ChippenhamRed

Yeah, not great. This will actually encourage the club to make those tickets more expensive to discourage people from doing this.

Is this the cheap child season ticket issue? If so I would have thought most kids would be there on a Friday night for a big game with no school the next day.

I suspect our head coach knows it’s nowhere near that simple.

What you on about Spazza, everyone knows “genuine loyalty” is the only criteria needed for an away ticket!

One of the absolute worst posts I’ve ever read on here. A complete embarrassment of utter nonsense from start to finish. Enjoy the game @SPAZZA - you deserve to win after putting up with that!

You think a draw away to a side 6th in the Premier League playing their strongest team available…isn’t a good result?

It does feel like the forum is very reactionary at the moment. Which isn't ideal when we're a midtable side that wins a few, loses a few, and draws a few. We were up after the three straight wins at Christmas, up after the West Ham cup games, and down after the mini-winless run in the league at the moment. It's human nature and understandable to a certain extent, but people really need to take a step back and look at the broader picture. There is very little value in obsessing over Manning's PPG at this stage. He's only been in charge for 15 or so games, he is still implementing his own methods and playing style, and he hasn't built his own squad. It's a poor metric at this early stage for those reasons, but also when it's so easily influenced by the standard of the opposition he has faced. Broadly speaking, I would say both Manning and Pearson have got about par from the squad. We are inconsistent, we are poor at times, and occasionally we have been excellent under Manning. All of that is as much about the quality of the players as it is the quality of the coach. If two coaches with different styles are performing roughly the same, then maybe that's just where we are as a club at the moment. We're just very mid-table. We want to see progress, but personally I think we need to give the new coach a decent amount of time to achieve that, with a summer of recruitment and decent backing from a board who need to put their money where their mouth is, and stop obsessing about every result in the meantime. Manning doesn't become Pulis when we lose any more than he becomes Pep when we win. Patience and time is needed before rushing to judgement.

Indeed. A team's performance is always a function of how BOTH sides play, how they line up and what tactics they employ. Part of the reason West Ham "didn't turn up" is because WE played very well, defended excellently, and didn't allow them to get a stranglehold on the game. Not simply because they decided not to play. Manning deserves credit for that and anyone unwilling to recognise that clearly has an unfair, pejorative view of the manager.

This is just a desperately weak reply. We won the second half in London 1-0, and drew the game away against a side who were 6th in the Premier League at the time, who picked the strongest side available to them on the day and were thoroughly outplayed by us for long periods - because we were absolutely excellent, and Manning got tactics spot on. If you can't give the team credit for a superb display that day - especially in that second half - then you clearly aren't capable of a reasonable or fair assessment of Manning.

You clearly didn’t watch the second half in London.

Nope, the reputation is made up of ALL the games, including the three wins in a row before the current run of games without a win you have selectively chosen. You are picking statistics to suit your argument. My point is the cup games should also be considered when assessing Manning’s performance. And overall it’s currently a mixed bag - and probably about par for the squad.

Utter nonsense. All games contribute towards a manager’s reputation and help demonstrate what the team is capable of and how the coach deals with superior opposition. Manning deserves a lot of credit for the West Ham games in particular, not for them to be ignored because of some weird rule you made up that for some reason they don’t count.

Indeed. Especially when the sample size is so small. PPG is such a crude measure over a small sample because it’s highly dependent on who you’ve played. It’s a mixed bag for Manning so far, but it was Pearson too - and he is implementing his own style while also not having bought any of his own players yet. The guy needs patience and time, it isn’t his fault what happened to Pearson, and at this stage I’d say PPG isn’t a very valuable metric.

I think Facebook might be more your level mate.

I like it and I like the way they’ve explained it in the video. Especially this bit. City and their red and white stripes, yellow kit, black kit with purple and lime, blue training wear, splat robin, club crest, and 500 different typefaces across their media output…could learn a lot from this.

Maybe it’s just me but I get really fed up with superfan judgement of away attendances. Every single individual will have their own reasons for going or not going. All of them valid, because no one is obliged to spend a large amount of their own time and money to watch a football match a long way from home. If we’re looking for reasons - it’s a cold Tuesday night in January, we’ve had a lot of away games recently, an away replay next week, and we’re midtable in the Championship playing at a ground we’ve been to plenty of times. Oh, and the cost of living has never been higher. Fair play to those that went, and no judgement on those that didn’t. Let’s quit this “embarrassing” crap and just give credit to those fortunate enough to be able to go.

How the hell is it cash only in a modern stadium in 2024?!

Yep, fair point. Had forgotten that as I wasn’t able to make the home game.

Decent prices, but I'm confused about how much members have to pay! EDIT - I guess the "non" refers to the whole sentence, but it doesn't read very well.

The carrot is officially on the stick.

You do but they are the exception not the norm. I find the consensus views of OTIB to be much more sensible in the main than any other social media platform, and the juvenile views that dominate football twitter are generally given short shrift here.

There is definitely a trend at the moment for “forced limbs” to get attention on social media. I saw one a few weeks ago where Watford fans were literally falling over each other after their 5th goal late against Preston. It was ridiculous because you just don’t react like that naturally in a mid-table clash when the outcome of the game has long since been decided. The inevitable end point to this is that someone will get seriously hurt - if it didn’t happen already at Ipswich yesterday.

Pleased to see people are with me on this. OTIB is a lot more sensible than twitter, which seems to be dominated by utter morons when it comes to this sort of thing.

Anyone see this at Ipswich today?! At the risk of triggering the utterly tedious “bet you’re fun at parties” crowd, I don’t understand why people are treating this bloke like some sort of legend. To my mind he’s a complete idiot and I wouldn’t have wanted me (or my lad) to have ended up underneath him.

The point is there is no point completely dismissing those games purely on the basis of the opposition's league position and/or form. It often doesn't work like that, especially in the Championship. And it does seem to suit us better playing against opposition who are on paper superior and play with more intent to win. When we beat Middlesborough earlier in the season, they were on a run of 1 defeat in 12 at the time.