The Journalist

44 minutes ago, Phileas Fogg said:

I had forgotten that actually. Quite interesting idea from Johnson. I also remember thinking Nick Carle looked quality - we definitely got the best out of him compared to how he got on at Palace.

I've always quite liked having flair players (in the David Noble sense of the word) or at least proper footballing players playing off one flank, as long as you've got someone comfortable going on the outside on the opposite side so you don't just become ridiculously narrow.

Josh Brownhill, while obviously being very different to Noble, also had the intelligence to come inside from wide and influence the play.

Jamie Paterson's another who was good at that IMO.

30 minutes ago, cidercity1987 said:

For clarity, the final five games of the campaign, are you referring to

Southampton L

Wolves D

Stoke L

Sheff Utd L

Preston W

5 points from 5 games?

Sheff Utd L

Preston W

Crystal Palace W

Crystal Palace W

Hull L

And, I'm not sure if you were at the Sheffield United one, but I vividly remember the match as one of the best performances I've ever seen from a City side in defeat. The players got a standing ovation from the entire away end post-game.

51 minutes ago, Phileas Fogg said:

Exactly - I strongly remember LJ and Elliot being the mainstay of that midfield. I can still remember the regular team now..

Basso; Orr, Carey, McCombe, McAllister; Sproule, Johnson, Elliot, McIndoe; Byfield, Trundle (Adebola, Vasko, Noble, Murray often regular replacements).

Noble simply didn't get about the pitch enough to regularly start with Johnson or Elliot in a midfield 2, and wouldn't have been able to partner Trundle for the same reason.

As usual, it's RR's poor grasp of facts letting him down. 

And five of those games David Noble started - the final five of the campaign - were actually off the right in a similar role to the one Josh Brownhill played during our cup run. Lee Johnson, as it happens, was left out for Nick Carle.

That midfield of McIndoe - Carle - Elliott - Noble saw us end that season playing probably our best football of the entire campaign.

I'm not sure Noble EVER started a game in the middle of midfield in the Championship. He just didn't have the mobility for it, so we had to find different areas of the field to hide his lack of athleticism.

9 hours ago, pillred said:

Shame for any team to lose a game like that, but yes it was a howler, bet if he had the power of hindsight he would have rather not come on, he could have been a hero but unfortunately it went the other way for him. 

I'd have thought with the power of hindsight he'd have just dived the right way for every penalty.

The next Jude Bellingham.

The best thing I can say about Nigel is I have absolutely no doubt in my mind we'll be in a far better place when he leaves than when he joined.

Whether that's pushing for promotion to the Premier League or not is obviously far from clear - but he'll have put the foundations in place for it at least.

It doesn’t help when he’s asked question after question after question when the journalist already knows what the answer will be. Nigel isn’t one for going through the motions so it just becomes utterly painful - and some fairly high-profile local journalists are pretty guilty of it.

That said, one of the club media guys managed to get through a recent five-minute post-match interview without even asking a question. It was just a series of statements for Nigel to respond to.

I’m the first to defend other journalists but of the current local ones now, outside Geoff Twentyman and James Piercy, the quality of interviewing is close to abysmal.

Interesting timing on the announcement if it was scheduled.

Hope all is well, anyway.

2 hours ago, TomF said:

Yep me too, mid 90s through till I could drive.   Even used to get Adam B on it for years as well. 

Pros and cons then.

9 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Bents distribution and positioning for receiving passes has been awful this season, it’s not just tactics..  It would require a large technical change for him to start passing it out from the back in the manner Max does, regardless of team style changes of late.

Also think Bentley instinctly tries to slow everything down (unless we’re chasing a goal in panic mode), whereas O’Leary’s default is to get us moving forward quickly.

As I posted the other day - I do think Bentley is the better all-round goalkeeper but we play better front-foot football with O’Leary in the team.

Maybe the captaincy hasn’t helped Dan and he feels like he ‘needs’ to be a calming influence.

Good job there’s not much on this - the most annoying kind of defeat.

Going to be good when we bring Bentley back and we’re left with two goalkeepers short of confidence and knowing the manager doesn’t trust them.

Said it at the time but you HAVE to be sure what you’re doing when changing goalkeepers. It’s not a position you can just chop and change.

Still feels too early to judge this properly but my instinct is, at the moment at least, Bentley is the better goalkeeper - but we may just be a better team with O’Leary in it.

3 hours ago, Fordy62 said:

My word he’s found his shooting boots. Really enjoyed that performance. Someone on the other thread said his power reminded them of Ade Akinbiyi. 

Certainly becoming a real handful. Well played son. Well played. 

He’s always had that in him. Said it for ages. He hits a ball so cleanly off both sides - like nobody else we’ve had for a long while - he just needed to add a touch of composure and decision making on when to shoot.

He’s clearly benefitted from:

- Having his game time properly managed

- Having a physical presence with him to share the load

- Having players run beyond him

When those three things happen he’s a very, very good Championship player.

Antoine Semenyo’s return makes a huge difference to Martin IMO.

£20m for a striker with a better than one-in-three record for Burnley in the Premier League? I'd say that was pretty decent business given the state of the league table.

Only watched the first half but thought he put tempo into our play rather than slowing/calming everything down, which Dan Bentley is very guilty of.

My big question mark on Max is his physicality - can he dominate his box?

He needs a run of games now so we get to find out.

I do hope the goalkeeper change has been properly thought through - if Max is in tonight he needs to stay in for at least half a dozen games, otherwise you end up in a situation where neither keeper feels trusted or confident.

Lee Johnson got in an absolute pickle with his keepers towards the end.

As long as it can be unequivocally proven, I'd like to see points deducted for this sort of thing, personally.

4 hours ago, And Its Smith said:

I think it is by far our worst ever signing as he was also poor for us on loan. Wolves FA cup game made my mind up. Strolled around and regularly let his man run off him. Thought it was bizarre that we wanted him off the back of his poor loan spell.   A lot of fans liked him on loan but I will never understand why 

I said this a few weeks ago - "by far" might be harsh as he's got some competition for it, but I think when you add the context that we had a look at him for six months and still decided he was worth the money despite him not showing much it was a remarkable signing.

And fans reference that we'd just signed Szmodics too - Paterson was also here and is a considerably better player than the pair of them IMO.

1 hour ago, brady bunch said:

I feel he needs a fresh start elsewhere, and whilst I would question his diet, I have never seen him give less then a 100% on the pitch for us.

The wages are a joke, but again that is not the fault of him or the other footballers who get offered them.

You've never seen Palmer give any less than 100% on the pitch?! You've got to be absolutely kidding.

The guy does far too much running for the crowd and not enough running for the team - for example, he'll hurtle towards a full-back clipping a ball down the line, throwing himself into an attempted block but getting nowhere near it, and then spend the next 30 seconds dusting himself off and meandering back into position.

The fans give him a nice cheer because they see it as effort though.

3 minutes ago, Moments of Pleasure said:

Not Manchester United losing?

They couldn’t have done it without us.

Overriding memory was the shock/elation of the winner and the immediate realisation I needed to bottle that feeling up and begin a complete rewrite.

That match report was read by 3.2 million people. City were probably the biggest sports story in the world that night.

In terms of financial outlay and what he’s actually produced on the pitch - and set against the context of what he did during his loan spell (ie exactly what he’s done since signing permanently) - I’m struggling to think of many worse signings in the club’s history.