LondonBristolian

The best bit will be the off-season where there will be no results to base anything on but we’ll all carry on anyway!

Problem is - win or lose - there’s always a small number of people keen to shout “I told you so” and provoke other posters into a response. Last night was a great result. And I’m ignoring Blackburn “looking poor”. Plenty of teams look poor without anyone scoring five against them and often teams look poor because their opponents are forcing mistakes. So it was a great result and nothing should be taken away from that. And, over the last four games the manager has confounded my expectations. I’m still conscious we have had false dawns or brief periods of form before and I can’t say Manning has absolutely laid my doubts to rest but a good performance and win Saturday will go a long wait to convincing me we can not just play well but do it consistently and I might just start to get excited about next season. Problem is I’ve got excited only to be disappointed so many times before that it is hard to tell if things will be different this time.

There was a full back for Luton I felt sorry for when we beat them 3-0 a few years back. James Bree, I think. To be fair to him, had a decent career since which shows I can’t always judge on one game.

I’m calling it. We’re going rogue. Red with alternating purple and lime green circles. Purple shorts and lime green socks. The robin will be replaced with a tasteful picture of Mark Robins, to commemorate 22 years since our 2003 Football League Trophy win.

"Easter Lights" aren't even a thing. One gets the impression Lee Anderson is utterly ignorant of British traditions.

Bit confused by the original post. My understanding was Muslims were unable to eat pork for religious reasons and not unable to look at photographs of pork for religious reasons so it is rather confusing what point, if any is being made. What entertained me though was the person who replied complaining that the club hadn't put up a "Happy Easter" post, only for several people to reply linking to the "Happy Easter" post that the club had very clearly done. It goes to show the people who feign outrage about these things tend not to link their grumbles to objective reality. It's a bit like the people who complain about a lack of an International Men's Day in March but ignore International Men's Day in November...

I too find the Pearson obsession quite weird but perhaps not in the way you do. Pearson has not been mentioned on this thread once and the vast majority of posters who've expressed doubts about Manning have done so based on things like results, performances, lack of full benches, whether we're giving opportunities to young players and admittedly also his dour presentation style. There have been criticisms of the board and Technical Director around communication of the new manager but the vast, vast, vast majority of posters have given Manning a fair chance and judged on what they have seen. With only one or two people significantly harking back to Pearson. So my question is why you in this case - and other posters in others - suddenly bring up Pearson as though that is the reason for people's criticism of Manning even when nobody has mentioned Pearson at all? It feels frankly disingenuous to refuse to engage with people's points and proscribe a motive for those points that is very clearly not there.

I think Semenyo is the current player who'd add the most to the team.

Players are pretty candid too: https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/sport/football/joe-edwards-gives-plymouth-argyle-9211591

That's only because Manning's not had a full season with Bristol City yet...

To give credit where it is due to Manning, he has now just about done enough for me to go from the "this isn't going to work" camp to "the jury's still out". Ten days ago I thought the end was inevitable and would be swifter than many predicted. I felt there would be a fair chance that we'd fail to beat Leicester, Plymouth or Sunderland and - had I been forced to place a bet on when Manning's tenure would end - I would have picked a seven day window from tomorrow until the day after Huddersfield as I thought that was the point was his position would become untenable. There is no doubt at all he has proved me wrong in terms of my sense that we were in an irrevocable downhill slide. There is still a fair bit to do to move me into a position where I'm optimistic about next season. Oddly the games against Blackburn and Huddersfield are probably far more significant to my judgement than the Leicester game. We already knew we could produce the occasional outstanding performance against top teams. What Manning needs to convince me of is that we can win those games against struggling teams that sit back and hit us on the counter. At the moment, I feel more positive than I did ten days ago but I also feel like I'm in danger of falling for the Lee Johnson bounce where a run of results at the right time masks a general sense of overall underperformance. 7 points in 3 is great but our results in general have not been and we still don't know what the "true" Bristol City is. We've now got five games where Manning has a chance to demonstrate he can get us performing consistently well and pick up points against struggling sides. It sounds a harsh assessment but, looking at what the fixtures are, 7 points or less from those 5 would maintain my sense of underachievement, 8 - 10 points would feel like "par" and only 11 or more points from the last five would make me start to feel like I could approach next season with optimism.

We’ll see him in early 2025 then…

Thank Christ our exit from the under-18s cup means our manager can completely ignore the academy for a totally new set of reasons. Major focus on the club’s annual under-18s table tennis tournament?

I do wonder if we are about to see a bit of a fashion change again with managers. This season has seen a number of clubs appoint managers into their first roles at this level. Rohl, Edwards, Duff and Foster all have not worked whilst the jury is out on Manning and Williams. Even Maresca - who may ultimately succeed - appears to be underachieving on his resources. I’d not be surprised to see a swing back towards experienced appointments for a while.

I think he's the one of these players - like James or Skuse - where it was far easier to see what he was doing when he wasn't on the pitch doing it. People often like a midfielder to make lung-busting runs and crunching tackles and get goals and assists. All of which are good things but it's easy to miss the value of someone who sits deep, stays calm and controls the game. He left a real hole in our midfield.

Last season's game featured the incident I voted for as the Champagne Moment of last season. We got a bloody penalty!

In fairness, wages are relative to value to the team and the amount a club'd pay a player very much relates to how big a part they'll play. So the affordability question might not mean this player wants significantly more than we can pay so much as this player would command the salary we'd pay a key player but we think they only be squad players next season. I'd imagine a player like James is one of our top earners and I think he absolutely should be. He's a quality player with premier league experience. Similarly Williams was signed to play a key role under Holden and I'd have thought he'd be on the upper end of our learners. The big question then is "are these players going to want to be paid more than their role in the team?" I feel, for Williams, the answer might be yes. With James, it comes down to where Manning thinks he fits with Bird, Knight and TGH etc. At the moment, I'd certainly say he's showing enough to warrant being paid as a player but, as @And Its Smithsys, the level can suddenly drop with senior players and it is a factor. I'm not so sure it will with James as his style of play isn't reliant on physical prowess but it still has to be considered.

I'd not appreciated we were in the presence of the person whose job it was to make an official ruling on who is and is not a fan. Congratulations on your role. I'd be genuinely interested to know who appointed you and what the selection process was?

Perhaps so but the fact remains that ever a manager as good as Clough did not succeed at every club. Whilst even Manning’s strongest advocates would not put him in that bracket, the reality is that he could go on to have an extremely successful career after Bristol City AND be the wrong appointment here. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Not every manager works at every club. Brian Clough was a disaster at Leeds, Unai Emery has done well in every job except Arsenal, Steve Cotterill is far less popular with Forest and Birmingham fans than us. Neil Warnock did well at Crystal Palace and QPR then badly at Leeds and back at Palace then well at Rotherham and Cardiff. Pearson was great at Leicester than a disaster at Derby. Valentin Ismael got a Barnsley team to the play offs but could not do so with a theoretically stronger West Brom team. Moyes has done well at Preston, Everton and West Ham but struggled at other clubs. Not every manager job is in any sense the same and few managers would succeed at every club.

Both Brian Tinnion and Jon Lansdown made very clear that they were bringing in a new manager to get the best out of the players we had. If Manning does not want the players he inherited - and, to be fair, there is no indication that this is the case - then that de facto makes him the wrong appointment and justifies his sacking irrespective of any other factors. We cannot afford to rebuild the squad every time we appoint a manager and the whole suggestion we do so utterly undermines both the current manager and the Technical Director, whose literal job is to ensure we have continuity through the club irrespective of who the manager is.

That doesn’t in any way imply Edwards would have achieved the same thing had he stayed at Watford though. Not every manager is the right fit at every club. A manager could easily go onto have a successful career elsewhere but it still have been the right decision to sack him where he was.

Totally agree with this. I always felt that, whilst Pearson was the person to halt the club's freefall and rebuild the culture, he might not be the person in charge to kick on from there and I'm not 100% certain that I'd have renewed his contract if it was down to me. (I think I would have done but I'd have assessed at the end of the season). However I deeply disliked the way the club allowed speculation to grow around his position, the lack of respect the club showed for the job he had done in tough circumstances and the way that what was essentially a decision around the club's preference for the style of manager they wanted was justified by trying to publicly undermine the job Pearson had done. I totally get that I'm not going to like every managerial decision the club make but my issue is the lack of honestly and integrity.

In many ways, Scott's injuries have put him in a similar place to a January signing. He didn't have a pre-season at Bournemouth, the pre-season he had at City was massively undermined by two long-term injuries in four months and he has had to adjust into a team mid-season. I'm sure he'd have liked to have had more of an immediate impact but, at the same time, he's faced relatively little adversity in his career so far and this season's experience could give him an opportunity to develop and learn. I think it's very early to be judging him as a Premier League player.

I think for me there's two major frustrations I've got with Leicester, Everton, Forest etc. 1) Clubs defending themselves not on "we didn't break the rules" but "the rules we knew about - and, in most cases, had a vote on - weren't fair in the first place". Premier League clubs vote on the rules for PL finances together and every club had an opportunity to agree or disagree with them. And - whether they agreed or not - every club knew what the rules were. "We didn't know we'd have a bad season" or "we sold that player a bit later as we thought we'd get more of a profit" is basically "we knew what the rules are but decided to chance it" Even if one agrees with the point above regarding West Ham, the point to raise and challenge that is when the rules are being agreed, not after the point you've been caught breaking them. 2) Contingency planning for the possibility of a bad year is what literally every business needs to do. No company in the UK could go to an insolvency proceeding and say "well, we just sort of assumed we wouldn't have a bad year so didn't plan for it". I totally get how Leicester were caught out by the financial impact of being relegated after a number of top eight finishes but that's not an excuse.