Supersonic Robin

Think that's a bit harsh on our supporters. There's making someone a scapegoat, and there's criticising a player for clearly making a massive error. This is the latter.

F****** hell, Max

Hell of a jump up from that level, especially for a player like Langstaff who is already in his mid twenties and might not have much development left in him. I'd rather focus on bringing in wingers than strikers.

He has been showing it more in recent weeks, in fairness. Some very good performances over the last handful of games

Agreed, Preston are surely one of the smaller teams in the league. Almost every measure suggests that's the case. Appreciate some won't agree, but I think trophies/historical success is slightly overplayed in these evaluations. No offence PNE, but winning ye-olde trophy in 1890 isn't really relevant anymore.

In which case you have to pay a notable fee (be that a loan fee or a transfer fee) in order to simply retain the same squad as you had last season. Take us with Kalas, Dasilva, and Palmer as an example. We spent around £14m just to keep the same players that we'd had on loan (and had to sell our best player, Webster, to fund it). As we found out, going heavy on loans can be extremely expensive and make it very difficult to make sustainable progress (assuming you don't get over the line first time)

Exactly this. I always feel that going loan-heavy is a pretty high risk strategy. We complain about losing our best few players at the end of the season for tens of millions of pounds. Hull will be losing their best few players at the end of the season for a grand total of £0.

Fair points, but you can also make a decent argument against him if it makes you feel any better? His only management experience in the Football League consists of half a season (this season) in L2, and a full season at Swindon in L1 in which they were relegated. Can you imagine the uproar if we appointed a manager essentially on the basis that they had 1 good season managing in the National League? (not saying this would necessarily be my take on him)

So in other words, you'd be fine with it as long as the results were okay......

Appreciate what you're saying, but if it actually came to fruition and we were in the bottom 6 because we were losing 4-3 every week, do you really think you'd still feel that way?

People make claims like this quite often, but I really don't believe anyone who says this at all. I've never seen a fanbase of any club who are frequently losing games express that they're happy that their team are "at least going for it", nor have I seen them suggest it's preferable to being higher up the table through drawing more games. Under Pearson in 2021/22 we were a team who were frequently involved in attacking high-scoring games. The sentiment on here at the time certainly wasn't "I don't mind conceding so many goals because the games are exciting!". Let's not be naive, in reality results are what matter most to people.

I agree that there are tactical reasons as to why breaking down the teams at the bottom of the table can pose a slightly different challenge for us, but I still don't see that as a sufficient excuse for the poor results against said teams. We can throw around cliches about "fine margins", "anybody can beat anybody", "there are no easy games" etc etc, but relatively speaking there ARE easy games. The teams in the bottom 6 are there for a reason - they give away more points than anyone else. Put simply, lots of other teams manage to beat them! Since Manning has come in, our record against bottom 6 sides is P3: W0 D3 L0. We've also played 3 other teams in the bottom half (Norwich, Blackburn, Millwall) with a record of P3: W0 D0 L3. Not great. This isn't about bashing Manning. It's just about explaining my original point: The "great results" against teams in the top half cease to be "great results" when they're just used to make up for the points you've dropped against bottom half (or even bottom 6) sides, rather than to push you towards a higher points total than you'd otherwise expect.

Good results against teams like Sunderland, Hull, and Watford become slightly meaningless when you keep dropping points to teams like QPR, Huddersfield, B'ham, and Millwall. Classic City!

The same applies even more so to games like QPR, Huddersfield, and B'ham, in which we also dropped points.

I don't think Yeboah has ever really been a genuine first team option. He had a few appearances when we were low on numbers, but it was very clear that he wasn't ready yet. No shame in that for Yeboah, most 17 year olds aren't ready. Hopefully he develops and becomes more of an option in future.

I'll ignore the Pearson stuff as it's been done to death on here. I agree that we're slightly guilty of "celebrating" a failed past though. I cringe every time I see that poster under the South Stand detailing our victory over Liverpool in 1994. "We beat Liverpool 1-0 in a cup game 30 years ago" really is the type of boast you'd expect from a League 2 side. Unfortunately, it's an illustration of the extent to which we've underperformed historically. Compared to the vast majority of Championship clubs, we simply don't have anything to boast about. Even the Man United game, as good as it was, feels bittersweet when you reflect on how we've fallen away since, and how others have cruised past us into the Premier League in that time. I do think there's an argument to say that the club (& fanbase) would benefit from a bit of a shift in mindset - we should be conscious of the fact that our history is disappointing and we should expect more. Perhaps a good illustration of what I mean. How many fans of other Championship clubs based in big cities with 20k+ attendances would happily refer to their team as a "small club" or their city as a "provincial backwater"? Compared to fans of other clubs, we often seem strangely self-deprecating about our club's size and potential. (Sorry to pick on your post for this one, ooRya!)

Hate to say it, but if you're "anti-data" in football, then you're a bit of an old fart who has been left behind. I don't mean to be harsh, but it's true. This is the direction that the world, including football, is heading in. Clubs like Brentford are a good example of how effective good use of data can be in outperforming your opponents. Every club uses a huge array of data. That includes Bristol City under Nigel Pearson, by the way. If Pearson didn't use data to inform his decision making (which almost certainly isn't the case), then it would be a weakness of his, not a strength. Is performance data the only thing that matters? No. But I'd be very concerned if it wasn't something we looked at. Nothing alarming about this quote IMO.

I don't agree personally - a point against a team in the bottom 3 isn't a good result for a club with ambitions of being in and around the top third. QPR hadn't won in 10 games. They were, and still are, in the relegation zone. In their last game prior to us they drew with Rotherham. Appreciate they appear to have improved under Cifuentes, but if we want to progress up the table then IMHO we have to look at games like this and say "No excuses, we ought to be winning this really".

P6: W1, D2, L3. 5 points from 6. The draws are pretty damning too - IMHO draws against QPR and Huddersfield have to be seen as bad results given that both sides are in the bottom 4. The 1-0 loss away at Southampton? Fair enough, I can accept that. So essentially it's: 1 good result (Boro) 1 reasonable result (Southampton) 4 disappointing results (QPR, Huddersfield, Norwich, Blackburn) I'm not worried about relegation at all, but it's a very poor start results-wise. Especially when you remember that Manning was brought in to improve our league position THIS season.

For that to be true you'd have to have missed a hell of a lot of football over the last 10 years!

We got rid of that nasty manager, and we're playing with his nice little drawing on the front of the kit instead of the club badge. I'd imagine tonight is a success as far as Jon is concerned!

People often forget how bad we were under Holden. We ended that season with the worst xG for in the league, the worst xG against in the league, and a new Championship record for least shots in a season. For much of the campaign we genuinely weren't competitive. We struggled to generate a shot on target or win a corner in many matches. I even recall a game vs Barnsley where we generated about 0.02 xG in the game (yes, that's zero point zero!). We were comfortably one of the worst teams in the league, and I even think there's an argument to say that Bristol City side was one of the poorer teams in Championship history. To top it off, we ended the season with opposition players publicly stating that "Bristol City's players didn't even seem to be trying". It really was the individual excellence of Kalas and Bentley that saved us that season, as well as a decent amount of luck. IMHO, it was so important to remember all this when evaluating the job Pearson did. It's also why I found it utterly comical whenever people suggested that Pearson hadn't improved us at all.

Every time we have a poor run of form someone says "I can't see us winning another match for *insert big number here* gameweeks", and every time we do.

We are the biggest club in approximately the 7th biggest city in England. Despite that, we have never won a major trophy, never played in the Premier League, and have spent less than 10 years in the top flight of English football since our inception (and most of those years were pre-WW1). There are very few (if any) clubs with our size and potential who have achieved so little. Unfortunately, the last 25 years is an extension of that failure to achieve. Yes, we've improved our facilities and become slightly more established in the Championship during that time. However, we're deliberating whether taking 25 years to go from "Bottom third Championship Club" to "Midtable Championship Club" constitutes achievement - the fact we even have to think about it shows that something isn't right. Other clubs of a similar size/potential to us would (and do) laugh at some of the things we propose as successes.

Bell has suffered from being caught up in the hype surrounding other young players. Fans were too generous to him before, and are being too harsh on him now. Bell came into the team at a time when we were amazed by the talent of Scott, Semenyo, and Conway (to a lesser extent). He was swept up in the hype surrounding this trio, and often tacked on to the end of the list as our 4th talented youngster. However, Bell has never quite looked to be at the same level as the other 3 (that's more of a compliment to them than a criticism of Bell). Over the last 12 months or so, I've often tried to calm our fans when they've become excited around Bell - especially with regard to his ability to produce for us this season. A few goals at the start of the season and expectations rose. Unfortunately, Bell's now failing to meet those increased expectations. I don't think there's been any major decline in his performances. I just don't think he's ever looked quite as good as some fans have claimed he is. The honeymoon period of having "one of our own" in the team is wearing off, the rose tinted glasses are being taken off, and it leaves Bell looking a bit underwhelming. Maybe he'll improve and go on to bigger things, maybe his future lies in a lower division - who knows. For the time being, we just have to accept that not every young player will be the next Scott or Semenyo, and that currently Bell isn't quite good enough to be in the starting XI of a team with top third aspirations.