Numero Uno

Playing great football? We were winning games such as Forest away and getting obliterated at the same time. We haven’t played great football at any time since Wolves turned us over about 4 years ago.

Maybe I’m old fashioned but when I had a bad game I always looked at myself rather than the Manager. If the Manager told me to do something that just wasn’t working then I’d look at the Manager. Or do we now live in a world where we mess up the kick off after conceding and where Nathan Baker loses his head and Dan Bentley parries a shot he is capable of holding straight to Lyle Taylor and it’s the Managers fault? That doesn’t make sense to me I’ll be honest.

If you're going to give something different a go surely you do it on Saturday? The general consensus is we'll get mullered on Saturday which to me means free hit. West Brom's Centre Halves are beasts and Martin will get no joy there. Rest him for Barnsley.

Things would surprise me a lot less. St Maximin, Callum Wilson and possibly Darlow the Keeper, who I've always rated, aside Newcastle have a squad jam packed with mediocrity for Premiership level. It's almost like watching a Premiership version of us but without the fight that we sometimes display when we are at it that enables us to pick up points. They could be in a position by January where any top name player worth his salt thinks "don't care how much you are offering Mr Saudi, stick that right where the sun don't shine". They will probably then end up looking at the next raft of quality and spending shitloads (because clubs know they have it) on players who are good but not top notch. I can see it taking them 4-5 years before they are anywhere remotely close to where they want to be.

I don't necessarily disagree with what you are saying but he was shite last night. He's been unjustly villified a few times recently but last night he had a shocker.

A goalkeeper of his ability should be holding it not worrying about where he's going to push it.

That's two injury time mishaps from our keeper in injury time at a cost of 3 points this season. Easy solution, get Max on after 88 minutes......

If he's being put on a "First Team Fitness Programme" I'm guessing some of the physical work he needs to get through at times is literally too much for him to be also starting games......even at U23 level. As you say, he did play against Watford though.

Presumably because he feels Martin has given him enough in other recent games, certainly a lot more than he gave us last night which wouldn't be difficult to achieve. Players have bad games and Martin had a shocker last night......a stinker. I would rest him and try something different on Saturday, personally, because I see that game as a free hit. The game where we really do need to be bang at it is the one after...........

I am amazed that people who have watched literally years of Championship football cannot see how bloody brutal and intense it is to play in, especially for young kids. Have these people forgotten that Alex Scott, the best of the young bunch, who came back in last night and showed what he is going to be all about had to be taken off after HALF AN HOUR a few weeks back for his own good because the game completely passed him by and was too much for him. Playing someone who is showing themselves to be UNFIT for purpose in effect against Centre Halves like Gary Cahill is literally the stuff of ruining careers, not dreams. Alex Scott showed last night what can be achieved when managed correctly, being taken out of the spotlight at the right time and thrown back in again a few weeks later after learning a few lessons along the way and perhaps the management of Louis Britton will yield a similar result. Setting him up to fail in a league where he will get chewed up and spat out if he isn't ready definitely won't.

Chris Martin never gave us anything in terms of retaining possession last night...........absolutely nothing. This is what the people who want our Nige to be on the touchline "barking a few orders" like that is some magic formula they managed to think of but Nige hasn't are not grasping..........you can bark the **** out of yourself but if your Centre Forward cannot keep hold of the ball after you have been under pressure or at least do enough with his body to get kicked/pushed and earn a free kick the thing will keep coming back, your defensive players will be running around like mad dogs to plug gaps and get the ball back and then when it does arrive at their feet after they have just spent the last five minutes running like mad dogs guess what happens more often than not? The movement isn't there, the quality is missing on the pass and off we go again. That is how Forest had a solid 10 minute spell at the start of the second half and yet we've got whoppers on here who thought it was tactical orders from the staff.

The key last night was his movement which was a major part in the first goal and also the chance that produced a top save from Samba (people will say he should bury it but remember the opposition keeper isn't going to just stand there and let it sail past him because Bristol City are the opposition). Movement is something we are really piss poor at and so if Wells can carry on in that vein we will benefit. How both the ref and linesman missed that save was pure comedy.

How do you coach composure? These lads all know how to defend and see out a game at 1-0 because they’ve been at pro clubs since 8 years of age but the old bottle has gone right now.

Not the mess that we were though. I know you don't rate the guy but you surely have to accept that he inherited a complete and utter car crash situation. It wasn't about lack of confidence and the usual shit, we had horrific injuries, demotivated soon to be out of contract players (caused by Teflon), ******* hiding in the HPC rather than getting out there training etc. etc. I've been supporting this club 45 years and I've never seen anything even remotely like it tbh.

Experience says that we will get a home win and are likely to follow it up with another. Last night was mental when you think about it in the cold light of day. We imploded in the craziest way possible in two minutes of injury time and yet all I read on here today are 22 year old tactical geniuses who don't even play the game telling me that the tactics were all wrong. If you were Manager of a company in this kind of situation you don't approach it like a football "fan" would. I do hope he identifies the "Passengers" he talked about and bins them asap. With the rest of them it comes down to one thing and one thing only.......hard work.....there's no easy way out of it or magic wand he can wave. We must still remember (or at least he will as a non "Fan") that we are mid-table on 16 points. The world may have almost ended for us as fans last night and find me a fan who wasn't raging about it but he is not paid to think like that even though a minority of fans want to see him shouting and bawling at people and "gert showing some passion innit".......

To be fair that's a poster on OTIB saying that not Pearson himself. He comes across to me as knowing exactly what he's got himself into and IF (big if obviously) he gets it right this job could well rank up there amongst his greatest achievements, in fact it would be full stop given where he is starting from. I think that's how he sees it - we aren't a club for the faint hearted, that's for sure.

Things are so complicated with us. We have an Owner whose heart and even more importantly money is clearly in the right place but he just doesn't have a football brain of any kind. He never even used to follow football as a kid and doesn't it ever show at times. We have Grade A facilities, that's on Steve and a totally mismanaged club with a collection of mediocre players to go with it, that's also on Steve unfortunately. The worst thing that ever happened to this football club was the mantra of "clubs in the bag" spouted by Gary Johnson all those years ago because that's all we've collected ever since. Shall we sign quality players on high wages? "**** that, lets get a few more clubs in the bag for the price of one good player". A manager who has been around the block comes in and immediately says he wants a tighter squad, he doesn't want his Golf bag so heavy with ******* clubs that you need a forklift to carry the bastard. The problem is the tighter squad he wants just happened to coincide with Swiss Tony and Lee Johnson having spent more money on players than any other individuals in the club's history and now, financially, we are bollocksed. So we don't have a tighter squad higher on quality, we have one of the same LACK of quality as we've always had. This is the same Swiss Tony that the Owner clearly stated was a great bloke and totally misunderstood by fans..........who got that one right? If Steve Lansdown was a fat cockney who can down a pint of lager in one (no names) he would have been hounded out years ago. I actually think his current policy of "leave it to Nige for the next three years and stay well out of it" will, if we give Pearson the time, be the right strategy. What I do know is that if he interferes again and we end up with a Mike Flynn/Michael Appleton in charge then I might replace season ticket every season since I stopped playing football with pick and choose. Been there too many times before.

I'm with you. Lack of composure in match situations is on the players. You can bet your bottom dollar that in training they aren't showing the same lack of composure. No coach tells his players to panic. It makes me laugh that people think the players were told to allow Forest to batter us for the first 10 minutes of the second half. Why would any Manager do that when we've barely kept a clean sheet all season. We have a very mediocre squad overall and it's on Nige to get the best out of them. Given that the almost unanimous view on here pre-season was we would be in a relegation battle I would say 16 points so far is an acceptable return overall even if the "where" we've got these points grates a bit with too many Home fans leaving the Gate pissed off every game. Of course, you also get complete and utter cock's (I won't name the idiot) talking about "Happy Clappers" when we all know there was nobody either clapping or happy at 9:45pm last night and they just don't and won't understand the position we are in. None so blind as those who will not see. There will be more "Peterborough's" and more "Forest's" this season, hopefully not too many "Bournemouth's".

Agree on the feeling sorry for him bit but the emotional minority wanting him out need to be careful what they wish for. No money, low q squad, three year rebuild, what Manager worth his salt comes anywhere near us? You are literally looking at the Mike Flynn’s of this world AT BEST. The underlying cause of all the shit we are experiencing right now is an Owner who had blind faith in Swiss ******* Tony. All we can do is suck it up and hope that the improvements we have seen since last seasons car crash (we are competitive with last Saturday an obvious exception) lead to further improvements and a lower mid to mid table finish.

I’m leaning towards that view. No subs might have cost us two points but not three.

I have to admit that when you are defending a single goal lead ending up with two of our weakest players on the pitch, Palmer and O’Dowda didn’t make sense. If Wells was shagged I would honestly have rather seen Pring stuck up there and told to run around like ****, take the ball to the corner when he got the chance and sink a couple of tackles. Make no mistake the kid would at least try to do that if he was asked and would have come off the pitch blowing after his cameo. Because enough is enough, wtf does O’Dowda give us at ANY time? 1 goal in 20 says pretty much **** all to me. Similarly with Palmer who manages something one-off a few times per season but that’s it basically. They don’t run around, they don’t tackle and they aren’t good enough to be luxury players.

The squad lacks leaders, why else do we have the Goalkeeper wearing the ******* Captains armband? If there was one thing I would implore Nige to do it’s ******* sign somebody who will go out there and make sure the other 10 blokes are putting into practice what you’ve told them to do. They don’t even have to be that good themselves, just a keen and sometimes nasty bastard that hates losing on a Saturday and will give anyone who is endangering his win bonus a right sort out!!

Bollocks. Not being able to pass a football or not being able to move into the right spaces to receive it is down to lack of quality and know how. Makes coaching bloody hard work at that level.

Very decent squad????

I said the other day we have to get some home wins by under our belt by February/March otherwise you are looking at sub 10k season ticket sales next season. Far too many people not enjoying it right now. The bigger picture is simply stay in the division and I think Nige will achieve that one but we do need to give home supporters something to get behind otherwise it’ll go tits up. Tonight was criminal tbh.