Davefevs

12 minutes ago, Bat Fastard said:

RTV + VPN must be part of the mix. If they only show the games that are not on Sky, then the NOW TV monthly deal may help.  Bloody awful though.

I won’t be resubscribing to RTV on an annual pass.  I’ll see how the season pans out.

Just now, exAtyeoMax said:

It’s shit! 

Is 12:30 on a Saturday a bugger to make from London?

6 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

Included with what? It can't be free?

With a Sky Sports subscription

1 hour ago, mozo said:

Narnia

From the book “the lying p-Rick in the boardroom”

(that’s me trying to add some humour to calling anyone a lying *****, but it is the best I could come up with!)

Paul Arnold Garita - cult hero

40 minutes ago, Mrdc said:

Website does not seem overly clear about the best person to contact over a disability issue.

The best I can find is Gareth Torpey but so far with no repy.

Any thoughts?

Yep, Gareth is your man.  He’s very good.

1 minute ago, WayOutWest said:

I wonder how this will effect expats like me. I live in Canada. Games on sky are shown on DAZN which is great as I don't have to get up 430am for 1230 kick as it's available for a week.

However non sky sports games on Robins TV will be 430am. No chance of "Catch Up"

Interesting to see how this develops 

I really hope the game are available “on-demand” not just “live-stream”, or recordable via sky+/skyQ.

9 minutes ago, Jobi said:

I don’t really understand this - can someone sum up what this means for 24/25? Thanks 

If you have a season ticket / attend every game, expect to go less on Saturday at 3pm!  Expect circa 7 of our 15 or 16 home matches due at 3pm to be moved to another time or even another day.  Roughly 4 homes will be 12:30 Saturday and roughly 3 will be some other time…could be Friday night, Saturday evening, Sunday, even Monday.

If you have Sky, expect to be able to watch us more on telly!

4 minutes ago, CloudyThatchers said:

Only refers to the Saturday kick off times ,doesn't include a Friday night game and probably a Sunday lunchtime 

Only refers to the Saturday kick off times ,doesn't include a Friday night game and probably a Sunday lunchtime

Exactly.  NTTDS was suggesting a few weeks ago that all 5 Champ tv selections would be 12:30.

Whereas likely there will be 2 that are scheduled away from 12:30 (and 15:00 too!)

4 minutes ago, Barrs Court Red said:

https://www.skysports.com/share/13130980

@Never to the dark side for info

So 2 of the Champ games could / will be non-12:30.

Did you hear any different at your ITV meeting?

41 minutes ago, hinsleburg said:

I actually disagree here and think he probably would.

Bell is a bit of a concern for me, I rate him more than most, think his pace is such a valuable asset and don't think he deserves some of the flak he got this season.

However, he doesn't suit this system at all! He's neither a number 10, lone striker nor a wing back and if this is our way to go I'm not sure where we will see him play. Think Anis would have began starting as soon as we changed shape regardless of Bell's injury. He would have given us extra options and fluidity from the bench but not sure we would have changed shape and think he would have been shoe-horned into that second number 10 slot similarly to how Sykes has been used.

Out of all our attacking players for next season, think Bell is the one who will suffer the most and be interesting to see what happens there as I don't think he possesses the attributes to play that role.

Glad you raised this.

Was listening to FBC pod last night (Owers on it), and a bit of talk of “we need an attacking wide man”.  My thoughts were why, we don’t play with one.  Also talk that Mebude was that signing.  Yet LM has gone away from playing with one / two.

Of course if Manning wants to be able to play specialists in BOTH a 4213 AND a 3421, he’ll need a LJ-sized squad (I don’t mean LJ’s size, but the size of squad he required - clubs in the bag).

I wrote a long doc at the weekend.  More scenario setting re who we might lose than who we should sign per se.

It’s a long read, sorry.

But the reason I didn’t want to write a “we should sign x,y,z” type document, is because I don’t know how wedded Manning is to the more-lately used 3421 or whether he wants to keep 4213 also.

Maybe recruitment inbound will start to show the preference, but I fear players like Sam Bell won’t have a home if he goes 3421.

7 minutes ago, Jobi said:

So the answer is - not a huge amount of difference, just going about it in a different way. 

Then you need to ask - what was the expectation?

2 minutes ago, Jobi said:

No, I mean facts - as in we have conceded less goals was what I was referring to - 5 as the other poster said. 

What about the sentences that followed your use of the word “fact”?

4 minutes ago, Jobi said:

Well I think it’s important to look at the facts rather than, “what ifs”, because then anything could be anything. Mehmeti and Roberts were clearly out of favour under Pearson, one was on his way to Oxford and the other requested to go out on loan - so it’s safe to say they have improved under Manning and there is little evidence to suggest that that would’ve happened under Pearson, based on what we have seen. 

I think it’s clear that we are defending better as a unit, whilst we have gained Dickie we lost Naismith, Atkinson, Kalas and DaSilva. 
 

 

Did you mean “opinion”?

26 minutes ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

I'm not sure this is true, I'll defer to @Davefevs on the passing. I'm not impressed with the passing between the back 4. 

We've conceded 5 less goals than last season. Improvement yes but you have to consider it in context. Last season we didn't have Dickie and for large parts we had a make shift defence. So the question I have is do we look more solid because we've been coached better like you are presumably implying, or do we look more solid because we have purchased a solid player and have had far greater availability in defence? 

Can you say with absolute certainty that those players wouldn't have improved under Pearson or any other manager? Williams for example, Pearson and his medical team worked extremely hard to get him to a fitness level where he can be a consistent Championship player. Comparing Williams from last season to this season would be unfair because of those fitness issues. 

Similar for Roberts and Mehmeti. Can you say with absolute certainty that they'd not have improved under Pearson or another manager? Has Manning got the best out of them or have they just followed the expected trend in their development? Let's also not act like these players are world beaters, because they are not. We are in danger here of thinking everything is rosey because we went on a good run. How did the perform during the bad runs? 

OK thats good that Conway is looking more threatening, what about earlier on in Mannings time here? Again this is a question for Dave but from what I've seen in my own eyes it doesn't appear that xG has improved. 

I don't think our pressing is anywhere near as good as it was previously and for a large part Manning moved away from pressing so I'm unsure why you have come to that conclusion.

Whilst the Southampton and Leicester games were great results let's not forget that we could have played Leeds all night and still not scored for example. 

I think much of it comes down to personal preference and some personal bias too, in particular playing style preference.

As I said in the early days of Manning when I was building my opinion, many suggested we were playing better, creating more chances, better chances, etc…when we weren’t!  Perceptions!!!

Overall Manning has achieved “similar” results in a different way is the easiest way of describing it.  I could present lots of numbers to show that, but here’s a simple summary:

For me, I’ve not been hugely impressed over 30+ games overall that his “on the grass” approach to producing “front foot, high press, forward thinking, attacking football” has reached much semblance of achievement, but…at least most of the 8 games since the international appear to be more closer to the desired brief from the Hierarchy, but they couldn’t be any worse than a bunch of pre-Easter games, could they?

I could write loads more!

2 hours ago, real_bristol said:

How long was Nigel’s best unbeaten run compared to Liams?

12 games vs 7 games if you want facts!

Ended by Manchester City!!!

(9 games vs 7 games if you only want league games)

1 hour ago, Tomo said:

Whilst I was very impressed with his 27 minutes performance, it's really difficult to judge whether Manning would include him in next season's 1st team squad. 

U21 football is what it is and City and Charlton have both struggled with results this season. Some will say that results don't matter, it is a 'development league'. However, the jump from U21 to Champ is huge as we know. Not everyone is an Alex Scott unfortunately.

The personnel and make up of our u21 squad will look very different next season with a lot of players being released soon and u18 players stepping in. 

It's going to be very interesting to follow the pathway of Murphy and the U18's stepping up. 

I called it a few weeks back that Forest Green may look at some of our u21 released players or even those players staying, who maybe loaned out next season. Ping! - Cotts was at the gate yesterday, so it will be interesting to see if anything happens on that front.

 

FWIW, and I’ve obviously not seen Murphy in a City shirt yet, he has the big advantage that he’s got 40 games-worth of senior football under his belt already.  Top-flight Ireland Prem is not the greatest standard but he was playing for one of the better teams there, inc playing in a couple of Euro qualifiers.

That puts him well ahead (imho) of someone who’s been on loan at Yate for example.

Do I expect him to be a first team regular next season?  Absolutely not.  But I do expect him to around the match day 20, and to get minutes here and there, and not token minutes either?  Yes, I do.

Tom Rawcliffe said “hopefully by the end of this week” on 3Ps pod.

41 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

Wondered if having a final U21 game next Tuesday might be a factor, or if we play it with youngsters included who already know they are being let go?

Dunno, shop window for those who are going and want to play.

1 hour ago, TV Tom said:

There was a centre half at Leicester about twenty years ago (Elliot ?) used to score a lot of goals, scored all four in a two all draw once !!! 

Matt Elliott, former Torquay player, looked like Uncle Fester!

1 minute ago, Super said:

People will always take the piss if they're allowed. 

Glad you’re so chilled about it.  Not everyone is as flawed.

4 minutes ago, Super said:

I get that but it's laughable that he gets more blame than Lansdown.

Does he?  Not from me.  Right in the thick of it with SL, JL and LJ.  All culpable in their own way.  But don’t forget that Ashton was brought in specifically to help allow SL to step away (to Guernsey), and to provide expertise to JL.  He royally took the piss.

So I think he’s fair game personally.

Just now, Super said:

Blame the people whose money he was gambling with. 

You don’t get paid £500k+ a year to absolve yourself of any responsibility and accountability!

Just now, Capman said:

It’s an interesting point Davefevs. In my experience when organisations do not set clear, concise and transparent objectives they tend not to deliver. I wonder if NASA would ever have got to the moon if the senior staff had spent years saying they wanted to perhaps get somewhere closer to the ‘top end’ of the atmosphere in the hope that if they did that for a while they might get to land somewhere on a rock close by. It might sound flippant but it’s the way I feel about the club. There is a complete lack of focus on delivery. They think if they make vague promises and make endless changes eventually something good will happen. It is the triumph of optimism over reality. 

Couldn’t agree more. 

Fully deserved too.

MK have not dealt with Crawley making the pitch massive with their sweeper keeper wing-back keeper!.

Lets see if Williamson has an answer, because they are on a for a stuffing as it stands.

29 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

Kieran Maguire (normally excellent) being very misleading here and quoting 22/23 figures:

 

He got a bit arsey in response to replies too.