Eddie Hitler

Everyone moaning about this commentator should think themsleves lucky that they live in the RB signal area and that RB provides full commentary on City games. If I could listen to this I would be happy with Joe Pasquale and Bobcat as co-commentators. Anything better than that is a bonus.

Yes. The lack of consistency must make it very hard for existing and prospective senior staff to deal with. I understand that FFP brings its own constraints, and that these were made clear to NP prior to accepting the three year contract, but not allowing the spending of the windfall £25m surplus is applying an artificial constraint to the manager beyond FFP. Such didn't happen under GJ or the MA/LJ double headed regime where spending everything possible was the de facto policy. Whether that is favouritism, simple inconsistency, or an exit strategy is then the question.

Yes. In business planning you have an agreed budget but update the forecast through the year with projected variances from that budget. If there is no specific and justified reason for those variances then they have to be eliminated as far as possible. If however there is a good reason for one which was not known, or not certainly known, when the budget was set then the forecast variance becomes accepted and replaces the budget. For BCFC there should have been at least two budgets prepared: one if Alex was sold and one if he wasn't. You don't just stick rigidly to one budget when the initial assumptions of that budget have been proven to be wrong because of new information. I'm a finance guy but I know that finance is there to inform operational decisions in real time and not to put wholly unnecessary shackles upon a business. Accountants don't just say "No". Or rather shouldn't, if they are any good.

Very well done Sir!

Also a brilliant one. I do know it though I will leave it for someone to work it out for themselves.

To give him the benefit of the doubt and that he's not Henbury Gas blatantly inventing lies then possibly he's mixing it up with this: Ashton Vale plans mean new council homes - and a new station for Ashton Gate? Council plan to build their own new homes - with space for a station too Around 140 new homes, including 56 new council houses, will finally be built on an area of land near Ashton Gate – which could also provide space for a new station to serve the football and rugby stadium. Council chiefs gave the go-ahead to use the Bristol City Council-owned land, known as the Alderman Moores site in Ashton Vale, to build houses on, years after it was first identified as a site for possible housing. But instead of selling off the land to a private developer and then trying to persuade that firm to include council homes or ‘affordable housing’ on the site, housing chief Paul Smith got the backing of the council’s cabinet to do the development themselves. https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/ashton-vale-plans-mean-new-7338

My favourite ever crossword clue; the letter spaces are (6,5): 014 The size, font and emboldening have no meaning and are just to make it easier to read on a screen. In real life I have asked several people this and only one even came close so I prompted her slightly and she got it right. I don't think that I would get it.

New owners of football clubs always think that they know better than other or previous owners and immediately start splashing the cash in the expectation of instant and ongoing success. They may get one good season out of it but it will soon fall apart and then usually the money's gone and they're back to tight budgets and trying to avoid relegation. I'm not having a go at the new Kuwaiti owner, Wael or the Lansdowns as if I had the spare funds to buy a football club and start playing fantasy football for real then I think I would be easily as reckless and as trusting of football "experts". Because we all think that it's going to be different this time, because it's me that's doing it. I entirely agree with your post btw.

I'm expecting QPR to sign him up, he was excellent in his time there before being sold for top dollar (a club record). I don't think it would work out here though.

It may well be that far back that it showed bias.

IMO the BEP certainly used to have a pro-Rovers bias, which was especially noticeable when there were arrests for football related trouble: City arrests headlined but Rovers arrests quietly tucked away, but to be entirely fair I haven't noticed that for a few years now. Other than that I agree.

Great, good to hear.

The success of the English national women's team is a good thing IMO, new girls' teams have been springing up all over the country with massive motivation to play football because they're inspired by that success. And it gives the opportunity for a lot of people to feel part of something national. I'm not interested, as I'm not interested in cricket, rugby league or swimming for that matter, but it seems rather churlish to keep knocking it as some are. Though I'm certainly not saying that you're doing that. And if the current interest translates into a load more paying spectators for the women's football league or for TV coverage of their games then their pay will increase. That's how it works. It's only the childish comparisons of the media to 1966 which irk, and they seem deliberately designed to annoy people. Clickbait if you will.

I would say that it has risen above being a minority sport now and is a "proper" senior sport. That doesn't mean that it necessarily has the depth of support of the men's games where there are decent crowds all the way down the pyramid, but it's probably pushing or has exceeded men's rugby league or union, or cricket these days for participants and paying specatators. And I say that as someone who has no interest in women's football so I have no bias towards it. Nothing really touches men's football as a spectator sport in this country. It's unfair to always use that as a comparator IMHO.

Yup. Footballers and entertainers generally are paid a portion of the gates receipts / ticket sales they generate. I am sure that the players of Torquay train just as hard as those of Man City, there is no complaint that they receive less in a year than Man City players do in a week. They aren't salaried roles where you are paid to carry out a particular function to a required level, those should be equally paid.

Flares. Good innit?

I hope everyone in those stands joins in, this dragon display by Porto shows how good these can become.

Absolutely that. Look at all the highly qualified and fully badged up assistant managers who step up to being a full manager and it's an absolute disaster because they don't have the man management skills that such a job requires. Brian Kidd was the classic example of this. Superb assistant manager, terrible manager. The best preparation for being a good manager of a big club is to start in the lower leagues and prove yourself there. Brian Kidd's dire managerial career: 1998–1999 Blackburn Rovers Kidd left United to take charge at Blackburn Rovers in December 1998, replacing Roy Hodgson who had been sacked after Blackburn's poor start to the season left them in the relegation zone. Despite Kidd having a promising start with Rovers, which saw him voted Premier League Manager of the Month and having also spent nearly £20 million on new players in his first four months in charge he was unable to save them from being relegated from the Premier League (just four years after being champions) and Kidd was dismissed on 3 November 1999 with Rovers standing 19th in Division One Brian Kidd's absolutely superb assistant managerial career: 1988–1991 Manchester United (youth team) 1991–1998 Manchester United (assistant) 2000–2003 Leeds United (assistant) 2003–2004 England (assistant) 2006–2008 Sheffield United (assistant) 2009 Portsmouth (assistant) 2009 Manchester City (youth team) 2009–2010 Manchester City (assistant) 2010–2021 Manchester City (co-assistant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kidd

Betting man who throws it all away like so many of them, Keith Gillespie springs to mind.

Indeed. We can still win this.

I think it's great that we can count amongst our chairmen and managers a successful musician, a film star, and an England national team manager. It's much better than being a run of the mill club.

In the Championship we are the nineteenth least safe for car crimes or, put another way, very safe. Full survey: https://www.scrapcarcomparison.co.uk/blog/match-day-parking/

No, just tried and straight in as normal. This is on an Android phone.

I look at it that they're copying us, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.