samo II

Not even the worst team in 40 months

Yep

And BTW - bench is next level. Feels like NP making a statement.

It’s absolutely the response from what NP said last week; formation be damned, only those he trusts to put in a shift given the start. Not sure if it will be enough or makes sense, but I do appreciate him putting his money where his mouth is.

Actively shocking how good that team was when you look at the squad we had, and when you think they then almost took us to the Prem.

Ultimately, for me; we’re exactly in the position where the squad and state of the club in suggested we would be coming into the season - lower mid table. I don’t agree with JL’s suggestion we are underperforming, certainly when you take injured players into account, and in the case of the number of youth/academy players we’ve played regularly this year, lower mid table seems about right. Do we need to see further improvements? Yes. Would we be somewhat better off had we performed better at certainly key points (like in the 90th+ min in defence multiple times)? Yes. But we are in deep trouble financially, and don’t have the flexibility with personnel to change much, and so expect much of an injection of talent - NP and CF really have been getting what they can from a limited squad, and at least that’s looking so far to be enough to fend of relegation, allowing us to go again at this level. I’m grateful to the Lansdown family for all they have done for the club, but Pearson is right; trying to do a ‘semi-Brentford’ for years was always a high risk/high reward way of doing things, and one that ultimately they signed off on, and has resulted in us being unable to weather the covid ‘storm’ so they need to temper their expectations now to fit the ‘new normal’. I’m firmly in the camp of seeing us as exactly where I expected us to be; kind of shocked anyone would think otherwise tbh.

It genuinely impacts my ability to watch football - it grates on me how pathetic so many players are; give it the big un when they score or do something they are pleased with, yet whine and moan and throw themselves about at the slightest physical contact. It is boring to watch when the biggest talking points often orbit around whether a challenge was fair/worthy of a foul, which is impossible to tell because most players ‘sell’ even minor contact like they’ve been knifed in the gut. Other than City games, I don’t really watch football for general enjoyment anymore, in particular because of that.

Really? I don’t think we have a top half squad, let alone top ten - some of our best performers are raw youth players and plenty of our experienced players haven’t performed at a championship level for two managers or more. I truthfully cannot see how you’d put together a top ten line up, let alone match day squad from what we have available.

Will probably get them up, then be found to not quite have the acumen to move them beyond mid table in the Prem, like always. But that’s not exactly a big issue for WBA; solid appointment.

Of recent games: the 6-0 away win at Bradford to confirm going up was really enjoyable. Absolutely dominant showing and after the many times we’d had to scrabble to get over the line in league one promotion races, to so comfortably secure championship football was great.

I’d wager Carl Ikeme could spend 1,000 years in plenty of ‘games’ and plenty of potential occurrences in all of them would pass him by. Personally, I don’t monitor the injury reports of every football team out there (if this is something they’d even disclose), so I also cannot claim for sure it has/hasn’t ever happened before, but safe to say neither has Carl Ikeme, so imagine his statement (while perhaps true) would hold as much weight as my own. World is ****** when Twitter is where people look for ‘evidence’, swear to Christ.

I love the sheer ambition behind many of those shots. They say people ‘see headlines’ when they go for worldies like that but don’t imagine the lads involved here thought they’d make them for all the wrong reasons…

An interesting choice of job for him. I’d have thought his time at Aberdeen may have given him more stock than a second level job there, but perhaps he’s taking a role that suits him more than challenges him. Wish him luck; I don’t fully subscribe to the notion that he had no chance here, as feel he made some odd choices, and was clearly still learning his trade, but it wasn’t the best time to be taking us on, so can’t fault him too much for what happened.

It’s probably just Wells then: I don’t think it’ll be a factor with Atkinson. Big jump for the lad, and as mentioned; not had the chance to slowly get time in a settled and/or successful side, so can imagine he might be in and out of the line up a bit. If he’s injured or has been, tough time of year to manage that, what with the unsettled schedule and lack of time between games. I’m personally happy with what I’ve seen with him so far; got some work to do still, but I don’t think we should have been under any illusions he’d be another Webster immediately. Had potential though.

W L D W L D etc. form would make us comfortable, and in fact would be a decent end to the season; looking at the fixture list, I think that’s not impossible (albeit not in that precise order, of course). My biggest concern is that we simply look better on the field; while I feel we’re exactly where I expected us to be just now in terms of points and position really, it has been some of the frankly shit on pitch showings that have had me worried. Emergence of some solid youth players has been a plus, and hope we hold our nerve and keep playing them, plus maybe find one or two on loan/from the lower levels who may be able to mix things up, though can see far more outgoings happening than incomings. I’m not losing sleep over it, but I do think we’ve work to do to ensure safety and the ability to plan for the future are this level still; I just hope we get a little more consistent and trend upwards in our performances as the season closes out.

Only six points in 20 games is almost so incredible looks like an achievement. That’s a minimum of 14 losses over those games; hard to argue anyone deserves not to go down with form like that.

Will admit to looking at things at 2-1 down and not being confident we could get back into it; happy to be wrong. Encouraging thing being a lot of young players playing today who didn’t let the scoreline get them down, so while it can be up and down sticking with youth, decent showing from them today. Hope we can build on it and string some results together now.

HNM is literally one of our best players; I have no idea why people can’t see it.

Please, please don’t concede late again, lads; if nothing else, Andi deserves it for being (once again) our best player. COYR

Andi’s weird run of almost only scoring braces continues. COYR

Maybe. But I’ve seen a lot of those not playing on the pitch this season and wasn’t that impressed by them. Not saying our kids our world beaters, but thinking big picture; at least some of the young players might end up solid squad players for us, or at least fetch decent coin if we go down.

I’d imagine very little. My biggest worry after seeing those accounts isn’t who we can get in, but which young players might be gobbled up for less than they should, as we have little leeway to hold on to them.

Upside: some of the younger players are clearly our best personnel, which at least gives you a little hope. Downside: Not quite everything else, but the vast majority. This Millwall team are not good, and aren’t even seemingly playing that intensely, yet even with 25 mins left, I struggle to see us getting an equaliser. Bad times.

“Win win for the Gas :laugh:” is such a funny response when you realise that was probably their absolute high point over the last 20+ years. Stuff like that is the only reason I still get a bit annoyed when people call us ‘Bristol’ and don’t know that there is another team in the city, as imagine being mistook for cheating scum like that.

Was it one of their promotion seasons they had at least a couple of home games called off due to ‘waterlogged’ pitches when it was drizzling? Always find a way to fiddle things, don’t they?