mozo

5 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

I’ll have no issue fronting up Jimbo if he proves to be a good appointment for City.

I would’ve sacked him after Cardiff.  I made a big call.  Not like me to do so. no fun in doing so either.

But we have played differently in this weekend’s games, I feel it’s right to try to understand why.  Have you seen differences?  

I’ll still review each game objectively.

 

Great post Fevs. I was, and still am, surprised that you jumped to that conclusion when you did, but it may still be the correct one, we shall see.

There's no doubting that you're passionately wanting City to win. There are a few on OTIB clearly with more of an agenda but hey, it's OTIB!

15 minutes ago, Rudolf Hucker said:

Definitely Wells’ goal. On RTV they showed a super slo-mo of the goal. The ball hit the defender’s head, onto Wells’ head and into the net. 

Cheers mate, I didn't see that.

57 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

100th League game for us today (in all competitions he’s played our last 83), second consecutive clean sheet.

Lovely to see a son of Somerset doing well.

The Leicester game was the 100th in the league for us for both Matty James & Cam Pring, by the way.

Thanks for flagging that. He's a proper City boy and doing well. I said on another thread, he's still young for a goalie so the best is yet to come.

55 minutes ago, Crackers Corner said:

He has improved massively over last few months. Kicking is better and has kept us in several games 

I still don't like his kicking, a mixed bag today.

31 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

His sweeping is allowing us to defend higher

Yeah a few good examples of that today.

Just now, And Its Smith said:

Mehmeti won’t get an assist for today which is why assist stats are flawed.  Someone will use his lack of assists to beat him with at some point I’m sure but for me today is an assist. 

Was it a Wells goal or OG btw?

We could be sitting on two 3-0 wins if the penalty shouts had all gone our way.

I'd say at least 3 of them were pens.

24 minutes ago, eardun said:

This is why I’m happy to give Manning time. He’s a young coach and bound to learn, gain experience and get better, just like a young player (e.g. Semenyo, who some also wrote off at the start of his City career). Plus we have seen some really good performances under him so there have been some good signs. It doesn’t make sense to me to bin him off after just a few months. And yes I know we had an experienced manager before him who shouldn’t have been sacked, but that’s in the past and we can’t change that. 

Love this post mate

4 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Dunno whether the very latest table will he fully up however 1.28 PPG and 36% Win Ratio is a) Improving and b) Back to the levels of NP at time of sacking.

We could surpass 59 points, albeit one game at a time. Passing 60, perhaps even hitting 63-65 could be possible.

There are still significant shortcomings above Manning in respect of the hierarchy.

For comparison Manning has now hit the same levels as NP in respect of points from respective games. Under NP we either had +3 from 14 or +5 but NP and Fleming took us to +5.

For comparison 2, Sunderland, Norwich, Stoke Away yielded 4 points and Blackburn, Huddersfield, Rotherham 7 last year.

Thanks for the update mate 

I think it's fair to say that we expected that Pearson's ppg would have improved when injured players came back to fitness. Although I do think in hindsight we overestimated the impact that some players, such as McCrorie and Conway would make to our form. 

Manning has also had a difficult time with injuries. McCrorie came back and Tanner got injured. Sykes, all of a sudden a talisman for us, gets injured. Twine joins on loan and immediately gets injured. James and Williams at the same time etc etc.

I think the cup games were very impressive and mitigate the lack of improvement on the league form.

We're where I thought we might be in the league.

So, all in all, Manning has been fine.

That's my assessment so far; he's doing fine. Not saying he's done great as that would be am exaggeration, but he's clearly not as clueless and pathetic as much of the bile on social media has stated.

It would be lovely for all of us to see a strong end to the season now, just end on a relatively high note and get is us all exciting for next season...

...before the inevitable disappointment 

Just now, Ian M said:

I think you’re being harsh on Mehmeti, I like that he wants to shoot when in those positions. Don’t forget that we scored following the keeper saving his initial effort.

Totally agree and his whipped shots on his right foot have a nice shape about them.

1 minute ago, redkev said:

Tbf the game went exactly as I thought it would , I knew they would come out fast , remember there in the shite it’s there local Derby and the fans down there don’t really like us ( even though I didn’t think the atmosphere was n e thing special ) it was always a case of seeing off the whirlwind start and grow into the game which we done ,

we really could do with some more options upfront though ,

I don’t know if it’s the system or his attitude but Conway ( when not on tv ) seems to look rather disinterested 

I think you're right about Conway. I know he doesn't get many chances, but his general play is off.

1 minute ago, RedEyez said:

Hope Twine will be ok and the sub was just precautionary..

Twine has made a big imo even if we haven't seen him at his best. High quality players are good to have around.

1 minute ago, ProfitInMyPocket said:

Deserved for the second half, still a bit toothless in the final third. Not really many clear cut chances throughout. 

Can see why they are down where they are, lack of quality and things not going their way and the toxicity is building. No home goals in 5 games. 

We've caught two teams at the right time and deserved both wins, see if we can carry that on at Sunderland.

Leicester are top after beating Norwich 3-1 so they can't be much of a pushover!

I enjoyed that. A fun game, albeit not the highest levels of quality, probably not helped by a pitch covered in divots. 

The Plymouth players put a load of effort in but just don't have the quality.

Cornick with the worst shot of the season 

Just now, petehinton said:

Mebude signing looks stranger and stranger by the day

We're winning Pete. Enjoy it!

5 minutes ago, WolfOfWestStreet said:

I agree Manning doesn't deserve a chequebook ... get rid and upgrade. 

2 minutes ago, redkev said:

I sort of agree , manning seems to be 1 step forward 2 back ,but who would you bring in , 

I honestly don’t know who 

possibly Heckingbottom 

Bristol City are on the verge of winning 3 in 4 games and yet this is OTIB 

LOVE IT!

Took a while for us to get going but got up to speed eventually. Still not enough quality with too many sloppy touches. 

There for the taking if we raise our game.

Twine looks up for it. We're edging it now

1 minute ago, old_eastender said:

Pring looking particularly like everything is too much effort today

With the ball he gives it away every, without the ball he tries to foul every time.

Knight wastes a 4 on 3.

Pring needs to wake up

Toby gets his first 'acres of space' cliche in. I'm sure he'll use that little favourite of his a couple more times.

Just to clarify, by acres he meant a couple of yards...

1 hour ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Leicester cheated on the way up in 2014...fact they failed EFL FFP.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/11/leicester-city-finances-football-league-financial-fair-play-investigation

In addition to a straight up overspend, there was also this.

I'd have score(s) to settle if I was the Football League and I'd be trying to do something now, at the first opportunity of a slip.

Great shout Pops 

31 minutes ago, MarcusX said:

Disagree, this games fairly important IMO.

Its a chance for Liam to prove that he isn’t a “one trick pony” in terms of game plan.

It’s also a chance for him to win some fans back I reckon, or start to at least.

I think loads of us were excited after Southampton and thought we’d turned the corner and we all know what happened since.

So is Leicester another anomaly where the opponents press and attacking style left gaps for us to expose (which is our strengths despite Liam not because of him) or, let’s give him some credit as he changed formation and plan, was it signs that Liam did his homework and set up well to beat the team in front of him?

One thing that was notably different was the high press. I can’t understand why we aren’t doing that against “weaker” teams instead of this stand off stalemate nonsense we saw against Swansea.

If we see that press, and some more direct play today - OR - if they sit in but we manage to unlock them, then I think a few opinions may change.

If we see a repeat of QPR, Swansea, Wednesday etc then Friday was ultimately pointless really.

Not really because if we lose today but then win the next three games, we're still on good form. Obvs I'll still be annoyed if we lose. 

Plymouth look bang up for it.

TGH speaks well. Already said the word 'utilise'. Fancy.

12 minutes ago, Malago said:

Where’s all this “acid test”, “big game” etc stuff coming from.  It’s a fairly meaningless end of season game.  Hope we play well, hope we win, but depending on other results, the best we can hope for us to jump up to 11th.  Hardly earth shattering stuff.

The last game was the defining one if it suits one's narrative, but the next game is defining if that suits better...

3 hours ago, harvey54 said:

They were well off the pace yesterday. KdB has looked half fit for a while Haaland was out for a long time and not been firing on all cylinders. 

I think Peps loyalty to certain players might cost him this season. 

As for Arsenal, I've a massive soft spot for Spurs so I might not comment but I think Liverpool have the easiest run in.

I wouldn't say 'well of the pace' is a fair description. They dominated the first half and Arsenal were defending really deep. Arsenal are just well organised and hard to break down. I think a more measured description is that Man City didn't show enough killer instinct.

3 hours ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Man City's demise can't come quick enough. 

Assuming they're guilty of even a fraction of the financial doping charges they're accused of, then when the verdict eventually comes, it will be one of the biggest scandals in European football for many years.

And they'll be a big fat asterisk next to Pep and their achievements over the past 10 years. 

Totally agree mate. We'll look back on the titles across the last 20 years and Leicester will probably be the only fair winners. 

...

Just going back to the original post, Grealish definitely didn't seem to enjoy that debrief, and Pep definitely shouldn't be doing that on camera.

However, I'd imagine Pep was frustrated that JG was getting the ball frequently, showing a lovely control and touch, but never driving into the box or mixing up moving inside and outside. Most of time he passed the ball or whipped it to the far post where Doku was. JG clearly is a talent, but that £100m was a waste imo.