the FA Cup Quarter Final at Wolves. Whilst Wright has undoubtedly - like any other forward - worked on timing his runs in training, I do not see how he could possibly have been able to learn how to avoid being offside to the degree of fractionality that VAR picks up on. Without the ability to learn from an error, or avoid it in the future, I don't see how it is fair to penalise someone for an infringement.

For me, it's the fact that VAR allows for a level of fussiness you (rightly) could not get with the naked eye. Offside was ultimately created to stop players gaining an advantage by just hanging around the goal waiting to score. Pre-VAR, a player needed to be far enough offside to gain an advantage in order for a decision to be correctly given. Otherwise the referee or assistant simply could not possibly see it, and there was a clear rule the attacking team was given the benefit of the doubt if it was not obvious. Now you've got several minutes of studying camera angles to establish a player was marginally ahead in a way that a) could not possibly confer an advantage to the attacking player b) an attacking player could not be expected to notice and correct themselves against. I agree that, by the letter of the law, Haji Wright was offside. I do not believe anyone could possibly argue that Wright gained any kind of advantage by being offside or that, had he been onside, the goal would not have bene scored. I also don't think anyone could claim Wright was at fault for being offside to such a fractional degree that he could not possibly have noticed and corrected without the aid of a replay and video cameras. So what you get in practice is a player who has made no correctable error and gained no possible advantage getting penalised for an infraction that nobody could have been expected to notice without watching multiple replays of the decision. By the letter of the law, it's the correct decision but I don't see how anyone could argue it's a decision that makes football better or a fairer game. I think the whole "a play is offside if his right testicle is fractionally ahead of the defender" is a nonsensical law, especially once you apply cameras and slow things down to check the testicular configurations. To my mind, the only way to make offside and VAR compatible with the spirit of the game is either to a) only correct decisions that the Assistant or Referee could reasonably have spotted b) change the law so a player's whole body needs to be ahead of the defender for an offside to occur.

It doesn't even make sense as an accusation. If the VAR Assistant was trying to fix a result in Luton's favour, why on Earth would he go for an Everton win over a draw? Utterly ridiculous nonsense which narrowly tops "it's not fair that we've got a points deduction for knowingly breaking the rules" as their most pathetic whinge of the season.

Spreadsheet has now been corrected to clarify it was Norwich and not us in favour.

Yeah - I thought that as well. For context, Wagner is asked his personal opinion and gives it. He certainly in no way implies he is speaking on behalf of the club and I'd agree that he isn't.

Watched the press conference and Wagner is in favour. Essentially the person who made it has got confused - it should be Norwich in favour and not us.

Yeah - I'm not sure anything has fundamentally changed since January. He presumably knew we were a mid-table Championship club when he signed and we're a mid-table Championship club now.

I've got mixed views on this. On the one hand, I suspect most managers - including in the Championship, League One and League Two - regard replays as a bit of a pain in the arse and there are probably a lot of fans who'd appreciate getting a result on the day. On the other hand, replays are a fantastic income generator for small clubs and there's a certain magic in smaller teams forcing major sides to a draw and an extra game - even if they ultimately lose in the replay. I feel like the main result of this will be more bigger clubs going through to the later stages and less opportunities for smaller clubs to get a money-spinning second fixture.

I’ve definitely started watching a lot less (non-City) football due to over-saturation. I don’t have any issue with the amount on - people can watch it if they want - but I definitely watch quite a bit less of other clubs than I used to. That said, I suspect the fact that we have not had a promotion or relegation battle for several years probably affects my excitement for football in general.

The only thing is that he’s maybe not done what they hoped he would with either Hull or with us. I wonder if that will shift their expectations of what impact he could have for them next season.

Thanks @phantom!

For me, the first two are very clear front runners and then there's a few I could consider after that: 1. Dickie 2. O'Leary 3. Tanner has been consistent and performed over-expectations. 4. Vyner possibly deserves to be above Tanner but I don't know that he's excelled by his own standards to the same extent. 5. Knight is a little bit less consistent but has definitely added something else. Not much between those 3 and James, Williams, Sykes and Pring

I've noticed this post on the events page from a Rovers fan planning to wear a City shirt on Saturday to raise money for the Children's Hospital. He's put it in a place people won't see it so thought I'd highlight it. @Moderator- is there any way to convert his event into a thread on the board so it gets a bit more attention as people might want to contribute.

As someone calling for Manning's head four games ago then my answer is that you can only make a decision based on the evidence available at the time. After West Brom, I'd have 100% have sacked Manning if we'd lost the next couple and I couldn't see it turning around. I'm delighted that there are huge signs of improvement but I still think calling for his sacking was an utterly valid call based on the info available. Right now, there's really positive signs and he obviously deserves to see out this season, rebuild over the summer and show what he can do next season. It might be we get ten games in and are challenging for promotion and, if so, the board and Technical Director will deserve praise for a brave call in sticking with him when the fans were turning against him. On the other hand, we could revert to poor form again and it'll turn out in hindsight that his appointment does not work out. We don't know. But, if we end up sacking him in October, the people who are praising him for the last four games are not suddenly "wrong" for their opinion at this moment in time, in the exact same way that nobody was "wrong" to feel he should be sacked after two extended winless streaks.

I agree with your post but, in fairness, I think often it's not about anyone deliberately leaking things. It's just that people have a frustrating meeting and then vent a bit to someone they trust - maybe another colleague at the club, maybe their best mate or a family member - and either someone overhears or the person they sounded off to mentions something to someone else and all of a sudden it's public knowedge.... (EDIT: Obviously occasionally our Technical Director DMs confidential info to others on social media too but hopefully that's a rarity!)

You could be right. Being completely honest, I didn’t know their name during the game. I think I remember someone telling me it was Bree after but it could be that either I misremember or whoever told me the name got the two confused.

I really don’t get why people find it so implausible that there are people on these boards with contacts at the club and that they occasionally hear info that isn’t in the public domain. I also don’t really get why people find it wildly implausible that - after a run of bad results and poor performances - the players took a view on that or that the Technical Director had words with the manager. That strikes me as what would almost certainly happen, whether anyone heard about it or not. What I would say is that, if either the players or Tinnion had views on what was needed to improve, I think Manning deserves credit for listening and taking feedback on board rather than being stubborn or defensive. A lot of people don’t engage with or learn from feedback and it can be a real flaw.