italian dave

Yes agree - and my final sentence was a bit tongue in cheek as a deliberate reaction to everything on here at the moment. It's not easy to deal with though, is it? We're not the only ones. Southampton v Millwall on Saturday being a case in point. And - my point above - it's not just this season. "Fortress Ashton Gate" seems like a distant memory.

Did he play in goal against us up there one year? Or am I just imagining that?

Thank you for that considered response. And, leaving aside the one instance of Gavin Marshall, no it wasn’t.

Thanks, and my apologies too: I probably over-reacted. I’m just getting a little frustrated by the seemingly endless diet of ‘sack everyone’ on here at the moment! Yes, that Birmingham game last season was the stuff of nightmares. And the Huddersfield one the season before was probably worse - and made worse again by a long drive home listening every one of R###s 7 goals to sneak promotion going in. Thinking about it, maybe it’s more to do with Huddersfield and Birmingham than Manning, Pearson or Johnson!

But my point is that it’s not a recent thing. It’s been the case for a decade, through the last four managerial regimes.

I didn’t say I was satisfied: just making an observation. And, yes, I do recall those games - I was at all three. And if you think those Birmingham and Huddersfield games were “deary me” then you should have tried the previous two encounters at both grounds. Dreary deary deary me!! I’ll stay happy, thanks. I’m not sure what the appropriate greeting in response should be. Stay miserable? Hope you find happiness one day?

And away from home we’ve played 6 of those 7 and lost only one. (After a Sheff Wed player was incorrectly not sent off!). As for some time now, we do better away from Ashton Gate. Any connection with the all pervading negativity around here?

Or, confidence shot and minds on where they’ll be next season? Always impossible to predict how these things pan out. The likelihood is that it will be a ‘nothing’ game for both sides, which probably won’t make for a great game!

How dare you come on here with your sense of perspective and proportion?

I reckon Rotherham will be dead and buried by then. At the current rate, the game that relegates them will be about a month earlier!

The more likely scenario is that we just don’t show up, they win, but a result somewhere else relegates them!

Exactly. If we’d beaten them he’d have been gone 9-10 months earlier! That’s about the average managerial career at a single club in the Championship! As @ReadySteadyGo says, we did him a favour.

Loved him in my younger years. I think he was about the same era as Frank Worthington. They made football enjoyable and exciting to watch - it chimes a little bit with the thread on here last week about JET. We were at QPR a couple of years ago when they had an event, I guess a bit like the one we had for the 1974 team when we played QPR last week. Stan Bowles was one of the players who came out onto the pitch that day - despite obvious difficulties even then - and he got a really fantastic reception, including from the City fans.

Pretty much the range you suggest was what I had in mind. We somehow always seem to gravitate to 14th Next season: won’t that depend massively on whether we’re able to secure our summer targets, on who leaves, on whether we’re able to keep a more settled squad than has been the case for some time - and even on who goes up and down from the leagues above and below? Just feels like there are too many variables and unknowns. Thats just my view though - and I doubt it’s as scientific as yours!

That would probably have been more honest, yes! Along with “illness/relationship breakdown/mistrust/job done” (delete as appropriate!) But we’ve been through all that! We know we’re not a top 6 side this season. We know we’ll likely finish mid way. That’s always been the case, and embedding a new manager makes that only more so the case. So all I’m saying is what do we keep playing to an exaggerated version of what we all know is a Fawlty Towers script- it serves no purpose.

I’m not disagreeing with that Dave, but I think the ‘wanting it more’ is a slightly different issue. Thats more about what @spudski refers too. We were in the same position last year, of course, and a number of those final games were painful. I also wouldn’t argue with your last point. But that’s in relation to yesterday’s game: it’s not a reason for the ‘sack Manning’ overdrive that some seem to have gone into.

Yes, I think you’re right there. Although let’s not fall into a similar ‘everything Pearson good/everything Manning’ bad mindset either - we’ve still needed, and will still need, points post Pearson to stay up.

. But I’d still maintain neither said ‘this season’. The real point though is surely that it was a Fawlty Towers script. We’d all agree on that. And I just think that the quicker we all move on from that, and stop playing to that Fawlty Towers script, the better.

@luke_bristol @Alessandro @1960maaan @Davefevs . See, I was right about the first bit, if nothing else! Yes, Marshall said that. I’ve always acknowledged that and should have been clearer. But he’s not a football man, and it’s JL and BT who run the football side and who are the two who get constantly slated on here (rightly so in some instances) - and neither of them said that. I stand to be corrected @Davefevs but I’m not aware of JL having ever said promotion this season. And, bigger picture, we all know that the real reasons for what happened weren’t just footballing ones and the quicker we all stop pretending that they were the better.

And don’t we have defensive coaches, set piece coaches, midfield coaches, and so on. By that logic Manning isn’t responsible for anything or anyone, and the whole premise of this thread is irrelevant. (Which I don’t think it is).

Nice summary as always @Olé. Just some random thoughts from me. A @BigTone style ‘condensed version’ might be “they wanted it more than we did”. That was my over-riding impression. I don’t know why we started with an unfit Pring, given that Roberts has been decent recently. Physicality maybe - we certainly struggled with Wednesday’s. I’m not sure Sykes was also unfit (as has been suggested elsewhere) - he took a very heavy knock from a nasty challenge (unpunished, as many were by the ref) and seemed to struggle after that. And, as when he picked up his last injury, LM seemed to struggle with how to replace him. Admittedly options are limited now - we will miss Bell I fear. I thought Wednesdays first goal was a really good one, and more down to their good play than our bad. I think there was an element of good fortune with their second! We seemed intent on playing everything wide second half, and I didn’t really understand why. We didn’t try to mix it up as we usually do. Not sure why. Having said that, I felt TC got more and more ineffective (from a fairly low bar to start with) as the game went on. It’s not just about service; he gets that. It’s scraps, but that’s the case for most strikers at this level. He just lacks the physical presence or the guile - and I don’t know whether his confidence is just shot, or he’s thinking about where he’ll be next year, but to me there are starting to Diedhiou style signs of going through the motions just now. It was poor, no denying. But on another day we’d have been playing against 10 for a lot longer and from a healthier starting position and we’d have had a penalty, although we’d probably have missed!

I’m probably going to get battered even more so than @RedM for this, but for me this thread pretty much sums up the negativity and the determination to find fault with anything Manning that’s so prevalent on here at the moment. There are ups and downs, pros and cons, black and white and various shades of grey in any club and any season and especially when managers change. Yet reading through the posts so far what stands out is the determination to attribute every single negative to Manning and every single positive to something or someone else. Thats not being critical of your question, @Dredd. It’s a reasonable one. It’s more about what follows. And, as a slight aside but another example of the negativity, @Merrick's Marvels - apart from the generic aspiration that any club in the Championship would have promotion as an ambition, who has ever said that promotion this season is or was our objective??

It’s the top half that’s interesting; all those wins mean lots of defeats in the top half, keeping us just as close to the top 6. Seriously, what’s slightly odd is that even if we’d beaten QPR and Wednesday, we’d still be only two places higher.

Time……David Bowie

I thought that throughout the game he struggled with the concept that ‘being vaguely near the ball’ and ‘making an attempt to play the ball’ are two different things. I lost count of the number of times he allowed Wednesday players to push, shove, and simply run into our players to knock them off the ball. And that incident near the end when McCrorie was barged off the ball - that wasn’t a shoulder to shoulder challenge, it was a shoulder barge on a player running with the ball.