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54 minutes ago, Rocking Red Cyril said:

 

Ok I accept it's only my opinion . 

but I really feel the dark arts in football are so abused in high stakes games by Argentina and Italy to a level beyond other teams .  Which is such a shame as they both contain such fine football players 

Maybe that's why they produce the sort of talent we don’t? Because you have to survive and come through all that argie-bargy. 

Whereas all our children now emerge from organised, coached, safe practice on smooth all weather pitches 

Poor from Leo. People say he’s better than Maradona, not at the World Cup he's not been.

4 minutes ago, !james said:

Argentina penalty given by VAR, same as the Maguire incident 

2 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Joke

If there'd been VAR in 1986 I'm not sure Fifa would've spotted/looked at/given everything that might've been given that year ....

2 hours ago, The Dolman Pragmatist said:

  The use of Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma gave football an image which encouraged new people to watch the game, and the whole package was very Italian and very stylish.  It helped make football acceptable in a new way.

Really? Not Sky TV a couple of years later? I'd say Gazza's tears and England getting to the semis and coming back heroes and Gazza with his tits oot on top the bus turnt England at summer tournaments into a big event here. 

I know a few people (well, our old mum and her friend) who saw Pavarotti in 1990 on the telly and then went to see, er, Pavarotti and his two pals singing in London, but they weren’t tempted down AG.

Newsnight, just now: an anonymous Iranian woman protester asks that England fans boo the national anthem of the murderous Iranian regime on Monday. I think we might just manage that. 

I think it's a cost of living/inflation thing but I keep seeing Aldi Weimann when I see his name. Maybe it's because we've got him for half what we were initially paying him.

It's not heating or eating for me (eating, every time), so much as Asda or Andi 

1 minute ago, italian dave said:

Don't...don't 

"It makes you wonder, it makes you prowed 

To play for England, and hear the crow-ed

As we're marching on towards victory 

......

This time, we'll get it right (repeat until fade/Harry Maguire is replaced)"

Just now, italian dave said:

Maybe not...but we had all those god-awful "team anthems" where by virtue of reaching a World Cup or a FA Cup final it was deemed that a bunch of the most tone deaf people in the country were fit to record a song.

"We're on our way, we are Ron's twenty two

Hear the roar, of the red, white and .... er, the red and white:

This time, more than any other time, this time

We're gonna find a way, find a way to get away

This time, getting it all together ..... "

Love that one. What number did it get to @British Steel?

9 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Middlesbrough and Sheffield United are historically bigger clubs than us so you can cross them off for a start. Talking more PL, far more time in the top two divisions etc.

Blackburn won some trophies in their early days and again have spent only six years in their history outside of the top 2 divisions, arguably a bigger club irrespective of Walker.

Derby, clearly a bigger club. West Brom likewise.

Others I have more sympathy on, ie Watford, Norwich and Fulham for example. Some of these pumped up by money, Parachute Payments or a combination of the two although I expect that even pre PL, Norwich have featured more heavily in the top 2 divisions.

Brighton are a curious case. They were turbocharged by a combination of promotion and their move to the Amex in 2011-12.

Went up in 2010-11, left the Withdean that same year.

Attendances rose by 12.5-13k in just one year and they have comfortably averaged 20k plus ever since, whereas we have only averaged 20k plus twice in my lifetime I believe.

Have our turnovers ever risen by 12-13k in one season in modern times, or has our turnover ever pretty much trebled in a year?

Brighton had larger crowds and turnover than us, but Brentford, Huddersfield and Luton all made the play-offs with less, or at least no more. Preston and Millwall have matched or out-performed us with less. Now we struggle to match Rotherham. 

It's not how much we do or don't have, it's what the people making the big calls here do or don't do with what we have here. We're just poor at making the most of what we actually have at our disposal.

If you put Steve Lansdown at Brighton, and Tony Bloom came here, I don't fancy Brighton much, and I don’t see them where they are now.

5 hours ago, Major Isewater said:

Look at the size of the clubs above them, I am not saying that they’re pushing for promotion but they are, IMHO, doing OK.

We need to get away from "size" being something deterministic, or more important than it is; it's not irrelevant, it's possibly more important than in years gone by but when you look at Brentford in the Prem, Luton in the Championship and say Bradford still ailing in L2, you come back to people and the choices and the decisions they make (with the cards dealt to them).

The Titanic was bloody massive, but the people running - literally - the ship were lacking. Sheffield Wednesday are big but not big enough to withstand people running their club making poor decisions. 

Sometimes, smaller clubs can outwit bigger disorganised ones by being cuter and leaner and smarter, on and off the field. In over 100 years we have managed this twice. It's not too much to ask that we do so again, not when others of similar stature manage to do so.

On 07/11/2022 at 18:02, Denbury Red said:

Some friends of mine are coming to Ashton Gate from the Trowbridge area (and returning there after) and asked if I could find out the best place to park.

He has a seven year old son - so not too far would be good and they don’t mind paying!

I always come from the South so don’t really know the options!

Anyone help?

Cheers,

How was your friends' evening, mate - did they get parked up ok?

51 minutes ago, Olé said:

 

On the main point, I'm starting to feel the same way as you. If we regress yet again this season there's absolutely no basis for all the stadium, HPC soundbites around us being setup for success.

The bricks and mortar (steel and concrete) are ok, set up for success, all we need now is, are, er, the people. 

1 minute ago, Marina's Rolls Royce said:

RG said it will be c.£20 million this time around. SL walks and we are Bury( and buried).

SL stays and we are ..... Bristol City. Rock and a hard place

41 minutes ago, ChippenhamRed said:

You’re probably right. But at least today’s 80 year old city fans can at least look back on time in the top division playing - and occasionally beating - the best in the country. Currently I have next to nothing.

It was three years of struggle, mate. And one year finishing 13th. A lot of losing and drawing, and not scoring enough. And disappointing crowds, that moaned too much.

Loads of scrapping though ....

2 hours ago, The Dolman Pragmatist said:

Given that they lost to Chippenham at the weekend, we’re on a hiding to nothing here.

Difficult place to go, Chippenham mind. From Lincoln. 

I miss Deano. Where is he now?

Football lads: don't do that (coke) do this:

1 hour ago, Simon79 said:

This will be seen in three ways, those who are seemingly in the Pearson ‘ out ‘ brigade, who will use it one way, those in the Pearson ‘ in ‘ brigade, who will say he’s said nothing wrong & those who just see it as it is, which is obviously strange. Has anyone ever heard another manager comment on a substitution/formation change & referenced an opposition player not running? Bizarre thing for Nige to comment on. That will be Khadras motivation for the away game sorted, unless Nige convinces him to come here in January obviously! COYR 

Yeah, me. I have. Jimmy Sirrel did this years ago, when we went 4-2-4 from 4-4-2, and something about Forbes Phillipson-Masters not running (very fast). 

9 hours ago, GrahamC said:

 

Horrible, cynical, dirty side assisted by a spineless ref.

Pretty much what Nige said he wants us to be.

Why don't the club put away fans in the upper Lansdown, so we can have City fans behind both goals and improve the atmosphere? 

9 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

The point I was making was that it was an established part of going to football well before our promotion year, so I didn’t see it as the factor that others did.

Doesn’t mean I’m right here, either, but your background, I had a working class father who even at 81 still remains obsessed with the game, also plays a big part, too.

No argument at all from me about how “uncomfortable” it was, my brother got a few smacks when we were leaving The Hawthorns (he was about 14) & I still remember being scared at St.Andrews, Upton Park & Selhurst Park. Nor about the fact if I’d been a father & applied today’s values (which many of course didn’t) I would have thought long & hard before taking children along.

From this distance I look back & am amazed at the fact I went (away, on my own from 14) & also that on reflection the grounds weren’t just scary then but were downright dangerous, as Bradford & Hillsborough later showed.

I would say though @Swede is spot on, it was a very different time, many things that fortunately we would just see as completely unacceptable now (casual racism, sexism, indifference to this level of violence) were ignored, if not possibly tolerated.

I think AD was racking his brains for the reason our gates were poor, but in reality the reasons were numerous, including West Country apathy.

 

Yes, that's my point: it's a number of factors. Increasing violence being one of them. And apathy around here too, that can be factored in.

When we got to the top the club expected old fans to come back, and new ones to be made, but that mix of 1970s factors contributed to that not happening, with these people. I reckon.

The first programme I picked up was Man City Feb '78, and of 46 lines on AD's page, 38 are about dart throwing and the potential closing of the ground and playing at a neutral venue, and the consequences of that. AD wanted us to "grass" on whoever was chucking darts.

We perhaps forget now what an issue it was, 45 years ago. Or maybe the club went on about it too much?

Interestingly, we're 14th in the table at that point, and 15th in the attendances table. Getting more than Wolves, Boro, Ipswich and Norwich. Not too shabby. And we hadn't played Liverpool or Manchester United by that point.

If I had to pick one crowd deterring factor from that era it wouldn't be your economics or violence, it would be that we were a bit disappointing and struggled for three of the four seasons.

14 minutes ago, Merrick's Marvels said:

That's the plan.

Really? Not: "When you gonna get yer cheque book out?"

This could be a shite appointment, to be fair/add some balance to this thread.

35 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

I think the violence stuff is a complete red herring.

It was really bad from the very early 70s, certainly as far back as I can remember.

If you were going it didn’t put you off (very scary at times) but it was no different, possibly even slightly on the wane, by the time we got promoted.

"If you were going it didn't put you off," fair enough. But what if you weren't going? Why weren't you going?

Because it didn’t put you or others like you off doesn't mean it didn't deter others, might I point out. It was part of a "package" into which we might add televised football, that made football very unpopular for a time and coincided with a sharp decline in attendances.

You didn't have to be in the thick of it - the violence - to be uncomfortable at least, if not deterred. @77 punk wasn't, I know, deterred by the "action" at his bus stop after the game the night Tottenham were relegated here but if we'd been playing them in the cup the following Saturday I reckon he would not have waited for the 339 at 5pm at that stop, not if we'd beaten them again, just in case, and maybe gone and seen The Clash in town first or something or other. 

Alan Dicks was clear in his programme notes that the behaviour of some (young) supporters was making Ashton Gate unattractive to some potential supporters. 

If you went in the 1950s as a teenager then stopped, and thought about going again in your thirties maybe with a child in 76 or 77 you would not have found everything to your liking, I'm sure.

2 hours ago, ashton_fan said:

I can't agree that the support was luke-warm in the First Division era, there weren't so many season ticket holders so gates fluctuated more, yes there were some lower gates in midweek games against teams lower in the table but for example when we played Liverpool at home at the end of our first season we got 38,688. Me and my mates certainly didn't stop watching them when they went down either although we did lose a lot of fans who used to travel from around the south-west just to see a first division game as there was nothing else anywhere close. You wouldn't expect to get the same number of fans willing to watch Notts County rather than Arsenal, say.

Reading back through the matchday programmes from that era the club clearly considered the attendances to be disappointing. Alan Dicks also often grumbled about the crowd 1. Moaning and 2. Swearing, and other undesirable (and potential-family-supporter-keeping-away) behaviour. 

I think the club had thought: we get to the 1st division and the crowds will be huge, only by the time we did get there, crowds are declining across the whole game and around the country because of a number of reasons, not least the violence and the poor facilities and grounds (AG only had 7,500 seats, if we had had more seats then .... ) but also the football itself was in decline as a spectacle, culminating in changes in the early 80s such as 3 points for a win and the new pass back rule.

We just got there too late. We needed to get there in the 50s when we had Big John and crowds were huge after the war. The boom didn't last and we got there as the game was going bust.

The other thing to remember is that this fabled era in our history was in fact 3 seasons of either fighting off relegation or being relegated, in 4 years. No-one back then, other than Man Utd, pulled in bumper crowds for a team struggling at the foot of the table.

Truth is, we were a pretty poor and unattractive team to the uninitiated with only Norman Hunter as any sort of "star" scoring not enough goals playing in a ground in need of modernisation with regular fighting in the East End and Grev Smyth park, to attract these potential new supporters on a regular basis.

Getting to the 1st division was the only "success" in that time, where we needed to have more success whilst up there to pull in local people not already regulars, like other similar clubs such as Norwich and Southampton enjoyed.