ashton_fan

Lampard didn't fail at Derby, took them to the playoff final in his first season. He wasn't ready to manage Chelsea it came too soon and Everton is a basket case anyway

I keep thinking though when Nige was appointed he was never mentioned once on OTIB despite the usual ITK posters saying a deal was imminent with candidate X/y/z

39 minutes ago, Alessandro said:

As I was saying, you can pick your argument.

What about Bournemouth, Brighton, Fulham, Cardiff, Swansea, Burnley, Brentford, Luton, Leicester, Southampton...need I go on?!

Yes agreed some clubs have done better but my response was to the poster saying "almost every single club of our size has out achieved us" which clearly is incorrect 

1 minute ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

They had good times ie PL, or in some cases winning a trophy or similar before though. Bigger highs and lows but more highs.

Some of those are historically bigger than us anyway 

Surely it's not worth winning a trophy if it bankrupts the club though (eg Wimbledon and Wigan nearly)?

1 hour ago, Supersonic Robin said:

How can we be so sure that we'd be in L1 without Lansdown?

There probably is an alternative universe where we'd be in L1. There's also an alternative universe in which we're an upper midtable Premier League team like Brighton.

Given that almost every single club of our size has out-achieved us, probability suggests that we'd have done a bit better under another owner.

Regardless of one's views on Lansdown, it feels as though we're at a point where we need to accept the risks associated with a new owner if we truly want a chance at success.

 

So no club our size has done worse? Derby, Bolton, Wednesday, Wigan, Blackpool, Reading, Portsmouth, Charlton, Barnsley .. need I go on?

1 hour ago, Alessandro said:

I’ve always felt this over the years too - but the more I think about the more I think “that’s football” these days.

Yes it’s a huge sum, but people will say to you it’s often a debt of his own mis management - and more over time I’ve come to agree with this. He’s thrown good money after bad time and again.

The reality is football doesn’t make money outside the premier league, at least not for long periods. You own a club, you lose money - why bother? Many reasons probably but mainly because you want to get to the money of the premier league - that’s the jackpot.

Ironically, just pumping in the bare minimum to keep you a float, or throwing good money after bad, is counter productive - it’s like having a container ship with multiple holes in the hull, patching up one at a time and carrying a smaller payload to minimise the losses. 

No, haul the ****** out, invest in filling all the holes then you can fully load up the cargo and make some real money.

OK random analogy but hopefully you get the idea. 

Surely he has been "filling in the holes" with the investment in the stadium, training ground, Academy etc.? There are plenty of owners who don't put the money in, or very little, and let the club fall to a level where it can pay the bills with little or no subsidies (the Gas are a good example)

People should remember that without Steve Lansdown putting in £20m or so every year to keep the accounts balanced this club would be in L1. No previous owners have supported the club financially to this extent so a change of owner may well see us going down rather than up.

He was definitely limping but didn't want to come off, maybe that's why Nige wasn't happy 

Best start in Div 2 since Bristol City in 1905/06 when we won the league with 30 wins in 38 games .. according to Sky

Tins had always said he gets on well with Nige, I think this is just guesswork at play and shouldn't be taken as gospel 

I like Nige and can appreciate the ways he has improved the club, but if I was in SL's shoes I'm not sure I'd give him a new deal at this point, I'd want to be more certain of our league position towards the end of the season. Team results have been inconsistent and although we moved up to 8th with our win yesterday we were close to being 16th or 17th had Coventry been able to shoot straight, it's too early yet to envisage where we're likely to end up. There's no reason to rush since Nige isn't a young up and coming manager who other clubs are likely to poach or tempt him away, he's generally seen as difficult to deal with. He's not improving his chances of a new deal by talking to the Press about perceived incompetence at Board level, that usually only ends in one way (I think it may have been affected by his recent illness).

If he wants to stay it's quite simple, if we're still in say the top 8 in March then I'm sure he'll be offered, say, a 12-month rolling contract but if we're entrenched in the bottom half as in previous years then I think SL will go for a change. Although most people on here want him to have a deal now, that's on the back of a win, if we'd lost yesterday then that would have been four defeats in five and opinions would be different. I hope he does well and is given a new deal, there's no point in changing for the sake of it like they do at most other clubs, but we have to show we can challenge in the top half at least.

10 hours ago, slartibartfast said:

So the club was like a train set bought one Xmas, played with for a while ,then buried in the attic ?

It happens. Most of my mates who never missed a game when they were younger stopped watching football live long ago. Usually due to family commitments or some just prefer a game of golf on a Saturday. They'll still watch matches on TV but that's about all.

1 hour ago, REDOXO said:

Yeah I was there. Wasn’t it one of Ray Cashley’s early games. I remember being surprised Gibbo wasn’t in goal. 
 

Well I think I remember it!  

On reflection I think he scored the equaliser to make it 1-1 before the second own goal after City had dominated possession following Millwall's early strike. I think Cash was in goal as you said.

Gordon played in this game in 1966

I remember him playing at Millwall in that game where we lost 3-1 and scored two own goals (Merrick and Rooks I believe), embarrassing it was on Motd but Spiring scored our goal and had a good game from memory putting City back in the game at 2-1 with ten minutes or so to go, then they scored a third walloped from about 20 yards.

13 minutes ago, Sheltons Army said:

Where did you get this wild claim ?

As a fanboy , I know you won’t have a bad word said about the Lansdowns or Johnson Jnr but making stuff up is pure desperation

This is old news, has been discussed on here and in the Post a few years ago

56 minutes ago, phantom said:

IMO the bigger problem is that the intention was to hand the legacy on to Jon to take forward

He seems to be very distant from the club and can only assume he doesn't have the interest to take on the reigns

Isn't Jon making his own fortune with a property business in the Bahamas? Would you give that up to come back here so you can get given stick like his dad has done on OTIB?

2 hours ago, lenred said:

Me too. Especially when I’d get a lot of it back as well when I came to sell.
 

This fallacy that SL is doing all of this out of the goodness of his heart is just that - a fallacy.   We’ve known that he isn’t ever since his ‘my club’ rant during LJs rein. Probably knew it before but that confirmed it for many.  

The infrastructure is better but that’s it.  And even that - as great as it is - is not that incredible for this level as we’re continually told - it’s very decent for the Championship and would just about stand up in the Prem.  But it’s not anywhere near groundbreaking  
 

We’re in the same league as before he took over and haven’t been anywhere near his continually stated aim of becoming an established Premier club.
 

His rein has been one of treading water when it could’ve been so so much more had he made smarter decisions. I’d imagine he’s finally realised that and now wants to cut ties when he gets what he wants out of us financially.  If figures are correct though it could be a long wait! 

We were stuck in League One when he took over, now an established Championship team, he wants to sell the club due to his age, he needs to ensure he can hand over to a new owner in an organised way as he can't go on forever!

7 hours ago, Barrs Court Red said:

They’re not. He’s made strategic blunder after strategic blunder - either wholly or partly through his entire tenure.  Woeful managerial choices are just the tip of the iceberg - and are they that bad? 

Wilson - decent

Tinnion - disaster, right man wrong time 

Johnson - decent

Coppel - disaster 

McInnes - ok

Millen - not great 

SOD - disaster 

Cotts - decent

Johnson Jnr - mixed bag

Holden - fml 

Pearson - mixed bag

With all those managers, most of the failures are with a backdrop of SL ******* about with direction/funding/letting boy blunder loose 

Biggest one of the strategic failures (if he had a hand in it) would have been the decision not to go ahead with the Ashton Gate rebuild in the very early naughties.  Though I’m not sure that’s attributable to him or not.  
 

It’s all bad though, there’s definitely balance to be had in the SL good/bad argument.  And that’s the frustration for me.  It’s not all bad…but it could and should have been so much better. 
 

Hindsight's a wonderful thing. Most of those appointments looked ok at the time and were welcomed by the fans. Virtually all managerial appointments end in failure at some point in any case.

I remember what it was like before he took over, stuck in the 3rd division, 10k gates, hardly any young players coming through, stadium falling apart and no decent training facilities. This is the first time we've been established at this level since the 70's, gates have doubled and we have brilliant facilities. Some people have short memories.

I remember not so long ago when we were in L1 we played our final game of the season there when they were celebrating their promotion to the Championship and I envied them

4 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Everyone knows this. Not sure what point you are trying to make?

everyone is a selling club bar a few. You have missed the point. The recent criticism of SL is because he appears to have decided to stop putting money in (his prerogative) when all his previous messages and those then cascaded and communicated by Alexander, Tins and Nige is that (sone of) the Alex Scott money woujd be available. Alexander’s SOTC interview seemed to be - how do I spin SL’s new approach to fit a view that this was all agreed in March when budgets were set. It failed because we’d heard completely different messages.

Nobody blames SL for results. We do criticise him stifling a good opportunity to progress by coming up with crap like his nest egg comments. 

Not everyons thought it was that obvious:

REDOXO

• 
• Members
• Posted 19 hours ago

Steve L's comment about the nest egg clearly related to the Club's finances not his own, he's already got more money than he knows what to do with!

It's funny how when we won NP gets the credit but when we lose it's SL's fault. We've always been a selling club, I remember Chris Garland being sold to pay for the Dolman in my early days of watching City, you can't stop players moving if they want to play in the top league and we need the money to balance the accounts.

Looking at their summer signings they should be doing better, Daniel Johnson usually a thorn on our side, not taking this one for granted 

Looking at the Burnley forum seems he did ok. Described as 'lively' 'can pick a pass' 'can tackle'

It may be because the software for OTIB has been updated and a parameter has not been set correctly? Otherwise, you could try compressing the photos so they are smaller files, there seem to be loads online but some charge for the service, this is an Adobe one that I think is free although you may need to register (I haven't tried it myself):

https://www.adobe.com/express/feature/image/resize