ExiledAjax

7 hours ago, Davefevs said:

surely the pay off is anything but “standard” and linked to their salary, remaining contract length?  

Possibly the Post means that the mere fact that they get a pay-off is standard? Which it would be in any industry. Its poorly phrased though.

That ain't taking 2 months. Done by  Christmas? I'd be amazed.

17 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Followed by the 10 game losing one

Which, at least on OTIB, would actually be more exciting.

Flint and Freeman. Set pieces. Goals. They felt made for each other in that title winning season.

40 minutes ago, 1960maaan said:

Current position. Always just a guide I guess, changing form etc. Interesting though.

3 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

I hadn’t seen this when I posted elsewhere that we’d played 9 of top 12 and 4 of bottom 12.

@ExiledAjaxyou won’t be surprised to find out I track position of opposition at time we played them.  If I ignore the first two league games, one because there is no table pre-GW1 and GW2 will be biased to those who played at home in GW1, and therefore average pre-GW3 to pre-GW13, the average is 12th.  But it’s not an exact science.  If it’s post-match that average is 11.

Probably better to do it for the final 23 games not the first 13.

Cheers both. 

I await our impending 10-game win streak with great excitement.

5 minutes ago, 1960maaan said:

Interesting graphic popped up. Seems we have had the 3rd hardest start to the season. Something else to make the glass look half full.
Imagine all those dropped points late on in games (if my Auntie had a **** etc) . 
In real terms it means nothing I guess, as we can struggle against the poorer teams, just as much as the better ones.

 

Interesting. Is it average position now or average position at the time we played them? 

Just now, P'head Red said:

Especially when half the crowd think it's a great laugh to sing "you must be shit, we're winning at home"..

I didn't like that chant either. I get that it is supposedly tongue-in-cheek, dark humour etc, but I wouldn't call it particularly effective "support".

3 hours ago, 1960maaan said:

What I'd like

                 Bentley
     Kalas - Atkinson - Baker
Tanner - James - HNM - Pring
             Scott - Weimann
                   Wells

What I think Nige will do

                 Bentley
     Kalas - Atkinson - Baker
Tanner - James -HNM - Scott - DaSilva
           Weimann - Martin

I think I'd like a mix of the two. Take your 'Nige' team and add Pring instead of Dasilva. Switch James into the central MF position, and I'd give Wells the first 60 minutes, with Weimann earmarked to come on for him and bust a gut for 30 minutes at the end.

                   Bentley
     Kalas - Atkinson - Baker
Tanner - HNM - James - Scott - DaSilva
           Wells - Martin

One other option - not that this is what I'd necessarily do, but it's something to think about - is to try and emulate what we did at Cardiff earlier in the season. As a fast, direct passing side with an emphasis on set pieces, WBA are not so different in terms of style to the Welsh. They play a different formation, so that may be a reason not to do this, but if we did try and recreate that away win then we might go with something like:

                   Bentley
Tanner - Kalas - Atkinson - Baker
HNM - James - Scott - Pring
           Weimann - Martin

In that formation I'd start Weimann, as he did against Cardiff, and assuming King is out then Scott could replace him I think...although if we're not confident of that you cold switch HNM central, push Weimann wide right and start Wells alongside Martin.

I suspect Wells and Martin will both start, due to their both being subbed off in midweek.

3 hours ago, 1960maaan said:

Has anyone heard anything about Williams yet?

2-3 weeks out. Nige discusses him and King in the last couple of minutes of today's preview.

Confirmed

https://www.bcfc.co.uk/news/paul-simpson-leaves-city/

Paul Simpson has left Bristol City by mutual agreement.

The club wishes Paul well for the future and thanks him for his 14-month service during a period of transition for the Robins.

Simpson arrived from the Football Association in August 2020 to support then newly-appointed Head Coach Dean Holden.

With the recruitment of Nigel Pearson as permanent Manager in May and Curtis Fleming as Assistant Manager last month, Simpson was re-titled First Team Coach.

City CEO Richard Gould said: “Paul has been a great support during his time with us and we are very thankful for all he has done for the club. We wish him all the best for the future.”   

2 hours ago, Davefevs said:

You’ve got to take minutes played into account, surely.

Career

81 in 281 or 81 In 19689 mins (219 full matches).

A goal every 2.70 games

City

16 in 71 or 16 in 4631 mins (52 full matches)

A goal every 3.21 games

QPR

20 in 66 or 20 in 4478 mins (50 full matches)

A goal every 2.50 games

Non-City

65 in 210 or 15058 mins (167 full matches)

A goal every 2.57 games

So, he’s down a bit on his career and non-City average.  However, 1239 minutes last season was on the wing (13 games worth), which at least have a bearing on his record.

 

Yeh, I'll go with that.

To be clear, I don't think he's a terrible striker, and he is fitting into the system better this season than last, but he's not the 20 goal a season guy some seem to think he is. He'll get about as many goals as Fam did.

9 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

 

4995 mins, 55.5 90min equivalent, so he’s at his career record of circa a goal every 3 games.

Although, don’t forget about 15 of those games were as a winger.

Bloke I responded to said "proven at this level", and so I was talking Champ only i.e. "our level". Across his whole career at Champ level he's at 81 in 281 = 1 in every 3.46 games. Of those, 16 goals and 71 games are for us in the Championship = 1 in every 4.44 games. He's well off pace.

5 minutes ago, GreedyHarry said:

If Barnsley do agree, and I hope they are asked, wouldn’t it be great if both clubs issued a joint statement prior to explain why Barnsley wore their 3rd kit. It might start fans of other clubs talking more loudly about the issue.

Absolutely. The club(s) could both generate some good PR and goodwill from such an event. Huddersfield did so earlier after comments made regarding the kits used in their opening day match.

Honestly, if we ask them to wear white and they refuse, I'd like us to make a statement on that as well. Possibly we do that by wearing Purple at home - and then explain why we are doing such and odd thing.

3 hours ago, lukebcfc1989 said:

Good player, proven at this level before coming here had bagged 12-15 goals for QPR 

Another decent striker City have signed at this level starved of chances dealing with negative and small club tactics.

And the season prior to that he got 7 in 40 for QPR. His overall record suggests that at Champ level he should be getting roughly 1 in every 3.5 games. But his purple patch at QPR in the first half of 2019/20 makes people think he's a guaranteed 20 goal man. Historically he's far from that.

Since signing for us he's scored 16 goals in 71 league games - a 1 in 4.5 game record. It's not great, and is worse than his overall career record at our level, but to me it doesn't suggest criminal mismanagement or underperformance. He would only need to have scored 5 more goals to be trotting along at his par standard of 1 in 3.5. Would him having scored 5 extra goals mean we were discussing him in different terms? I doubt it.

Good game for him on Tuesday though.

2 hours ago, Hamdon Mart said:

Upon reading this again with more awake eyes, I can't really add too much more to what I typed the other night. I will send in some feedback to my immediate bosses but how much weight they carry in an area that is quite commercially sensitive is questionable. They are able to get me moved to a better position to collect data during the game but getting a club to change kit is a whole lot more difficult, I assume. 

Of course, I understand that you aren't the CEO of Opta. Honestly, I am not necessarily looking to get any club or team to change their kit. I think we can eradicate 99% of issues in this season and in future by simply making sure that every team has proper away and third kits that they then use at appropriate times. Had Bournemouth used their white away kit in our match you and your colleagues in the press box would have been better off. 

The talk in the press room on Tuesday night was about the difficulties faced by all of us with the AFCB kit. In the room were analysts, journalists, the ball tracking guys, commentators, club media and summarisers so a wide range of people and from my admittedly small "survey", everyone had the same problems with player identification. We as Opta analysts are trained to look for other attributes in players in order to make positive identifications of players such as hair style/colour, boot colour etc which is going to be little or no help with the colour blindness issue of course.

If it takes a kit like Bournemouth's green 3rd kit to get everyone talking about the issue then so be it. I know the Post are looking to do a piece on this subject so there is some traction happening.

At the end of the day, it boils down to the fact that all supporters have the right to enjoy watching the game (even if there's two goals for the opposition in stoppage time!). 

We have to keep talking about it.

Look at this from Boro v Barnsley last night. Again, Barnsley have a white third kit this season, and Boro have a white away kit. This Red v Green match up could have been so easily avoided. Our game v Barnsley in 9 days time has serious potential to look like this one if Barnsley do not wear their white alternative. If you can add your voice in any way to make sure they do that, we'd all appreciate it.

Barnsley's third kit.

@NIGHTMARE has there been any discussion amongst the Barnsley fanbase regarding your green kit and people struggling to distinguish it?

45 minutes ago, 1960maaan said:

Because we don't have players that can play in tight spaces, under pressure or even find a pocket of space, we can't play out from the back. Which means we have no other option and we are back to chasing shadows again. @Davefevs highlighted the number of 2nd balls they picked up in good areas, means they get possession and we chase them again. 

It's annoying, we have good players, skilful players . But they don't do the things they train for all week. Watch the videos, all one or two touch pass and move, get to a Saturday and the game plan seems to be , hit Martin, fight for knock downs. 
I think Nige has us doing that more because we simply can't hold the ball.

To this point- Massengo, Dasilva and Scott all have the technical skill to keep the ball in tight areas, even with 2 or 3 big (and Forest were physically much bigger than us) lads close to them...but they either don't have the vision or don't get given the options, to release the ball after. This happened with each of them two or three times last night.

So yeh, we have enough players with that technicality, but the others have have work harder to allow it to be useful. Right now it's wasted.

See also Weimann's lung-busting charge up the pitch. Ultimately wasted because he either didn't see the options, or they weren't good enough enough be used.

1 hour ago, Lanterne Rouge said:

I see Bournemouth wore that kit at Stoke last night - fair enough though given Stoke`s home kit I suppose.

Yeh from a Kit v Kit perspective this is fine. Bournemouth still blend into the pitch though, and the numbers are hard to distinguish on either kit.

He got a pretty consistent wave of applause as he walked the edge of the pitch on being subbed. He had a decent game.

3 hours ago, 1960maaan said:

Because we didn't get control of the ball quickly, and because all 11 players were basically on our 6 yard line, he was allowed to take liberties. Nhaki's effort was brilliant and unlucky, but with no one outside of 20 yards from our box there was no pressure on them to defend from their corners or even attacks. 
That is on Pearson. Tiredness and nerves ok, but that is simple setting up for corners.

Yeh, others like yourself and Fevs have covered the finer tactical points, but from where I was (South Stand, row 2, just left of the goal) it was a pretty clear issue that I felt should have been solved.

Also, from there it was a pretty blatant penalty on Scott in the 1st half. Real shame that wasn't given.

I called Massengo for Martin at HT as I felt that Martin was puffing and Massengo, Scott and James could trouble them. It's a shame that trio got only 11 minutes together as I thought there was something there.

Personally I didn't think that Palmer and COD were what we needed. I'd have likely used one of Pring or Bakinson to shore up the midfield and left Wells on to retain at least some pressure on their defence and Samba. However, I accept that this would be just 2 subs, and I don't know how we are managing fitness. When COD came on I thought Weimann might move up top (and by the way he was gesticulating to the bench as COD came on he thought so as well) but instead he stayed wide and we just lost any impetus going forward. COD dropped too deep, Palmer did whatever it is Palmer does, and every push forwards was just snuffed out before we reached their box.

1 hour ago, 1960maaan said:

the keeper acting sweeper near half way

My dad - who's watched about 10 football matches in his life - he spotted Samba basically playing sweeper. Dad was calling for us to push up and pressure him, or take shots such as Wells did, or run at him, anything to put him off and push him back onto his line. As dad said, not doing that essentially gave them an extra defender.

Obviously subbing off all of our strikers did nothing to improve it, and so they were able to start attacks from very advanced positions. 

I agree with pretty much everything else you say, just thought I'd expand on that one point.

57 minutes ago, Welcome To The Jungle said:

I always trivialised colour blindness as someone not afflicted, until I listened to the price of football podcast a month or two ago that was dedicated to it. I'm a pretty hard lined traditionalist when it come to sport. For example, I've watched hundreds of Bristol Rugby matches, but never once been to the Bristol Bears, which I see as franchise nonsense that has no place in British sport. 

However, I pretty much instantly was on board with us wearing the best colour we can, home and away to aid those with red-green (the most common kind) colour blindness, through a combination of patterns and colour choices. If that means we don't wear red at home, so be it. I'd rather the club was inclusive than traditional.

Thank you very much. If you feel like it then please email your thoughts to the SC&T. They'd be delighted to hear from you.

7 hours ago, Portland Bill said:

Ryan Lowe was the man we should have got, but he wasn’t a big enough name for most on here.

His record speaks for himself. 

He was top of my list as well. Believe he signed a new contract at Plymouth either just before LJ left or just before DH went. That put the stoppers on any approach.

7 hours ago, Hamdon Mart said:

EA, have not long got back from the match and have a 6am start tomorrow so wll compose a longer reply tomorrow if that's okay.

We were talking about this in the press room tonight, not spcifically the red/green issue but more the numbers being unreadable at certain clubs. I think Saturday's problem with the numbers got worse as the game went on; as the players were sweating, their dark green shirts got darker still and the numbers then almost disappeared in some cases.

I doubt very much I have any influence in getting anything done, I'm only an in-stadium analyst but I will mention it and see if anyone else has reported similar. FWIW, I watched EFL on Quest this morning and think I spotted at least three other green/red matches too; there may not be many teams that have a green first kit but there are more than a few that have a grreen 2nd/3rd kit.

No worries mate.

I sat at pitch level last night, right down in row 2. Had no issues at all seeing the Forest players as that kit would work in place of the floodlights. From a colourblind perspective last night should have been fine for most people.

But picking out our players against the red seats and crowd of the other three stands was trickier, especially as the rain darkened the red to near black.

Now, that's not a colourblind issue, that's just an issue caused by having your seats the same colour as your shirts. Silly, but neither home kit colour nor seat colour is changing in a hurry.

2 hours ago, PHILINFRANCE said:

Hmmm.

One minute lonely overseas and pining for your wife and young child, but, no sooner are you back than you are straight out of the house and down to Ashton Gate to watch City with your Dad!

For the record, I have posted this with a  and a huge .

Enjoy the match.

Life's all about balance mate.

What a game to finally get to eh.

2 hours ago, downendcity said:

There'll be a few hoping your not sitting by them tonight then Ajax ! 

Haha. Don't worry. No curries or beans have been consumed in the past 24 hours.

On the theme of lucky items being brought...I'm bringing my lucky Dad. He's been to AG all of 5 times and has seen 3 home wins and 2 draws.

Attending for the first time since the 125th anniversary 1-1 v Fulham on the eve of Lockdown 1.0.

Wet and windy, and likely I'll arrive too late for any decent parking to be found, but I'm still excited to see us and finally get down AG after way too long.