Dr Balls

Part of this is optics. He’s not ranting and raving, therefore “he’s losing his edge”…? With age hopefully comes wisdom. Nige is certainly a thoughtful individual and has interests beyond football. But if anyone takes that as not being ambitious or wanting to be successful, then think again. I honestly believe if he has had enough he would walk away. There’s no sign of that just yet. He also knows SL isn’t a “hire ‘em and fire ‘em” owner, having been through the Watford manager mill in the past, so time has been on his side. He has another challenge ahead losing Scott, but with the.exception of maybe Guardiola and Ancelotti, every manager has to accept that they may lose their best player to another club (and even those 2 have each possibly lost their best in Gundogan and Benzena this summer) and get on with it as best they can. And without doubt, Nige is one of the best managers we have had in the near 50 years I’ve been supporting City. The change in approach to developing the football side if the club and the professionalism he has brought may not always have led to stunning results on the pitch, but it has kept us up, when we far more likely to go down, plus laid far firmer foundations for success in the future.

Do the Section 106s include Ashton Gate station on the Portishead line? It’s just recent comments from Marvin seem to suggest the station is back on the table again, to follow the Portway P&R station that’s already opened and the new station being built at Ashley Down - for the cricket obviously!

Reading the comments (when I finally got past all the ads) it would seem that the fans weren’t happy at us taking him off their hands for a loan and then a relatively low fee at such an early stage in his career.

Without more detail it’s impossible to be too specific. However in simple terms, the surgical options for bacterial infections are either “incision and drainage [of pus]” for abscesses and collections, or an excision of infected tissue, be that skin, muscle, bone or something else. Neither are good, as you would normally hope that antibiotics alone should treat most bacterial infections.

The theory may be that other clubs, knowing that we have £20+ million in the bank from the Scott sale will look to overinflate the price they want for any sales to us. Therefore either we get our purchases sorted early in the window before Scott is sold or hold on as long as possible for any potential targets requiring a fee, so that we can drive a harder bargain with the club selling, knowing that we are willing to walk away if we don’t get the fee down to something reasonable. And the same may apply somewhat for the wages with the player. And it’s not like big clubs haven’t ballsed this up in the past: https://www.channel4.com/news/torres-and-carroll-star-in-last-day-transfer-scramble

Emery’s record in European competition is nothing short of remarkable, particularly in the Europa League with Sevilla, who weren’t even the 3rd or 4th best team in Spain at the time. I would suggest that Villa are potentially favourites for winning the Europa Conference this year. As for LJ, it seems he will have to reflect that the “Papa John’s Cup” is more his level of competition. And even then he was lucky to win that!

Given that squad, if Nige can get us into the top half of the table that would be quite an achievement. We are kidding ourselves if we think that lots of our players are covered by other Championship teams. The goalkeeping choices are unbelievably thin, while goalscoring without Conway looks a problem. We only need a few more particular injuries and we are in bing trouble. As for reaching the Playoffs that would be a miracle nearly akin to Leicester winning the Premier League! Given that squad, if Nige can get us into the top half of the table that would be quite an achievement. We are kidding ourselves if we think that lots of our players are covered by other Championship teams. The goalkeeping choices are unbelievably thin, while goalscoring without Conway looks a problem. We only need a few more particular injuries and we are in bing trouble. As for reaching the Playoffs that would be a miracle nearly akin to Leicester winning the Premier League!

Not all of the managerial choices have really been those of SL. Cotterill wasn’t his man, and after backing him in League 1, he chose not to in the Championship, when the prices were significantly higher. It does seem like we are now seeing something very similar with Nige, which considering the impressive job he has done of tidying up the mess left by LJ and Ashton and their profligate spending just feels very unfair. I could be proven wrong in the next 10 days, but it really wouldn’t surprise me if we don’t bring in anyone between now and the end of the transfer window.

Using that shop analogy, others have been rifling through the hangars at TK Maxx looking for that discounted designer bargain, while we only shop at Primark and then think we are keeping up with the latest fashions. And it’s not as if that latter strategy of dredging Leagues 1 and 2 is foolproof, as the transfers of Kane Wilson have so recently proved.

If Conway is out for months and Weimann still injured, given who we have sold and released, and who we have left (a forward who hasn’t scored in open play for 20 games, a lightweight 20 year-old, and a player whose best attribute to attacking appears to be long throws) then the need for a decent striker becomes even more pressing.

I just don’t think this current set up of 1 in the middle up front and 2 very wide actually works well consistently. The wide forward on the opposite side to the play has to come infield to support the lone striker, while the full backs then have to give the width upfront. It has worked at times last season, but so far this season it hasn’t really clicked, and part of that may be because other teams have sussed how to counteract it by pegging back our full backs. Certainly looked like that in the 2 home games so far.

Perhaps finally realising that the Championship is a lot more difficult than LJ and Ashton led him to believe? We are basically playing for a place in the playoffs and then hoping. And SL is certainly jealous of clubs like Luton and Coventry. The reality is that if you take the main creative/attacking midfielder out of any side at this level, they would probably struggle. But you have to have a plan for that and so far I don’t see one. Assuming that there is a plan to bring someone in to replace Scott, then hopefully the club are getting on with it. If there wasn’t a plan then that was truly negligent!

That’s probably because Knight’s not yet up to speed with this level. Remember he has only played 3 games against Championship teams, as the pre-season and Carabao Cup were against lower level teams, when he has looked far more comfortable. Can he improve? I would certainly hope so. Is he the attacking midfielder we need? That seems a lot less likely from what I understand of how he has played previously, but he did get 2 goals against Oxford, which is a lot more than many of our midfielders have managed for a long time.

The home performances did improve in the second half of last season, for the first time in many years. Yesterday was a return to the worst of the last few years, and I can honestly say I didn’t stay until the end with any Hope that we would even get a consolation goal.

The risk is that last season was a blip for a number of these players. And unlike some on here, I still don’t think that Vyner is actually a top-notch Championship defender. Not terrible, but certainly not someone any other club looking for promotion would want to take off our hands. And his distribution yesterday was really poor, but then again depending on the central defenders to set up our attacks also highlights our midfield woes.

My thought is that given the set up of the various companies and entities (Bristol Sport, Pula Holdings etc,) just taking City’s men’s team out of it is more complicated than buying other clubs. Plus I don’t see SL relinquishing control of Ashton Gate or the new training ground, so what exactly is it that any new “owner” would actually own? The assets would be very minimal I.e. the players and staff at the club, all of whose value is both subjective and at risk of significant depreciation. That doesn’t look very attractive to me, and I dare say any potential overseas investor.

There appeared to be at least 1 or 2 frogs on the pitch yesterday on that basis, at at the very least reverting to amphibian tendencies. The form of players like Pring and Vyner is a worry, while the starting front 3 yesterday were as toothless as a bunch of tadpoles.

The third point is the most crucial one in terms of whether or not SL is serious about us reaching the Premier League. As I mentioned in another thread, the other teams that constitute Bristol Sport cost only a small fraction of Bristol City men, yet those teams have been relatively more successful in a shorter space of time. With the promotion of City Women, they all play in the top division of their sport, unlike us. However “success” is somewhat easier as the bar is not so high both in sporting and particularly in financial terms. The competition is intense at both Championship and even more so at Premier League level, and I just wonder if after 20+ years of ownership, SL just isn’t really that ambitious for us any more. He’s done what he can in terms of the ground and the training centre, but getting success on the pitch that can then be turned into a profit in the EPL is just too high risk with a very low chance of return, as realistically the only way a club without parachute payments is likely to make it out of the Championship and into the Premier League is through the playoffs, I.e. one spot per year. As has been joked many times before, how do you become a millionaire football club owner? Start off as a billionaire football club owner! Given SL’s prudent financial background, that would seem to sit rather uncomfortably. At a commercial level, the club breaching FFP and being sanctioned would be a disaster for his wider business reputation, after taking his eye off the ball so to speak with LJ and Ashton, spending money like it was going out of fashion. That said, given his previous appointments, I still think he would prefer a “yes man bluffer” like LJ, who will tell him what he wants to hear, over a bluff realist with proper managerial credentials such as Pearson, who tells it as it really is, at least in private.

SL certainly gives the impression that he’s not really a football fan. The understanding has always been that John was the football fan and his dad preferred rugby. Plus in terms of relative success, City are the leat successful and most expensive part of Bristol Sport. That really doesn’t help if you are of a “safety first” financial mindset. The next few weeks will give a very good idea of the real level of ambition at the club. My feeling is that SL talks the talk on promotion because he feels he has to as the owner, but when push comes to shove, he’s no longer willing to back that aim financially, because the risk of failure is considered too high from a financial perspective..

The problem is that we seem to need that type of player to replace Scott, plus another striker to replace the gap left by the departures of Martin and Semenyo. Without Conway, we have no one upfront who can either hold up the ball or even try to muscle their way past a defender.

As someone who did stay until the end, those of us that did were certainly in a minority. The exodus of our fans after the second goal went in was the most dramatic I have seen in the many years watching us. Over-reaction maybe, but also a sign of extreme frustration that we have just sold our best player and that was the subsequent dire performance from the team.

Play like we did today every week and we will be in a relegation battle. It was that bad, and it wasn’t just that Birmingham were better than us, which they were. We were very poor throughout the team, plus no shots on target usually means no goals.

Agree that there may be an element of reticence about recruiting from Europe from the highest levels at the club, especially having been most recently stung by the Massengo saga. By contrast, someone like Kodjia could be considered a success - 20 goals in a difficult season (20 goals that helped keep us up) and then sold for a tidy profit of £8-10 million after one season. And of course, LJ recruited Tammy Abraham on loan as the replacement striker and he also scored 20+ in a season. We could certainly do with a fit 20 goal-a-season striker right now.

I don’t doubt that Ashton may have profited personally from some of these European transfers. As for Magnússon, my understanding was that we made a profit on his transfer out, while Djuruc was unfortunate with injuries (and what we wouldn’t give to have a player like him now) and Pisano did a more than decent job in the 2 seasons with us Although I am sure Pring and Tanner are on a fraction of Pisano’s wages, I can’t believe that our wage structure is really so tight that no one from a European league wouldn’t consider moving.

Sorry but I just don’t buy that argument. We have recruited successfully from Europe in the past for relatively low transfer fees (Magnússon, Djuruc, Pisano). It’s like in going from LJ/Ashton to Pearson we have gone from one extreme to another.