ashton_fan

Of course it's all speculation as we don't know what discussions have taken place but JL said the Lansdown's weren't going to "walk away" and that they had a long term commitment to the club.

I thought JL said the Lansdown's weren't looking to sell the whole of Bristol Sport, just looking for an additional investor who had expertise which would benefit the group. At least with the ground ring-fenced we won't be attracting asset-stripper type owners so I think it's a good thing. It's quite normal for businesses to get commercial properties on long-term leases in any case, can't see it putting genuine investors off.

I can see where you're coming from, I've been going for over 50 years now and it used to be a couple of pints in The Robins and watch the match, but having watched the team play in the 80s at the bottom of Div 4 in front of 4k crowds in a stadium falling apart I really appreciate the matchday experience now. The new facilities have opened up the game to thousands of new fans, my wife loves going to the match but would never have put up with the old stadium, gates have increased to about the level they were in Div 1 in the 70s, in the old Div 2 we used to get 12000 if we were lucky.

It's easy on here to think most fans are anti-Lansdown, but it's actually only about 20 or 30 people who keep repeat-posting their opinions. There's no reason why they shouldn't but looking at the fans forum, and talking to people at the stadium on matchdays this isn't representative of the fan base in general.

I thought we played a much higher line defensively, Boro did the same which compressed the play into the midfield, especially in the first half which is partly why there weren't many attempts on goal. It will be interesting to see how we fare at Southampton. I won't judge Manning untill he's had 10 games in charge then we should have an idea how things will pan out.

How come you think a large percentage of fans want the team to fail? You obviously weren't at the game today

It depends what the criticism was

I only got involved in this thread since Edgy_Red indicated he had been put off posting by the response to his comments

Everybody's entitled to their opinion but it's been a bit like lynch mob mentality on here lately where anybody saying anything even slightly critical of NP gets jumped upon, which is why you don't get a balanced view on here any more, people are just put off from posting.

Good for you, you made the mistake of vaguely criticising Nige which inevitably gets a negative response from his fan club on here.

Whatever the expectation I'm sure Manning will be given a fair crack of the whip here as has been the case with previous appointments (unlike most other clubs) and that in time we'll be able to judge whether the decision to make the change was good or bad.

Obviously if you ignore the "horrible run," then the figures look a lot better but unfortunately they all count!

If you look at the last 3 seasons our home form has been poor. That run you mentioned we won 5 home games in those 4 months and another 4 during the rest of the season so really wasn't that great out of 23 games.

We haven't had a decent run of form at home for ages now so hope that Liam will crack it although tomorrow might be a bit difficult with Boro in such good form, I'd take a draw but hope for a win

I'm pretty sure Nige was sacked because relationships with the management had completely broken down, you could tell that from his last few interviews. Re the squad Nige said he was happy with it at the start of the season and targeted the top 6 so it wasn't just what JL said.

I thought we were told (by JL) that Scott money paid for our early summer signings in anticipation of him leaving at some point during the window? Also we don't know how much money we have received up front for the transfer, in another thread it was estimated to be as low as £5m? I guess we'll never know for sure?

Must have been trains, there were a lot more local stations in those days

It's probably just that the other teams started later than us and got better over time and overtook us.

They probably didn't even have electricity in those days

I remember in the 70s there was a South East Counties league for youth teams of league clubs around London

While I was looking for stories on City I came across numerous interesting articles on football in general, one article from around 1912 was complaining how in the "modern game" there were too many goalless draws and that it was better in the old days of the 1880s and 1890s when things were less organised and there were more goals!

Here's another article from 18 November 1906 describing our win over Sheffield Utd at Ashton Gate

I think we were in the First Division at the time, this is an East Anglian local paper so they were more interested in Norwich , the East Anglian League seems to be for reserve teams in the area.

I have managed to download this newspaper clip from February 20th 1909 previewing Norwich's big cup tie at Bristol City, this would have been in the run to the final against Man Utd. Norwich were in the South Eastern league at the time so it would have been a big upset to beat Bristol City. The article is headlined "Football" in the column at the top of the page just right of the photos. I note from the league tables that the Gas and Swindle both played in the Southern League at the time:

The new QPR boss has a similar philosophy to Manning and wants to dominate possession so it will be interesting to see who comes out on top. City have the advantage of a better squad and QPR struggle to score so hopefully we'll get the points. If we win we'll have won more games at Loftus Road than Rangers this year!