cellist

My lipreading in German isn't up to much, but I believe he's saying "you guys haven't been showing the right behaviours"

Any proven manager will see how pearson was treated here and steer well clear. Who wants the hassle? Who wants to work for morons, let alone be dictated to by them? Can't see anyone with a realistic championship cv coming. Obviously Cooper is way out of our league anyway. So were we to sack Manning, i fear we will have to get lucky with an 'up-and-comer'. I don't think they'll make a change. But if we really look like we might go down, I can genuinely see them turning to LJ until the end of the season. He may even get a result or two out of this bunch, backs to the wall and all that. Of course no other championship club would employ LJ at this moment in time. But isn't that what we do? Things looking like a bit of a shambles atm.

Unlikely. Not due to our form, but the number of teams below us who would have to seriously get their act together. Rotherham are doomed, and so we only need two of the other 10 teams to not overtake us. Sheff Wed and QPR have come good the last few weeks, but not sure I see Birmingham, Huddersfield, Stoke, Blackburn in their current form all overtaking us with a few points head start. Still, the fact that we are worried at all shows what a total car crash replacing Pearson with Manning mid-season has been. Couldn't really have gone much worse in terms of points and performances overall (one or two exceptions). Would love to hear BT/JL hold their hands up, but what can they say at this point really? We don't tend to sack managers quickly. Manning would be going the way of Beale or Rooney very soon at most other clubs but I doubt he will here unless we do look like we're going down with 3 games to go.

Some bad publicity on the BBC feed. Hope the fans there can make their feelings known

Here we go

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/68431928 Heard this interview with Warnock today after Aberdeen had lost at St Johnstone and thought it made an interesting comparison. Fans chanting "you're not fit to wear the shirt and sack the board." Of course the situations are very different - he inherited a team underperforming in the bottom half, we were in a decent position and have a "top six squad"... He's also very critical of his playing staff. More of their attitude and integrity rather than playing ability or "ability to learn". And silly mistakes - "I don't care if you're Pep Guardiola, if you concede goals like that you're going to lose games". I guess his reputation in the game allows him to do that - and it isn't a sulky, off the cuff, defensive comment. It's a challenge to his players - that's his man management style. Difference is the honesty and straightforwardness though. "We played well in the two home games, but if we play like that we won't win another game". "I understand the fans, they deserve better". No hiding behind coach-speak, no nonsense comments about 1 bad performance in 20. Hard work on the training ground required. Not for a moment suggesting we appoint Colin! But why can't we have a manager/some leadership who respect the fans and don't hind behind bullshit, and just tell things how they are? Obviously we did have that, and that ship has sadly sailed. LM not helping himself when results and performances aren't good. Needs a win on Saturday that's for sure.

He doesn't come across as easy to warm to, and that is exacerbated by the last two results/performances. If he was winning games I dare say we would be warming to him - we'd be saying how ruthless and focussed he was, confident in his own ability, measured, detail orientated, tactically astute, young and up and coming etc. Some would see through it, but football fans will be taken in by pretty much anything as long as the team is winning. But when the chips are down, all the sound bites come across really badly. To those who say he reads the forum - clearly not enough or he'd have dropped the word "behaviours" from his vocabulary by now!

Liked Danns. Good player. Did you know Mickey Bell's son Sam is a pro footballer now! Well I never. I knew Matt Hill's son James had broken through at Fleetwood. What I didn't realise is that he was signed by (you guessed it) Bournemouth in Jan 2022 and is currently on loan at Blackburn. Completely passed me by.

Absolute car crash of an interview. It does bear one or two worrying similarities with Saturday. Can see why they sacked him afterwards. I wouldn't want to play for him after that. Don't know anything about the MK situation at that time, but it doesn't really matter does it? If you're saying what essentially adds up to "Me and the coaches are brilliant, it's all the players' fault" - hard to see how things can get better.

General feeling of frustration here at the moment means this is turning out to be another stick to beat Manning/the decision to sack NP/the leadership with. There are plenty of good sticks to beat them all with, but I wonder if this isn't one of them! He can't go on loan to a league side outside of the window. Bath is a local club who we have a good relationship with - he can play a few games and still train with us some/all of the time. If our injury crisis is over, why not go and play a few men's games? Presumably he could have gone to a conference club, but a) it wouldn't be so local, b) perhaps don't have the contacts. So this is a bit of a non-story for me. They have 13 games to go, chasing a play off place - maybe it helps strengthen a useful relationship with them. Maybe he helps them get promoted and we can send a couple on loan to a higher level next season. Could be a case that everybody wins.

Exactly. I remember fondly those years because it was my first taste of football growing up. But we repeatedly failed to get out of a worse division than the one we're now in. In terms of footballing ability and achievement, BT can't really hold a candle to some of our current squad and many others we've had since. In terms of footballing CV he does not compare favourably to James, King, Pearson, Euell, Fleming for example. Bit of a joke that Pearson might have his decisions (allegedly) questioned by someone like BT really.

Mehmeti has had way more game time than sammie ever did. Not sure thats the right comparison because nobody can say he hasn't been given a fair crack of the whip. Like you say some of the scapegoating a bit harsh, an easy target for a general sense of frustration. Hope it comes good for him. And if we are going to play the way we are trying to, you're right that you need some kind of unpredictable outlet on the pitch (the fact that at the moment he fairly predictably gives the ball away notwithstanding!)

Run out of reactions but I think this is very well said. As for the bit in bold - it does seem we have a leadership team that are easily taken in by that sort of thing doesn't it? Overthinking, overcoaching, it's very reminiscent of LJ whose best run it needs to be remembered coincided with a bit of an injury crisis that limited his options, and the spine of a team with exactly that robustness and spirited togetherness you mentioned - built (not entirely) by his predecessor. I share your frustration and feeling that we were, in some senses, nearly there. Nearly on to something. Baffles me how we seem to have passed it up to make the same sort of mistake we've made previously.

When we talk about SL selling up one day - we often say "be careful what you wish for". Not sure what I think about that, but as for the manager, well if he were to be sacked, who will be appointing his successor? Does that fill you with hope? All I'll say is that a certain former manager is currently out of work (for the second time this season)

Why isn't it fair? Maybe unfair to write him off - but the criticism is fair imo and the line "he deserves a summer window and pre season completely lets BT & JL off the hook. They said he was brought in to get more out of the current squad, this season. Can anyone argue that he's done this so far? I'd argue it's got worse - some might say that on balance its the same when you factor in the cup run and Watford (A) and Southampton. But he hasn't fulfilled the brief he was set - he hasn't done the job he was brought in to do. He's had more or less the same number of games but got fewer points. Seems pretty clear cut. Could be behind the scenes reasons as to why he has failed to do this. Maybe it's not 100% on him. I can only speculate. Perhaps this was because he was also told to change the style of play completely (likely, given the rhetoric about "front foot football".) That sort of thing would require a full pre-season wouldn't it! Who would ask a manager to come in and improve the results and completely overhaul the style of play half way through a busy season without much money to spend? No sensible owner/technical director I can think of would run a club that way! Perhaps he was also told to play certain players - team selection today with 2 unfit players in the starting XI is bizarre. Mehmeti has certainly had a lot more game time and only seen a little improvement. Maybe BT is meddling in that as well, who knows. I don't know why he has failed so far but it seems pretty clear so far to me that he has failed to get more out of the current squad, not only in terms of results but also performances. We've seen more from this squad that we got today or last week, or on numerous other occasions. So he has to take some of the flack - you can split the blame with JL and BT if you like but LM has to take his fair share too.

Exactly this. Loved watching Tinnion ping passes around against giants like Chesterfield and Port Vale back in the day. But he has thoroughly blotted his copybook for me with the Pearson sacking/Manning appointment and the communication around that. The dramatic, toys-out-of-the-pram "I'm off twitter see you when we're in the Premier league" only to come back 2 weeks later didn't exactly help. Wasn't old enough to know the ins and outs of the Wilson sacking but have since come across one or two comments from Wilson's book that don't show him in the best light. Really irritates me how, after having his chance as manager and really showing no aptitude for management at all, he seems to be back in a position of so much responsibility without ever having to go away and prove himself. It's hard to imagine another championship club (with "premier league aspirations") going within a million miles of him.

Well they would say that, leaving with 3 points! I feel pretty angry because I felt that we were beginning to leave the beige, bland, soft Bristol City behind under NP. But we're back to bland again. I'm angry because it feels like we've thrown what we were building away. I'm angry because we've been total suckers for this ridiculous fad of employing boring, monotonous coaches who bamboozle their players with meaningless gibberish about box entries and behaviours on the grass, but can't get them fired up for a league game. We don't look like we know what we're doing. It is bland and beige, but it feels worse than that because whatever we were under Nige, we weren't bland and beige. (Of course it wasn't free flowing, of course there were some poor performances especially early on. But at least when it was bad, he would call a spade a spade. We've been told today was a "great learning experience". What have we learned that we didn't learn at home to Millwall? Or Birmingham? Or QPR?

Feel he sums up our club in lots of ways

At least he's tried to make a change. But will the performance improve?

Last man ref!!!!

Naismith on co-comms talks more sense with more clarity than I've heard from Manning in his interviews. What a header - Knight often gets on the end of corners. Get in!!!!

simple goal. having huffed and puffed for 15mins, they string a few passes together down the right and it's 1-0

Uh oh, he talked about box entries at 3:20! One of my all time favourite Johnson-isms... He comes across well and relaxed in this interview - much more so than pre/post match. He's talking about coaching which is what he's most passionate about. Can see why the players will enjoy the sessions as some have said, and feel like they're learning. Obviously not translating enough onto the pitch yet - time will tell, but I wonder whether more coaching is really the answer. Could it not be more of the other side of being a manager that is required here - the man-management/motivation/attitude side of things, and also the communication skill to get those ideas across simply and clearly in the heat of the moment. The Klopps/Peps of the world have both sides of this which is what's needed. If you can't be brilliant at both - I guess it's going to depend on the rest of your coaching team and the personality of your squad. Increasingly common nowadays to prioritise the modern "progressive" coach who may be tactically brilliant (or at least knows a lot of the big words...) as opposed to the "old school" man-manager. Every manager wants a bit of both, but which are the managers that win things? David Moyes might have an answer! From our experience over the last few years, which one wins?

He's gone from great prospect to Ali Dia in a few short days. I would say classic otib - but pretty much the whole team have gone from world beaters to competition winners this week.