Dr Balls

After tough home games against West Ham, Forest and Leeds, in a way Southampton were the perfect opposition. They want all the possession but struggled against a high press and over-committed when coming forward with a defence and keeper for whom defending wasn’t their strongest attribute. Plus a great performance by so many players, but a special shout out for Hayden Roberts, who had a stormer to the extent we didn’t miss Pring at all. That’s saying something!

The last Bristol derby with goals from JET and Joe Bryan?

All true but Leeds are even more of a bogey team for us than Preston were. That said we were really poor and part of that was the set up and tactics. Glad we competed the double over Boro and hoping we can repeat our last home league score against Southampton on Tuesday…

Tbh scoring any goals in open play with our current set-up and tactics means you must be a top notch striker. Harry Kane would struggle up front for us right now, because there is so little service. I understand that’s why Manning has brought in Twine (at significant expense) as someone he knows who can play the way he wants, but beyond that this team doesn’t suit the style of play he is trying to impose. And on that basis, I do really feel for Conway, because he does a lot of running for so little reward. Look at how many times Bamford was on the ball on Friday compared to Tommy and you can immediately see the problem.

What would be really interesting is how much of our possession is actually between the back 5. How many times do we see passes backwards and sideways from Tanner and Vyner particularly? Probably because their forward passes are so poor and inaccurate so “safety first” but it’s not exactly exciting!

Well in the case of LJ and MA, perhaps there are even bigger bullshitters in football than there are in finance and business. Which having seen the interview episodes on the Apprentice, when their CVs are scrutinised, really makes me wonder! The problem is that frequently SL has gone for managers with potential, who have had a bit of short-term form, without actually achieving anything significant (McInnes, Johnson Jr, Manning) or the cheap internal option (Tinnion, Millen, Holden). Strangely the only ones who I would have described as successful from his list of managers are those with previous tangible success (Johnson Sr, Cotterill, Pearson) although I accept that Coppell was a miss, while SO’D was a useless manager, but he did lay the groundwork for the Academy and some of the players that shone under Cotterill and LJ. The point is that none a single one of them has gone on to bigger and better things elsewhere, which again suggests a poor record for picking managers.

That’s fair but he really needs results right now. Our current league form is woeful. And Manning and his assistant don’t seem to know how to affect a game positively through making changes. Lose the next 3 games, which is quite possible, and the volume of unhappiness on here and elsewhere will likely rise close to levels heard at the time of Pearson’s departure. Which will suddenly make the QPR game a “must win”!

But we still get the media fluff, promoted by the club, that Manning is a “bright young coach”, while of course the club were quite happy for Pearson to be painted as an aging dinosaur, when the truth was nothing of the sort. Personally I would prefer experience over promise, but of course that doesn’t suit the owners!

Exactly. At least under Pearson, in very challenging circumstances, we made progress in the final league position each season. Anything less than 14th this season, especially given playing our league position when he took over, would suggest Manning’s first season has been a failure.

I think giving Manning a free pass this season, on the basis that he came in a third of the way through the season, is far too lenient. We were told that he was brought in to improve our results this season, but so far in that regard he has clearly failed. Even worse, he’s made a limited but competitive team look like a limited and ineffective team. That is not progress. It suggests a fixed way of thinking about how to play that doesn’t suit the players he has, which is very worrying. Effective football is one that means the team scores more than it concedes rather than playing a particular way. Many fans will forego entertainment if their teams win (Arsenal have been doing that for about a century!) but the problem of late is that much of our football has been poor, boring and losing. At the rate we are going our first league win of 2024 might not appear until March. That definitely brings back memories of SO’D and that 7 month winless league run from March to October 2013, which of course also included a relegation…

A tomorrow that never comes to anything - except yet another rebuild!

One thing that is clear is that we aren’t really playing a “central” back 3. What we have is very lopsided with Tanner playing like a right full back covered by McCrorie, while on the left, Pring is playing as a wing back with varying amounts of cover in front of him. Yet Pring and Dickie are more secure than Tanner and Vyner, plus far better going forward. Tanner gets a nose bleed as he approaches the half way line, while Zak’s passing is so bad, I would be tempted to check he’s not colour blind so often does he pass it to the opposition. We would be better with a back 4, with McCrorie on the right and Pring on the left. Then 3 in midfield (James, TGH and Knight) with Twine playing as a number 10 behind Wells and Conway. That would be a much more robust and effective set-up (4-3–1-2). You never know, we might even score!

Yes Leeds are a very good team at this level, but they had lost 3 of their last 4 away games. We played straight into their hands by trying to play a way that doesn’t suit at least half our players on the pitch. Plus being a striker under Manning must be one of the most soul-destroying roles in football - Just lots of chasing defenders and nothing to work with. It’s dull and ineffective football, so it neither entertains nor is it successful. Reninders of the ill-fated but thankfully brief SO’D era are flooding back…

What like Kieffer Moore (just gone to Ipswich) or Famara Diedhiou (just joined Cardiff)? You couldn’t make it up!

Quick update to Manning. Unless you have parachute payments and far better players than everyone else, trying to play possession football in the Championship is a fool’s errand, if your aim is success. We will get nowhere playing that way against teams with budgets we can only dream of. Hence why Pearson set us up as a counter-attacking team. Firstly we aren’t going to have 60% possession against teams like Leeds. And most of that 60% possession being in our own half with our back line or goalkeeper is also zero threat. Hence the lack of goals. It was the wrong team, wrong formation and wrong tactics tonight. But will Manning learn? I hope so but I fear not.

Agree but I still think we will finish lower than last season I.e 15th or lower. That’s definitely not what was promised by the owners…

Look at the players she has to work with and pick from, compare it to the other clubs in the WSL, and the reason we are at the bottom of the table is pretty clear. And it’s not the manager. Needed to invest more at the beginning of the season rather than hoping for young players to cope at this level. And the best of them, like Brooke Aspin will be off at the end of the season, so getting back to the WSL for a third time after relegation will be even harder. No parachute payments like the men’s game!

Couldn’t agree more. Short-sighted and useless from those in charge. Really feel for Lauren Smith. Treated as badly as Nige I.e. set up to fail!

Personally I must admit to preferring the clean “simple” badge. I challenge anybody to say that the current Sheffield Wednesday badge is better than the previous one. Current badge: Previous badge:

I don’t disagree, but this comes back to the rubbish from Tinnion of we have a consistent style of play throughout the club. Pearson goes and Manning wants to play a different way I.e. possession rather than counter-attack. The one other thing is that the former tactic tends to need far more skilful players than the latter, and they are generally more expensive both to buy and keep. Pearson had success at Leicester with no a counter-attacking side, plus his hands were tied financially. The question is whether Manning can get the team playing the way he wants on the budget he is allowed. Which brings us back to Jason Knight. He is great at pressing high up the pitch as he runs and runs. What he doesn’t do as well is the final ball or scoring, although he has got a few goals this season and considering he’s not the tallest, he’s also good with his head. I do think that he has lots of good attributes and has been one of our best players this season, but it’s how he fits in if we have 2 proper strikers (Wells and Conway) up front that I am a lot less sure about and is more difficult to work out. That said, we have so many midfielders out of contract this summer, he is not someone that I would be looking to sell either.

I thought that magnet effect only worked in the Championship. Although all those Yorkshiremen having to get up before they go to bed to make it all the way down to deepest darkest Janner territory, might just mean someone will take pity on them and show it live instead…

Explains why there were so many and so quiet at times in the Atyeo on Friday night - Nuno’s non-playing reserves!

Which comes back to the short-sightedness of not investing in this transfer window to maintain their WSL status. Really poor from those higher up not to emphasise recruitment of some top talent, even just in the short term to ensure survival. Principles of recruiting young local players are all well and good, as there is a huge area for the club to tap into for both support (hence the 4th largest crowds in the league) and talent, but experience and top international level players are still needed to survive at this level. That’s what other promoted clubs have had to do but of course we are Bristol City so we do things differently - and then seem baffled as to why it hasn’t worked!

So we paid QPR less than half what they paid Oxford for Dickie 3 seasons earlier? Kerching!!