Alessandro

Happy with that line up, apart from Scott it's an experienced midfield/forward 6, average age well up in the high 20's I guess.

Interesting that for all the pre-season minutes for the academy youngsters, only 2 make the match-day squad. Scott and Bell.

Every season is a squad game as we've seen, so Nagy, Massengo, Semenyo, Bakinson, Moore etc on the edges still to come in. Main concern is we still look light up top though and will want to see the CB pairing more, still wonder if Kalas will slot back in soon though.

But there we go, clean slate, fresh start, no baggage, cliche cliche.

Come on you REDS

Congrats to LJ - first bit of silverware. I'm sure the Sunderland fans are loving that.

Seems to have galvanised Sunderland - got them on the kind of roll that ends up with promotion.

I for one would be happy to see him and Sunderland in the championship and on merit too.

I dip in and out of most of them and enjoy them for what they are, a group of passionate City fans chatting about City, as if they were in the pub, car or on the walk home from a game.

Agree with some, disagree with others. Some I’d buy and drink and chat with, others I wouldn’t! 

But keep up the good work gents, all of it is much appreciated, because it’s your free time after all.

Semenyo - first league goal tonight - COYR

I can understand the frustration with Semenyo - he looks so good at times and has all the attributes - as I said in the match day thread “Everything but the goal!”

Fine to ask if he is a natural goal scorer but you’ve got to then ask can he learn and improve through coaching and experience.

I’m no-where near writing him off.

1 hour ago, pillred said:

I give you Bobby Reid!

Bobby Reid, love him. But TBF, goal scoring-wise he had one good season for us. Since he moved he scored 5 in 30 at Cardiff and 6 in 31 at Fulham.

Not prolific goals wise, but we know his game is much more than that.

Very different player to Semenyo though.

Some brilliant glimpses and raw talent - but at some point he has to start adding goals to his game.

You'd hope that it could be a case of, get the first and the second will follow soon after. He is certainly getting himself into good positions. 

I guess the question is: he's never really been a goal scorer, his loans (apart from at Bath was it?) have shown that he is not one of these natural finishers banging them away at a lower level and just taking time to step up to the Championship. He's got it physically for this league, so...

35 minutes ago, MarcusX said:

Quite interesting, not sure how I’d feel about one of my team mates being that worried about his camera in the build up and during a game? Ok when you’re winning maybe but not if he starts making howlers.

I thought the crowd noise was played into the stadium, I guess not?

Yeah the crowd noise must be pumped straight into RobinsTV then I guess? I’ve seen a clip of the guy with his sound mixer doing it but thought it went out into the stadium too.

Foster has a YouTube channel that gives some behind the scenes insights....here is the City one from the other night for anyone interested:

9 minutes ago, pillred said:

Well it reads differently to me, and I'm fairly sure he meant 20,000 deaths not 200 even if he didn't word it very well.

2 minutes ago, bcfc01 said:

No I didn't.

The last sentence was ambiguous to me, could have been confirmed infected (you could have correct me earlier when I replied), but fine, you now mean't deaths.  

Either way, kind of sums up a major part of the problem for me.

You casually banding around these huge figures, the number of deaths the government expect, up to 50, 000 people and still think they got their policy "spot on"?

Well, i'm not really sure what to say to that, other than that is an unacceptable figure on any level and I hope to God people who make these kind of statements, or agree with them as somehow being acceptable or inevitable, don't have a loved one affected by it.

Anyway, i'm not going to get into a massive debate about it, but suffice to say, "spot on" and 50,000 deaths don't compute, IMO.

I'm no expert either but I think the government has it spot on.

Current estimates of those with/had the virus is 35,000 (we don't know the exact numbers, same for most countries) with 103 deaths. Currently way under 1% mortality rate. 

Government expectation is 20k - 50k with possibly closer to/under 20k if everyone follows the advice given (which they won't). 

41 minutes ago, pillred said:

Where does he say it's only going to be 200? he said 20,000.

200 Deaths - He wrote 20,000 infected, 1% mortality rate. 

.

9 minutes ago, bcfc01 said:

I'm no expert either but I think the government has it spot on.

Current estimates of those with/had the virus is 35,000 (we don't know the exact numbers, same for most countries) with 103 deaths. Currently way under 1% mortality rate. 

Government expectation is 20k - 50k with possibly closer to/under 20k if everyone follows the advice given (which they won't). 

Personally don’t think they got it ‘spot on’ given the policy U-turn and the contradicting advice at times. But happy to agree to disagree.

I guess only time will tell when the dust settles - but I’ll be astonished, and you can hopefully refer back to this and gladly tell me I was wrong, if the death toll at the end of this is only 200 in the UK. 
 

11 minutes ago, wendyredredrobin said:

1%?  Have you seen the mortality rate in Italy?  Number of deaths is over 8% of number of cases.

On that basis your 400k would equate to 3.2 million.

Not saying we would be as bad, but 3%+ is not unrealistic.

Yes who knows what the exact figures are.

That % may be less than you suggest, given rough predictions that 10’s if not 100’s of thousands of people will have it, not show symptoms, or have mild ones, self isolate and therefore never be recorded as one of the statistics.

Awful to think that we won’t have a true reflection of the figures, because the world’s governments weren’t able, prepared or worse willing to, test everyone.

2 hours ago, wood_red said:

A genuine question to you, what should the Government have done or be doing and at what timelines? It seems every post is just a "have a go at the Government", when they are pretty much in a lose lose situation. The situation is changing by the hour so how can they foresee everything? They are basically following what advice the Scientists and experts are advising them to do - they do that and people will have a go, if they don't do that people will have a go.

Maybe we should have just shut the borders 2 months ago, stopped everyone outside the UK coming in which would massively have helped wouldn't it? Everyone would then be moaning that it was over the top and not feasible. It is a crazy situation that will never please everyone with whatever decisions are made.

I’m no expert but I’d simply want them to learn from the countries 5/6 weeks ahead of us.

We had a chance to act earlier, ahead of the curve, yet our experts and government wasted at least 2 weeks on a policy they’ve now totally u-turned on, despite being able to see what was happening elsewhere in the world.

So going back to the failed ‘herd immunity’ disaster policy; the experts said they expected 60% of the country to get the virus with this method, and we know the death rate is around 1% - so basically the experts and government thought it was acceptable to sacrifice up to 400,000 people?

400,000. Fine, still may only be 1% - but you probably won’t say that if you or one of your loved ones are one of the 400,000.

Not a political comment, just simple maths. Unprecedented times, yes, have other countries got it wrong, yes. But there were lessons learned already from other countries so we could at least try and avoid the same mistakes.
 

1 minute ago, Super said:

It does say 2 years on the sky news article.

Yeah I read it....still think, "hope", it's a typo. 

It's not being reported as 2 years on any other articles i've read - if it was true I think more people would be picking up on and talking about it! 

That's a very long time!

44 minutes ago, Super said:

2 years?

Surely that's a typo. 2 months?

If we've gone from a 'carry on and self isolate' to a 2 year ban on all large sporting events, concerts and conferences etc that's a rather large escalation in a few days. 

This is awful. 

If flares were seen, pray for a miracle and that they have a life raft - unfortunately in current sea temperatures in the channel hypothermia would set in in well under an hour.

Tragic news and thoughts are with all involved.

2 off the line

2 off the post

2 cracking saves

At least 2 good headed chances missed

Very frustrating loss though, but you can’t say we didn’t give it a go.

4 minutes ago, Esmond Million's Bung said:

It was always going to be a tricky game and it wasn't pretty, we scored 3 great goals and it is a much needed 3 points, but be honest we rode our luck at times and once more the luck we needed to ride was all self inflicted, if we had missed the chances that QPR missed I think there would have been uproar.

I agree with the Middlesborough analogy to a degree but we have to cut out the defensive errors.

Which ones are we talking about - because I can think of two really all game?

One in the first half when ?Washington? picked it up left side of the box, cut in and the Maaenpaa saved.

One in the second half when Maaenpaa had the rush of blood, forward probably took an unneeded extra touch and 2 defenders got back well to cover.

I'm surprised how many people expect us to go away from home, completely dominate the game and not concede chances in a game of football?

The bottom line is a '0' in the goals conceded column and I think we deserved that, just.  

A great result at ground we've been awful at in the recent past against a team who needed a result and performance after a 7-1 drubbing, with the crowd baying for blood.

A game lacking in quality for the large part, but a very professional performance from us.

We did what we've been saying we need to work on and took our chances and largely kept QPR at arm's length, a clean sheet with 2 main centre backs out.

We saw out the game, just as Boro did against us. But unlike Boro, we didn't sit back with 30%/40% possession, rely on worldie saves and the woodwork twice to keep a clean sheet and a win. 

First win of the season, onwards and upwards. 

Cracking goal - Taylor did well, Eliasson - what a cross. Weimann, 3 goals now.

1 minute ago, Numero Uno said:

I think we are all grateful for the lead and are entitled to call their keeper out for poor goalkeeping if that’s how we see it. Do we care? Of course not!!

People are also entitled to think the current performance level will see us get battered many more weeks than not against better opposition.

Doesnt mean we’re pissed off to be winning!!!

I never said you were pissed off with winning.

I just said goals come how they come sometimes, just ask the team sat at the top of the table. Enjoy them.

Getting 'battered' many more weeks then not?? Well that's your opinion. But this is game 4 of the season and despite losing to Boro, we've yet to be 'battered' once.

1 minute ago, The Original OTIB said:

Fantastic early cross to Eliasson who should have scored. An easy target for some, Mr Taylor.

Yep that was a much better chance. But actually it was great work by Matty to chase that down, get in position and I expect the keeper was thinking a cross was coming.

And to those of you saying soft goal?? Maybe, but who gives a flying ****?? Do you think the Boro fans were saying "soft goal" after they scored their first bounced off a defenders back and past an asleep fall back to bounce perfectly onto their forwards foot?

How many people are going back through the thread to see if it’s too late to edit their ‘praise’ of Matty Taylor...