Harry

Sad news. RIP Mrs Murray.

Currently on Talksport is the ex Liverpool CEO Peter Moores. He briefly mentioned about whenever he visited Crystal Palace and how welcoming and what a good guy Phil Alexander was. But we ditched him of course.

No one is suggesting anything about him being in the first team. Just showing some concern as to why he’s had 4 and half months off and not even a single minute for the 21’s.

Sounds ominous Phants!! I wonder if the South Stand kids pricing will be altered. It’s been a bone of contention on here that there are so many empty seats behind the goal (essentially the ‘home end’ is half empty most games).

Good summary Dan. Dave - the keeper, Reyes, gives me butterflies whenever the ball goes near him. He did pull off a couple of good close range saves but when the ball is in the air, I am hiding behind the sofa! For reference, it was his awful flapping that led to the late Wrexham equaliser last week. He seems to play very well and then make a complete blunder. FGR have really struggled for a decent keeper since their promotion year (and they’ve signed about 6 of them since then!!) Regarding Harvey Bunker - Dave and I have had a number of conversations about him. He’s always played as a DM but Cotts has moved him to LCB in a back 3 and he’s been solid there. As you say Dan, he got in the way of everything last night and was brilliant. Cotts then reacted to their half time subs and moved Bunker into midfield again to counter Jamie Walker coming on. And he did his job there too. I like Bunker - he’s a neat and tidy player with a good heart and desire.

Ha ha. Levi Ives mind! Now that was one bizarre episode

Your easy answer though isn’t even what I’m looking for. If one of them has managed 10 league 1 appearances, how come the other one hasn’t even managed a minute in the 21’s? I’m not at all bothered about first team bench. Just at least some minutes at any level please. I can’t fathom how someone can be on a 4 and half month pre season. I think we are being lied to. Again.

Tinnion tells us he was the best player in Ireland. He also tells us in yesterdays interview that he hasn’t featured yet as he is still in “pre season” as the Irish league only finished in November!! November mind!! His last game was 3rd November. So he’s had 4 months and 10 days off so far. This would be the equivalent of it now being 18th September if you take the same number of days since we ended our season on 8th May. Interestingly, the other “best player in Ireland” (my opinion), Jack Moylan, also finished on 3rd November but has now made 10 appearances for Lincoln. They gradually integrated him and he’s now started the last 2 and scored 4 goals. A couple of ‘wow’ goals too. Anyway, my point is, 2 players who finished the Irish season on 3rd November. 1 has now made 10 league 1 appearances, the other is so-say still in pre-season and hasn’t even had a single minute for our under 21’s. What’s REALLY going on with him?? Is Brian telling us porkies again. There’s no way this kid is still in early pre season mode. Why has he not played a single minute for the 21’s at the very least??

I miss the embarrassing visit to the photo shop, wondering if there is anything rude/incriminating on my holiday snaps and getting funny looks from the staff

Watched on a stream tonight. It was serious backs to the wall stuff. Took the lead after 45 seconds and it was basically a defensive wall for the rest of the game. I watch a fair bit of FGR and I’ll tell you for sure - since Cotts has arrived there is a very clear difference in how bloody hard these lads are working. They still lack quality, but flip me, they are working their nuts off. I think it says a lot about my current mood that I cheered Doidge’s goal tonight more than I cheered our goal v Swansea on Sunday!!

Weird isn’t it. Why would they take the squad photo on 27th Feb (6 months late) and then wait another 2 weeks to publish it?? It’s not like it has to go to the printers to get developed these days! I find this all very very odd

It appears as though Cornick still had his moustache in this photo. When did he shave it off, was it prior to the Shef Weds game? This photo was not taken in the last few days, maybe even the last couple of weeks. Which makes it even more odd as to why now?

Does that include the contents of brown envelopes??

Community Notes from Piercy. Superb.

Nah. Cheltenham. Punchestown is in Ireland.

Already on that one Joe.

Periodisation is a method of training where you break this down to 3 cycles, macro, meso and micro. It’s about designing training plans to achieve goals but breaking it down into constituent parts to account for heavy workloads and lighter workloads. Maybe some of you ought to register on the course to be able to get a grasp of this methodology.

He said he wanted to take a break from management for a bit. In fairness to him on these webinars, he wasn’t sure how much interest there would be. He’d initially put a post on LinkedIn asking if anyone would be interested in such a thing, and he’d figured he might have a dozen or so interested and he was going to run detailed sessions to a small number. But the interest on LinkedIn was vastly more than he anticipated and so is running these free ‘all-comers’ webinars instead now. I appreciate that he’s easily ridiculed by many but there is clearly interest from people outside of City, Sunderland and Hibs as to drawing on his experiences in the pro game. He’s been involved in 1,000 pro matches at 15 clubs and is willing to provide that experience, for free, to aspiring coaches, managers, recruiters etc. Surely it’s a good thing that he is ‘giving back’ to the game.

Yep. I had a conversation with Tinnion back in early September and he mentioned this. Basically for a number of years now we’ve been playing our kids ‘up a level’. The 16’s play in the 18’s, the 18’s play in the 21’s etc. It’s designed around a progressive pathway and affording the kids opportunity at higher age groups and thus higher quality levels. You could argue it’s been quite successful. It’s also allowed us to loan out players from our 21’s, because we’ll have the 18’s playing for the 21’s instead. In September, I asked about the reason there weren’t so many 21’s out on loan this year as yet. The answer was because the focus this year was on winning the 18’s Youth Cup. Further reasoning was that, and I quote “we’re really proud of the academy and what we’ve done, but we’ve got nothing to actually show for it, so we want some silverware”. So yes, Kid, we have purposely sabotaged our successful youth model (with knock on effect to the 21’s loan opportunities and 1st team experience opportunity) because we want to win the cup. Who was it said that at that level it’s not about winning it’s about the development of the players? We seem to have said “bollox to that this year, we want the cup”.

30 years eh?? That reminds me….. We’re crap at home, we’re crap at home, for years now, City’s crap at home ……. cuz I remember.. A Robin on a shirt, Johnson’s Paint still gleaming, 30 years of hurt, never my pants I’m creaming

I don’t think Dickie takes too many touches very often. He occasionally may have 3 or 4 when an immediate pass forward isn’t available and he thus shifts to the left for a pass to Pring or the right to Vyner. Re Mehmeti. Very different. He’s a winger. I’d expect wingers to take more touches of the ball as they are attempting to dribble and beat a man or create space. TGH takes too many touches for a CM. It slows us down massively. CM’s at this level should be 1 or 2 touch, 3 at max. He did this under the previous manager too so it’s not instruction. This thread has been on my radar ever since he arrived but I didn’t want to ‘go early’ as it were. So when someone else has notified this too I now find it’s time for me to say my piece. It’s happened all season, it’s not a regression under the new manager.

It’s not instruction. That’s a terrible excuse. You can’t blame a manager for a player taking 6 touches to think about his next move. It also happened under the previous manager. It’s not instruction, it’s the players speed of thought.

Yes yes yes. That was the bit I forgot to add to my post earlier. He regularly takes 4, 5 or 6 touches before moving the ball on. Watch the best midfielders in this division, it’s all 1 or 2 touch. Occasionally 3. Generally the best CM’s in this league take 1 touch to control it and manoeuvre the ball where they want it, and the 2nd touch to pass. It keeps the play uptempo. TGH slows the game down like no CM I’ve seen before. When he does the 1 and 2 touch stuff he’s fine, but more often than not it’s 4,5 or 6 touches. It bugs the bloody hell out of me!

I don’t think he was very good under the old one either. But that’s just my opinion.

As @Davefevs will know from our WhatsApp chats, I’m not a big fan of TGH. He’s a player with decent technique but I don’t see much more than that. He’s not very quick. He doesn’t tackle well (he’s often easily manoeuvred past and resorts to attempting to grab or pull or soft fouls). He often switches off in terms of defensive positioning (there’s been a few goals conceded from this lately). He gives the ball away very easily too often - there’s been a few incidents lately where he’s not played the easy pass in an attacking position and the opposition have broken away and had a chance or a goal). His set pieces are kind of okayish. Not brilliant but acceptable. He occasionally sees a good forward pass but it’s all too rare and he’s mostly just a very ‘safe’ passer. Think about this - West Brom were willing to pretty much swap a 22 year old academy product for a 34 year old ageing Weimann. I think there were some who suggested that West Brom sold because they needed the money - but what’s £1.3m? They could have made that sort of money up in numerous different ways. Ultimately, Corberan plays a high tempo style and TGH simply didn’t fit. Corberan was happy to sell. I personally don’t see TGH as a regular in any other top 12 team in this league. Sorry. I think we could have spent that money better. He’s not a ‘bad’ player by any means, but he is rather ineffective and just very ‘meh’.