Negan

Just seen on Twitter, lovely bit of news. Think that’ll be us done now for the window barring any outgoings? Would love us to keep Scott and bring in another keeper and striker but all 3 of those aren’t likely. Be very interesting to see what happens if/when Scott is sold and if it’s just a replacement for him we bring in. Very happy with Knight though, finally a Brownhill replacement. 

2 hours ago, Bristol Rob said:

U21s

Doesn’t hit the same. Have as much interest in that as I do soccer aid. Only really has my interest if we’ve got one of our own in there. 

There's still so long before football starts though... christ I miss it. Summer without international football sucks ass, been spoilt the last 2 years 

Have a Wednesday friend who thinks they are bringing Carlos Carvalhal back. Nearly got the job done for them last time, very harsh on Moore though. 

Might not be the best manager for them and can understand the confusion around it but I really don’t get all the stick and hate LJ gets by our fans. Yes it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing all the time but in my years watching city there’s only been 3 managers I’ve genuinely enjoyed watching the club with and actually brought some excitement/joy and that’s Gary Johnson, Cotterill and Lee. Granted the first 2 won promotions and a cup but with LJ it’s the first time we were considered a genuine threat to the league and a team that could challenge. Also worth remembering we were his first “big” job and he was still learning his trade. Things could have gone differently for him here if he had someone above him better than Ashton to oversee spendings.
 

Might be the only one who thinks this but I reckon he’d do a decent job at Leeds. If you look at his jobs so far it isn’t that bad. Kept Oldham up and settled, went to Barnsley and got them in the promotion mix and to the cup final before leaving for us, they went on to get promoted and win the cup, took us from relegation fights to pushing for play off spots and a very good cup run. Went to Sunderland who were an absolute shit show and again had them top 4 and it was a bit of a weird sacking with the timing. Where’s he’s at now there’s only so much you can do. Never making top 2 and at best can make a domestic cup final. He needs to come back to the championship again imo.

I mean they aren’t going to stay up anyway but now hoping they finish bottom just below Luton. Not sure who they think they are in the premier league standings but 17th will always be a massive achievement for a club as small as theirs. There’s a reason they had to put him in charge to begin with…. 

6 minutes ago, Merrick's Marvels said:

Fully fit, he's not a squad player though. 

The risk is for how many games will he be fully fit? Great player but isn’t worth the money if he’s only going to give us 5-10 games a season. 

The yellow kit (ignoring the badge) is actually really nice. HATE the home kit as it looks cheap/fake so praying they hit us with a decent away one. Personally think it’ll be the same as the home but black with white stripes.

Hoping O’Neills provide something better next season, can give them a bit of slack for this seasons as it would of all been quite short notice. So fingers crossed they are saving the away kit reveal for either that big 15 million pound signing we’ll make or Alex Scott signing a new deal telling us he’s not going anywhere DiCaprio style. 

So it sounds like he’s a CB who went on loan to Derby and they played him LB… sounds familiar to Lloyd Kelly? Happens to a lot of young centre backs where they get pushed to the full back position when stepping up to real first team duties. So I don’t think this is the end of any Joe Bryan links. As others have said this looks more like cover for Atkinson/Naismith (Kalas not signing) and he can slot in at LB too. The perfect signing imo, especially on a free. 

Anyone know if the Brentford interest in Vyner was concrete? Be just our luck he FINALLY performs and someone comes in for him, Bobby Reid all over again 

19 hours ago, Percy Pig said:

I get what you're saying, however they're 3 or 4 seasons into their squad building exercise coming from a much more solid base than we had when Pearson came in. The mess of a squad left by Ashton cannot be underestimated. It defied all logic and coherence.

We have had about 5 days of the January window in which to actually start the process of building a squad. Otherwise we've had to rely solely on free transfers, rough diamonds and the academy.

The summer window is step 2 on a road to building a proper squad, 4 or 5 solid performers maybe a splash of flair. Then it's about bedding those players in and getting the team playing to a plan, whatever that might end up being. 

I anticipate that we will see how we envisage Mehmeti becoming integral through pre season. I'm hoping it will be more central or narrow off the left. Think he's got all the attributes to impact the game from there. I'm thinking along the lines of Knockheart in Nige's Leicester team. 

All really interesting stuff. So many different approaches to our playing style we could take. 

Excited to see it unfold.

Luton and Coventry didn’t really have a “squad building process” to be fair. All built on the back of promotions and momentum. Millwall are probably more similar to us in terms of building a team. However our process started the minute Nige walked in, yes Ashton left it in a mess but those days are behind us now and it can’t be used any longer as an excuse if things don’t go right.
 

Assuming we don’t have a bad injury hit season, this window needs to be seen as an opportunity to build for a promotion push, top 6 HAS to be the aim this season. If we stayed up by the skin of our teeth then I’d say it’s more important we focus on maybe a mid table finish but we have a mid table team right now. We finished 10 points off the play offs, it’s really not as big of a gap as some may think. 3 wins and a draw more would of had us there or at least fighting for it. I think if we looked over the season there was plenty of loses which could of gone in our favour with a bit more quality in the team. 

For the first time in a long while I’m excited for the upcoming season as there’s been something there which we’ve not had for ages, hope. The last few years the pure focus was survival, we know we’ve got the squad capable of keeping us in the league now and the potential is there for play offs. If we finished anywhere from 7th-10th I’d be somewhat happy, but only if that’s where we’ve been throughout the season. I very much doubt 69 points gets you a play off spot next season, 21/22 that was 9th/10th spot. Truly believe that Nige and the boys can do it though. 

Let’s be honest, Luton, Coventry and Millwall are all “our level” kind of club in this league. I know Millwall fell short at the end but the fact they were in it up until the last game of the season was great. If those 3 teams are challenging for top 6 then there is NO reason why we can’t. It NEEDS to be a top 10 season at an absolute minimum for me otherwise it’s time to move on from Nige. It can’t be another season like this. However without knowing the ins and outs it’s hard to say. You also never know if you’re going to fall victim to an injury hit season, so many factors involved. With the ambition and position we are in with manager/squad though it’s got to be a season where we’re challenging. There’s no more excuses now. Clubs with less resources are out performing us year on year, fingers crossed we can actually spend a bit this window, shame that means losing Scott though.  

Crazy to think we’ve got it so right at left back and so wrong at right back. Think I’ve seen us with 2 truly decent ones. Orr and Little with the latter mostly being decent during the double winning side. Other than that we’ve just not had that consistent performer. HOWEVER… Tanner is growing very well there. Shame Wilson hasn’t had an impact. Pring has just been excellent, made the position his own now. 

I’ll be honest I didn’t take much notice of the announcement when we had to drop Hummel. I thought this kit was to just see us out for the rest of the current season… to find out we’ll actually be wearing this for next season as well is extremely underwhelming. It’s up there with the 13/14 season as one of the worst we’ve had. Genuinely so horrible and tacky. Shame really as I love the yellow kit (minus the badge) not sure how they can get something so simple, so wrong. 

I just worry he’ll be one of these that earns a new contract then come next season the levels drop, he picks up more injuries and we’re left wishing we went elsewhere. He’s a decent player but I think we can do better overall if we look at another option. Let Nige get in more of his players. 

17 hours ago, brad blit said:

We get to see Scott at least 4 more times before he leaves in the summer. His quality shone today 

Wow… I really didn’t realise there was only 4 home games left. As much of a meh season as it’s been, it has gone pretty quickly. And whilst we aren’t mathematically safe, relegation won’t happen now. On Boxing Day I thought for sure we’d be in the dog fight. So that’s my biggest reason to be cheerful, we’re ending it strongly, injuries doing their best to get us down but the boys keep fighting. Well done Nige and team, really did have my doubts but you’ve proven me wrong. Hopefully this summer we can get some players in and really push on, even though that will mean losing Scott! 

7 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

We will need one or two new CMs then. King will be out I think, Scott sold, James a year older, Massengo formally gone, Benarous back from injury hopefully but that's a 20 year-old who's had a season on the doctor's table. If Williams is reduced to a rotation player then you are essentially left with James plus what...3 new signings?

I think Williams will be key next season.

Think Naismith will be used in midfield next season. Desperately need him in the back 4 ASAP though! 

16 hours ago, Port Said Red said:

I think Pep might be saying "Come on, did you really fight off a pack of dogs in the mountains?"

"My god Mr Johnson, you've aged terribly since I was last here, glad to see you've finally had your growth spurt though"

I mean its not impossible but it won't happen. I'll honestly be buzzing with a top 10/12 finish and a positive goal difference. It will be interesting to see how we react to our first defeat, not including the Man City one as that was to be expected. Positive result at Cardiff is needed, don't want them gaining anything on us. 

Definitely had the quality. We seen glimpses of it. Just one of those thing unfortunately. Hopefully he continues his football journey in another capacity now. Retiring from playing isn’t the end. 

1 hour ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

I actually 100 million percent can. 

Nigels future as manager has never been discussed. 

No it wasn't. There were a few fans that booed. The same fans that booed Joe Low. Their opinion means nothing. 

Defending was awful? Please show me where we conceded 4,5,6 to back up your comment. 

Of course in that period you mention we had a month off due to the world cup. Not sure how you are somehow managing to blame Nige for that.

No you can’t. You’re just some bloke sat at home who doesn’t know anyone at the club but you get a hard on making out you’re in the know
 

It would of most definitely been discussed. Maybe not to the extent of it being serious but the club would have known things weren’t going well and would of been preparing solutions if they had to make a change. Just like any sensible business would

If you couldn’t see we were all over the place defensively during that period you need help. You don’t have to be concerning 4 a game for it to be bad. The mistakes we were making were comical.

It was 3 weeks off and in that period we still played 15 games. Won only 3. Nige wasn’t completely at fault obviously, but you’re deluded if you don’t think he takes some responsibility. He’s been here 2 years, he’s now responsible for the good and bad. 

2 hours ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

I can unequivocally tell you he absolutely was not. Thin ice for losing two games in a row? And then 3 draws in a row? Jeeeeez. 

No you can’t mate. You can only guess and think like me. The place was starting to get toxic and thats usually when managers are soon to get the boot. From the 4th of October up until Boxing Day we’d only won 3 games and been embarrassed by Lincoln in the cup. The football/defending was awful and the pressure was most definitely heating up. If we’d of lost against Millwall and Coventry I genuinely think that would of been the end. Thankfully he turned it around and hopefully that’s finally it now and it’s clicked. 

Yeah regardless of what some say on here I think he was skating on thin ice and needed a month like this to get that security back and show the ones in charge he is capable. I’m not getting to carried away with it though because if history is anything to go by, this could just very well be a half decent bit of form and we could lose every game this month. Things are most certainly looking a lot better now though and long may it continue. We’ve had nothing but utter dross now for 3 years. Want to see those good times back at the gate, keep it up Nige  

53 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

It’s just social media users, in reality it means absolutely nothing.

Social media is useful to find out stuff like a French journalist (who will know) that a club over there is after Han Noah, but no Prem club signs a player because some fan on social media raves about him after a game, they’ll be watching him anyway.

On that topic I actually saw a Cheltenham fan yesterday saying he wondered if Massengo was joining them on loan because Wade Elliott said they were signing a midfielder.

I mean he turned down Anderlecht FFS, he’s obviously desperate to go on loan in League One.

Wouldn’t say it means absolutely nothing. When it’s a top 6 club their fan bases are ridiculous on social media. Obviously the club won’t go on Twitter and see fans are asking for Alex Scott so they’ll buy him, but they are fully aware of the noise around it surrounding certain players. You just have to look at the Mudryk deal recently and how big of a deal chelsea and Shakhtar made of it online. They knew full well how big it was with their fans. If spurs see they have hundreds/thousands of fans begging for Scott, it’ll definitely have some influence. Not huge, but some. 

Just now, Slack said:

Search on twitter "Alex Scott Bristol city" the amount of people begging their clubs ... One Leeds fan thinks he's worth 12mil

Yeah did see a spurs fan say 10m… they really don’t have a clue. He’ll be our highest ever transfer fee received I’m sure of it. Has to be 20-25 million minimum upfront.