Ian M

With the tennis balls?

Is our friend at the BBC on the Live Football desk today?

Is it?

Commentator on Saints TV just fell for announcement of Happy Birthday to Drew Peacock.

Also an argument that psychologically it could stunt their development if they think they are closer to the first team than they realistically are. Got to keep them hungry.

Every time I see someone say that sort of thing, I check against Wolves... and yes, they had had an identical penalty awarded against them this season by VAR.

I saw this thread title and thought for one horrific moment that the curse of the RHPC had struck again

To be honest, that's straying into "my truth" vs "the truth" territory brought to the fore by Gen Z. That said, the players may well respond well to his training methods and we may do excellent business in January and we achieve it anyway. Nothing is impossible in the Championship. Having decided to bring forward the transition from Nige to "a new guy", I agree it would be absurd not to also bring forward some of our Summer business too. If nothing else, to increase the bedding in period and give us the greatest chance of success next season.

My recollection is that he handed it over to "Group CEO" Gavin Marshall to explain better but when Gavin was not really answering the question asked, JL questioned "it's under Bristol City Holdings right?". I don't know whether he was being subservient to the group CEO in his tone or whether I am more sure of our corporate structure more than our chairman is. To be honest I'm not sure which I'd prefer it to be.

I agree. I’m just calling the situation for what it is (in my eyes).

The answer I liked the most from Liam all evening was his answer to a question about loans. He spoke of creating depth charts for each position (why don’t we have these already?) and if we see we have a good prospect in the Academy that might be ready in 2 years, that might be a prime opportunity for a loan so as not to block a pathway. When he says he’s obsessive, I believe him and despite having the lesser title of “Head Coach” I think he can still continue what Nige started and have an influence / improve our overall football operations.

Top 6 was never the expectation for this squad. Comfortable mid-table, pushing top half is. I think it’s clear the Lansdowns had a personality clash with Nigel. If you have a difficult employee and he isn’t exceeding expectations, why keep them? So, for Nige, the target was promotion. For Liam, it isn’t. (That’s not to say he won’t try or achieve it) It was only in the immediate aftermath of Nige being removed that they spoke of challenging “at the top end” of the table, every interview situation since, starting from the Friday after, they have talked about progression instead, no hard targets.

That was only the target for Nige to be allowed to continue in role. Every chance since then they have dialled back expectations.

Whether it was the more relaxed setting or the comparison with those alongside him on the top table, I thought he displayed a quality that hadn’t been at the forefront to this point, charisma. As good as someone can be from a technical aspect, personal skills are also key in a leader and I feel more confident in him than I did already before tonight.

I was wondering at the time if the players had worked out they could create a little space in that pocket that TGH received the ball as Knight had had similar time and space a couple of minutes earlier in near enough the same spot.

Not with my eye-sight.

Actually, only Cardiff and Millwall better our 7 goals from set pieces this season. Unfortunately, only Sheffield Wednesday have fewer open play goals than our 9.

Wasn't that more a case of Zak's touch being heavy when intercepting rather than overplaying?

Anis grew in confidence the longer he was on today. Hopefully Manning is the man to get him firing as he has the raw ingredients to be a superstar for us.

Price is agreed already.

Speaking as one of the "SL was wrong to sack NP" posters, can I just say that of all the candidates we could have thereafter appointed, Manning was my number 1 pick. No back-tracking for me, it will be here, quotable, probably by MRR, whenever anyone chooses to in the future The problem with pigeon-holing people is there are vastly different opinions within each group you (general you, not you you downendcity) create. It's why I pay no heed to people accusing us of being a fickle bunch, we often are not, it's just different people being vocal at different times depending on circumstances.

No idea. GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer though.

FA Cup: Barnsley expelled for fielding ineligible player in first-round replay - BBC Sport Easy for the FA to kick Barnsley out for breaking this rule. I note they weren't so keen to act vs West Ham.

I made the same observation, finishing ahead of Iceland and Bosnia. Seems they are no longer the automatic whipping boys they once were.

.....and whoever thought winning "matches" was too ambiguous and decided to introduce "games of football" to the football manager's lexicon.