italian dave

I’m pretty sure we used to have games on August bank holidays fairly routinely. But that got abandoned for all sorts of reasons. And football only abandons things when they don’t work financially! Too much competition from other activities - families, holidays, festivals, days out etc. Too close to the weekend games. To name just two.

£7k, £10k, £12k: I imagine that whatever Schalke are paying him it will be in Euros - which might also have some significance in any comparison.

How he ended up managing us is because for SL the concept of ‘continuity’ doesn’t seem to extend beyond internal appointments. Which may be another manifestation of that lack of football know how?

Football’s a funny industry though. Loyalty (or lack of) yes, but I’m not sure that’s very different to most employment nowadays. But the big, different, factor relates to your first point. TK is just 30 and looking at probably the last significant earnings of his career. There’s not many other places where that’s the case, and people in that position. I think that makes the decision an even easier one.

In answer to the question: don’t know, but if any two managers get sacked on the same day it’s probably 50/50 that both have managed Watford at some point!

Have you seen the food at the Mem? You’d pay more, not less, for something someone has taste tested for safety first.

Must admit I always expected him to go abroad after he left City. Although maybe covid had something to do with that not happening.

Thanks @Olé, great report as ever. I think this time it highlights particularly how fascinating this game was and the fact that it was far from clear cut who was on top and when. That came across in the matchday thread where there seemed to be a lot of disagreement about whether we were playing well or not. There were spells where we had a lot of possession but looked far less threatening than Hull. Others were we started to break effectively and Hull seemed content to sit back and take the sting out of the game. Others where we pressed well as @sh1t_ref_again talks about, but at the same time Hull managed that well. Other periods were the game just ebbed and flowed between the two sides. Really good to watch. Too far away to see anything of the disallowed goal: I think it came as a bit of a surprise to the City fans when Wells started to celebrate! My feeling was that the delay was simply about ref and lino consulting: no question of the ref making the offside call, just discussing touches, deflections etc. it happened once last season where we had a very late call. I don’t like Linighan but by his standards he had a decent game.

That's the same stand that a few days ago they were saying was not that much different to what was there before so planning consent should be a given?????

It’s a reasonable complaint. If they’d known they were going to lose today, they’d have arranged for them to be left on all night and waterlogged the pitch. Match called off. Win the rearranged game. It’s worked for them in the past.

It’s a cunning plan. They’re going to sign so many players that there won’t be any left for other sides.

Quite a lot riding on the game for you tonight then?!!

I agree Dave. And it seems to me that (possibly Bell aside) we have players better suited to that too. And although NP said that last season, he very rarely played 2 up front even when Scott was in the side.

Bumping this as it's about to drop off the first page....just in case someone who can help might see it last minute.

Thinking about City....bit depressing to be honest!!

Larks’ Tongues in Aspic…….King Crimson

Not old enough yet, is he?

Yeah, sorry, and apologies @glynriley: I was just pondering City’s woes over lunch, as you do, and it occurred to me that I didn’t really know what we were disagreeing about!! I’ll shut up now.

It disappears fairly quickly: it started off at £130m, went down to £125m in the space of a few posts, and now it’s a balance of £50m! Seriously, when you think about it, we bandy about wage figures on here of £10K, £12K a week, and hardly bat an eyelid. Not long ago we’d assume players were on 3,4 times that. £10K is half a million quid a year, £2m over a 4 year contract. And we’ve got how many players. It adds up to scary numbers very quickly.

£1990 for those of us with digital tickets….?

I think it will, as others have said, royally piss off the planning officers and councillors. But ultimately I don't believe that the planners can do otherwise than consider the application on its merit. In other words, they can't refuse something that would otherwise get consent, just because it's already built. Not least because they'd only lose on appeal.

PS. I’m actually not sure we disagree about much! Was LJ given massively more resources than NP. Yes. Did that mean he was able to go out and bring in more and more experienced keepers. Yes. Did that mean we ended up signing sufficient to aim for 2/3 quality keepers. Yes. Did that strategy eventually break us. Yes. (And, incidentally, would we like NP to have a greater resource to go out and sign more experience/quality the consensus seems to be yes) My only question is whether you lay the blame for that at LJs door or at SLs? He’s got the resource available. The club strategy is moving towards a one of success at all costs. He’s working to an ultimatum as part of that strategy. What’s he going to do? Refuse to sign a Maenpaa or a Steele on the basis that he’d rather bring through an untried youngster and save the money for a successor? Ultimately he failed of course, and paid the price for that. But he came as close as anyone has done in half a century!

Fair enough: just to say though that I wasn’t including the likes of Mac Boyd - for precisely that reason. Bentley, O’Leary, Woollcott, Wiles-Richard, Haikin, Bajic. As I said, not disputing the quality/cost/resource issues but that’s a different issues and one where lots more factors come into play. I take your point about ‘signing’ as opposed to inheriting: but again, very different times 2016-19 compared to 2021-23. Externally and internally.

I’m not saying it does. I very clearly made that point. All I was pointing out was that in terms of pure numbers - you seemed to be suggesting that 9 was an excessive number - there’s not a lot of difference, As I said, quality, cost etc a different matter. But that’s when you get into a much broader debate as I just touched on in my response to Graham. Rightly or wrongly LJ was given the resources and it’s perhaps not surprising that he used them to sign proven players - especially given that he was under a top 6 or bust ultimatum.