Clutton Caveman

7 hours ago, fgrsimon said:

Szmodics and Chris Martin must have scored almost as many between them as our entire team this season?

Ate you suggesting that Chris Martin could still do it at Championship level?

As we see with Mehmeti, there is a huge gap between L1 and the Championship

11 hours ago, cityexile said:

Have to say, looked the class player on the pitch tonight.

Yes but it too a long time with several clubs unable to unlock the talent. Sometimes it just clicks

26 minutes ago, supercidered said:

First and foremost Manning doesn't seem to be able to adapt. If Plan A goes well, we look decent if we get sussed out which seems to be happening more often than not then Manning looks like a rabbit in the headlights. I think we will be ok in that we won't get relegated but that is hardly an aspiration is it? I keep hearing and reading that once the summer has come and gone we will be looking better and to be within a top 6 finish. I just can't see it myself.

I'm one of 8 of us coming up from Devon on the train for the Cardiff game and booked it all a few weeks ago. Got a crate of Natch and will be on the first can by the time the train leaves at 8:28am.

Most of us a travelling in hope rather than expectation. I've been having nightmares about Fam scoring the winner and tapping his head in front of the South Stand.

COYR

 

For me our failure to sign a decent striker in the last 5 or more years is our main problem. There are not too many other ways to play if you are unable to compete in the air or hold the ball up bringing others into play. We don't even show much pace since Tommy did his hamstring, so we have to try and create unmissable tap ins or rely of flukes.

When we get a free kick on the edge of the box it should create some excitement but at the moment we seem to get better results from corners.

With such a "modern" coaching team I am surprised that we approach these kicks like a pub team. 3 or 4 players have a little chat, one wins the argument and the others move away and 15 seconds later its into the wall or over the bar.

Surely we have at least 1 player who can hit a ball well enough to at least test the keeper. Our corners and wide free kicks seem to centre on finding Dickie who is most of the time engaged in a grabbing competition worthy of Twickenham.

I can't remember anything that looks vaguely like "something from the training ground."

We are not a tall team so surely we need to be clever in these situations.

19 hours ago, RedM said:

I've seen this a few times. My ST ticket is as I said in the Dolman but if a workmate cannot attend I use their ST's and sit in the Lansdown. Often I have got to their seat and someone is sitting there, I advise them it's my seat and they move without problem (as they aren't meant to be there, and obviously don't want to draw attention to this). They often move a few seats or rows away until the same thing happens! I have seen stewards occasionally ask other people to leave the Lansdown stand and point to where they are meant to be, eg the SS or even the Dolman! But no, it's certainly not monitored very well.

I think since the season ticket has been moved to our phone far fewer people give their seat to someone when they can't make it. Its too complicated for many (inc me) to arrange the E transfer

I think this creates less income for the club from food and drinks

Hope it gets rid of the "professional foul"

How may goals does this behaviour rob us of

On 02/02/2024 at 23:54, Leabrook said:

How did he get chucked out for trying to start an atmosphere? Must have done something quite bad 

Exactly this. The more people that sing the better the atmosphere. Pretty simple. 

If we could only get a bit of excitement from time to time on the field it would help.. a lot

On 03/02/2024 at 11:47, NcnsBcfc said:

Completely @GrahamC

"So in the summer we're looking for a big strong, quick forward to play as a number 9" ie not Tommy

"But we would still love Tommy to sign a new contract"

"We need to improve our forward options". Read everyone is going from our current forwards (Conway, Cornick and dare I say it Wells?)

"There are funds available from Alex, Antoine deals and..." BT was gagging to say the money we'll get for Conway.

How on earth did we buy Cornick?

20 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

I think the top 10 budget claim is true.

Whether we actually have a top 10 expenditure is a very different issue.

I've looked through the League this year and believe only the Parachute clubs and Sunderland feel nailed on to have a higher revenue. Maybe one or two that are variable either way of course.

Whether we're 7th or a bit below can be a matter of speculation but I do think we comfortably have a top 10 revenue in the division.

Parachute Payments- Solidarity Payments gap being eliminated would reduce it further but otoh sides such as Leeds, Leicester and Southampton 3 unusually strong clubs relegated at once would exceed our income anyway.

Parachute Payments are ruining the Championship. As an alternative I would like to see a rule change that all Prem player and staff contracts contain a relegation clause there their package reduces significantly when relegation occurs. Most contracts are not more than 3 years in duration so over a 3 year period the parachute payments could be phased out. This would protect relegated teams and get rid of the 2 paced league.

On 03/02/2024 at 08:35, MarcusX said:

Whilst I generally agree with you, what concerns me last night is the way we setup and played. Stinks of naivety that LM felt we could go out and try and play the same way against a very good Leeds side. After about 10-15 mins and that Tanner slip we looked devoid of confidence and there was no plan B.

Leeds are very good, I won’t deny that and some teams we just won’t beat, but that was a dreadful performance.

No plan B is a long running problem

On 30/01/2024 at 22:13, lenred said:

They might not be top 6 championship standard (moot) but all 3 are very much championship squad standard.  

Cornick, really??

1 hour ago, Breezy said:

To the tune of 'You to me are everything' by The Real Thing:

Oh, you to me are everything, the greatest left-back I have seen,

Oh, Cam Pring (duh-duh-duh-duh), Oh, Cam Pring (duh-duh-duh-duh)

You went on loan to Merthyr Town, but now you're worth a billion pound

Oh, Cam Pring (duh-duh-duh-duh), Oh, Cam Pring (duh-duh-duh-duh)

 

 

Great. that will really be adopted and sung from 3 sides of the ground

What about he's one of our own ........

On 21/01/2024 at 09:35, cellist said:

Let's hope those questions do get asked! I'm sure there will be excuses - they'll argue performances have improved, or the style of play is a work in progress with a change of manager mid-season (their fault mind!). They'll say we young developing squad inexperienced at this level, and that Manning hasn't had a summer transfer window or full pre-season. Some of those things may be true - but that's not what they said in November.

Definitely reasonable to expect a higher points return than previous seasons under Nige given what they said. Last season 59 points finished 14th, season before 55 finished 17th.

To get to 60 points requires us to get 23 points from the next 17. The next four are tough, so looks like we'll have some catching up to do.

I am finding it hard to get worked up on this topic. For me it is clear that we are set up to not go down. Anything better than that is a bonus. With a good striker we could probably be 6 points better off but they cost a lot and we don't do that, so to me our position in table reflects the ambition of the owners and we have to accept it or be habitually angry.

15 hours ago, DaveInSA said:

Have I missed something? Or has the dark art of defending been banished?

The humble 0-0 or 1-0 seems a rarity. I have no facts on this but just a feeling about it.

If you don’t have to quality players in the team, conceding none gives you a chance of at least a point. in 2016/17 Huddersfield won 11 games 1-0. 

I think Pearson knew we didn’t have many goals in us. Hence an approach to hit teams on the break and be rock solid at the back. 

I wonder if this is the best strategy to get out of the Championship without the parachute payments? I guess we’ll never know.

Attacking mainly consists or robbing the ball close to the penalty area from teams who are obsessed with playing out from the back. Defending means not giving the ball away in those areas. Football is becoming so predictable. How many times per game do we see goalkeepers kicking the ball to a player wide on the halfway line and it sails over his head. Then you get 10 passes close to your own box until some player gets closed down and hits it long anyway. It would be interesting to learn how many goals are scored each year when teams over play close to their goal, why are we so obsessed with this? It works only for teams with players who can receive the ball under pressure and not panic and lose it, and where the whole team wants the ball and is constantly moving into space.. Frankly at our level there are not too many of those. I consider Luton at the moment. They have fast wingers and big forwards and get the ball in the box as often as they can. It seems they frighten defences more used to a slower build up and at least they entertain. 

I sort of understand LM's thoughts on possession but when our forwards need so many chances to score 1 and our possession takes place mainly well away from the opposition goal something doesn't add up. The most worrying thing is when LM ball is not working, there does not seem to be a plan B like for instance the radical idea of playing to together up front.

2 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Can you quantify in financial terms the lack of ambition point..£22.2m, £28.5m and of course the Covid affected years of £38m and £10m in losses across the prior 4 seasons. 

Can you quantify how we should demonstrate this, either in financial or intent based terms.

I think a big lose is no reflection on ambition. Much more a reflection of previous poor management. As I said they want to stay in the Championship to retain income level and maximise the chance of selling. £22.2 and 28.5 turned out to be the cost of staying in the championship.

On 02/01/2024 at 14:27, Shauntaylor85 said:

Have never been a fan of Bell, Ivan Sproule type headless moments. Seems very lost as a player, I am not convinced he is good enough for this level. 

Our forward players are just simply not good enough for this level. Could do with a whole new frontline. 

When you are that small you either have to be extremely fast or very tricky. Unfortunately Bell is neither

5 hours ago, exAtyeoMax said:

I'm not talking stadium etc, I'm talking board room/ plan/ strategy 

I think the thing that would make the difference is "Genuine Ambition". Genuine is important because no matter what JL says they know this is not a top 6 squad and the fact that he says it is shows he is either insincere or stupid or both.

Ambition means that the club is determined to reach the prem and shows that in all it does.

I think with Genuine Ambition the players would at least give it 1 more year.

The reality that they see is that we are a club with owners that want out. They want to stay in the Championship with as close to a breakeven as possible. Where, in the Championship does really matter. The management have learned that whilst we are in the Championship season tickets sales and gate receipts are pretty much the same whether we are 8th or 15th. No matter what dross they serve up the loyal 20,000 or so keep showing up.

1 hour ago, OneTeamInBristol said:

If we cashed in on Conway now we'd get a few hundred k.

Miles away from a consistent Championship goal scorer currently but not all his fault.

Before his injury he would have left the defender in his wake when he was put through one on one but now whether can't or wont run flat out, he certainly has lost a lot of pace. Also is not suitable to play as the lone striker. Simply not his game.

34 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

The other thing to add in the mix here is that stats can be misleading.

If you take the Hull game we had 21 shots. However I’d argue that there was no real quality in the shots - the second goal (Anis) keeper should save and the third is a massive deflection. Outside of that, I recall one further Anis shot but no other major test of the keeper, so that’s probably two decent efforts - one of which was a pen.

(This isn’t to say we didn’t play well and deserve the win - we did - but we had territorial pressure as opposed to chance pressure).

I’m less concerned about the number of attempts on goal and more by the quality of said attempts - whether by working enough space or a straight good effort. And again there I go back to speed of play/thought being our best way to open up teams and to me, in a lot of games we’ve been too passive and without intent in the last 11. It allows teams to bank against us and we end up needing that slice of luck or that worldie.

It seems we have a 1 trick pony as a manager. When teams figure us out and adjust at half time we change the personnel but not the tactics. Yesterday the opposition played 2 up front so supposedly we had a man spare somewhere. When things were not happening we took off Conway and replaced him with Wells rather than switching to 2 up front for a change. When Sykes went off I thought this was the perfect stage for Yeboah as at least he can cause a bit of chaos against huge defenders but instead we put the headless chicken on with typical results. We are very predictable and really a plan b & c when a is not working.

21 hours ago, Silvio Dante said:

I know this guy has come up before but I find his work very interesting. He did a long post on Duff this morning which it’s hard to disagree with (first post) and that inspired me to look to see if he’d done anything on Manning - which he did, immediately after we appointed (second post).
 

Approximately one month later, it’s absolutely fascinating to read.

 

 

Great read thanks for posting

17 hours ago, Harry said:

The time for Twine was 3 years ago when he was leaving Swindon on a free. 
Too late now. 
 

For what it’s worth, I think January will see us “bring forward” the Gardner-Hickman deal. That will be made permanent with the additional fee of £700k. 
 

I think the only other incoming will be an attacking midfielder. But it may not happen as we certainly won’t overpay.

I don’t think anything else in midfield happens until the summer when James & Williams are out of contract. And King. 
Basically means there’s 3 squad places in midfield to be filled in the summer, with Knight & TGH staying. 
 

However, if it were me, I’d have a new Gk, Rb, Rcb, Dm, Am. That ain’t happening though! 

Remember LM has a different feeling on loans compared to NP

Looking forward would seem to be a good idea at the moment so lets think ahead to the January transfer window

Where should we strengthen

Who could we realistically afford

How much if anything will LM get.

Should we move anyone on

Just to kick it off, I think we need strikers. As per normal we will almost certainly be shopping in League 1 or 2 where I don't have a enough knowledge to identify potential signings, I think LM will get approx 1.5 million, I think if we got a decent offer for either Wiemann or Mehmeti we should take it. Based on his injury record Naismith should also leave.

19 hours ago, TV Tom said:

Unfortunately these prices are the same everywhere at these sort of events, personally I wouldn’t pay them, the price of a pint is fair enough but food prices are scandalous 

For me I am more concerned about the queues. Last season you could leave your seat on the half time whistle, get in the long but fast moving queue for the coffee shop in the back of the Dolman concourse and be back in your seat ready for the kick off. They used to have 5 or 6 servers and the queue moved super fast. Now it is more fancy with just 2 servers and you would need to leave your seat on 40mins mark to get served and be back in your seat for the second half,

11 hours ago, spudski said:

The 'Covid' period changed many people's perspectives of what they did normally without thinking. 

Lots reavulated their lives...and what's important. 

I know many people that took that time and built ' pubs' in their gardens. 

Many people now want to work remotely from home. 

The same with football. It's now a format that is no more  of an experience than going to Tesco's shopping.

People go to work and look forward to meeting up with mates, chilling, having a few pints, lots of banter, going home and chilling with the missus and kids...or similar. 

Going to watch City...or any others...are the majority champing at the bit in excitement? Very few imo. 

Football now is 24/7....who'd be an analyst? I'd rather stick pins in my eyes. 

I question the mentality of anyone who says they think about football 24/7. 

It's not normal or healthy...and imo detached from reality. 

I think the problem for the AG experience comes in 4 parts

We haven't recently been involved in play off contention or a relegation scrap so few games have been super critical

Atmosphere generated during these high stakes games remains for some time, conversely when you don't have high stakes games for a long time, the norm becomes dull. 

We haven't exactly had a team to get you off of your seat for a few seasons. With the exception and Scott and sometimes Antoine we haven't had a player that makes runs and beats people or even a crunching ball winning midfielder. At the moment if you bought a shirt for your kid there is no stand out name to put on the back.

Finally the fans sense that the owners are going through the motions and so they tend to do the same.

No a nice picture but imo a true one

6 hours ago, Charlie BCFC said:

Early days I don’t blame you for thinking most of this.

But the thing around players not buying into his style of play is rubbish, they already have and you can see the difference. You’re just sulking over Pearson still and not accepting that Manning needs the same patience as we have Pearson as a fanbase 

Didn't look like they bought into his style of play in the 2nd half. I lost count of the times we hit a simple pass to a close by team mate but they were on a totally different wavelength and the ball went out for a throw in. They look confused and leaderless on and off the field and had no plan to tackle the second half formation of Norwich.