mozo

The points gap to top 6 is not the barometer that everyone else uses. Everyone else looks at league position and points accrued. This means that we have currently improved on last season. But you conveniently found a metric by which you can criticise. We were good enough to beat Stoke and Birmingham under Nige, but we didn't. Does that make Nige a failure? You and I both know that football is not played on paper.

If you had to guess do you think he'll leave on free next year?

Yeah they bloody should do, and they did through his long covid tbf, but 'feels' like it was part of their thinking (not that I ever know anything!)

At the point that Scott had been sold, and it became clear that we weren't going to splurge any of the profits, I'm pretty sure that the consensus was that we'd be upper mid table, but not on a charge for the playoffs. I do agree when Nige says Liam inherited a good situation, in that we have a young squad, full of potential, all with a great attitude, very hardworking and obedient. Manning doesn't have to cull or overhaul. That's a good footing. But it doesn't therefore mean that the expectation should be playoffs. I don't believe Nige would have got us in the playoffs, but you and I may differ on that? I think this confirms that Nige was sacked for the reasons that we all thought: relationship with owner and NP's health. He rightly appears pissed off about it.

I think these are good points and we'll have loads of threads over the summer about this. I think the overall quality of the squad will only see marginal gains or losses if we only change two players. We will also have the marginal gain, in theory, of our young squad being one year more experienced and mature than this time last year. We will be hoping and praying for the marginal gain of better luck with injuries. So if we are marginally strengthened in each of those areas, we could conceivably be 10 points better off. But the two big caveats are that number one, football isn't an exact science and the wind blows which way it wants. And secondly, it's too early to say because of all the uncertainty around Conway, Williams, James and who the forward will be. An extra 10 points would keep us in the mix for 6th and I think fans would largely be happy. But hey, this is Bristol City, and we know how to balls things up!

Just to check that you are balanced, did you post anything positive about the Norwich performance?

I like 'Twiniesta', might start using that...

I did cringe when Manning said the people not listening thing. Doesn't sound good at all. The only thing I would say in his defense is that he has clarified his position on passion in previous interviews, but the reputation that developed from his not to high, not too low comments, and perceptions of his demeanour still continued.

In all seriousness, I'm interested to know how he knows that there's that preconception of him. Someone obviously told him. I'm sure Nige use to reference things that the fans thought too. How do they know?

I thought it was a decent interview. He makes a point of trying to dispel the OTIB/social media myth that he's a robot and doesn't want emotion to be part of football. He denies that, and said they even covered it in training. He wants us to have fight, and to be on the fine line between emotion and control. Edit: Also lots of 'behaviours' chat. He goes into what they're talking about. Self-explanatory to be fair, but might of interest to the people who get riled by him using the B-word. Finally, I don't think he mentions Southampton

100% agree. Hopefully we will kick off next season with fans positive and up for it. I'd like to see us pick up 4/6 more points from the final two games, bring in a forward that we can all get overly optimistic about, and trounce a couple of team in pre-season to set up a highly anticipated first game of the 2024-25 season, which naturally will be a 0-1 at home to Millwall.

It's also possible that many fans were like me in thinking that City weren't as bad pre-Easter as some were making out. Who knows I'm sure there are lots of factors, but the main one could be that the matchday is a big part of their lives.

Depending on which clubs are knocking on his door this summer, yes. It's so annoying that we find ourselves in such a weak position with a potential star.

Sounds like we want to keep Twine then!

I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it...

Well done Dave and Ian for getting this done Also, fair play to GM for fronting up. We criticise them when they don't answer questions, so hopefully this is a sign of improvement fan comms. I don't think we learn anything revelatory here, and no doubt there will be criticism, but there were questions relating to a lot of the key topics that we debate on the forum and I think GM answered where he could (he's not exactly going to divulge our transfer budget). I suppose one controversial comment from GM was that our current position is only slightly below our season expectations. This will ruffle feathers following the narrative around the Pearson sacking. What I took from the interview is that the current strategy will remain in place; that we hope to achieve success on the cheap, via canny recruitment, and hoping we get the wind behind our sales.

Spot on assessment

Post of the Day winner right there...

It could be a confidence thing too. There have been one or two rumours about attitude, but I've no idea I'd they're true.

Tommy has been playing as a lone striker most of his short pro career. That's not a recent thing. And he's never consistently had good service. I also doubt he feels that he deserves the full 90 every game while more senior pros like Wells and Cornick are second fiddle to him. The question is, which team out there will offer him better money, and better minutes. The first bit is easy, but he might not necessarily want to go to a club like Burnley, Southampton or West Brom, for example, where he might have to start down the pecking order and try to play his way into contention. He best mate, Alex Scott, has only played more than 60 minutes in 6 games this season, despite being in the squad 18 times. Maybe Conway doesn't care about any of this, but he might be considering it. I'd imagine his agent will want him to move on.

There's definitely a risk there. The thing for me is that we might fill our squad with players that will be great in 2028, but until then we won't go anywhere, and those players won't even stay that long. At the moment we have players like Williams, Pring, Dickie, O'Leary and Vyner all in or approaching their prime years, and few a couple of years behind, but we do need to be careful that we don't lose the nous, maturity and character that older players can bring.

I'd imagine rising mortgage repayments won't help.

Yes because we can't jump on the narrative that the events of season have lost a big chunk of the fanbase.

The thing that was a revelation was his forward passing. We forget how crap we used to be at passing the ball forwards, that when Tyreeq started doing it, we were in awe.

Interesting what you say about basketball, because my understanding was that in the NBA 3 point shooting was increasing, which is higher risk. Is that a good thing for the game or a bad thing? From the NBA games I've watched in the last couple of years I didn't notice anything dull about it, but I presume the writer follows the sport a lot closer than I do.