Davefevs

Where do you sit DT? Tony sits just below me in LS near SS. I agree. Think Scott having a poor 37 mins in front of him didn’t help. Shame for Scott, got a heavy challenge early on and didn’t seem himself. Yet, the professional manager thinks he is. As did the Rotherham manager. He has most of the attributes to be a very decent RB at this level. He does need to work on his feet in one v ones though. Its funny whenever we don’t win, there has to be a scapegoat. Vyner is the leading candidate to be pounced on after a game. None of the critics prepared to give him credit though v Cardiff for example…..silence.

Plus 3 suspended too. Plus they need to be under a business plan too, but that hasn’t been agreed. Puts them bottom, below Forest.

I thought Vyner had a very good first half, surprised at the sub at h-t.

Exactly….we have a system that makes us competitive. In 5 of 7 games we’ve been exactly that, if not better in some cases. Boro we were poor bar 20 minutes second half. Tonight we allowed Luton to have 3 or 4 spells where they created decent chances at will. We were still able to take a point. We actually looked pretty solid in spells, dealt with Luton’s changes second half, and almost got an undeserved 3 points. Matt Withers on twitter said perversely it was a point earned, which it was because Luton were the better side. I just don’t think we were as bad as many people made out tonight. Fans expectations of dominating games, hammering the likes of Luton, Preston, Millwall, Blackburn, etc is cloud cuckoo land. We are very much a new team, staring from a low base, and we’ve picked up 9 points from 7 games.

Back 3/5 for Luton by the looks of it

Scott for King

Too quick for me!!!

Janneh, Bell and O’dowda mooching around the side of the pitch like they aren’t involved.

Unfortunately TWTD is not as capability rich as OTIB. But seeing as they’ve been looking me up on here, they have full access to all my factual stuff….if they want to really look at why I think like I do….and that I’m not winding them up….despite my poor choice of word “stirring”.

Part of the problem was that he’d sold all the “Adam Webster’s” if that makes sense. There was no £20m player last summer, when Covid hadn’t really affected the transfer market, because most clubs thought we’d be back inside full stadiums in Oct 2020. He’d looked good in the good years….Flint, Bryan, Kodjia, Reid, Webster and Brownhill. Hell, he even benefitted from Bolassie to the tune of £4m!! But last summer what was he left with. You don’t make £10m on an £8m signing like Kalas. So some flaws in his approach. Not all sh1t, but a fair bit of it. In some ways he was hamstrung by a manager who couldn’t make up his mind which system to play abd who was in his trust group. That’s where his lack of skills in Talent ID and recruitment strategy let him down….he didn’t know enough about football (the playing side) to rein LJ in, nor do I suspect he wanted too, as each signing was a vanity trip. There are some crappy clubs, but beyond the PP clubs I suspect we are trending towards the bottom of the clubs that’ aren’t Derby, Reading etc. That’s a bit of a fall from grace. Thanks…but I think that is where his “personality” lets him down. I could ignore that if he achieved here, but it’s another reason to dislike the bloke. We should never have divisive appointments at our club really. You can argue LJ was divisive too (some fans dislike him as a player, nepotism, etc), so to have 2 such characters was a double whammy. I guess this one about where you are drawing the line from, and I’m possibly being slightly biased. If I go back to 18/19 when we finished 8th, that was the point to kick-on. Instead our costs have played a part in us going backwards….we treaded water in 19/20, a bad end saw us finish 12th. Then last season….eeeek! So looking at where we are now, I liken it to 16/17 and the journey from there. That’s why I say we are set back. But I can see why you think we aren’t in too bad a position to kick on….if we can maintain the improvement. Nige should’ve had a better hand to deal with and future resources to invest to make us stronger, which is where LJ and MA were in 16/17, peaking sporadically over the next 2 seasons. It was ok to talk year on year league position improvement, but if you go all-in on that without looking at the bigger financial picture (was always my argument you can’t look at league position in isolation) then you will find it hard to work out the reason why it went wrong. Its all about opinions, the above is mine. I think it has sound basis, but I’m always willing to hear another viewpoint. (and I’ve finally worked out how to quote a section) ??????

TWTD wanted a Bristol City fan to explain, so I took the challenge. I worry for your club, a club I like. When I hear US investors saying their pension fund want PL football but there is still returns to be made in the Championship, it made me think back to the Venky’s at Blackburn, who didn’t know you could get relegated from the PL. True Story - I know one a Financial Consultant who worked for them. There is no money for a team to make in the Championship, unless you are returning as a relegated PL club on PPs. That to me sounds like they’ve been sold a dream, not a reality. Of course there is a dream of doing a Barnsley, a one off stellar season. There is a dream of doing a Brentford, but Brentford had to go one step forward two steps back with player sales until such a point where they got a critical mass of good players together for a real-go at it….knowing the team would probably break up if they didn’t go up. That is the risk. Doing a Brentford with a stagnant transfer market is going to be a real challenge. As I’ve said many times, Ashton isn’t the devil incarnate, but he portrays himself in a much better light than his performance and salary warrant.

Me too, but he does have various roles across City and Bristol Sport….so not all his time is Bristol City. Not defending him btw.

When I said stirring, perhaps I should’ve meant I’m enjoying warning them of what they really have.

I said in the summer, he’s playing a “General Manager” role too. Whether that balance will change we’ll see.

I think you are right to raise / debate what you have above, it ain’t black and white is it? I will always try to present a balance in my “arguments” for and against, might not feel an even balance. In Mark Ashton’s case, the view is grey, but imho it’s dark grey, rather than light grey. Others may see it the other way, that’s when good discussion can be held. I think we hit poor discussion when posters can only look at it from one side. It is fine to disagree with the other side but try to explain why is helpful. FWIW, we did stay within FFP, so you can rightly argue that he only spent what he brought in. My side of this debate is that with a diminishing squad in terms of asset value, the ability to sell players to cover the costs was trending towards coming to a head. Covid has sped that up, Covid is not the root cause, “reckless” spending is the root cause. That spending has been the focus of mine since the window of Jan 2018. My analysis over the months since reached a conclusion that the trend did not look good. Rising costs, less players / less value to offset costs with player sales. I think Mark Ashton saw that happening and bailed on us (and his responsibilities too). He rode the good times and was a busted flush here as the going began to get tough. He’s jumped ship to a club about to ride a big wave of investment. He’s an opportunist is a polite way of putting it. Just to follow up on your point RW this summer’s signing - the reason Nige has spent a few quid on transfers is because: he’s cut the wage bill (Bristol Post suggesting by a third - no mean feat, I’m not sure it’s quite that high from my estimates) he’s cut amortisation millstone going forward by about £6m p.a for the next two seasons, and another £5.5m in 23/24 Mark Ashton loaded the accounts with future costs. It looks great to make £25m net in player sales in the 19/20 season, but if you spend £25m on fees plus all the other associated costs, you load costs in over future years. Under MA with LJ and DH (even though DH wasn’t given much in way of transfer funds) they retained a large playing squad at a huge cost, disproportionate to income, and therefore the only way of staying “in budget / FFP” was to sell players. Early days indeed, but not unreasonable to say we might well be getting more for our money with Nige in charge.

If only Bentley was in goal, he could aim his goal kicks to himself.

TWTD forum is a delight this morning. I’m stirring!! ???

The encouraging thing for me is where any OTIB poster who comes up with their 442(ish) line-up, none of them look ridiculous. We have a group of players capable of playing at this level, so the odd tweak here or there looks fine. ??????

I agree. Think he will’ve seen the light of working without Ashton. He’d have come here last summer if so.

That’s brilliant to hear (about Nige, not the bit about Ashton). ??????

Great minds. I was looking at CH last night and seeing if MA was now director at Ipswich, he is. I had a look at Gamechanger quickly but didn’t check the year. Mike O’Leary - West Brom, Oxford, Alicydon Ltd, Ipswich Mark Ashton - ditto As we know already. There is no doubt that Mark Ashton took his eye off the ball here, and Steve Lansdown took his eye off of Mark Ashton.

It was CB in a 4 on Saturday, Tinman tweeted me because BBC had him right wing, just like last night. Wyscout hasn’t done it’s overnight update yet, but they’ve listed in squad number order in their team sheet (not pitch graphic) and if BBC use that ordering then that’s why he’s shown on the wing. No doubt he played CB though. Joe Low showed as right winger on BBC too. Hoping Tinman will reply to my late night tweet. This is from Grimsby’s Academy coach. he was up against Paul Mullin, who was at Cambridge last season.

Towler got 90 in another 3-1 win and Low also 90 in a 4-1 win (Vince Harper got 79 mins)

So the follow-on question is - was Ashton undermining Lansdown / City from that point on, or at least not putting 100% into it?

Imagine the finders fee for being part of the group that introduced Gamechanger to Ipswich. Whether that trip to the US was for SL (City or Bristol Sport) I don’t know. I do recall a mate of mine saying Ashton wasn’t taking City to Florida for the club’s benefit. Gonna ask him to try and recall what he knew. It’s quite possible Covid slowed that down. Let’s see if a certain someone can remember what he said at the time. JET was allegedly on £20k per week at Ipswich, hence why QPR could afford him and we couldn’t. I don’t know whether Cotts thought he could do it at Champ level….too big a risk on those wages. Whilst under contract at Ipswich we were paying half (I think).