italian dave

If you’d checked, you’d have seen that this whole thread was begun by the Lee Johnson Deprecation Society, also still going strong. 8 months after he was sacked.

As do some of the anti-Johnson City brigade who took great delight earlier in this thread at drawing attention to those Sunderland fans.

I can still remember watching Milan Djuric get a proper old fashioned centre forwards goal for us, under LJ, - and at Sunderland.

Well, LJ has certainly had experience of losing his best players on a regular basis.

Not sure if this counts for the joke thread. It’s true. But made me laugh. Shoe Zone store group has just replaced its Finance Director. The outgoing FD, Peter Foot, is being replaced by a new FD, Terry Boot. Genuine, apparently.

League: This season 2. Last season 3. Season before 2. (Rovers in that time 5,7 and 7 respectively). Average number of pens per game is between 0.2 and 0.25. My maths aren't great, but I reckon that means that on average a team could expect 4-5 each season - so we're well below average.

I was thinking EU blue; pesky rejoiners...!

I was never his greatest fan as a player, but felt he got unfair stick, maybe in part for being his Dad's son. Yes, the things he said and did sometimes were a bit cringe-making, but I wonder whether the ego and the arrogance - not a million miles from self-confidence and self belief - are qualities that a football manager needs. A bit like strikers needing to be greedy because hey have the same self confidence. At the end of the day that's maybe what enabled him to manage his way through those poor runs in a way that DH never looked likely to do. And why those poor runs never, I think, saw 3-4 successively more gutless performances in the way we've seen recently. Not always an attractive trait but maybe something a manager needs to have. I always felt that towards the end he slightly lost that: I don't know whether it was the self belief that went, or his belief that the club believed in him: I think the departures of Webster and of Brownhill really dented him - timing wise as much as anything, and he lost a bit of that confidence in his ability to bounce back from that. But overall I still think he's one of the minority of managers in recent years who've left us in a better place than when he arrived. And he certainly doesn't deserve some of the vitriol he got at the time, not the weird delight some still take every time he loses.

I genuinely didn't look hard. It was the second thread I looked at - after realising that the first one immediately followed a bad result - and the first (and only) page I looked at.

Two likes if I could RR! I get that in the immediate aftermath of a game people get angry. But to still be using words like tosser and cretin about a man who left the club a year ago seems sad bordering on pathological. Like you I don't love one or hate another: I try to take the view that any manager probably knows more about coaching and about football management than I do. That I'm not in a position to know what goes on behind the scenes. And that ultimately most managers are doing their level best for Bristol City and usually working bloody hard to do so. (The only exceptions during my 50 plus years (maybe unfairly) have been Pulis whose principal concern seemed to be money and Osman whose principal concern seemed to be himself. ) I also share your concern about the current direction of travel: we just seem to have lost any obvious strategy and to be drifting. And despite what I said above about the managers knowledge of coaching, I see us starting with a three man midfield that includes two players who've not played all season, and I see us responding to being behind by throwing on five forwards, and I do wonder!

Have to disagree on Akinbiyi/Kodjia. Akinbiyi was very much a known quantity, having been playing in the same league as us (and scoring lots of goals) the year we bought him. It was an era when we just bought the best players from that league every season! Kodjia was a relative unknown, having to move to a new country.

Exactly this. Another example: in the 90s we were able to take a promising young striker on loan from a top Premiership club (Andy Cole) and having proved his worth during his loan season we could afford to prise him from that club on a permanent move in the summer. Imagine having been able to that nowadays with Tammy Abraham. I think the other thing that's often overlooked in the comparisons about who was able to sign who, is the issue of departures. I'm not sure there has ever been a manager at City prior to LJ who has had to lose his top players at the end of every season. It may have made good business sense, but to have to lose players like Kodjia, Kelly, Webster, Brownhill, on a regular basis is as much of a challenge as having the cash to sign players.

Back to the staring point today for this thread, I just took a look at the Sunderland forum. I suspect that there have been some, including the OP, who simply don't like LJ and have been waiting for the opportunity, which inevitably comes after a poor performance and a disappointing result (think last Saturday on here). What's quoted above from the Sunderland fans is very selective. Here are three quotes from a single page elsewhere on the forum, all last week. "I like the chap... I like the intent as well, young manager, obviously a student of the game, intelligent insight" "Early days. I think he's still not getting the message across to some of our thicker players." "He'll get us out of this league. Our best appointment since big Sam. He needs time to sort out the mess he's inherited but supporters will respond to how he wants to play, pressing and taking a risk to win games. I think he is without doubt getting the club going in the right direction." Just for a bit of perspective and balance.

I guess it takes our collective mind off the current one ?

Exactly this. In the third tier, we used to be able to go out every summer and sign the best players from the league that season. Nowadays in the Championship we couldn’t even dream of that.

Not on ££s, of course not, and I’ve made that point. But previous incumbents were able to go out and sign the likes of Akinbiyi, Thorpe, Anderson, Andy Cole, Dziekanowski, David James, and so on. All relatively big signings for the time. You’d have to go back to the days of Des Williams and Terry Cooper to say that we were a ‘poor’ relation to most other sides in our league. (and ironically in those days made some fantastic signings cheaply and had some great times!)

Cotterill gave us a fantastic season and promotion. Johnson gave us an unforgettable cup run and established us as a respected Championship club. Both had their strengths. Both had their weaknesses. It unravelled for both, in different ways, towards the end. I don’t get why for so many people liking one seems to require belittling the achievements of the other. Between the two of them the club progressed in a way no other did and in a way we certainly didn’t manage when we were chopping and changing managers every year with Pulis, SOD, McInnes etc etc

Well no-one else managed it in 40 years. And whilst football income and expenditure is very relative, previous incumbents weren’t unable to splash cash when necessary.

Terrible news. Wishing him all the best; always a player I had a lot of time for, and even as a bluebird!

Shoot me down but seems like a pretty fair, straightforward, reasonable approach by the club in difficult circumstances.

Except when City score...!

I can't see it rising much by, say, March though. And bearing in mind that Bristol is likely to start in tier 2 or 3, the starting point for Ashton Gate is probably going to be between zero and 2000. As long as they are still refunding some ST holders on a match by match basis, I can't see any way they'll want to add new ones. I agree that there's reason for much more optimism about next season. And that we can be hopeful of getting back to much nearer normal, and normal capacity, by then. I didn't really mean to suggest that we won't be looking to sell more STs than this year, just wondering whether we'll be doing it in February, like we did this season! All conjecture, of course, and subject to ups and downs and as you say government whims, but I just think the restrictions and the uncertainty won't have gone away by Feb, and the government (probably rightly) won't be looking to declare life back to normal quite by then. But, yes, we will hopefully all be able to return to the Gate next season. And maybe even away trips too!

Wouldn't think any chance of that. We're already debating the different ways of restricting demand from existing ST holders so they're not likely to sell more. What's more debatable/interesting is whether and when they start selling next seasons.....

I’ll disagree. Looks like a vicar with an apron on. Bloody awful. But you’re right: up against that Tesco bag look of the same era, it’s a world beater!!

20,000 cases a day