The Masked Man

3 minutes ago, willem ii said:

Safari on 3 square kilometers….  nice reason to make it a family trip on which daddy/mommy has a day/night for a trip for him/herself! And do not forget to go to the Efteling, the best amusement park of the Netherlands and situated 15 minutes by car from Tilburg!

Would love to go back to Efteling. Not as big but on a par with Disney Paris in my opinion. Talking myself into Willem II away next year! 

20 minutes ago, cidercity1987 said:

Is it just me that wishes this match was in Tilburg? We never get a European trip but it would be quality 

I'd love an excuse to go back to Beekse Bergen too.

6 hours ago, Wanderingred said:

When Mark Ashton was running riot, and we were signing Monaco wonder kids and the like.

I'd forgotten about HNM. We might get to see him again at AG next season. 

I'm worried. Three of the next four are Ipswich, Leicester and West Brom. We can't create chances and there are increased instances of the players getting frustrated with each other on the pitch. We were really lucky to beat Boro. If we're not careful the next time we're challenging for the top six will be in League One. Really need Scott Twine back and hope he can be the creative spark we need. 

Some posts on this thread are baffling. Bell and Conway have both been playing roles for the team and I've never seen them give less than 100%. They should also both have further progress in them.  In Bells case he probably hasn't been playing in his favoured position and that has an impact on performance. Derby fans weren't overwhelmingly impressed by Jason Knight and look at the transformation he's had playing in his natural position this season. 

Thanks @BCFC Rich good to get some perspective from the other side.

I'd much rather Ipswich got promoted than Leicester, Leeds or Southampton... The parachute payments make for a distorted league.

Also glad to see Luton making a fight of it in the PL. I thought Burnley would have been the ones to have done okay. 

It was a strange game. Both teams seemed to switch off when they went ahead. I think Manning is still getting his ideas across. You can see that City are developing a possession based game and then moving the ball quickly when the space opens up. At times we do give the ball away cheaply though. Credit to the players for turning it around. Anyone who takes points of us will have earned them. 

I think the frustrating thing is the race for the last play off spots is wide open and the trend at the moment is that Manning's appointment is going to set us back at least a season. Longer term I think it might be the way to go but we shouldn't have made the change mid season.

Birmingham fans must feel the same.

Like many games in the championship today's could have gone either way. Luckily for City it went ours. I often wonder whether it's best to have a good manager or a lucky manager or whether they're the same side of the coin.

I share some others thoughts on whether we have the best players for a possession based game but the squad we have is better than anything Manning has worked with before so given time he should be able to get them playing how he wants too. 

Two tough games coming up but Southampton and Norwich will know they're going to have to work hard to get a result and City will know they have what it takes to get one too. 

Football is increasingly data driven so one assumes that somewhere there is some analysis that backs up the view that the squad should be challenging for the top six..... Without data all we're left with are thoughts and opinions. 

The problem is that most of us think that the club moved Pearson on because his face didn't fit rather than for footballing reasons.

We can't change where we are so we need to give Manning a fair chance. But it's difficult to know what that is without knowing the data on what he's got at his disposal.

Don't get me wrong I think City should back Pearson as with the right support I think he'll get us to the playoffs but some of the criticism of Steve Lansdown is overdone. I get that people want success but you also need to remember where we came from. This is where we started when SL became chairman. http://stats.football.co.uk/league_tables/2002_2003/league_division_two/index.shtml I think it's only Brentford who have shone from that league. 

I have a couple of hundred old When Saturday Comes magazines from 1999 - 2012. Most in good condition. You can access them all with a digital subscription but on the off chance anyone wants them I thought I'd post. Depending on location happy to try and drop off. Unfortunately City spent most of that period in League One so not a lot of City content. 

If we hadn't dropped points to Stoke and Preston when winning we'd be in third place. We weren't one of the big spenders in the Summer so I think overall the team has been doing well. 

The players will go to Leicester believing that they can get the win and if we can sustain that attitude through the season who knows what we can achieve. 

3 hours ago, Loosey Boy said:

Currently, the only team to have taken points off of them…..

Preston had an awful pre-season and I don't think any of their fans would have predicted the start they've had. Some would have been glad to see Lowe gone.

I thought that we lost some momentum after the equaliser due to the substitutions and that allowed Hull to have a ten minute spell where they were on top. Once we got to injury time we looked more likely to get the winner. 

We're operating with a small squad and not having Conway, Weimann and McCrorie are all big losses. We also haven't replaced Scott and we know how Pearson feels about that. I don't see how anyone else would get much more out of the resources, besides which ten games in is normally the minimum time on which to judge how teams are going to shape up. I think we're all disappointed but it's too early to call for change now. 

This is a tough one. I think we're missing a creative midfielder and another striker. In another universe where we had Scott, Conway and McCrorie (assuming he's an upgrade on Tanner) we would have had three points today. 

What I really liked about him was that he kept it simple a lot of the time. Didn't try to to do anything too flash. A great experience for him and hope he kicks on in the U-23's this season.

The positives are that you potentially have a team that is greater than the sum of its parts. The club has a clear identity, players are fit and the dressing room is happy. There are also a lot of options if the squad stays fit. The problem would be if we had a run of injuries in critical areas. City have a relatively good run of fixtures to start so if we get points on the board and keep a consistent first xi I don't see why the play offs aren't a possibility. Conversely if we were to wobble and pick up injuries mid table potentially more likely.