Dr Balls

This would be my biggest concern for the rest of this season. Owners thinking that they know better than managers and coaches on how to run a football team. Nige and Colin may be quite different characters but they clearly had experience and success at this level, and had man management skills that meant they could get the most from a group of players. The Birmingham situation is one that we most don’t want to follow. Birmingham under Eustace were all over us earlier this season and deserved to win. Birmingham under Rooney are awful. Same players but just assuming that a new coach can come in and do better, when the former has built up a rapport and trust with the players, is just nonsense. Like many on here, I have little confidence in the ownership of the club when it comes to footballing matters. And I have a bad feeling that our new “Head Coach” may quickly be out of his depth at this level, especially if he only has one way of wanting a team to play. Either that or the nest egg will need to be cracked open wide, which completely undermines everything Nige did in reining in the spending.

About the only club at this level not appointing a German Head Coach…!

So is Manning being given a “free pass” to be worse than the man he replaced, who was supposedly failing because those with the power to sack him decided that he couldn’t achieve “this season’s aim”? Either the aim is promotion this season or it isn’t. And if it isn’t then, the reason for getting rid of Pearson was false, while it also suggests a major lack of ambition. And it doesn’t make Bristol Sport a more inviting option to buy, as the only way to make the finances better is making it to the Premier League, even if it’s only for one season, because of the nature of the parachute payments. You can’t have it both ways. There is no such thing as Schrodinger’s promotion!

To be fair, Steve Lansdown has more chance of “selling” the Suspension Bridge (the Mayfair square) to a gullible rich Yank (a la London Bridge) than he does of getting an American to pay £200M for Bristol Sport!

Absolutely this. And all of that guff about Nige having to go because he couldn’t deliver promotion this season is shown up for what it is. As others have already said, JL and BT will be measured against this stated aim and should get all the blame they deserve if this doesn’t happen given they made the changes. However it also puts Manning in a tough position as well, as the usual“honeymoon period” from fans for a new manager/coach could be very short if the team clearly starts going backwards. The club hierarchy/owners may be tolerant of mediocrity but given what they have said, the fans have every right not to be so forgiving, and Manning would be directly in the firing line along with JL and BT.

Except Ange got to spend the money from selling Kane, unlike the situation with Nige and the Scott sale. Just saying!

Take what you are saying @Davefevs. That said if we were to employ a Chelsea manager, I would take Emma Hayes over Frank Lampard!

By people who preferred “rugger”.

Apparently he’s been remotely checking out properties in Clifton on RightMove. As for Colin, I appreciate he would be the worst tasting Marmite ever for fans but if you want a manager who has had even more success and experience at this level than Nige, he’s your only man. Look at the job he did at Huddersfield last season keeping them up, when they looked dead and buried, plus look how they have done since he has left. It won’t happen though!

So it’s now a week since Nige was sacked and it’s been followed by a load of word garbage about the reasons for this. However it is perhaps the case that the 2 Directors of the club (yes there are only 2 - 1 is JL, the other is the CEO) have let the cat out of the bag. It’s not that they want promotion this season but rather that they need Premier League football and the associated money next season to make Bristol Sport a worthwhile asset to sell. As it stands, all of the various components of Bristol Sport are loss-making, with only the men’s football club having a chance of breaking even by selling players it develops at a high price. This produces the said “nest egg” but there is no guarantee that this will ever be spent. In fact, it may just be used to help cover further financial losses. Bristol Sport has turned into a major headache for SL and he wants out. ETM holding up the development of the housing at “Longmoor Village” turns off the revenue stream wanted to develop the “Sporting Quarter” including the new arena, which has now been delayed with no sign of anything happening there any time soon. In the meantime, men’s professional rugby is a financial basket case, with all clubs losing money like it was going out of fashion. That is likely to make any overseas investor keen on buying the men’s and women’s football teams, plus Ashton Gate and the HPC think that there must be better options elsewhere, especially given the supposed asking price for Bristol Sport of £200 million. And SL won’t want to be left with just the rugby and basketball teams, and then having to pay to rent out their playing venues. The bottom line is that promotion is no longer a vague aim, but it is essential to the wider aim for the Lansdowns of selling up and getting out. Now that might be a good thing for fans if it was realistic, I.e. appreciating we needed to use the “nest egg” to buy the players needed to achieve it, but the impression given by our 2 directors and Tinnion, the technical director, is that our current squad is good enough to get promotion. Having seen our performance yesterday against the bottom team in the league, who were down to 10 men for more than 60 minutes, you would have to suggest that they have either been taking something fairly hallucinatory or they have no idea of Championship football. Neither suggests that the current demand for any incoming new head coach is achievable. And so any person interviewed for the vacant post is quite rightly going to ask “And what resources are you going to give me to make this happen?” If the answer is you have to work with the current squad, I think most would say “forget it”. And if the answer is “You can use some of the nest egg” that suggests that the owners always intended getting rid of Nige and not allowing him anywhere near those funds I.e. they were deliberately setting him up to fail. Especially as he would have told them that we don’t have a squad to compete with the likes of Leicester, Leeds or Southampton, and Luton to a greater or lesser extent “got lucky” doing it on the cheap. So there we have it. Are we an attractive option for an ambitious head coach? Only if the available resources match the stated aims. And will SL manage to sell Bristol Sport? Only if the stated aim is achieved, which suggests having to splash the cash in the January transfer window, which as we know is not a good time to try buying players at a decent price. And the fall guy for all of this and the one that has done most to put the club on a more stable footing both in football and financial terms in the past couple of years is Nige, who is likely to have pointed out the currently unrealistic nature of the aims. Unfortunately it seems that if you don’t like the message, it’s always easiest to shoot the messenger!

It was really poor and disrespectful from the Wednesday supporters in the Atyeo. The bugler had hardly finished before they started chanting. There was no silence to speak off and the referee spared further embarrassment by just blowing his whistle as quickly as possible. Not very classy!

The reality is we got rid of Bentley because he was on huge wages and a decent shot stopper, but his distribution was terrible. The thought was that Max had better distribution skills but that doesn’t seem to be the case. He’s not a bad keeper but he does have mistakes that cost goals and points (e.g. the winning goal for Ipswich) and he wouldn’t be first choice in a team vying for promotion. Just ax we would need more threat up front for that we would also need a better keeper.

“By this time next year Rodney, we will be Premier League!”

Doh! Misread this. It’s the EFL “Tinpot”Trophy not the EFL Cup. Step up on the “Papa John’s Trophy” I guess but hopefully we will never have to compete in it again. Although after this week’s shenanigans, I wouldn’t put it past our owners…

Still the “League Cup” to me.

Just to point out that neither Williams or Dolman were players. And we have only had 2 parts of the ground named after players: the dearly departed Wedlock “stand” and of course the Atyeo Stand. And even those names were relatively recent. if you really wanted to rename a stand after a manager and make a point to the current owners then the obvious answer is surely the “Dicks Out Stand”!

My prediction? 1 point - a home draw against Sheff Wed and a loss at QPR. And even that might be optimistic. Fleming has a job on his hands to get the players up for thes fixtures given the circumstances, and it’s not like we have a first team squad that is fighting for starting places. Being able to stand on both legs without being in pain reduces the numbers available to about 12, let alone being able to run, pass or shoot…

Isn’t that similar to how all conspiracy theories work? It becomes self-fulfilling, by going round and round various platforms and outlets in a mad form of feedback loop? The reality is very few people really know what’s happening, and if it involves trying to second guess some of the people involved in any appointment, good luck on that one, because I’m not sure they really know what they are looking for, or how to find it!

FLBC? No thanks. Probably would go as well as the vanity appointment that is currently WRBC. By getting rid of someone doing a good job and replacing with a “name” leading to less of a “new manager bounce” rather than a dead weight thud!

Based on past appointments, my guess would be someone who hasn’t managed at this high a level before, so happy to be a head coach under a Director of Football who is a bit of an unknown in wider footballing circles, relatively young and inexperienced I.e. cheap to employ, plus finally has some previous link to the club, if possible. Based on those criteria, Luke Williams is the obvious choice. But we will see…

I blame the ECB for poaching Richard Gould. The set-up between him, Pearson and Tinnion was a far more equal and stable relationship. And the only one left is Tinman, who suddenly seems to have all of the power, mostly it seems by saying yes to whatever the owners want! As for who we get as Head Coach, it’s more a case of who I wouldn’t want rather than who I would. And given previous appointments by the Lansdowns (excepting Pearson), I would expect someone who hasn’t managed at this level before. SL remains burnt by the Coppell episode, the last time before Pearson he went for an established manager. (And I don’t include Cotterill because he was Dawe’s suggestion/choice.)

This goes to the very point of good management. Speak to those lowest in the organisation as such and find out what they really think. Don’t send them questionnaires that they won’t complete, actually get out there and talk to them, bond with them. In the case of a football club, it would include the players, particularly the young players. Imbue trust in people by getting them to feel part of what’s going on. Include all elements of the business - for City that includes both the men’s and women’s teams. The reality is that from all that we have heard through various routes this is what Nige was really good at doing. Hence why he was so well liked and respected by those working with and for him. But unfortunately for him, he was too good, too honest and ultimately too powerful for an ownership that is remote and not open to criticism. So the answer was “get rid”. And it’s why we are looking for a Head Coach again and not a manager. The owners don’t want anyone having that much power again as that would be a threat to their way of doing things. Which in the case of running a football club is doing it badly!

I think it’s fair to say that Nige has unfinished business at AG. But there would need to be a change of ownership and a clear out of those left (Tinnion etc) before any return could happen. On that basis, the first aim has to be a change of ownership.

Ironically the lyric “Same as it ever was” comes from the Talking Heads track “Once in a Lifetime” - which obviously also refers to how many times City will get promoted to the top flight! I also went to the Watershed on Thursday night to watch “Stop Making Sense” the film of a Talking Heads live show. Stopping making sense also fits perfectly with the owners’ decision on Pearson!

For someone in finance it’s incredibly naive to believe that you can make money out of football outside of the Premier League. Like the old joke goes: “How do you become a millionaire football club owner? Start as a billionaire!”