Edgy Red

20 minutes ago, Numero Uno said:

What is the thinking behind that? A rugby or basketball fan that normally has no interest in football could get priority over a football fan? Perhaps I'm being miserable but I'm not understanding that. Put it this way, if there was a massive rugby game in Bristol there is no way I would deny the chance of a genuine rugby fan to attend. Same with basketball.

Completely agree... i'm a member and get to around half the home games each season.

Somebody mentioned earlier that maybe the club should have introduced a 2nd priority window (after season card holders) for members that have attended a certain number of games already this season.

I'm not knocking the club as i fully appreciate its already a logistical nightmare to organise in under a week, but i did have a bit of a panic on this morning when it seemed that most areas were close to selling out.

Just now, Betty Swallocks said:

Membership has been increasing all the time though, the more members there are, the quicker the tickets will go. 
 

The bigger point should be, members who have been to 3/4 games this season should have had a higher priority than those who haven’t. 

I agree regarding the membership priority but i suppose it has been difficult for the club to administer ticket sales with such a short turnaround. The members sale window was small as it was.

Does anyone know how many memberships have been sold?

1 minute ago, mattjb said:

Some season ticket holders  will have upgraded to different seats it being a big game and fairly cheap, my sister and nephew did. 
some of the issues could be down to people having seats in their basket and not being able to pay, then after a set time they become available again. Would explain the fluctuations in availability 

I think you're right Matt. I managed to finally get a seat at about 10.15 after it kept rejecting my seat selection. It appears that there are only about 100 left in the whole stadium so i'm not sure its going to make general sale?

15 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

That is THE CHALLENGE for managers who are trying to play Pep-ball with players of ability that’s not top for the division they are in.

Thats a good point Dave and the reason why we need 1 or 2 "clever" players in the final 3rd.

Cundle would be a good addition and i still feel we could do with some genuine pace too.

If Manning is able to bring a couple in, then i really do think we are moving in the right direction.

Brilliant performance, especially 2nd half.

We were brave on the ball and tried to pass out as much as we could which is very encouraging.

Special mention for Dickie and Vyner. West Ham are a big physical team and they defended set pieces so well

39 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

Agree with every word.

Palmer was an utterly baffling signing, people like to jump on the bandwagon and say all 3 of the Chelsea players were poor but the other two made perfect sense.

Szmodics didn’t look ready in his very few opportunities & when he left us for (League One) Peterborough I don’t recall many (any?) of these posters complaining.

At 28, over 3 years since he left us it is clearly all coming together for him, but to pretend that there was a majority opinion at the time that said keep him is nonsense.

Good explanation Graham... players develop at different speeds and Szmodics didn't look ready for Champ football when we signed him.

His career path could be the same as Bobby Reid. Up until the age of 24 there was no way that i could see Bobby being a 10 million Prem footballer but credit to him, he really kicked on. Szmodics may earn a similar move now.

1 hour ago, Roger Red Hat said:

If I was Tommy I wouldn't! I'd look for a team/coach that would play me in a system that more suits my game.

It doesn't really work like that tho... a manager isn't going to change his philosophy/formation to suit one player.

I'm sure people will correct me but i can't name many sides in the top 2 divisions that play 2 central strikers, so Tommy needs to adapt his game, not the other way round.

FWIW i think he's a decent finisher but his all round game is lacking at present, and its a position we need to improve in my opinion.

6 minutes ago, Supersonic Robin said:

Good results against teams like Sunderland, Hull, and Watford become slightly meaningless when you keep dropping points to teams like QPR, Huddersfield, B'ham, and Millwall.

Classic City!

Sunderland, Watford and Hull play attacking football which leads to an open game. The Likes of Birmingham and Millwall don't play that way and we struggle badly to create anything against teams like that.

We have a hard working squad but sadly the quality in the final third isn't there (but we knew that anyway). There will be bumps in the road like today but i'm still hopeful that once Manning has added a few of his own players to the group, that we can develop a more fluent attacking game.

Nige stabilised the ship but the style of football for the last 3 years has been largely poor and pretty negative in the main.

Who knows where we will end up with Manning, but if we finish mid table again but the football is more entertaining, then i will be happy.

Personally, i wasn't seeing any evolution in the way we played under Nige, but if others were, then i respect their opinions.

Lets all get behind the boys for the 2nd half of the season and see where we end up.

Its obviously still very early days for Manning but i'm just enjoying the positive approach.

There will be defeats along the way and we will concede goals, but football is an entertainment business and the players appear to be thriving off the new positive play.

Our shots on goal stats have been impressive in the last half a dozen games and long may it continue.

5 hours ago, Davefevs said:

I was very impressed with Hull n the opening 20 that night….and then very impressed with us for much of the rest of that game.  We should’ve taken the 3 points up there too.

They are a good looking side though, but they aren’t good defensively.  That will be their Achilles heel.  You are always gonna be in the game with them.

I thought Hull were a decent Champ side who played through the lines well and always had a threat with Connolly's pace. Twine was fairly quiet but Seri and Tufan are good players and Delap certainly has some talent.

I really enjoyed the game last night and we gave it everything and caused them problems for most of the 90 minutes.

I'm encouraged by what i'm seeing and if we could add 1 or 2 new faces in January then hopefully it can be a positive 2nd half of the season.

1 hour ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

I think Aston Villa and their fans have arrogance in abundance sanctimonious in general tbh. Not many clubs I dislike more.

Disgusted, perhaps the game has changed I dunno. It wasn't racism, Watkins himself confirmed this.

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/13032896/ollie-watkins-celebration-personal-abuse-behind-reaction-to-scoring-aston-villa-winner-at-brentford-says-striker

I'm sorry Mr P but i have to disagree. My mate is a season ticket holder in the North Stand at Villa Park and i go to a few matches each season with him. Villa fans are a decent bunch and they are a proper club.

I know there was a bit of beef with Lee Johnson when we played there, but i'm not sure Villa did much wrong.

1 minute ago, Shauntaylor85 said:

Come on all, thought this would sell out. Remember being there in 1997 for that huge game in December. Sold out then! Around 900 tickets still left for sale. 

Was that 97 game the 1-1 draw? Did Goater score for us?

I remember the traffic was terrible and i missed the first 5 minutes!

36 minutes ago, Lennieb said:

There's ability in there mixed with a  little bit of self doubt at moment  a run of starts would do him the world of good imo,hopefully he gets a go again against Hull.

Good summary. He deserves to keep his place in the team.

He is much better with the ball at his feet than Bell. He is clearly a confidence player and a few goals/assists would do him the world of good

There is a huge amount of luck required too. It would be a surprise if 2 from Leicester, Leeds and Southampton don't get the auto promotion spots.

Whilst i do agree that Liam Rosenior is doing well, if he doesn't get Hull promoted then he is likely to lose 3 or 4 of his better players and then all of a sudden next season becomes a challenge.

Its so hard to compete with the teams relegated from The Prem. They are rewarded for failing and its a very unfair playing field.

3 hours ago, red panda said:

I don’t want to pretend everything is great, and I really feel for those that travelled such a long way yesterday.  But it is really as bad as many make out?

We’ve had some poor results, but LM is trying to change some things and all of our defeats under him have been by a single goal to reasonably or very decent sides. The Sky report on last night said City “can take heart from a performance that so nearly produced a fightback”, we “created the best chances” early on, we were “the much better side” for the last 30 mins, and we “could easily have come away with a share of the spoils”.

And reading the “Gaffer speaks” thread I think there are many people on here waiting to put a negative spin on anything he says or does:

• he is apparently “broken”, but would you want him to be upbeat after a defeat or in denial that some things weren’t going well?
• he “got it wrong” as he speculated that some players might be overloaded mentally, but isn’t a bit of self reflection like this far better than pretending that everything you’ve done is great?
• he has been criticised for not playing the likes of Yeboah, but when he does this he is wrong for bringing off (the perhaps tiring) Sykes or one poster suggested he was just responding to what he read on here!
• he’s described as “personality vacuum” and similar, but we’ve employed him to coach a football team, not as an entertainer
• there are also comparisons with LJ which I think are wide of the mark.  LJ really was an example of a “not my fault, I’m doing everything right” manager, whereas LM already comes across as much more honest, open and likely to respond in a good way.

Other posters have commented on how enthusiastic the players appear under his management.

At the end of the day, it might not work out.  But I really hope we can give him a fair chance.
 

This is a very sensible post... i won't read any replies as i fear it won't be well received

2 minutes ago, Dr Balls said:

Hence my comment about “rinse and repeat” in terms of bringing in more players to play his way, another season written off before it’s really got started. JL said this is a top 6 squad - then Manning should clearly know the requirement this season is a top 6 finish, not another clearing out and building again. 

I don't actually think we're that far off from being a team that can challenge for the top 6. If you take away the top 3 or 4 teams, the rest of the division is pretty similar.

WIth a couple of attacking signings in January and the return of McCrorie and Atkinson, we could kick on in the new year.

23 minutes ago, formerly known as ivan said:

Regardless of who we do sign in January, all I ask is please please please do not let it be anyone from bloody Oxford! Simply not good enough to improve what we have, yet would be the easy move for Manning to make.

That is going to be our market tho. Top talent from League 1, journeyman Championship players, or youngsters on loan from The Prem.

I can see us being interested in Brannigan from Oxford and wouldn't be surprised if we went after others from League 1, as Manning will know alot about the best talent at that level.

We have to be realistic about the wages we commit to and therefore League 1 may be where we look.

1 hour ago, Swede said:

We've sold £53M of talent to Bournemouth alone, yet here we are, still a mid table Championship side. We were a mid table side lacking investment under the experienced Pearson before. We are still that same side under the inexperienced Manning. I haven't seen much improvement other than going from side to side in "possession based" football which generally goes nowhere without an end product. Is it exciting? Well, at the moment, no it isn't. 

But... we have to give Manning some time to implement his ideas and style. He's only had a handful of games. Lets review things in 6 to 12 months and see what we think. The early signs for me are encouraging but time will tell.

I've said previously that if you look at the players that were sold/released during Pearsons time in charge, there are only 2 or 3 that can really be considered a huge loss (Scott, Semenyo and Kalas).

The football under Pearson was largely uninspiring so i'm interested to see what Manning can do.

This forum is toxic!

I've said previously that i was 50/50 regarding Nige. If he was still in charge i would be ok with it, but equally the quality/style of football under him was generally pretty poor and therefore when he left i wasn't too disappointed.

I can see already what Manning is trying to implement but it will take time and probably 3 or 4 new faces. I see we had 14 shots today which is decent away from home.

I understand that everyone has their own views regarding Pearson and the way he left, but can we please try and get behind the team. We are all Bristol City fans after all.

Where do people think he will play when he's fit?

We paid a decent amount of money for him and i wonder what Nige's plan was?

Right back, Centre back or Midfield?

13 minutes ago, alexukhc said:

Miles Leaburn please

Unfortunately, I think he recently picked up a bad injury.

He looks a good prospect tho

I know i'm swimming against the tide based on peoples posts on here tonight but i genuinely thought we played ok today and should have taken at least a point from the game.

Preston and Birmingham were far worse home performances in my view.

We were shocking at Rotherham but scored a last minute winner so all was rosy. Unfortunately today we were on the wrong end of that and it hurts.

Lets give Manning some time and hopefully with a couple of good signings in January we can have a decent 2nd half of the season.

Tin hat on!

9 minutes ago, lenred said:

Can I ask what positive signs you saw today.   Genuinely?  Because I saw a team that couldn’t beat one of the worst teams I’ve seen down the Gate for a long long time.   They looked like they were scared of their own shadows they were so devoid of confidence, yet we still let them win.  It was very very poor imho and I didn’t see anything from us to make me feel any better so anything you can provide would be gratefully received! This is not meant as a slagging of Manning btw.  He still gets time from me.  But that was terrible today imo. 

I thought there were a number of positives today.

Knight and TGH continue to impress and we tried to play the ball through midfield where we could.

I'm not sure how many shots we had today but it felt like we caused them problems but lacked that bit of quality needed in the final third.

Whilst Norwich have been on a poor run of form they are a decent side with some very good footballers.

Its always horrible when you lose a game with almost the last kick of the game and Zak should have done better, but we were the more positive team in the 2nd half.

The modern game is all about posession and i thought we had some good spells today.

Manning is clearly asking Knight and TGH to be more positive and play higher up the pitch.

It will take time to implement his style and ideas and we obviously need more quality in the final third, but i saw some positive signs today.

A draw was the least we deserved and ironically Idah who scored the winner is the type of player we need with his pace and physicality.