DaveInSA

16 hours ago, Top Robin said:

Let's hope so.

Oh do behave.

on the one hand, of course it’s a new era. With Jon and Tinnion running the show with Manning as their lackey.

And on the other you’ll be the first (well maybe second after Andy 80002052456472907462) on here when results dip (as they will) to spout off “Manning out”.

It’s about a bit of balance and perspective surely? We’re still a mid table squad. And it’s still too early to say if Manning is going to be a success or not. And we’ve had solid results in the last 3 games, which we just as easily could have got fewer points from.

1 minute ago, Silvio Dante said:

 

I don’t watch much footy. But I have the Amazon.

Scott has been class in this game. What a player. Normally I don’t give two hoots for ex players. By Alex is different. 

City shouldn’t fear Watford. It’s the type of game we absolutely can win. And lose. And draw.

Sticking my neck out. Manning to break the away duck . 1-3 city. 

What I love about these players is the commitment and togetherness.

This is the foundation that great things are made of.

with some canny recruitment and good man management we can definitely push on.

but we knew this already TBF.

can Manning do it? It seems like he’s a quick learner. So why not?

1 hour ago, Marina's Rolls Royce said:

No matter where we are- that night at the Man U game was simply sublime. Nothing bitter for me.

I started attending matches in the early 80's so thats 40 years now. Probably half that has been in Div 3. I genuinely don't get the "we should expect more" in that if you choose to drive a Ford Fiesta 1.1 then it's silly getting frustrated that it doesn't do 0-60 in 4.2 seconds.

I think we've only once looked like we may genuinely get to the top tier since 1980 and we've never come close since that season or before.BCFC are rank outsiders every year and I don't see that changing without a really big slice of luck/rub of the green/everything clicking.

 

That bit in bold needs another slash:

/proper leadership, vision and management.

if we had that over the past 30 years, we would be way better off than where we are now. 

as opposed to the Mark Ashton approach of pinning players on a dart board, putting on a bilndfold, and then signing all the players you manage to hit in the temple.

In all seriousness, the approach is not rocket science is it? I'd love to know what "our approach is". I bet we have 35 positions based on an ancient Sanskrit text book. 

6 hours ago, Mike Hunt-Hertz said:

About 80 minutes too long.

To be honest, I never used to watch rugby much. But after living 15 years in South Africa - it's difficult to not get "bitten".

I actually think rugby is a much better watch than football these days. All this tippy tappy nonsense across the pitch then back again then going back to the keeper, rinse and repeat is so dull. At least it's dull when done with no purpose and no pace.

Gone are the days of blood and thunder wingers skinning full backs and whipping crosses in for forwards to score. 

1 hour ago, sh1t_ref_again said:

 

Not often I find myself agreeing with anything you post, but found 2 in quick succession

One of my concerns I posted when LM was being touted for the job, was lack of experience of the championship and what he achieved as a player, whilst things are going well its easy for the players to be onboard with what the coach is after. When we get a bad run of results, if senior players start to question the tactics or what they are being asked to do (particularly if you have strong petulant characters, which I don't think we have), the lack of been there and done it can start to undermine the players belief in the message, which is not the case of Nige or Lampard for example. Not saying the players in any way feel this, and not sure players starting doing there own thing at Blackburn, although Manning has said players need to problem solve on the pitch, so maybe given licence to react and play in a certain way, that varies from the original plan as the game develops.

The second point momentum, is massive as it gives belief and confidence in what you are doing.

Lampard, has achieved the square root of FA as a manager. Just saying.

4 minutes ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Just checked and every club in the Championship has a CEO apart from:

Norwich Board & Executive - Norwich City (canaries.co.uk) - but they have an actual proper board and sporting director.

Stoke Stoke City FC - Directory - they also have an actual proper board and sporting director.

Sheff Weds - Can't find any details, COO Liam Dooley left in October, but run by a madman.

Rotherham United - only have a COO and no DoF. An anomaly.

 

So basically us and bottom-of-the-table Rotherham are the division's outliers in terms of internal structure. Brilliant.

Nobody is allowed to hold Steve and Jon to account. Not through a proper structure of Board and Sub-committees to oversee the work of the CEO. It's laughable. 

BCFC is being run like a small family business selling pizzas out of a converted Sprinter at festivals. It really is that bad.

Bristol City (aside from the promotion years in Divs 3&4) has been a constant disappointment in my life.

The levels of underachievement for a city of this size, with a massive catchment area are utterly astounding. When considering the Lansdown era it's abject failure, brought on by incompetence and....

...lack of governance throughout their reign. A good leader knows their deficiencies and has trusted advisors who can bring sense and other opinions to the table. In the Lansdowns we have none of this. We have nobody with deep footballing knowledge at the club. We have no-one steering the ship. We have no-one to hold accountable except for the Lansdowns themselves. And we've been told "this is my club". When it isn't, it's our club. The fans club. Bristol's club. Ironically we had some sort of structure in place just one year ago. and we started to turn the corner.

When someone disagrees and upsets the apple cart - they're fired. They naively think that Gould and Pearson sorted the mess out. Brought in Alexander (who I was actually quite excited about - in that he knew how to run a football club) when Gould left for his dream job. And then both Pearson and Alexander were gone. The work is not yet done. "Alright Nige, we've now fixed all the footballing issues, we couldn't stomach you disagreeing with us any more and we've decided that you're part of the project is done. Sorry your sick and all but get out the club". The ego there is astounding. They are little boys in a mans body.

I don't (yet) have any beef with Manning. But my word in a results business they've been poor. And defending is also poor. We need to ratchet things back up really quickly, because conceding 2 goals a game and scoring 1 means that you lose. Every time. 

Ipswich top the league. In case you were wondering.

Well.

Don’t.

Say.

I.

Told.

You.

So

20 minutes ago, Robbored said:

It’s actually live on TV if you have Sky Sports 

Who has sky sports these days?

Given we are a postive front foot attacking high pressing side who creates loads of chances and is tight as a nuns chuff at the back with no individual or collective stupid defensive errors which cost us a goal a game...

I'm going for a conservative 15 points

I'm drawing a line under the BS from Tinnion, Lansdown and all the rest of the Lansdown brigade. It's all a complete fabrication of where we are as a club, ITO the talent we have and what "style" of football we can play. It's all smoke and mirrors.

We have a mid table (position 8-15) squad. We have a couple of players who would get into top 6 sides. That's it.

If, Manning can do a Luton then god bless him.

It will be a massive surprise to me if we are 8th and above. And we'll have done something royally bad to finish lower than 16th.

I was thinking almost this last night.

Couple of things came to my mind - the gulf between Premier League and Championship is huge. Totally massive. I don't normally watch premier league footy, but it was on the Amazon yesterday so I had a dabble.

Villa have built a really good side over the past 4 seasons. The speed with which they moved the ball and the skill of the players was marvellous. You could argue that their execution at the last hurdle wasn't that great (the shots in the main were tame) but the number of chances they made and the purpose they had was a joy to watch. Man City were all at sea.

But it isn't the Gulf per se that's the only issue.  The bigger issues is that we don't have any balls. The players over all my years of watching (except in Tier 3) have lacked the balls and belief. Coupled to this the game has changed quickly over the past 3-4 seasons. You have to be intelligent and adaptable too (whereas at our level over the years if you were a good clogger as a CB you did ok - ala Flint). We're miles away from being comfortable with the football. They're scared to play. 

The Lansdowns don't have any balls either : see below

49 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Agreed- as for us.

Had we been able to go big late 1990s perhaps we would have been among them.

Hell had we gone big in January 2008, that was as good a time as any- we had momentum, oh we at times rode our luck especially away from home, but we were surely too timid in the January window.

And us fans have no balls or belief either, we're just as bad as the players. 

What needs to happen, is to build on what Pearson started. And we need to get some balls.

Cyclical Steve and the Nepotists.

my expectation was that he would be fired halfway through the season with us being 8th and 3 points of the playoffs.

And that he would be laughing his arse off at the results since he was fired.

you'll know when it's toxic because the bedsheets will come out

I'm not 100% sure, but I think we've been gaslit  again.

@Harry hits the nail on the head, like he did from the minute Manning was appointed (nostra"Harry"mus). We don't have the players to move the ball quickly with purpose and intent. I saw it with my own eyes yesterday. And at the same time you could see what we were trying to do, even in the second half, which I thought was not boring. It was just all too slow...and a couple of players didn't step up, and deliver the solutions on the pitch, which is what he also wants.

We don't have these players. Some of the youngsters might become these players. 

FWIW, Weimann, Williams, James and King I think are all OOC this coming summer? I doubt any of them will be renewed - maybe James but his legs will go soon. Incoming the new creative midfielder(s).

52 minutes ago, marcofisher said:

Problem is the board think they know better and decide to go away from a Cotterill/Pearson type (who do know better). This entails a change of play style that the squad is not equipped for, reinvestment is required (which the Lansdowns apparently don’t want to do anymore), and therefore it is set up to fail for the new coach, who is not equipped with the appropriate players to play the style of football he wants, or just as often in the last few years, is found to be no better tactically than the Manager types who instilled some structure. Plus in the case of LJ, no better at bringing players through the system than Pearson was.

I didn’t agree with Pearson going but I also don’t think Manning is a bad appointment on paper. The problem is that we spent 3 years under Pearson building in one direction, and just when he finished clearing the junk, raised some money through bringing through and developing Scott and Semenyo, and instilled some fortitude in the team, we decide to chop and change back to the Head Coach route again. Now we have to reinvest and clear the decks somewhat again to be able to give Manning the players he would need to play in the way he wants, and there is no guarantee that works with the limited Championship experience he has.

For all the noises about not wanting to continuously pump money into the club, it doesn’t really make sense to rip it all up and start again when you finally had some stability in the club. Are we going to go big in January/Summer to get the players in that suit Manning? Otherwise we will be stuck with a pretty poor cocktail of a group of players that suit playing one way and a manager that wants to play another.

We don’t want to pump money into the club non-stop so let’s keep ripping it up and starting again, you can’t really make it make sense can you?

Cyclical Steve I call him. He's done this for nigh on 20 years. And we as fans are surprised. Well I am not.
We have a nepotistic love in at the highest levels of the club. It's pathetic. And I wonder if that is what Manning was getting at yesterday with his culture comment actually.

So here's my opinion. I think it's a clumsy use of language - he's young - he doesn't present himself well - I just wish he was more genuine. I don't think he's meaning culture per se. I think he's talking about mindset and responsibility.

Clearly, in that game the players didn't adapt to the way Norwich changed (my opinion) and they didn't step into another way of playing (which is what Manning talked about in previous interviews). He wants the players to take responsibility and find a way to win.

I'm actually behind this. You need leaders on the pitch to figure stuff out and shift what we're doing. Playing it slowly across the back 4 to Bell and Knight on the left wing, with Pring then coming to confuse matters isn't what he wants. I think this is what he was referencing. A couple of times in the second half we did what he wants - moved the ball at pace and pulled Norwich around. 

I think this will take time. Doing it in season, when you've been set up to be compact and hard to beat is tricky. Especially when he says in training they're mainly working on defensive shapes.

I went today, and now realise why I go to about 3-4 games a season. The bad seems to outweigh the good (well at least for me).

The Bad

I thought that performance was timid and naive. Especially in the second half. We are so frightened with the ball. I understand possession based football, but my word do it with some purpose. We kept trying to shift it out wide to Pring, Bell and Knight (who also loked a bit lost and confused and tended to go backward or get in each others way). It was so ponderous - why take one touch when three will do. There was no intent. When we did get in strong positions there was not one city player in the 6 yard box. It was naive because we kept doing the same thing over and over again against two banks of 4/5.

The Good

When we DID shift it with purpose (2-3 times in the second half) we were into them. It looked good. And we threatened.

3 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

Did you honestly think that the Weimann Semenyo & Martin partnership was “abysmal”?

Between the three of them they scored 42 league goals in 2021/22 with 22 assists.

Martin was a very clever hold up player, Semenyo is quick, strong & two footed, Weimann had the season of his career.

That was only 2 seasons ago.

 

:laugh:. Got me there didn't you.