Ian M

Not just that but we are conceding in the first 5 games this season as we did the last 10 last season; 1.2 per game - a rate of 55 per season Zak has played a lot better this season, he’s massively reduced the individual errors. He gave our “shout” a lot more thought than it deserved ? Again, the way Pearson has us playing reminds me of the way SC had us playing in L1, attacking Wing Backs with the CBs having license to roam.

If Antoine totally backs himself, he stays here, bangs in 8 goals before the WC, is a standout performer in the Ghana side at the WC and has his pick of PL clubs in January ?

Snipped a lot sorry…. Do I think there’s a huge conspiracy to punish Bristol City? Of course not. But there seems to be some kind of factor. If we could learn what it is, we could actually take steps as a club to overcome that obstacle so that our future is rosy and full of penalty awards. One explanation could be that amongst referees, when they network, we may have gained a reputation as a team of divers and that on a subconscious level they aren’t saying “Bristol City must not get a penalty” but if they held that view from personal experience in their previous matches or anecdotal, they may take more convincing to award us one. Casting a spotlight on our lack of awards would help if this were the case as the narrative changes to “Bristol City are hard done by”

But to their advantage they were playing Bristol 'Fragile' City at our finest, the winner of course coming in stoppage time.

How long since we got 4 @Mr Popodopolous Should make it fair and say the same minute too.

Last season our feeling mistreated by refs was compounded by not only being awarded the least but conceding the most as well ?

We'll probably merge the threads in a bit anyway, you know us ??

Like the Monopoly get out of jail free card, I like it! Can we get some cards for "opponent should have been sent off" and at any moment play that card against our opponents?

It's still on the front page, you could have posted this in there! But I agree with you .... although I sometimes almost join in with the hyperbole, adjusting it to "3 games in just over a week"

Yeah I figured that when I worked out we need just 3 penalties to put us level with 2nd bottom on the list minutes wise. I imagine it would be similar chances wise. But I am looking forward to things evening themselves out over the next 4 seasons

We need 33 more big chances than 591st place Birmingham to get a penalty. The same 33 big chance margin covers the top 572 teams in that list of 600 ?

If you check out the link from higher up the page of 31 European leagues from 17/18 season until 10/01/2022 (the point the list was published) you can sort by minutes per penalty or "big chances" per penalty which I guess would satisfy the question of attacking intent? We are bottom of both. From 600 teams. And by a considerable margin at that. We have played a further 25 Championship matches without a penalty since that data was published. This is the bottom 10 sorted by big chances per penalty.

The average Championship side in the last 4 seasons, receives 5.27 penalties per 46 games. In 87 games that is 9.97 penalties.

That table is outdated. We have played 25 Championship fixtures since then without a penalty. We have moved from one penalty ever 1834 minutes to one every 2115 minutes as a result. Our last penalty was 33.5 matches ago (3015 minutes) when Chris Martin scored on the stroke of half time in our 3-2 defeat at Coventry.

Too often we sign players with a half decent reputation and see them go backwards at City. With Andi, I believe we are getting the best Andi Weimann the world has ever seen.

Dare I say it, last night reminded me of the way SC had us play in L1

No-one can know what the same or different changes would impact the same scenario against a Watford or Norwich and it's all conjecture. But for your "if we had conceded two" scenario we have the benefit of seeing how those changes did affect a game we were leading 2-0 against Luton and they worked. That's a fact. A bonus for me is that I feel a lot of us losing leads late on and not being able to see games out is mental. This has been happening now for years under a vareity of Head Coaches and Managers and I can only think the playing squads transfer that mental fragility to new players when they are brought in. Don't underestimate the benefit of seeing out half an hour with 10 men against last season's play-off semi-finalists may have on breaking this cycle. Do it 2 or 3 more times in the coming weeks and we may just form a new habit of not throwing away leads

To all those concerned about the plight of Hapoel Hadera, since that table was published they received 3 penalties in the remaining 16 games of their season, one every 480 minutes ?

I don't normally subscribe to the theory that the top teams get favourable treatment from refs in regards to penalties, instead taking the view that they generally get more pens because they are up attacking round the box more often, giving the refs more opportunities to award them. That's fine for explaining our low return of 2 penalties 2 seasons ago when we were seriously poor and had the lowest number of shots in the Championship by some margin. However, it doesn't explain why last season we were awarded just 1 all season when we were actually one of the top scorers in the league! Consistently for several seasons now, it has been getting worse, here are the numbers (and our ranking within the Championship) for penalties awarded. 15/16 - 5 - 13th 16/17 - 8 - 9th 17/18 - 4 - 16th 18/19 - 2 - 23rd 19/20 - 3 - 22nd 20/21 - 2 - 24th 21/22 - 1 - 24th For the last four seasons, we average a penalty every 23 games! Incidentally, as well as receiving the (joint) least amount of penalties last season, we also conceded the (joint) most. InStat provided an analysis of 31 European Domestic leagues since the start of the 2018/19 season until 10/01/2022 (https://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2021/wp364/en/). You'll likely be unsurprised to learn that of the 600 teams included in this table, we are bottom of the lot. So what you may say? Someone has to be bottom right? Ok, but the gap between us (a penalty every 1834 minutes) and the team in second from bottom (Hapoel Hadera who get a penalty every 1517 minutes) is 317 minutes. That spread at the other end of the table covers the top 207 clubs! Since then I believe we have played a further 25 Championship matches without a penalty taking us up to an average of 2115 minutes between penalties ? No wonder Nige is a bit peeved.

No question Sykes was a red in my opinion, I also called it straight away like others but.... wasn't the penalty shout on Atkinson in the previous phase of play? If we could actually get that, Sykes doesn't even make that challenge!

Hopefully as confidence grows from performances like this, the passing we saw tonight becomes the norm, leading to more good wins and more confidence

Why the need for comparisons? A senior English team has just been crowned champions of Europe for the first time in my lifetime, I'll celebrate that. When a woman wins gold in the 100m Olympic Sprint final, you don't hear people say "but she isn't as quick as the men". I celebrate all sporting success this nation achieves, it's far too often fleeting!

I didn't mean to suggest he was the sole reason for that spell but he wasn't integral to our recovery.

Aka our worst spell

Over a season I agree that 17th was where we deserved to finish but I feel our team wasn't the same team over that season. For me the season falls into 3 periods of varying lengths. We started off reasonably well in terms of points return but I'd say performances weren't up there and we were struggling a little for goals, although our defence was quite tight. We then had a pretty unsettled period that lasted the majority of the season where the coaching team struggled with players "not being on the bus" and our manager caught covid a second time and we looked pretty terrible. Finally, they found a team and system and players who would play to that system (some of which had come around from being rumoured to have not previously been on that bus) and spent the final 2 months of the season playing the best we had all year. It's that final two months that inspires me to believe we have a puncher's chance of getting involved in the play-off mix. During those final 2 months this was our record: Those 10 games were broadly representative of a season as 3 were against teams in the top 6 of that table, half were against teams in the top half and the remaining 5 against teams in the bottom half. During those games we conceded goals at a rate of 55 a season. The majority of the players featuring in the team then are still here and appear to have belief in how Pearson wants to play. If the new arrivals simply allow us to continue conceding at around 55 goals per season with no improvement, and our goalscoring doesn't go into decline, I believe that allows us to finish in a window of 5th to 12th. If they do help us improve on that rate of conceding then we can look towards the higher end of that window. I am always minded of the saying "goals win matches, defences win titles". Whilst I don't think we are gonna be crowned Champions at the end of the season, I am encouraged by the progress we made on the defensive side at the end of last season and that our signings may help on that aspect too.