GrahamC

I thought the financial situation at Fleetwood had markedly changed since their former owner went to prison? In terms of size of football club I’d argue that the disparity between Sunderland & Fleetwood & us & Watford was considerably different.

Whatever your view on him going from Sunderland to Fleetwood in just over 18 months isn’t a great career trajectory.

Great post but without discussing the relative merits of Pearson & GJ, I’d argue you perfectly described the latter’s legacy. ”The pissheads sobered up or effed off” Wilson & his band of drunkards, then SL’s great mate Tinnion (hopelessly out of his depth as a manager) couldn’t achieve this. GJ’s abrasive Cockernee manner was exactly what was required, “shape up or fackin’ ship out”.. He definitely lost the plot towards the end but absolutely he rid us of the waster culture tolerated (encouraged?) by Wilson & that Tinnion clearly couldn’t break.

Without looking it up I’d say probably Ronnie Sinclair in goal & Glenn Humphries as the other CB.

Post Cheesley that probably has to be it & I reckon was the side for the Coventry game too (I was there). It contains arguably our greatest defender in Hunter, Gary Collier (plus Sir Geoffrey) who won’t be far behind as our next best, our greatest ever midfielder, plus Thomas Ritchie, and loads of all time greats like Sween, Tainton, the late Chris Garland, Whitehead & Mann. Looking back (I was only 13 then), that was some side.

Or one that was ever fielded in a game.

You’re sort of ignoring the fact these players are currently at Premier League clubs & the whole we haven’t the budget for their wages bit, aren’t you? Mbappe is really good at football, too.

That would be the same keeper who has been on the bench for them for every Premiership game so far? Seeing as we know now there is absolutely nothing left in the budget for Pearson to spend, that suggestion is Kasper Schmeichel signing levels of “not going to happen”. Mind you I’m sure you were also suggesting Keiffer Moore. I wish that we had a more experienced alternative to Max (not necessarily to start) but it seems we can’t afford it.

Exactly where I am. Gary Johnson achieved more than any manager at City in over 40 years. Opinions are opinions but that’s a fact. If you don’t rate him it can’t be based on results. I love Cotts but he didn’t get much of an opportunity in the Championship for all the reasons we know, still think we’d have stayed up under him but obvious the rules changed when he left. Which leads me on to LJ, the Man U game was incredible but he received backing like no manager before or since & didn’t achieve much with it. 17/18 side was a truly excellent one, though.

Yep & the Piercy article today suggests as you say, that Nige likes the area very much & wants to carry on with the job that he’s started & in my opinion, is doing extremely well. Absolutely no reason to doubt that is the case just because he’s 60 now.

Same as the Massengo situation, absolute horseshit for Alexander to claim last night the compensation for him was “already factored in”. HNM (well, mainly his Dad) pissed about nearly all summer before going back to their first offer from Burnley, so it is ludicrous for him to claim we knew all along what the compensation figure would be, when as I understand it, the rules are different if he joined an English club as opposed to a foreign one. I guess they will say Gardiner-Hickman was signed on loan instead of Thomason, Tim is absolutely spot on however about Bryan, no way is his replacement signing (Haydon Roberts) on the same money, the Kalas contract, HNM, loads of this narrative simply doesn’t ring true.

He isn’t reading this, he couldn’t give a **** what City supporters think. His comments in the recent past along the lines of “it is my money and club and I’ll do what I want” tell you everything about how we are viewed, as an income stream who should be forever grateful & uncritical.

Belarus is currently in UEFA, that’s pretty much the antithesis of a democracy. Russia was also in it until invading Ukraine. Azerbaijan & Kazhakhstan are in UEFA & aren’t remotely democratic & not sure Israel is a democracy as I would describe a true one, based on not allowing a great percentage of citizens living on land it is stealing on an ongoing basis the right to vote. Turkey’s elections are consistently described as not “free & fair”, either.

First bit, yes. Who says we are “top 8?” We have only played 5 bloody games. We know the money isn’t up front, but Alexander is now saying the plan all along was to sign those 4 players for about £4.5m because we knew Scott was being sold & SL was only a guarantor if that didn’t actually happen. What sort of a plan is that? Spend £4.5m & get whatever up front for Scott to cover, clearly a darn sight more. Bloody good job about the Academy too because it is obvious now that even after taking a significant amount off the wage bill & being at least £25m up on transfer fees this year, we couldn’t even field a team let alone have our tiny squad otherwise. It all makes little sense to me still.

He was on loan to Wimbledon last season then featured for Swindon against us in a pre season friendly but clearly they didn’t want him. No.

Kicking off in 20 minutes at home to Wigan. Bajic starts, along with Knight-Level, Araoye, Idehen, Taylor-Clarke, Sam Pearson & Yeboah of those involved with first team experience.

100%. For me this is why he & Alexander are starting to reference Luton all the time. Whatever we think of them their recruitment is consistently excellent & whilst they have increased costs, they still have a relatively small budget. However what they did last season is a massive outlier in how sides get promoted & you also need a year where parachute payment sides don’t do well & that’s rare too. We are basically at the lottery win to go up likelihood stage of SL’s ownership. Sides like Birmingham, Stoke & even those jokers over the bridge supposedly under an embargo are bringing in far more players. SL thinks we’re stupid or plebs, or both. Sell up now.

If I couldn’t love him any more just found out that he Tweeted today “one team in Bristol” & “that day against the gas will never be forgotten”. Pure class.

Think he also said Luton (our owner’s new favourite comparison) had a “small squad” last season. Utter bollocks, in 22/23 they used 30 players, it might have been a cheap one in terms of wages but it was about 8 players bigger.

Final one on the Gardiner-Hickman comment. He said it was “part of the plan” to sell Scott but “not part of the plan” to bring in TGH, that was only because of McCrorie’s injury. By my maths therefore even if McCrorie, Weimann & Conway were all fit (Atkinson & Benarous were already injured at this point) we were always looking to run this season on a squad of 21 players, which is just one more than you can name in a squad & with one senior goalkeeper. That is both madness & contradictory to Pearson’s comments about expecting to replace Scott. Doesn’t add up & why Hoskin didn’t question him on this is baffling. You’re no GT, that’s for sure.

He did. Which is why I thought Hoskins so poor. GT would have done his research & said our 4 summer signings were a total of £4.5m say, but Scott went for £25m. He was also allowed to go unchecked mentioning we spent money in January (£1.3m) when we got over £9m for Semenyo. Hard not to draw the conclusion SL is pulling up the drawbridge, but he was allowed to spin the “we’re still ambitious” “Luton did it” nonsense. If SL wants to stop funding us fine, sell up & **** off then.

Agostino’s in the riot game for me, though Tainton scored a cracker at Eastville in ‘74..

Just listened; A couple of observations, firstly I don’t understand his contention that signing Gardiner-Hickman on loan wasn’t “part of the plan” & was only done because of injuries, because that then implies we were always selling Scott (he admitted as much) but going to go with just the 4 signings from the summer. Wasn’t picked up on this. Next the £20m reference confused me, was he saying we had reduced our wage bill to £20m or our losses? I didn’t get why there were no follow up questions, especially as Hoskins seemed to run out of them well before the end & started asking stuff that had already been said. Didn’t see the Pearson contract bit in quite the same way as others, just didn’t want to say anything on it. Overall I thought it was poor, no attempt was made to ask him how come we have lost so many in numbers, shaved a sum off the wage bill & brought in 2 big fees yet we are supposed to still be aiming for top six on a tiny squad. An opportunity lost for me.

I remember one home game under Cotts (won 4-0) where I thought the full back that was supposedly marking him was going to cry. He was beating him for skill time after time so he tried to get physical & put his shoulder into him & JET knocked him somewhere almost into North Somerset. We had the best of him & even when we as a team were crap, he was outrageously good.

Loved him, had genius level skills. When it was dire under O’Driscoll (which frankly was most of the time) he was often the only thing worth watching. Took the slowest penalties ever & this goal is arguably the best I have seen in a game against the blue few in 50 years.