LondonBristolian

25 minutes ago, 1960maaan said:

It's arrived 

 

Only just started listening, but one thing that made me laugh.

When asked "are confidentiality clauses forever " Nine replies "ask me in 12 months time" 

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...

2 hours ago, ExiledAjax said:

In which case no, I don't think two will be enough. 

We've suffered twice this season, once when shifting manager and style, and once where we had an injury crisis.

That second lull (which chronologically was first) can be protected against somewhat by having a broader squad. I think that's what we need to take us up from the band in 8-14th to that in 5th-10th.

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. 

20 hours ago, Graham76 said:

This is exactly why I’ve decided not to renew my season ticket. There doesn’t appear to be an appetite to reinvest in the squad and I don’t think we are anywhere near being top six.

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?

1 minute ago, GrahamC said:

That is massive hindsight.

As has already been pointed out, his last game before joining was at a World Cup for England & his career was stellar.

Easy to say now he was on a very quick decent in terms of standards (though he did still have some exceptional games for us).

Probably the same people moaning will be those saying we never “go for it”.

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?

20 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

Coppell always struck me as a man who wasn’t necessarily in love with football, but when he was invested, he was all in.

I think that was one of the issues here - as I understand it SL pursued him and pursued him to a point where even though SC had reservations he said yes. There were major red flags though - IIRC he was to take over in the summer but rather than watch his new team he instead took in a Reading game.

It was a job he didn’t really want to do to start with, then when SL (and probably for the right reasons as he wanted to show us going for it) signed James over Coppells head it started getting even worse. We then have the horrible signings of Stewart and Hunt.

It was an awful appointment - not because of the manager, but because the manager didn’t want to do it. A part of me also thinks this is what has led to SL appointing lesser “names” other than Pearson subsequently- he got his fingers burnt. Maybe he feels we’re just not big enough to “buy” success to an extent and that’s driven a part of the strategy since.

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.

6 minutes ago, Kid in the Riot said:

It's ridiculous to expect a player to know for certain whether they are in an offside position, or not, period.

For clarity, where would you draw the line? 

“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.

12 minutes ago, Kid in the Riot said:

You think that by playing with VAR a player can time their movement so as to avoid being offside by a margin of a matter of centimetres? Come on. 

Again, the line needs to be drawn somewhere, doesn't it? 

I don't think "he hasn't played in games with VAR so he doesn't know if he's going to be off" really cuts the mustard as an excuse. 

This said, I'm still not a big fan of VAR. However it's here to stay so the rules and implementation of it need to improve. 

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.

30 minutes ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Agree with some of what you say, however a line has to be drawn somewhere regards the offside rule. 

You are bringing things like interpretation of intent by the forwards into the equation. You seem to be suggesting that if a forward tried to be onside, but then accidentally finds himself in an offside position, then that would be a reason to not be offside? That's going to create even more uncertainty and suspicion amongst fans. 

For the record, I think the offside rule should go back to there being "clean air" between defender and attacker. 

Maybe even "limbs" being offside should not count as offside. Take the line from feet. 

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. 

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. 

2 hours ago, northsomersetred said:

It's on the spreadsheet along with other teams that have come out in favour or against, the link is to YT vid of the Norwich manager which i've mentioned.

Read it and the comments, it's not rocket science.

 

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

1 minute ago, ExiledAjax said:

 

Thanks for doing the work. I'd also argue that Wagner is not Norwich. Manager opinions should be treated with caution as they won't necessarily represent the views of their club's owners/board members. It's not the managers who attend EFL general meetings.

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. 

5 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

Based on Norwich's press conference from yesterday? I don't buy it. If ever there was a time for "I don't believe it until I see it on the OS", it's now.

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. 

47 minutes ago, Major Isewater said:

I am sure he would have thought that Derby had a good chance of promotion when he signed for us so it wouldn’t be a shock to him if they are in the same division next season. 
Equally he would have known about City, the facilities and certain players like Knight with whom he played at Detby. 

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 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.

6 hours ago, marcofisher said:

I expect Burnley to come down and probably look to get value from him on the pitch rather than sell him.

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.

5 minutes ago, phantom said:

That's a glitch as that section should only show fixtures 

We are a pretty decent bunch on here that I am sure would support his cause, I have created a new thread with the original details and added some more

 

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. 

11 hours ago, Fontaineofallknowledge said:

Would you still have sacked him in hindsight? I'm aware of the nuance and I'm also acutely aware of context when appraising performance-hence why i disagreed with the bedwetters

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. 

11 minutes ago, Red Army 79 said:

Completely agree

Id also be disappointed if these type of closed doors meetings that may or may not have happened got leaked to the public. 

It would show a lack of respect, integrity and not great for both trust and team morale. 
 

Let’s hope we can continue to finish the season on a high creating a bit of positivity going into next season. 
 

Our last two promotion seasons started with a change of management that didn’t start off to well but on both occasions got on a bit of a run at the end of the season prior and that momentum continued into the promotion season.  

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!)

17 minutes ago, TammyAB said:

It was Luke Bolton, not Bree, wasn't it?

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.