Dr Balls

It’s a bit of a Gloucestershire theme between FGR and Cheltenham. If both beat relegation, I can be magnanimous enough to not only praise Cotts, but also briefly overlook one of his previous managerial posts and even applaud Darrell Clarke.

I know that Maidstone beat Ipswich away, but it’s not like Kasey Palmer has been ripping it up regularly for Coventry this season. Unlike Szmodics at Blackburn!

I would imagine Sammie would like to forget his time with us too!

Nige even lasted fairly long time at Watford, considering that time spent as manager there is counted in dog years rather than human ones!

But this comes back to low expectations generally. “We want promotion” is akin to most of us “wanting a nice life”. It’s a vague ambition rather than being something that is demanded and supported financially. The owners actually don’t want the boat rocked. They would quite like success in terms of promotion, but only on their terms. Which means no challenge to the hierarchy. Fortunately for them, they have such a passive set of supporters, used to decades of under achievement and disappointment, that they can get away with it! That said, lose the next 3 games, which is entirely possible, and by the time of the home game against Leicester, those attending Ashton Gate might be more vocal in their disapproval. But then again maybe not…

Curse of the autocorrect @Davefevs I think we all might be a lot happier if Manning had someone more senior than him, who he and we could trust to advise him as Director of Football rather than Tinnion, who is short-lived failed League 1 manager at the same club, nearly 20 years ago. The story that comes to mind is actually about the Gas. A long time back they had a young Paul Trollope as Head Coach and a very experienced Lennie Lawrence as Director of Football. A lot of their fans questioned what Lawrence added, and presumably so did the board as they let him go as a cost-cutting exercise. It was subsequently quite clear what he added, which was experience with which to guide Trollope. The results tanked, Trollope was sacked, relegation followed, and ultimately a season or 2 later they were relegated out of the Football League. The moral of this story is that experience and wisdom are undervalued in our current society and football it would seem is no different!

This comes back to why we looked good against Southampton. The players played on instinct rather than the sterile way they had been “coached”. And when we go back to the “Manning way”, it’s dull, predictable and the opposition quickly suss out that we aren’t really good enough to play that way at this level. It takes a big person to accept that their approach is wrong or isn’t working. Is Liam able to do that? Really not sure but from what he says I have my doubts.

Freudian slip?!

Oh I think that’s very unfair. Stan and Ollie were fantastic acting looking inept, whereas it’s not an act with JL and BT, they really are that clueless!

I would also give as evidence the way the women’s team has been set up to fail this season as another really poor decision, both on a sporting level and commercially. Finally make it back to the WSL, bring in the 4th biggest crowds in the league, but waste it all by not investing more heavily and getting immediately relegated. No wonder no one wants to pay the asking price for Bristol Sport - it’s a depreciating asset!

Define “badly run club”. If by that you mean amateurish and poor decision-making then there’s certainly an argument you could make for City under the Lansdowns being a “badly run club”.

And this is the bit where the recruitment of Manning doesn’t seem to fit with our player recruitment policy. If we are bringing in young players with potential then having someone who can improve them as they mature and introducing them to the first team seems essential. Manning played a young team in his first season at MK Dons but they were mostly Premier League loanees, and when he was faced with coping without them and instead having young players that the club could afford, he failed and was sacked. That doesn’t augur well for him or us within the framework laid out by the club.

Interesting in the sense that Stoke look like joining Rotherham in League 1 or that 7 of the teams in the lower half of the division won today? This is the one that ought to worry everyone. Only 3 teams worse than us in the last 10 games and 2 of those are Stoke and Rotherham. https://thefishy.co.uk/formtable.php?table=2&tab=tab-last10 Makes for very grim reading!

My biggest fear is that we could still be in a relegation scrap by April. And that Manning is not the coach you need in that situation. And just to give a little more insight here, read the last paragraph of when Manning was sacked from MK Dons and then try and align that with the club recruitment policy as stated by Tinnion: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/63361291

Lose both the upcoming games against Cardiff and Swansea and this forum will go into meltdown! By the end of March we could be in that dreadful situation of hoping that we will get just about enough points to avoid relegation and that there are 3 worse teams in this division. Given our recent results against teams near the bottom, I really wouldn’t fancy us in a relegation scrap with Manning in charge. “Mr Motivator” he is not!

The tactics from the previous regime were to play on the break and be quick in transition. Our last 3 wins in the League (Watford, Middlesbrough and Southampton) all have the same common thread through them that we were playing opponents who had the majority of possession, while most of our goals in those games came from quick play/breaks. And the common thread through our last 10 league games when we have had the majority of possession is that we don’t win, and we frequently lose. But Manning wants the team to play possession-based football, irrespective of whether or not it’s successful with this group of players. There is of course a phrase about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result…

So either we let Manning spend a load to bring in more expensive players to play his way but hopefully better and maybe more successfully or he doesn’t get to spend much and we find that he’s actually not very good at getting the best out of what he has got. The point is the best coaches and managers get more out of their teams than you might expect from just looking at the names on the team sheet. Do we see any sign of that from Manning so far? No, just the occasional flash of the players doing what they did best under the previous manager, almost irrespective of any game plan from the current head coach.

No! If he is anything like the coach he is supposed to be, Manning either needs to amend his tactics to suit the players he has or actually improve the players through coaching. Allowing him to bring in his players e.g. Twine on large fees with large wages is just going to get the club into another financial mess.

Why appoint somebody to the most important role in your business and then accept that he is going to have “learn on the job”? Do you see any sign that he is learning from his mistakes? Or even accepts that he has made any? The recent league form, even given the 2 wins against Middlesbrough and Southampton is woeful, plus our centre forwards have pretty much stopped scoring from open play since Manning has taken over. The service to them is so lacking, and they have to do so much running and chasing for minimal reward. If I was Conway or Wells, I would be seriously hacked off, because the system being played is so awful for a forward. And then, assuming that Manning achieves the bare minimum this season (not getting relegated) we are led to believe that in the summer, JL and SL are going to offer him the proceeds of the nest egg to bring in more of “his” players to someone who shows little sign of being able to improve them. It all feels like an accident waiting to happen, although it won’t be an accident, it will instead be a self-inflicted hobbling of the club by those supposedly “in charge”.

The gap between the Championship and League 1 isn’t quite the same as that between the Premier League and the Championship but it’s still considerable. Most promoted clubs struggle in the Championship. Ipswich are the most recent exception but they have an extremely experienced base to their team, most of whom have played at this level in the past. As for the difference in managers and coaches, again there are quite a few with experience of the Premier League. In fact we just got rid of one of them to be replaced by a relative novice. So it’s a double whammy for Manning. He’s up against better and more experienced coaches, playing teams with better and more expensive players. Fishes and ponds come to mind with Manning in the role of the minnow now in with the koi carp!

This all comes back to recruiting a coach who likes being on the training pitch but who is clearly poor as a manager pitchside when his pre-made plans don’t work. He just seems massively naive!

Doesn’t that remind you of another young manager who has achieved nothing really of note before he came here but was massively indulged by the owners getting us into a right financial mess in the process? I really hate to say it, but even under LJ it was frequently better than this. Playing players who aren’t fully fit to “rest” players who haven’t played for a well? Even the LJ selection tombola had more sense than that!

Yes but when your coach also seems clueless then you might suggest that’s the root of the problem. Always easier to blame others…

At the moment I would take anything from 21st and above. Looking over our shoulders rather than looking up the table. Big games coming up and I see nothing from Manning that suggests he knows what to do.

And then he came to Ashton Gate… Even players with no previous injury history can become crocks when they are with us!