mozo

3 hours ago, petehinton said:

The cynic in me suggests they are starting to plan for life without him early, so are phasing his minutes out. 

That has definitely crossed my mind, but there is also the issue that we play one up top and Wells wants and arguably deserves his share of minutes.

4 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

To lay the Blackburn win at Blackburn’s ineptitude is crazy.  The Swansea win is fair-game for criticism imho.

Yeah the Swansea game I think you and I were both annoyed with the block, which didn't work and is Manning's poor decision. I think another factor to the performance was that our players looked liked their confidence was shot. Not all of the individual errors were related to the tactics, but you could argue that cautiousness bred nervousness. 

I think Manning's defence was that we didn't moan about the block when it worked. And he's got point. But he should have just said, yeah I got it wrong.

6 minutes ago, redkev said:

I agree , also think pring ( apart from a few games ) has been a bit of a dissapointment this season compared with last season where admittedly he was excellent 

Yeah totally. He was in 'destined for the Premier League' territory last season and looks much more like he's at his level this season, under both managers.

52 minutes ago, Northern Red said:

Fair play, I didnt think "only beat West Ham because they had a man sent off" and "only beat Southampton because Downes was missing" could be topped for idiocy, but the OP has managed it.

Tedious waste of bandwidth, and now going on ignore.

Yeah there was the narrative that the cup didn't matter and ppg was the important thing, and that Manning could only beat the good teams.

Then we won games in the league, beat teams below us, improved our ppg, and suddenly the real issue is the quality of our wins. They're not good enough wins. We should be winning in a much more glorious manner.

Thankfully there are also sensible critics of Manning too, but some of the noise is amusing.

4 hours ago, 1960maaan said:

I don't have a problem with Manning going with the senior players while we were going through a dodgy spell, but we were safe yesterday and the starting XI annoyed me.
Instead of giving Knight-Lebel a start he moved what seemed like half the team around. Sykes hasn't shone at WB and Knight has been better in CMF. It got me thinking about the pathway and the continuation of progressing young players that Tinnion alluded to when LM came in. For one Mebude is looking like a Pathway blocker, but ok , if Manning thought we could grab a gem cheap I'll pass on that one , but how much time has been given to youth this season? We have managed to sign some good young players on reputation , but how long will that continue? 

I have had a quick look , and I will apologise and hold my hands up if I've missed some minutes. I think it breaks down like this . 
Under Pearson something like 240 minutes for academy players in 14 games. And yes some of those were forced on him , Cardiff away being a peak time gave us 113 of those minutes .
Flemmings one game gave us 0 .
The last 28 games have given 26 minutes for the Academy players.

Blackburn 21 minutes for Yeboah and against Blackburn in a game that was over , 5 for Knight-Lebel.

I worry that Manning is shaping up like LJ, would rather change most of the team instead of making one change with a youngster. Tinnion has to take some blame, excluding some for the U18 FA Cup (then not even giving them the best chance by going up the night before, thats another moan) . This should be the perfect time to blood players, they could be needed next year and a few runs this year could help the transition to the first team.
I hope I'm wrong , but it doesn't look great for the young kids ATM.

I do agree, and I personally would sacrifice results at this point. 

The only counter argument I would make is... how do you think senior players will feel being left out, particularly if they're players like McCrorie, Roberts and Tamner who have had to spend time on the bench or injured already this season and are desperate for gametime for their own needs.

I personally would have benched Pring and played JKL. 

14 hours ago, Silvio Dante said:

Rider to your last sentence….at league one level

You have to remember that Hull were Ok with letting him go at this level, and that Burnley he wasn’t fantastic for. At this level, across three teams, he’s been nothing more than “OK”.

I’d absolutely trust Liams judgement in him at league one level. But if we take Mehmeti as a case in point, a player that Liam (correctly) thinks can do it at league one has been sketchy at best at the higher level.

It might be that how he’s played is just how good he is at this level. It happens.

14 hours ago, Davefevs said:

@Silvio Dante beat me to it, whilst I was watching the golf.

Yeah absolutely, I'm thinking that Manning should have a good idea if Twine is too good for L1 and capable of high end Champ. 

I'll be the first to criticise if we sign him and Twine turns out to be not worth the investment. 

45 minutes ago, Shauntaylor85 said:

Pearson is better than Manning, end of. No argument on this, Manning’s best achievement is the sack at MK Dons 

Pearson is the first manager we'd had for donkey's years who had top flight experience, promotion success and tons of football common-sense, there's no disputing that.

Whether we would have picked up more points with Nige still here is a total mystery, however.

20 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

We do hit the (in most years) magic 2 PPG across 7 games from Swansea at Home to Huddersfield at Home so it depends on how we want to measure it.

Moreover, in GJ's blocks of 10 we just about hit the level inherited under Manning. 14 from 10, 4 wins ie 40%.

We've been talking about 'par', and I think we're very much a 1.4 ppg team this season. That's our level.

With a little bit of investment we could be 1.5 to 1.6 and its happy days

If the stats point to Manning being a bit 'lucky' (let's simplify), then I can't really argue with that. It raises a question mark about the future and whether our chickens will come home to roost, or whatever the poultry saying is. 

If, however, we are lucky over a sustained period, you'd tend to feel that we must be making our own luck.

Clearly, if Manning can add another 10-15% of that good fortune, we'll all be applauding him.

It's an interesting one. 

10 hours ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

No doubt your expectations at the start of the season were higher than they are now. 

If you dug up my posts mate and I'm pretty sure I was predicting 10-12th.

This was when it was clear that we weren't backing Nige with the Scott money.

58 minutes ago, Shauntaylor85 said:

Exactly this and those wins were both thrilling and we created numerous chances. Unlike the Blackburn game. 

Performances and results? Are you joking? It’s been dire and scrappy! 

We conceded numerous chances in the Plymouth 4-1, which we didn't in the Blackburn game (if we're applying your logic)

8 hours ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

So you don't think we could have beaten Huddersfield x2 +4 points

QPR x2 +5 points

Cardiff x2 +6 points

Without adequate investment? Beating just those 3 teams twice would now see us sitting comfortably in the play offs. 

I can list many other other games where we could and should have got more than we got. 

Whilst I think we should have signed 1-2 more in the summer, we have enough to have done better than we've got. 

Blaming it on 'investment' is just you doubling down. 

 

Yes, but every other team between ourselves and they playoffs also failed to win 6 games that they would hope to win, so they would like to rewrite history too. The reality is that football is not as simple as you win all the games you're supposed to win, unless you've got a superior (Premier League quality) team, which I think most of us agree, we do not.

5 hours ago, Tomo said:

Interesting that towards the end of the 1st half the crowd booed Pring for going back to the keeper...and let's be clear that the majority of the fans going to these end of season meaningless games are the hard-core type.

You can sense that the style of play is not being well received by the fan base even though we are on this unbeaten run. I guess it's all about next season now. If we are top 10 playing this way, then I'm happy as that's improvement but anything like bottom half of the table come mid October, expect more booing from the stands if we continue to go sideways, backwards and back again...

Carey on co-comms mentioned that booing, but he reckoned that Pring had done the right thing. If I'm recalling the right bit, the square pass he had on was at a slightly dodgy angle, so if he'd played it badly an interception would've been a serious problem. Having said that, it didn't seem like Huddersfield were pressing particularly well during that 'passage of play'.

Hmm...tricky one. He's not played well. You can tell he's trying to impress, but mostly things aren't coming off for him. 

I think the big question is, is what we've seen so far Twine at his best? I'm guessing we will sign him if we are confident that he just hasn't reached top gear yet. 

Manning should know what Twine is capable of.

I can honestly say, I don't expect us to win away at a confident and on-form Norwich City, but if we do, our last 6 form will be excellent, and even our last 10 will be impressive. 

Come on the Form Army!

3 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:

I’ll go the earliest of anyone and say the season was over when we sold our best player and out of pure spite and dislike to the manager didn’t make funds available for a replacement.

Notably, those funds became magically available in January via the bid for Azaz and signing of Twine.

So, in hindsight, August.

Yeah agree mate. 

Nige/Manning/whoever wouldn't have got us top 6 without adequate investment and SL decided against that. Our fate was sealed and we've achieved precisely what I and many others predicted.

35 minutes ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

Why won't you cry about it? 

I will be. Standing still/regressing is not acceptable. 

Because if we missed out on what I think is par by just the 2/3 points that's a pretty fine margin.

It would be a bit fussy to then turn around and say we'd convincingly underachieved.

If we lose the last three games it looks a bit worse and I'd not be content with that.

We only today had it confirmed that we can't be promoted this season. So we're not a million miles off, but I appreciate that you had higher expectations than me. 

4 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

I'd say Manning needs 2 more wins minimum to get to something like parity.

Hopefully we can press high as a starting point, like elements of the Leicester, Plymouth, Blackburn games- we are a better side when we take a positive intent based approach.

Yeah, I said before this game he needed 7 more points, and that's 1 ticked off. 

If I had to predict, I'd assume we'll lose to Norwich, beat Rotherham and anything is possible last match.

But... who bloody knows with City!?

I'd like 64 points, but if we finish on 61/62 I won't cry about it. Ultimately it really doesn't matter.

Regards pressing high, we did for the most part today, albeit more selectively. I think Manning wants a more selective high press, but I'm not sure if the players are comfortable with that.

I presume there was a chant of 'she fell over' today?!

Just now, redkev said:

I said before the game we really start to get consistency in our performances from one game to another they go from pretty decent to really poor from week to week , 2nd half we weren’t bad but first half that was poor , 

mind you this hasn’t just happened under mannings watch this has been going on for years at city ( except cotts promotion season ) city rarely win back to back home games Saturday / Tuesday games 

Agree mate. Huddersfield did a good job of disrupting us and we did a poor job of dealing with it. Seen it so many times before. Another very different challenge up next

26 minutes ago, BS3_RED said:

No, not the team. The ref. I thought she pretty much got every call correct. 

She was certainly one of the best we have had this season. 

Anything that annoys Joey Barton is good in my book

6 minutes ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

Demanding high performance every week is the only way to become successful. 

Saying "well we've always struggled against these sort of teams" is incredibly tinpot. 

I don't think Mozo and W-S-M Seagull demanding high performance is going to make City successful. And it probably won't help our mental health because we won't get what we want.

It was an irritating game, too many players were slightly off it today. Pring, McCrorie, Williams, even James were very hit and miss today and Sykes looked well off his best.

But we have to be philosophical and know that over the course of ten games, you will always get at least one of these. Every single manager gets them, by the way. 

I appreciate that every game where we're not good will just re-awaken the feelings you have about the current boss, but whilst we're right up there in the form table, let's give him a bit of leeway and not assume that every mis-kick is his fault. 

1 minute ago, Big Cheese said:

But that predictable city, said before the game, could be 0-0, or we will struggle to win, no matter whos the manager thats always been the city unfortunately 

It definitely feels like that. We've had it against Stoke and Millwall this season where we've been driven mad by poor home displays and classic basic defeats. I guess fans of most Championship teams would say the same mind.

1 minute ago, Numero Uno said:

……..and when it’s four out of six home games boring people to death fans are entitled to call it out for what it is too.

10 points in those home games?

Just now, W-S-M Seagull said:

Oh yes. I'm sorry. I shouldn't expect us to put in a good performance against a bottom 3 team. 

You can expect whatever you want, but how many years have you watched Bristol City? When did you last see consistently high levels of execution?