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Yes, that, and: he throttles opposition players on the touchline and fights wild dogs with bare hands on solo hikes across East European mountain ranges (hope he doesn't book the latter for this summer)

Yes, defend a bit better (5/10%)/cut number of late goals conceded/"manage" slender leads after 85 minutes/sign quality CB in summer and we can have a very different season indeed.

Strange, but interesting.

Was that road that AD and the Pearces lived on Ormerod Road (BS9), would any one on here know or be able to confirm?

I did mean Nick Lowe, thanks.

Roxy Music's "Angel Eyes" always transports me back to that time, the early autumn of 1979, when we were a top class club, before we began to fall apart, to a season I started going fairly regularly. Buggles "Video Killed The Radio Star" does the same. And Dave Edmunds "Cruel To Be Kind," and, er, Cliff's "We Don't Talk Anymore." Amongst a few others. Good football, great pop music: 1979.

Some people used to reckon on here that Lee was treated with uncommon support and patience by Steve Lansdown and would have received less understanding any where else in football. Don't know where they get these fanciful ideas from, some times ....

Diego Maradona had to get a bit closer to Shilton before he was confident of beating him ....

Square, upright top holding lights (above) whereas AG lights (from 60s, 70s, 80s) had rectangular top angled toward the pitch. Top class our lights were, elegant; these above are a bit scruffy, a bit tin pot

The floodlight pictured above is not one of the AG floodlights from back in the days before everyone sitting down and not getting wet.

They haven’t got away with it, not yet; if they don't get away with it, Derby'll get away with a 21 point penalty.

Biscuit case of a club

"Beautiful plumage"

Let's try and remember we are all naive about the essential goings on inside professional football - you yourself have disagreed with Nige - not without experience and success in the game - saying that he can put desire into players by motivating them while elsewhere on this thread suggesting we "listen" to "ex pros" when they wax lyrical about great motivational managers. Why aren't you listening to Nige when he says this? We're all guessing about this. Motivation is a slippery thing from what I can see, hard to pin down. Did Nige sign Vardy then set about "motivating" him, or identify a highly motivated individual and pay a record fee for a non-league player to make sure he got him? It may, or may not be, that Nige cannot motivate any more, or never could; I just don’t know how we could be sure.

Shakespeare and his "once more unto the breach, lads" has a lot to answer for. The idea of the big, strong man inspiring exceptional performance merely through a few brilliant "get stuck into 'em, Nakhi/Kasey" sentences is embedded in our football culture and psyche. We all know Shakespeare wasn't there on the day with a dicta phone taking actual quotes, right?

What do you mean by "motivation," exactly? Henry V style oratory? Mike Bassett type effin and blinding? Shouting from the touchline and waving his fist? Or something more sophisticated than that? And how would a player or manager know, rather than guess, that his magical motivational qualities made a difference (as opposed to, say, how preparation had gone the week leading up to the game, the opposition missing a key player, a lucky bounce or deflection or a penalty decision going your way or not early in a game, the physio having a great week, the nutrition being spot on, a player not sleeping well, a dispute between players unresolved, all manner of things) How could a manager's motivation be measured to demonstrate beyond doubt it's impact and value?

I'd argue managers can draw out or coax what is in a player but cannot implant characteristics such as desire into adults. You go out and find desire, courage, in players and bring them here, then when those players play with said characteristics punters marvel at the managers "motivation."

Ok, here's one:

It's not worth arguing over. Let's hope we win this afternoon.

Ipswich are 9th in L1 and had a crowd of 29,000 the other week, and took 6,800 away yesterday. That's not happening here any time soon (not even a division higher) and there's a distinct and quantative difference between the "tradition" here and the "tradition" there. For good reasons, one of which I have outlined already.

I was mocking the Sheffield Wednesday "it's too much!" thing from 2015, to be fair. Because that one game highlights the difference, in my opinion, between us and the clubs with the serious away followings that we know we don’t have but secretly wish we did. It was amusing following that thread on here, as people found what they really wanted - a valid reason not to be bothered to go through the ball ache of going all that bloody way, just to watch Bristol City. There was another thread about an away game a few years ago, Reading or somewhere, with people moaning about the difficulty of parking. The inconvenience of going away. Made me chuckle. To me, going away is about devotion, it's about what you are prepared to endure and suffer in order to follow and back your team in often unwelcoming circumstances. It has connotations of religious devotion about it. As I see it. This is why yer rotund northerner from Newcastle, Sheffield or Leeds will travel here, midweek, taking "two days off work" if necessary, in the depths of winter, and stand, not sit, in the freezing cold not wearing a shirt. What he is saying is: "look at me you soft southern shite! Look how far I've come! Look how much I love my club! Look how much passion I've got! Look how much passion we've got! Look at us! You're not as loyal/tough/great/passionate as we are!" Following a football club involves a lot of suffering, going away even more so - suffering boredom, inconvenience, great expense, time, hostility, frustration, crushing disappointment and so on - and some clubs' fans are willing to go to greater lengths and endure greater suffering, to back their team, than other clubs' fans. We have a couple of hundred heroic sufferers that do 40 plus games a season, but other clubs have more, in large part due to their historic record of much greater success than we have managed. We all know this. It's not "bad" or anything other than what we decide to say it is. It just is!

I don't, no. It's not bad. For a club like ours. We do, "travel well," around much of the south of this country. My point is just that some other clubs "travel" in greater numbers and further than we tend to for, amongst other things, the tradition of many years making originating in years when they were gloriously successful in a way we never have been.

Two days off work? For an away game, in England?

My point isn't only about Ipswich, it's wider than that. Please put the numbers up on here though. The "last time" they were in the Championship they were relegated. Let's put our away numbers up from 2012/13 if we're doing that.

Yes, perhaps. But I maintain that the "tradition" in Ipswich of going to support the club (especially away) is stronger there than it is in Bristol. Even after all this time. And my theory for why this is so is that Ipswich won shiny silver cups in the 60s, 70s and 80s, cups that every club in the country - Liverpool, Manchester United, every club - wanted to win (ie not the Sherpa Van or L1 title), and they were regularly on Match of the Day playing attractive, winning football. Meanwhile, we were mostly bobbing between Div 3 and Div 2 (not scoring many goals in the latter). That tradition, of "going to the match," of going away "with the boys," is more ingrained, even now, in Ipswich, than it is here. Our equivalent of Ipswich to MK, a trip of about 100 miles I think, and a huge away end, could be Coventry. We take a good following there, certainly, but not 6000. I'm not mocking anyone for that, merely trying to point out the difference between a club like ours, and clubs with greater success in their past.