Gert Mare

Our board decided we were good enough having walked League One and were very enthusiastic about tightening the purse strings.

Cotts wanted business done early to give him the pre-season to prep the team. The board thought otherwise and he started the season a rather frustrated man. 

In hindsight he was right in wanting business done early, but it's "their club" at the end of the day and they set the strategy.

When the wheels came off and he spouted his frustrations Keith Dawe's man had to go.....

I wish Cotts every success at Forest Green. How I wish he had been backed to the hilt here with us. 

Still, we don't want any manager to be more popular than the board now do we? If that becomes the case we should always find out who's club this really is. Toys out of the pram, break, easy.

How much for a maverick sports carbuncle?

The Pearson sacking and subsequent lies are the straw that broke the camels back for a lot of supporters when it comes to the Lansdown’s reign.

They say what they want

They say what they waaaaaaaant

It’s Jon and Brian’s club

They say what they want

They lie when they want

They lie when they waaaaaaant

Supporters are just customers

They lie when they want

He’s great with the academy, agreed, but when it comes to the first team…..
 

I listened to the interview today.

We have a great academy, but playing regularly in the Championship is a different kettle of fish. 

Oh, how we were so blatantly lied to in October (we already knew that). Top end THIS season a distant memory. Why make the change? Yes Jon, why? Because Tins now states we have someone ‘learning on the job’, so why make the change when we had an experienced manager who didn’t need to learn?

Injuries….Hang on….didn’t we have players coming back from injury since Liam was appointed? So why were injuries ignored for Nigel then? He had a worse availability situation than Liam, yet it was ignored and the club sacked him!!!!!

Gone from ‘right end of Championship’ to being happy if we were 10 points better off? None of this correlates with the absolutely clear narrative set out in October???!!!!!

The football is awful, crowds are down, a club that was all pulling in the right direction has been ripped apart and it’s now back to ‘us’ (the supporters) and ‘them’ (Steve, Jon, Brian etc). 

Conclusions:-

They didn’t like Nige - Even though he did everything that was asked of him.

Appoint anyone other than Nige - Even if he has to learn on the job.

We’ve got a brilliant academy and a first team which is regressing.

Tommy has had enough and is off.

Bajic will be off if he doesn’t like bench warming and moans about it.

It’s ‘their club’ and they’ll do what they want.

Don’t hold your breath over any future spending sprees.

They’re happy even if we’re not and that’s all that matters.

Shut up, get behind the team and renew your season ticket as we ‘learn’ our way into League One.

No-one is going anywhere.

Keep your blind faith.

We beat Southampton and Middlesbrough.

McKenna lost a load of games that he actually won.

Coventry have spent money because they sold players for big fees so we can’t compare ourselves to them. Hang on didn’t we sell Semenyo and Scott for big fees Brian?….Ignored, the same as Nige’s injury list.

The gulf in opinion between the supporters and directors of this club about how to achieve success has to be the biggest since they took control.

Brian has been here 30 years. We haven’t had top flight football for nearly 50 years mate!

Please sell up. This is a train crash.

Job for LJ short term until the end of the season possibly? Followed up with a 3 year contract if we stay up?

“Aggressive, front foot” - Brian Tinnion 2023

Runner up was Ronald”oh” with his short corner.

If today’s exhibition was of two young ‘progressive’ managers going head to head tactically then I’d happily go for another dinosaur next time around.

3 years of rebuilding to finally get a good feeling about the club again only for it to be completely destroyed in a matter of months thanks to a call centre boy way out of his depth.

Thank **** for that!

We can’t string 2 passes together and there is zero movement off the ball.

1 minute ago, Robinfever said:

Any streams?

Of tears? Yes, plenty.

Paint a wall and watch the bubbles disappear. It will be far more entertaining.

Wow. This front foot football is really something isn’t it?!

Back to Max and he hoofs it into touch both sides, or Vyner / Pring launch a 60 yard ball to the Swansea keeper.

Apart from that it’s 43 minutes watching Swansea pass it around like Coventry away in 1977.

Highlight of the half has to be Ronald’s short corner.

Scintillating. Brilliant stuff crayon boy. Well done  

This front foot, aggressive, in your face football hasn’t yielded much of a return thus far.

I just couldn’t comprehend it if the ridiculously idiotic decision made earlier in the season culminated in us being sent into League One. Felt sick enough back then.

I thought that getting into the Premier League was almost the impossible job for City, but this would trump it by a country mile from the position in which Manning took over.

The damage between the supporters and the board would be off the scale. Irreparable in my opinion.

Preying this doesn’t happen.

Any manager with a decent track record and ambition would have serious concerns about taking the Bristol City job.

Especially after the most recent change. We were the hot topic of conversation on Soccer Saturday when usually we only ever get a mention if we’re playing Leeds, Norwich or Southampton.

9 hours ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Both times the problem is the structure behind the manager. McInnes knew he was out of his depth and asked for help from the board and got none. Albeit in Scotland, McInnes has gone on to have a good career in management. 

SOD seems to have had similar problems to Manning in style of play. SODs Donny teams were superb and great to watch. Despite some trying to diminish his previous achievements, Manning got both MK Dons and Oxford playing very attractive, attacking football. He was "fairly hot property" as you describe and likely would have been picked up by another Cship club this season, if not us. 

The problem is both were/are operating in an empty vessel. Behind the scenes there's no structure, no plan, and frankly a couple of people out of their depth in the most senior positions. 

It's the same as it was 10 years ago, and it's just become completely laughable. 

For me it seems like there are huge trust issues for the Lansdown’s. Sadly, the ones they seem to trust appear to be bad choices.

Their involvement appears to be too intense and suffocating.

I might be way off the mark, but from various sources there seems to be a sense of micro-managing going on. That’s never good in any industry, let alone in football.

27 minutes ago, Mendip City said:

So….. the underperforming Nige Pearson’s results will keep us up! 

Well, Jon said “We want to be challenging at the right end of the division this season”, which is why we had to make the change when we did.

Unfortunately he was looking at the League table upside down.

Just now, Ivorguy said:

Fingers crossed won’t help

A new manager would

The old one would have been good enough, but hey-ho young Jonathan has got his finger on the pulse….sorry, crayon. 

Unfortunately credit won’t prevent us from being sucked into a relegation dogfight. Points are the only credit that matters and for the fourth game on the trot we have 0.

In terms of…..

In terms of…..

In terms of…..

In terms of…..

In terms of…..

On 03/03/2024 at 19:49, W-S-M Seagull said:

How do you know he wasnt? 

We were on course to progress this season under him. 

There isn't a weird narrative on here that the football was brilliant and NP was a good. That's a false narrative YOU have come up with. By and large the narrative is that the football was functional based on circumstances and that we could all see the improvements that were slowly happening. Most people have an appreciation of the job that NP did it very difficult circumstances. 

I agree.

He had a lot of key players on the treatment table, he was blooding youngsters as required, he was restricted on the financial side, very little to spend in the market compared to previous managers.

Just as we were in a position to untie his hands and give him some money to spend the clowns sacked him and replaced him with a complete rookie.

Sacked a bloke who took Leicester to the Premier League and built the team that won it against massive odds.

Anyone who seriously thinks he took us as far as he could should have a think about how constrained he actually was!!!!

They fed him crumbs!

NP did NOT take us as far as he could. Jesus wept!

3 hours ago, Harry said:

For the last few years, Bristol City FC has been attempting to create its own ‘model’. Their idea of the optimum way to run a football club to provide it with the best chance of success. 
 

The ‘Model’ is supposed to be one where everything at the club is ‘aligned’.
It says that all of our teams from the under 8’s through to the first team will play the same way. 
I’m not sure that’s quite such a good idea but hey ho. 
But the most crucial element for me is that the model says that the first team will play a certain way and that we have a ‘Technical Director’ to oversee this and ensure it’s on track and everything is aligned. 
 

Personally, at this level of football, I don’t think that works. 
The scene is such that, any manager coming into the club should be of a certain ‘type’ and conform to a certain set of principles. 
The club have created a philosophy (call it an identity if you like) as to how they want to play football and any manager should align (there’s that word again) with that. 
 

The Technical Director runs the recruitment side of the business. 
He determines what players we sign and what manager and coaches we sign. He will try to conform to the club principles and appoint managers and coaches who will ‘fit’ and sign players who will ‘fit’. 
 

We see this sort of model at the top end of the game. Many of the biggest clubs run on a Director of Football type of model, where the manager has only limited say in the player recruitment and is basically just tasked with getting on with it, with the rather expensive tools he is provided. 
 

This doesn’t work at our level. We see this in all it’s gory (yes, not glory) with the Tinnion/Manning appointment. 
 

We have a club philosophy that desires to play in a certain way and players have been signed to attempt to slot into that style. 
We now have a manager who has been appointed who clearly likes to adopt a very different philosophy. 
I don’t blame Manning for this. We approached him. He didn’t apply for this job. He had a clear and evident CV, a body of work behind him, that was obvious to anyone who bothered to look that was at odds with our own club model. 
 

Furthermore, this new manager, whilst not having players who can play his way, doesn’t have very much say in how to fix this. 
His first transfer window and we make 4 permanent signings - 3 of which we wanted before the new manager got here. So the new manager arrives, doesn’t have players he wants and then the ‘club model’ signs 3 players that ‘the club model’ wanted. 
 

This is a huge issue for me. We are attempting to recreate models that have had success at places like Brighton, Brentford and even bloody Luton. But whilst those clubs had certain recruitment models, they didn’t dictate a ‘playing philosophy’ throughout the club. They just had very thorough and clever scouting and recruitment modelling. It didn’t dictate the playing style. Whenever there was a manager change the new boss still has his own free reign in terms of how he played and the recruitment model would then have to ‘align’ with the managers philosophy - not the other way round. 
 

When Dean Smith took over from Mark Warburton, he did things differently and they recruited accordingly. Likewise when Frank then took over from Smith, he had different philosophies on pressing, defensive positioning, midfield solidity etc. and the club then recruited accordingly. 
Luton played a certain way under Jones, but when Edwards arrived he harnessed what was already good but brought his own style to it and the club then recruited accordingly. 
 

What we have at Bristol City is a dictatorial model, whereby the Technical Director and Recruitment Team have defined a model and anyone that arrives at the club must buy-in to that model. There is no wavering. Yes, a new manager might have a bit of a say in some signings but generally they are targeted based on our defined modelling. 

Surely it’s obvious to anyone that this just doesn’t work. The talk of ‘everything at this club is aligned, from the under 8’s to the first team’ is just a false platitude. It’s a strapline that they think is clever “hey look at us, we’ve got an identify and model, we’re unique”.

That might work well at Barcelona or Man City but it’s pointless in the championship. It’s not what will actually bring success on the pitch. 
 

To achieve success on the pitch at this level you need a manager who is allowed to run the first team in his own way. Who won’t be dictated to by inferiors who spout about an identity and an alignment throughout the club. 

It’s time for Manning to depart, in my opinion, but it’s also time for the club to drop the nonsense and stop acting like a billy big bollox. The club think that they have a clever way of doing things and that it’s the only way of separating themselves from the challenging division we are in. 
It’s not clever. It’s nonsense. Drop the bullcrap. 
 

The way to achieve success was evident to us a few years ago when a man called Steve Cotterill was appointed. I wasn’t his biggest fan when he got here, and I also think the time was right for him to go, but the period he was here, there is no denying that he’s been the only manager in recent years that’s done things his own way and said “balls” to the ownership and ‘model’. 
Cotterill worked with an experienced Chief Scout and identified the best available players and signed them to fit a way of playing that HE wanted. 
None of this “we’re all aligned from the u8’s to the tea lady”. 
Just an experienced manager with an experienced chief scout, putting together a squad that would play to the managers identity, not the clubs identity. 
 

It’s time to ditch the bullshit. 
Get out there and employ a manager with cahuna’s, one with a CV that demands respect from his players, let him bring in the players that HE wants, not players that the ‘club’ have targeted for the last few windows. Let him put his own team together to play the way that HE wants. 
 

The current model stinks. There are people in positions of authority that have real negative impact on this club who are not fit for purpose. 
We need a board of directors who can appoint a respected manager, who in turn will be empowered to bring in his own trusted recruitment team or chief scout, sign his own players and have zero meddling from unqualified  nobodies. 
 

Our model is shit. And we will get nowhere with it. 

Har, we had the right manager, but old dopey bollocks and numb nuts fired him.

No one with half a brain is going to take the job and be micromanaged by Jon and his sidekick “Call me Gaffer now please lads” Mr 7-1 defeat at Swansea.