Unan

Everyone seems to have missed this from yesterday, so I’ll share 

"There’s been speculation about Kane,” Pearson added. “The deal wasn’t concluded, it’s as simple as that. When we make changes to the squad when players come in, clearly that might affect one or two players that are already here. Kane had the opportunity to speak with Bolton, and the deal wasn’t concluded, and he’ll be here."

Yin & Yang

Barton knowing he can ride out the hate at the start of the season, as he has a 3 match stadium ban to serve.

Been done to death and I’m just repeating now but… ‘City’, in Sky Blue, it shows the absolute lack of any wider football knowledge by the entire design team for that to have been given the green light.

I mean.. the ball boys will be drying the balls when out of play right? Just no options for the players to time waste by asking for a towel(?)

And he’d still choose us!

For fairness 

20 minutes ago, OneCity said:

What ever happened to the lady police officer who used to post on here? Forget her name, but she had some things to say about that case and I think she even interviewed Henbury gas about it.

Promotion I think I read on here, she stated there was no such report and offered Henbury to a formal interview, to which he was never seen again…

unrelated somewhat but just had a nose on their forum and there’s about a dozen posts re their new signing, dead forum, dead fan base.

Nige has publicly said pre season is about fitness only hasn’t he 

Hard to be too fussed when he’s started 2 games all season, in Nige we trust.

1 hour ago, Barrs Court Red said:

That Southampton kit is a crime against humanity. 

Not the worst but Ward-Prowse in 2006 chinos looking like he’s giving birth isn’t a vibe.

18 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

 

Stats used with understanding and context are very useful.

Haha, yes, agreed. Ignore stats from bias silly sods that try to prove a point instead of debating for truth*

Scott got 42(?) second assists, or whatever it’s called, goal scoring opportunities maybe.. the ball before the assist, I don’t know. Stats can be used to show any bias, ignore them..

19 minutes ago, petehinton said:

They seem to think they’re gonna announce 3/4 signings in one go…think they’ll need to at this rate. Fair play if they do!

They do that often, on deadline day, a few kids and League Two rejects normally 

Unpleasant tents - Foul ground.

1 hour ago, chinapig said:

And we cancelled the contract he didn't have for maintaining our IT systems.

This was hilarious, City stating the global company that we use for all IT very clearly on the website. But no! A loss losing shop in Henbury does all the work hahaha.

Just now, NcnsBcfc said:

Those figures for received seem a bit low though aren't they?

Reid, Bryan, Flint, Kelly, Pack - that's another £35m+ combined isn't it. All gone during this period.

Loans and transfers under Ashton, as in players he signed himself, excluding players already here.

Another point, it takes a good two or three years for a CEO to really stamp their mark on a club.

For example, there’s been one set of accounts since Ashton has joined. To suggest he’s done amazing blabla, is not backed with any evidence. As has been said recently on this thread, the only objective information we have so far, shows a massive loss, and on who?

Their squad has some good players I’ll give them that, no great ones are there(?) and a lot of nothing players (in regards to Championship standards), Wes Burns being one of their better players says a lot. Chaplin is an alright Championship striker, better than what the bottom 5 probably have, but pretty average otherwise. Broadhead was distinctly average at Wigan, Luongo the same (and several years older).

For the incredibly large % increase in every area of the club (and that’s not including the undoubtedly additional increases when their new accounts are released), they haven’t built a Championship squad.

I do like their manager though, that probably was an Ashton signing to be fair, he likes these ‘trendy’ signings, as we all know, that’s the 1 in 10 bits of shit that sticks to the wall.

37 minutes ago, italian dave said:

And great response Ole! 

I think I’d add/suggest one thing though, in an attempt to be entirely objective and fair. And that’s that - for a while and in one respect - he was quite good at it. The one thing he did well was to extract maximum value from our assets. That was something that SL had always been clear was an objective for him, and it was something we’d been pretty poor at. We had a long history of turning down generous bids for players at what turned out to be the peak of their career - we’d expect them to take us to the next level and usually they’d end up the following season getting injured and/or losing form. Or allowing players to wind down their contracts. There’s no doubt that - in purely financial terms - we couldn’t have done much better than we did with the likes of Kelly, Kodjia, Webster, Brownhill. I think that impressed SL. 

I think you’re dead right about him being a wannabe footballer who actually had no idea about the football side. @Davefevs talks about SL leaving him to run the football side: my view is that SL left him to run the financial side and LJ the football side, but failed to manage the balance between the two when those objectives came into conflict. Either way, a mistake. 

And, ultimately, I agree - I for him it’s all about him, his income, his status, his objectives, and LJ wasn’t strong enough to stand up to that (and possibly also had a more balanced view and did actually recognise the financial drivers). And the way he stitched us up with the Americans was unforgivable, and surely must have made SL see the light? Even if too late.

Finally, and again trying to be completely objective, I can understand why our friends from Ipswich might be a little baffled: we must seem oddly obsessed to the outsider. Right now, the top two threads on our Bristol City football forum are about MA/Ipswich and LJ/Leeds - three years, a whole pandemic, two managers, a whole squad after both men left us! 

I disagree, we got good money for great players, Webster, Brownhill, Reid etc.

Nagy - Essentially a free transfer out

Famara - Record signing / free transfer out 

Walsh - Essentially a free transfer out

Paterson - Essentially a free transfer out  

Wright, Adeluken, Eliasson, Smith, Szmodics, Watkins, Pack, Eisa.. all wakes for free or a nominal fee, and that’s just the last couple years of his time with us. 
 

I’m sure @Davefevs has a spreadsheet with profit/loss on player sells, we made a loss on about 90% of ‘his’ signings. He only got good money for the players that actually commanded it, and the majority of those players were here before he even joined!

On 17/06/2023 at 10:20, Davefevs said:

Do you know what, I think it’s re-entering the place I work in some departments….of course they aren’t called “departments” any more.  A breed of ex-consultants have come into senior positions and the waffle is filtering down.

But I just smile and invoice!

People try to protect their knowledge by basically saying, “Well, I understand this term and that term and what this term means.” But the reality is, most people don’t actually know what these things mean underneath. I find this very common in accounting. A lot of business people don’t know accounting, and even a lot of accountants will have fancy words for things. But when you dig underneath, they don’t really understand the principle of what’s going on below it. And if you just understand the principles, and even if you don’t understand the words, you will have an advantage in, for example, negotiating deals, because you will understand underneath how the pieces are actually moving on the board, as opposed to what they’re called.

And I think the Feynman example is, his dad would take him for walks and they would see birds. And his dad would say, “This bird is such and such a warbler,” but that doesn’t tell you anything about the bird; that tells you about humans.

And humans gave that bird that name. Really the bird, it likes to stand on one leg at this point and it likes to pick lice in its feathers, doing this, and it likes to eat these kinds of things. And it flies this way for that reason and that these are its predators and these are its prey. So, I mean, those are the kinds of things that really give you understanding. Who cares what the bird is called? The name of the bird is irrelevant. In professional life, this happens a lot, which is jargon.

So you always want to strive for understanding, not for memorization. You should be able to re-articulate it five different ways in every language that you know. Otherwise, you don’t really understand it.

2 hours ago, 1960maaan said:

Just remember when slagging the shirts off. We had this, all be it for one game , nothing can match it for eye watering ugliness .

I still have this in its packaging, keeping it pristine for as long as I can. An absolute classic for all the wrong reasons.

5 hours ago, Dom1969 said:

Ipswich fan here. Feel like I need to say in peace as you have a 70 page hate thread about us, which is really weird. Is this the same Bristol City that have bounced around divisions 2,3 and 4 forever? You make Norwich City look like Man City on the honours front. 

The Ashton obsession is strange. A little worrying in some cases for you guys. He turned you from league one nobodies into championship nobodies. And your awful ground got a little better. I don’t understand the hate. Tell me otherwise.

Anyway we think he’s cool. We love his little beard and his well fitted white shirts almost as much as the fact he appointed McKenna and changed the entire ethos around the club. 

See you next season for a cider. If you want to burn some sage at Portman Road to destroy the memory of Ashton then we’d be grateful if you don’t throw the embers on our brand new pitch. 

Have a look at the views of every club he’s been a part of

https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/3995357.oliver-phillips-reflects-on-the-departure-of-mark-ashton-from-watford/