Davefevs

@Marina's Rolls Royce @BigAl&Toby @firstdivision Not aimed at you three, but just reading the latest quotes back to me, but it’s an interesting insight for me. I read pretty much every OTIB thread and try to read every individual post, although sometimes I scroll quickly…and generally see tonnes of negative bollax written, baseless bollax written, etc, and people think it’s fine. So I thought I’d start a thread with an element of positive bollax and see how it landed. One thing is for sure and I’m no Freud, is that It’s easy to write negative, baseless stuff. It’s harder to write substantiated stuff whether it be positive or negative. I love conversing with those that put a bit of effort in. MRR - I don’t really care how my perceived pro-Pearson view works out. It’s not really pro-Pearson, for me it’s the reality of a very difficult situation he’s taken over in….and I think he deserves to have the time to at least get a chance once the shit has been cleared up. That may be next summer - contract talks with the usual suspects might define that timeline to be a bit quicker. He might not get that time. I think he is steadying the ship, and whoever replaces him, whenever that will be, will pick up a football club in a better position than it was in when he took over. For me it is already in a much better state…but financially we have the “legacy” of SL / MA / LJ still lingering over us. Next summer there won’t be any players that Nige hasn’t had a chance to move on or re-contract. Not many managers get that full timeline of seeing all the players out they don’t want. But he will also have lost players he probably would’ve liked to have kept around, plus he isn’t able to bring in much beyond free transfers, bar Naismith, not even free transfers proven at this level. That’s a major drawback. When LJ had to sell players he was able to replace. Generate £23m transfer profit on Webster, Pack, Brownhill and Eisa, spent at least £25m in fees on 17 players….and a hefty wage bill increase that went with it. Christ, £5.5m amortisation of this season’s amortisation is LJ / MA recruitment. He deserves some slack…imho. He far from perfect, but he’s sorting us out for a better future. When the time comes to appoint a new manager, we might be seen as an attractive opportunity.

Rob - here’s our minutes winning, drawing and losing this season. I don’t include injury time.

Great post Spike.

Been out some of tonight, hadn’t seen the goal back…that’s some miss by Bentley on the first ball isn’t it? Didn’t spot at the time…don’t think black keeper top with grey third kit is a good choice either.

I think we could play many other formations, big questions are whether the players can perform better in it. I don’t think there was much wrong with the formation today, but I think Dasilva tired especially. Pring on after 55/60 for me. Fwiw, Wigan created virtually nothing from open play. I know some people hate xG, but… this proves it (Wigan left, City right). For me, that starts to point to us being “okay” in general play…but we did allow them (and the ref) too many opportunities to load our box. That creates an impression that they were better, and in some ways you can argue they were…in that they created from set play / were effective in their use. That’s something to work on against sides like that. For a spell in the first half we stopped pressing high up, but from a deeper position, and they were clueless, guys at the back no idea what to do with it…and we retrieved the bits and pieces because we were more compact. So, although I’m not an advocate of City’s 3412, much prefer the 3142 we played Wednesday, it’s good enough to get us leads in games, I think we need to think a bit more smart how we close up games. Im sure on Tuesday there is a good chance Pring and Wilson start…we then have 5 days before Cardiff, meaning anyone playing Tuesday who impresses might stake a claim for Sunday. We are nowhere near perfect, but I don’t think we are as bad as people are making out.

Yes, sorry…meant to add from last set of accounts….my bad. Completely ok now.

For me he was absolutely fine at RCB3 v Cheltenham…then seemed to spend most of the rest of pre-season “babysitting” (good practice for him) Idehen and Towler, to give them an experienced head around them. I think it allowed Vyner to stake a claim.

Not just wage budget, but amortisation costs halved last season and this…and will be a tenth next season as it stands. That’s some overall budget cut isn’t it? No wonder we have a thin squad. I think we are generally trending up from the start of last season, when we had to go backwards to go forwards. I don’t take 3 league games in isolation. Last season we never took less than 3 points in a four game run…ie. We never had a bad run of results….below par sometimes, absolutely. But never a bad run, we always found a result. The win percentage for those of you that like those things is generally on the up too (5 game rolling average type stuff). So I think it is coming, and continues to come. Not to the extent we are and not to the extent we had to last summer when we bailed with players like Diedhiou. We are in a small group of clubs really struggling financially. We have addressed this but this takes a while to play out. I thought we’d have resolved the contract situations of Wells, Massengo, Bentley, Dasilva, Kalas by now. Trying to gain a signature to reduce a wage isn’t gonna be something a player does in a timeframe we can push. But here’s the big positive: At least None of us are as completely delusional as Ian Gay, who thinks we should be approaching Carlos Corberan! What fantasy world does he live in? I’d hate to tell him that he’s manager of Olympiacos, but that’s irrelevant, as he would never come to a club in our situation. Christ, he wouldn’t even stay at Huddersfield.

His wife was carrying a baby.

I think there are only 3,4,5 clubs in our situation. Forest would’ve been had they not got promoted. Stoke, Reading, Derby (now relegated), possibly Boro are the others in the mix. Birmingham I’m not sure either. All the others have massive headroom either through PPs or because they’ve played within sensible budgets, e.g. Millwall. Luton, even Cardiff, etc. So not that many really. It bugs the hell out of me that it’s happened to us…luckily we started turning the financial oil tanker around…just takes a while.

It’ll come. Don’t discount how Wednesday’s result and today will help build confidence. It’s small crumbs, but often better periods start with something that appears unconvincing. We have played sone good stuff in each game so far. Sone poor stuff too. I don’t get too up nor too down either. Your opening para resonates with me, because for me, it shows how Billy big bollox we thought we were / had became. No humility in the way we thought we’d become “big”…yet every season one or more so called little clubs finished above us. We never won that mini-league despite creating far bigger losses. That is one of the reasons I wasn’t big on “season by season progression” - it was a false measure. We bought perceived success, it wasn’t really success and it wasn’t built. It was a pay day loan mentality. Being totally honest I would’ve expected Nige to have done a bit better, but even players like Bentley and Kalas (just two examples) have been inconsistent. When your senior pros are like that it’s perhaps a job made harder.

Shuffs - it probably covers the impairment of Palmer’s freebie to Cov. £875k asset value given away to get rid of a £1m wage commitment. So doesn’t free up much I’m afraid. it’s a bit shit ultimately but hey-ho, bigger job this season as it stands. But over the next 3 weeks when window closes we will know the true picture. Contract extensions or not as the case may be will make things clearer. its a hard waiting game.

My argument is that he had to because he / MA / SL overspent on 50+ other players (transfer fees, agent fees, loan fees, wages, signing on fees, etc, etc). If he’d /they’d been as frugal with each signing as Nige / RG, he might have been able to keep some of them…even offered the likes of Joe Bryan a wage commensurate not only with his teammates but his standing in the squad too. You can’t always have cake and eat it. Not picking on you Bar BS3, just your posts triggering things I can respond on the back of.

We should be able to, but you could argue at least this week we stayed on it to get a point. Small positives. I guess I’m quoting correlation not causation too!

Thank you….people forget we went backwards massively that summer….to go forward.

Where? or when? (serious question btw) Where - somewhere between the LJ going and MA going….probably MA going if I’m being honest. Absolute Charlatan. When - probably next summer when the contracts of all those players are either renegotiated or complete, and we are genuinely with Pearson’s players, I.e. the ones he wants, not those he inherited. Hope that makes sense.

Serious question…why put so much of a rider on one game? 46 game season.

The red card is a joke though. Competitive league, indeed….a point away is a point gained, whatever anyone might think.

Certain OTIBers aren’t 24k for Sunderland and 13k season cards. Some of them might be amongst them I guess. The wallow in negativity Joe. They can’t wait to jump on and apportion blame.

That experience has bought us another season in the second tier.

But never went more than 4 games winless. Progress is slow. I enjoy it more than boom and bust of the previous regime….that failed in its objectives…because that’s why they kept getting another player….just one more Steve, one more, then we’ll be alright. We kidded ourselves. They conned SL and us fans….and we harp back to it and great. It wasn’t. It was a disaster that caught up with us.

And it cost us millions of pounds for that failure. Someone had to pick up the disaster-zone….whilst the two main protagonists are elsewhere.

They’re still trotting out the season on season progress….where did it get us? HERE. A club fighting for its Championship status with eff-all money to recover. A CEO long gone, courting investors for another club whilst working here. I’m fed up of the entitlement of certain posters every Saturday evening when they come on here demanding the manager gets sacked. I want us to play better, but we are still in recovery mode. We should be grateful we have a manager and CEO with zero-Ego trying to recover this club. I don’t think some of our fans deserve them.

(Piggybacking on you Q…but to all City fans on here, not you per se) A manager who was happy to take on a shit-fest of a situation, have players leave OOC with little to no money to reinvest. There’s your answer. He deserves loads of time imho. He’s rebuilding a club for the club…not himself. People should be a bit more grateful. The CEO pissed off, remember that, courting a set of owners for another team…don’t forget that. We are competitive under Pearson, it’s hard work getting points in the Champ. We are fighting an unknown transfer window, hoping to be in-tact when it ends. Get behind him, be grateful we finished in the Championship last season, rather than going down…that’s the history of Bristol City, get into Champ for a few seasons then wallow as a 3rd tier club too big to be in it, but who takes several seasons to get back up. We are so entitled. We can’t wait to blame a player, we can’t wait to blame the manager. Have a word with yourself.

Embarrassing? In what way? Frustrating at times…yep. Showed spirit though. Dug in. Isn’t that a positive? Other teams are happy to have a decent spell or two in a game. City not dominating, doesn’t mean our opponent is either.