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Not quite. After this, he listened to the AG crowd giving LJ some stick - in the middle of LJ setting a new club record for consecutive league defeats - and suggesting Steve get his "Johnson" out, and thought: sod you lot, my money my club, I'm extending Lee's contract.

Fair play to Steve, then. Maybe he "gets" football a little more than I thought ......

We ought to have at least been "in and around" where Preston were that first season up (they finished 11th, which is the 2nd best we have managed in this Championship stretch), comfortably midtable, a season to enjoy with no fear of relegation. But we were a shambles, utterly embarrassing. On and off the field. For all that we have here in terms of crowd, income, facilities etc, we really are served up, and largely meekly accept, a pile of sh*t at this level, and largely always have been and done. It's an absolute wonder that 17 - 20,000 people are still interested and bother turning up. You look at bleedin Plymouth with a small budget coming up and giving it a good old go (except here), that game v Norwich Saturday must've contained more rollicking good fun than 2 to 3 seasons here of the end of Lee, poor old Deano, and the start of Nige. When we play Norwich, or any club within a whiff of a parachute payment, we are (more often than not) meek and pathetic, and many on here cannot wait to insist that we "cannot compete." People fall over themselves to make excuses, not only for being unable to "compete," but even for utter incompetence. I doubt Nige truly grasped the challenge facing him here, the learned helplessness woven into the fabric of the whole bleedin place. You Reds!

Chelsea did, but they've stopped it this season, so they can buy some more players. Man City have done it. Hull, QPR and Brum did this last season, Hull to every away game after Christmas. Multiple clubs have done it for the occasional big day out, in the time SL has been here. The only time we have done it under Steve, tbf, and afair, is when we lost 0:5 at Preston and Lee chucked Mags under a bus but you only found out about it the day after getting back from Preston.

Not sure Bents was quite worth the extra wedge .....

Stoke provide free coach travel, to every away game. Imagine that? They've done this for ten years. Imagine that? I suppose Steve did pay for his whopping great big Steve Lansdown Stand, which he charges anything up to £40 odd quid to sit in, so we shouldn't whinge and moan that he has never laid on any free travel in his time here (afaik), not even up Horfield to the Mem. And why would he? What's in it it for him/us? Free travel to an away game thereby ensuring the opposition a bumper pay day (we could always promise to trash the toilets, Steve, if you would be prepared to pay for us to go by coach to Plymuff, Cov, Stoke, somewhere). Funnily enough, Stoke's away support was dismal in the Prem, after a few years, when their away form was dismal. They stopped going. So the club decided to do something about it, and years later, they still have people travelling in numbers a division lower when they're still dismal. Owners that "get" supporters, and football, and can see beyond pounds, shillings and pence.

I'd imagine it can be justified (wanting to go KLF, here) by the amount of wedge up that, there London. Yer cockernee barrow boy will spend £160 notes on his pie n mash breakfast before he's got out of bed in the morning. He will bet twice that dahn the bookies at lunchtime, then triple that dahn the boozah where the barrel will be rolled aaahhht (etc, etc). They got more money than us up there, Phant. Is yer ans-ah

English football's angriest fans: Everton Leeds Millwall Stoke Amongst others ....

Don't worry mate, we're being ever so careful, and that's not what we wish for

The Premier League don't need to do that, the Championship clubs not in receipt of PP need it. So it won't be happening Agree about Sheffield United, very ordinary.

Meanwhile, in West London, Chelsea ticking along nicely .......

There is nothing ultra about our crowd or support nowadays. Except, perhaps, our indifference to what is happening on the pitch. I blame Steve Lansdown (why not?) Twenty years of .... well, not really going anywhere. The whole place is devoid of belief. People are there in the ground, but they might as well not be.

And get off at Leicester?

No, it was the snowy, frozen slip hazard terraces. 'ealth and Safety. Also, Hull had no need for that side, they hadn't needed it for the 20 preceeding seasons, and they wouldn't need it for the following 10/12 seasons, not with average crowds of 4 - 6,000. To think they would go on to spend 8 - 8! - seasons in Div 4 but still get to the top before us. Hull were absolute tinpot, dog sh*t back then. Good side we had that season.

Crikey. Last time I looked, you was 32 year old Kiwi Col working up Lawrence Hill in 1995, and Jonah Lomu was tramplin' all over our brave England boys. Don't tell me yer retired?

That's a bedsheet ^ right there

We can start the Protest Movement: Bring Back Nige - a la Clough/Derby, 1973 - now, before he's gone.

You can't be old enough, Col?

Steve is 71. What we wish for cannot change that, or reverse the clock. Steve moving on is inevitable. There is nothing we can do about it. We might as well crack on with it, because it is going to happen one day anyway ...

Green Army might pick you up, mate?

Shameful and ludicrous enthusiasm from the plucky lower league upstarts, call themselves West Country? What they trying to be, Leeds United or something? We are the premier, leading and unrivalled exponents of laid-back, can't-be-bleedin'-arsed, West Country apathy, and for that, I salute everyone not going tonight, and everyone that does bother, I salute all those that do not sing or make a squeak (unless we're losing and/or Harry Cornick misses another sitter/pass/whatever)

I stand corrected.

The "nest egg" will fund this, and more. Source: Steve Lansdown, 2023. Try and keep up, mate

If yer a billionaire, mate, you can have whatever you want on yer shroud. Trust me. You could have "City til I die," or "My money, my club" on yer shroud, as well as pockets ....

I am currently reading Jonathan Wilson's Brian Clough biography, and if you think that pettiness is beyond people that run football clubs, manage football clubs or have a lot of money, you are very much mistaken (I don't think you are, AMax). Au contraire. Not that I am saying anything about this particular development at AG. Only that all human foibles and many flaws can be found amongst the great, the good and the Guernsey in football. Truly, football clubs, at times, are like the fowl on the water: serene above ("all under control, nothing to see here"), thrashing about wildly underneath ("wtf is going on!")