Davefevs

Well said @petehinton

FWIW I don’t think he’s doing a brilliant job, but I’m pretty happy with how he’s steering this ship through difficult times. Recruitment will be key. Johnson wasn’t bad at all, but he wasn’t half a bloke who divided us. He even divided me!!! I liked some of the things he did, I disliked other things. I do think he’d had his peak with us and it was long gone. He couldn’t recreate 17/18. The 18/19 season although finishing higher was not of the same calibre, and although we were 7th (after drawing with Fulham) as Covid struck, I think we were hanging on by our finger nails, as results were better than performances and had been for a long while. It caught up with us / him post-covid and we fell back to 12th. It was always going to be difficult to to compete with 5-8 parachute payment teams, but boy we spent some money trying to compete. We hear RG talk about top 10 wages, but that’s coupled with bottom-end fees, I.e. free transfers. We were spending £8m on a CB and paying top 6 wages to certain players. We spent £25m(ish) on players in 19/20, not including loan fees, not including agent fees, not including the wage bill going up too. It was the big push to playoffs. And playoffs doesn’t mean promotion. We tried to buy success. We got carried away…and boy has it bitten us on the arse!

Flip that on its head…I think he realises what is value for money, that’s why he’s tried to get rid of the high earning / No minutes brigade. I’d trust him with money, because it’s evident he will spend it like it is his own. Exactly.

No, that’s not what I meant really…just saying the ref allowed players frustrations to overflow into tackles, because he’d lost control. I also don’t think Tanner meant anything other that going in hard and winning the ball, he just mistimed it.

?????? ?????? I’d take Pep in a heartbeat!!! ??? Why would Carrick come to us in our current situation? It’s bonkers to throw names out like that. We are unattractive currently. No scope to develop the squad with external recruitment as it stands. That might change next summer if we sell Semenyo, Scott or Conway. But I don’t think anybody takes us on in Nov 22 for fear of not getting to next summer.

I think the bit in bold sums it up, that we are a bit of a mixed bag, players performances are mixed, some of Nige’s decisions are mixed. Some of those decisions are mixed because we don’t know what performance we are gonna get from the players. From Weimann (mr consistency last season) to Vyner (been really good of late, very poor today). It’s very Bristol City, that’s the only consistency!

I’ve only just put the England games into my calendar! I’m not up for it at all.

Definitely contact on Wells…enough to make him go down / stumble / not get a shot off…YEP. But contact does not mean a foul nor a penalty. Putting a player off his shot doesn’t mean a penalty either. I reckon VAR would’ve been an interesting dialogue between ref and Stockley Park though!

Yep. Been good, today, hideous positionally!

Taylor Moore and Ryley Towler cup-tied for FA Cup, should they return in January. Idehen, was unused sub, so still ok.

Digressing - You’re a defender (from memory) who’s played at a good level…how do you explain Zak’s positioning today?

Sorry, but that’s how I feel. If posters can be strong in their proclamations about those who are comfortable with Nige’s performances then I feel I can be strong in my comments back. The position he took over in (end of Feb 2021) was at a point where the CEO had pissed off the players re contract situations (to then piss off himself), and the losses re the mismanagement of fees / wages (vs quality) and Covid weren’t in the public domain, we’d only seen a small portion of the covid impact in the accounts (for 19/20 season) as he took over. How do you square £68m of losses borne from an irresponsible management regime, and expect to improve the squad, and therefore turn around from the inevitable downturn that had to happen, regardless of who was in charge. Had Holden remained, I don’t believe we would’ve gone down either, we might’ve finished higher, but that summer was gonna be a cluster#### as the squad was gonna be decimated with little scope to improve. That continued into the summer just gone too. So, there you have my reasons why I said it! ???

Not sure a defender heading on the ground and getting kicked was enough for goal to be disallowed, but great for Chippenham.

For those of you interested, here are this weeks League fixtures: I’ve added in their league position and Pts total. I’ve highlighted those below us. Just one “6-pointer”. Rotherham, Blackpool, Stoke, Middlesbrough, Hull and Wigan all need to win to go above us. Draws are not good enough for any of them, except Rotherham who’d need to draw 4-4 to go level. In Wigan’s case they’d need to win by 8 clear goals! Huddersfield are stranded.

Just posted elsewhere that O’Leary has surpassed my expectations, but Tommy, I’ve been pretty convinced he had something from the first few times I saw him. To be doing it at Champ level so young is incredible when you think about it. He’s a diamond. O’Leary 26 (A) Vyner 25 (A) Low 20 (A) for Weimann 31 (£2.500m) Klose 34 (free) Pring 24 (A) Dasilva 24 (£2.000m) for Semenyo 22 (A) Williams 25 (£1.250m) James 31 (free) Scott 19 (A) Bell 20 (A) for Conway 20 (A) Wells 32 (£2.800m) “Ballsy”!!!

The save first half where the Boro FW hit an early left foot shot towards the near post, was amazing. I so hope he continues this form. Could save us a fortune. Personally I didn’t think he’d get beyond a Champ no2, but at 26 he’s now entering his peak years. More than happy that he’s proving to be better than I thought.

Lincoln knew they’d already had their easiest trip to the south west this season when they beat Rovers 6-3 earlier this season!! I wonder if they’re staying down here,

Right, onto today’s actual performance. Firstly, players unavailable - Naismith, Atkinson, Kalas…many people’s first choice back 3! Wilson and Tanner too. It meant a makeshift line-up. Most OTIBers wanted Dasilva left out. A fair few wanted Sykes left out too. Nobody wants Andy King or Chris Martin to start. Joe Low nor Sam Bell are gonna start over the 11 that did. We’ve no idea whether any players were suffering from the flu bug either. So, Nige went with just about the best eleven he could, even though some played out of their true position. For me, unless we really played well it was gonna be a tough afternoon. Vyner’s performance has already been covered and some! I think it had a major impact on others too. Conway was excellent. Pring was excellent, especially as he often got dragged out to deal with Jones. Klose looked like he was lacking match sharpness (no surprise), but stuck to his task and made some crucial tackles, headers and blocks. James tried desperately to keep us in shape / structured and was often clearing up mess. Williams must’ve ran some km today without the ball, as did Weimann…our LWB popping up in the move and scoring the goal as I wondered whether we might be about to go up a gear and finish them off, especially when Conway set up Wells to go close soon after. Wells maybe not at his best, but worked hard. Semenyo disappointing especially with Giles on a yellow, I felt he played really “safe”. Scott, did fine although couldn’t get on the ball enough. He was the player who triggered the press from Hackney’s square ball and strode away to feed Weimann for our opener. We just couldn’t keep the ball, and that led to us ceding possession / territory. A good point, a disappointment in terms of technical performance, but not from a gutsy perspective. Still not sure what to make of Joe Low coming on for Weimann with 8 minutes to go, but proves how stretched we are at the mo’!

That would be nice if we can manufacture some funds in the next window. Got to say, Max has impressed me more than I expected. 8 conceded in 7 games, is an improvement, but it’s everything else. I don’t get nervous with him anymore. He was outstanding today. Has he come of age?

I so agree. His positional play and marking of Forss (in the main) was hideous. Thankfully he made a few decent challenges, blocks, and stuck at it, so I give him credit for that. A good few seasons back, Flint (RCB2) had Adam Matthews playing so tight to him, we had nothing on the right side of the pitch. Flint was obviously not fit, but it completely left us unbalanced. Today reminded me of that. Of course, maybe Klose was asking him to play so narrow, but that seems unlikely after the way they’d played together recently. But even so, he didn’t even get tight too Forss. I honestly don’t think I’d apportion any blame to Antoine or Andi, although we seemed better with Andi on Giles and Antoine on Jones. Tinnion’s Co-commentary was spot on today. Maybe a couple of games of 110% concentration and guiding others left him mentally fatigued…it can happen. Williams got through a helluva lot of work off the ball today to help cover a gurt big hole, that he couldn’t impact the game when he did get it. Think the money goes up for post-group games too.

If us “Nige lovers” didn’t have to spend so much time going back over the same old shit about the context of the mess, the “Nige out” crew might actually get to read our true views. Us Nige lovers, don’t think he’s the messiah, nor he hasn’t pulled our pants down, but we have an appreciation of the size of the task at hand, and importantly recognise the impact that has. To suggest we should be in a better place than when he took over, is basically an impressive display of ignorance on their part.

I’m in to see David Rennie tomorrow morning, I’ve kicked and headed so many balls away today from my settee. I can feel the fluid in my knees already! ??? Yep, a hard watch today.

He was great, but I think you do Conway and Pring a bit of a disservice today. ???