Supersonic Robin

Also: Charlton Athletic (as in Charlotte) Charlton Athletic (as in Nathan)

Liverpool

2 in 1..... Milton Keynes Dons

Appreciate that the win percentage isn't great, but we're no longer the worst side in the league (in terms of underlying stats). That alone shows improvement on last season. This season has been far from good, but it's been a little bit less bad. That's the only point I'm trying to make here.

I see where you're coming from, and it's something I've wondered about quite a bit. I think it comes down to the difference between a "squad on paper" and a starting 11 in practice. Were you to simply look at a squad list, you'd see we have quite a few good individual players, perhaps more so than some other clubs higher in the table. (Bentley, Kalas, Baker, Klose, Atkinson, Weimann, Semenyo, Wells etc - lots of "high value names" in there). The problem is that it's incredibly difficult to actually make a strong, balanced starting 11 out of our squad. How many games this season have we had to start without an actual RB/RWB playing at RB/RWB? Do we have any real wingers in the squad at all? O'Dowda is the only one really - our best attacking players are all most effective through the centre. That's a real issue in selecting a starting 11. Conversely, other clubs may have fewer "star players", but they have a collection of players that compliment one another and that fit into a clear set-up/system.

Do you really think we're worse than last season? This season hasn't been great, but it's easy to forget just how bad last season was. Across the season we were the worst side in the league in terms of underlying numbers. We frequently failed to even perform competitively and respectably (bar the first 5 games).

Perhaps I'm being harsh, but I've always felt that it's a bit generous to use "he was our top scorer for a few years" as a point in favour of Fam. Across those years he was often playing as a lone striker, in front of a low scoring midfield, and he was being given penalty duty. He was also playing almost all of every game. It would have been a pretty severe failure were he not to have been top goalscorer in those circumstances.

Out of interest, what makes you so confident of that?

Respectfully, I think your expectations for this season were a little high. You say you're disappointed with us languishing in the lower half, but realistically I think the chances of using finishing in the top half this season were very slim. However, like you, I did expect that we'd be more defensively competent and more mentally resilient. I'm quite disappointed that we don't seem to haven't made more progress in that regard. In terms of Pearson struggling, I think you identify some of the main issues here - "despite the financial constraints, injuries and rumours of total mismanagement behind the scenes". Pearson is not free from blame, but it's worth recognising that he's inherited a team/club in a dreadful position. It often seems to be the case that on-pitch performance follows off-pitch performance at a club. Very few clubs who are a mess behind the scenes end up performing well on the pitch - look at us, Derby, Reading, and Birmingham for example. For half a decade we had Mark Ashton steering the ship with his dubiously appointed mates in important roles. We didn't (and still don't) have a DOF or HOR at the club. Our lack of footballing expertise was/is amateurish compared to some clubs. For all the positive soundbites that come out the top of the club, you can't really say we've been especially well run in a footballing sense. It's tough for any manager to succeed (fans' choice or otherwise) with that being the case.

It's not even our worst team in the last 2 years......

How can you say this with any certainty? Perhaps we would be in League 2, or perhaps we'd have had a decent run in the Prem, as many clubs our size (and smaller) have done. The idea that we're just not big enough / rich enough to do well at this level is ludicrous IMHO. Many clubs have done far better than us with far less resource.

In fairness, I don't think Williams had any major issues with injury before we bought him

A couple of general thoughts loosely related to your post: 1. Do we think that having so many applauses/silences perhaps dampens their impact? As you say, it was 3 on Saturday. It feels like it's at least 2 most weeks now. That's not to say that they're not for good causes, but IMO their value has been lost through overuse. 2. Does anyone else feel that there's been an increase in the number of opposition players goading the home crowd at AG? Seems to be happening far more than it used to. I'm not justifying the throwing of projectiles at all, though surely there's a correlation between the two things

Out of interest, what more were you expecting?

Good that we're looking for a head of recruitment. Personally, it's an area in which I'd be happy for us to spare no expense in order to get the very best we can. I have no idea if Ian Pearce is any good or not.

If anything, I think the opposite of this may be true, at least for Pearson - I imagine he's far more likely to be praying that we're able to keep Scott, Semenyo, and Massengo through summer. These are players that we should really be trying to hold on to if we have ambitions of progressing over the next few years. Our aim in Summer should be (and almost certainly is) to offload most of the higher earners at the club (Wells, Palmer etc), such that we're under no financial pressure to sell the young talented trio.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that this is a "6 pointer" or a "must win game" from a relegation perspective (at least not for us - we should be safe). However, it is a game that we should be winning IMO. Reading are in catastrophic form and have been accused by some of lacking commitment to the cause - quite reminiscent of us this time last season. After a disappointing points return from Blackpool, PNE, and Luton, this is a good opportunity to put down a marker and show that we're a midtable side, rather than a bottom third side.

I was listening to the NTT20 pod yesterday and they spoke very positively about Forest. They mentioned that it goes beyond Cooper though - the club is going in right direction and being directed well from the top by good "footballing people". Last summer Forest appointed George Syrianos as Head of Recruitment. He was very highly rated for his analytics work at Stuttgart. They also brought in Dane Murphy as CEO - the guy that did well at Barnsley (and had a background as a head scout and technical director)

The first goal is quite a collectors item! Not very often you get every member of a back 6 making an error (or semi-error) in conceding a goal!

Yepp, Hull lost both Bowen and Grosicki in January 2020, who collectively had 34 (!) goal involvements up to that point (23 of them Bowen's). For context, Hull had scored 42 goals as of Jan 31st 2020, so Bowen/Grosicki had been involved in over 80%. An extreme case of losing your best players. They then went on a ridiculously bad run: At the end of Jan 2020 (gameweek 30) - Hull had 39 points (14th Place) At the end of the season - Hull had 45 points (24th Place) 6 points from 16 games: 1W 3D 12L That run also included a game in which they found themselves 7-0 down to Wigan* at half time (*who were 24th at the time). Though Hull did get relegated having been midtable half way through the season, their example is incredibly extreme and a dramatic exception from the norm. It's not really a valid model for comparison.

I'm a big fan of Kalas, I think he's a very good player at this level. In terms of his athleticism and his natural instinct and will to defend, I don't think you'd find many better Centre Backs in the Championship (that's not to say he's one of the best CB's in the championship overall). He's also decent with the ball at his feet, probably slightly more so than he gets credit for. Can't question his effort and commitment over the last few of seasons either - although he's not a leader, I do think he leads by example. Of course he has weaknesses too, but he's more than good enough for where we are. Kalas did have a bad day against Blackpool, but I'd say he's been one of our more consistent players this season and has saved us many times in his Bristol City career. He's built up enough credit to be able to "get away with one" IMO. As others have pointed out, the big question mark is around value for money. The £8m fee seems huge in retrospect, though in fairness transfer fees were ridiculously high at that time (e.g. that summer, Bielik went to Derby for £9m, Webster to Brighton and Mings to Villa both for £20m+). Having said that, I do think we overpaid slightly for Kalas. Is Kalas worth £25k pw to us? Perhaps not. And even if he is, can we afford that at the moment anyway? I think the finances dictate this one for us; In summer we'll either need to give him a new contract (on a lower wage), or sell (and probably spend a portion of the fee on a replacement).

As someone stated on another thread, I'm surprised by how much patience Pearson has shown him. O'Dowda's lack of aggression and commitment seems like exactly the kind of thing that would frustrate Pearson. FWIW I thought O'Dowda was looking improved earlier in the season, but he seems to have reverted to type a bit. If we let him go in summer, I could see him joining another Championship team - he has a strong enough "Championship CV" for it.

I presume he thinks we need a taller manager? and perhaps some taller coaching staff??

Really disappointing today - much poorer performance than the last couple of games. We've all said it so many times, but we've got to stop conceding so many soft goals. Frustratingly, you don't need to play especially well to score 2 or 3 against us at the moment. I felt that was the case today - Blackpool didn't really impress me, but found themselves 2-0 up at HT. It would be such an improvement just to make the opposition actually earn the goals they score against us!

I'm interested to hear the thinking behind some of these views? Some pretty bold criticism in there - what makes you think he was THAT bad/incompetent? (I'm not contesting you, just interested to hear the explanation)