GrahamC

Telegraph reporting today that Gloucestershire are considering selling Nevil Rd & moving outside of the city. All part of a trend, the zoo, majority of the major shops now at Cribbs & the alleged arena that all seem to be headed out South Glos way.

Depends if you see mid table as “mediocrity” I suppose? At present we are above Watford & Norwich with their parachute payments. For much of the 21st century we would have killed to be at this level, 4 years of going absolutely nowhere under Wilson, Tinnion’s awful spell in charge. Relegation under SOD & then falling further until Cotts arrived. I don’t believe a word our chairman or Tinnion say, we are no more a top six outfit than Swansea, being well clear of trouble is a start & the new chap then gets half a season to see how he shapes things within our constraints, as far as I’m concerned.

As you say, it makes a lot of sense. Not employing someone as manager who has been in prison, who managed to upset a family yesterday who had their son murdered by his brother, who employed a chief scout who had stood trial for the manslaughter of a policeman & was an obnoxious narcissist is admittedly an incredibly low bar, but fair play, the family club with such incredible support has pulled it off.

Early 2000s Poland were away to Northern Ireland in a WC qualifier. They kicked off in Belfast, fairly safe to say absolutely no one else has ever done that & secondly they’re a tough lot..

There’s no rule. Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Ancelotti were all top players (even if the latter wasn’t in the same category as the first two, hardly anyone who ever played the game is & he had a stellar career) then all won loads as managers/coaches, too. Guardiola too.

In 21/22 he scored 13 “at this level”, in 19/20 he got 9. I’m not saying that means he’s Viktor Gyokeres but there is clearly something there or he wouldn’t have played 200 games for Luton. I think we need to stop giving him 15 minutes as a sub & decide whether he’s a part of the solution or not. At present with Wells injured, Bell in the middle of a goal drought & Weimann not in great form either, no one else is scoring goals. If he got 4 or 5 starts we would know whether we look to move him on in January or there’s enough there to persevere with him.

Nagy? The bloke who is a regular for his country that has just qualified for the Euros topping their group? What a random & strange comparison.

Well firstly he’s got to be fit to play far more often than at present & because I cannot see them as a pair, he would have then to convince that he’s the better option of the two. Don’t think he is.

He reminds me of Gary Owers. Chases around the pitch & has all the attributes you mention but his passing can be wayward to random. At least twice last night he gave the ball away really very cheaply. Few people on here used to wonder what Pearson saw in James, but he is our only midfielder who consistently finds a team mate with the ball & as his sublime pass to put TC through last night shows, it isn’t always square or backwards, either.

Remember that, I had my name on my seat in the Dolman. When the seats were replaced in the refurb they all went, have to say I didn’t mind too much as they had managed to spell my first name wrong anyway.. Fairly typical experience of being a City fan.

Unless we are incredible in the transfer market or can find another Alex Scott (& good luck with that) it will also require significantly more money than we ever gave to Pearson. You can only go so far by spending about a quarter of what you generate in sales, as an example I’m a huge fan of Mark Sykes (contrast his VFM compared to Kasey Palmer) but no one can realistically believe you can consistently pick up League One free transfers &/or produce sufficient Academy players each year to genuinely compete for top six.

Makes us look exactly what we are. A mid table team that has been able to get points against the sides below us whether we’ve been the better side in those games or not. Someone said last night, it makes no difference whether Pearson, Manning or Guardiola is in charge, that’s the squad they are working with, no matter what the chairman & Tinnion claim.

It was £1m & we spent the money we had on Knight, there wasn’t enough made available to sign both.

Absolute cock. If Southampton get back up it will be down to parachute payments, not him. Bluffer.

Totally. Also we only had 7 subs tonight, we used 4, so the 3 left (Knight-Lebel, Yeboah & Bajic) haven’t started a single football league game between them. With a couple of injuries we look shorter of numbers than anyone else in the division. Manning knows this, so he isn’t putting kids he thinks are nowhere near the standard on the bench to pad it out, the way Pearson sometimes did. Tinnion might pretend we have loads of U21s that are ready to step up but our head coach clearly doesn’t think so.

Who’s that then & where’s the money coming from? We sold a forward for £10m, released Martin & then spent £300k on the replacement. Coventry sold their striker for £20m & spent £16m on replacements, see the difference?

Look, I don’t think all of them are, either. We sold both Kodjia & Semenyo for 8 figure fees, (£13m & £10m) & we then spent £300k on Cornick, so we would do incredibly well to find more like them with the transfer budget we apparently now have.

So when Nahki Wells comes on as a sub at Watford under Holden when we are 5- 0 down in a 6-0 defeat with only 4 minutes to go, you can’t see how that is completely different to him playing a full game? You don’t think the fact that Conway scored more goals in the Championship last season than anyone of his age apart from a kid who was on loan from Man U is impressive? Ok then.

You have picked the worst possible stats in every case there. Conway scored 9 in 25 starts & 9 sub appearances in the league last season, that seems pretty good to me for a 20 year old. 54 of Wells appearances for us have been as a substitute, so his minutes to goals puts him around a goal every 3.5 games, again fine. How many games did Bell start as a striker last season? He only started 14 in total. He scored 4 in his first 11 this season but is definitely in a drought. This has been covered before Weimann has rarely played as a striker for us, just regularly in one season. Cornick has been a sub a lot too. It will cost a lot to bring in a proven forward in January, I’d rather persevere with Conway & hope Wells is back soon. Mehmeti is a winger.

Played it a long time & a smart bloke, that’s a decent combination.

I know the adage that the longer you’re not in the team the better you are, but we are definitely missing Wells. He might not be prolific these days but his movement & awareness is still better than anyone else we have. Hope he’s back soon & someone else (Conway, Bell, Weimann) can go on a scoring run.

He wasn’t great but I reckon he’d have scored the chance that Conway missed..

Naismith was a hamstring, Sykes was just a tactical switch I thought.

Whether we rate the coach or not, if Knight. Gardner-Hickman & then Williams when he came on are going to repeatedly give the ball away I don’t know what he can do about that. The squad is too small (he knows that, he isn’t filling the subs bench) & we ended the game with a back four all of whom are right footed. Conway’s miss was a killer, best chance of the game.

Time wasting was Preston like, kicked the ball away, deliberately took every restart from the wrong place & as you say pretend injuries. Better side but some embarrassing stuff towards the end.