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4 minutes ago, old_eastender said:

Well done Max, coming and catching the ball from a corner

Skocking pass again from Vyner, loses us possession.

Shocking or misplaced?

4 hours ago, Swede said:

Although its a lovely ground to visit, many a time I've come away disappointed. Without wanting to put a downer on tonight but whenever I think of the Hawthorns a flashback [or is it a shudder] of the "Welchy bobble" comes to mind   

Game had a 0-0 written all over it until Stuart Monroe (I think) passed back to Welchie. We all watched in horror as the ball bobbled over his foot and trickled into the net. 

5 hours ago, pongo88 said:

The only match I really enjoyed away to West Brom was in the promotion season of 75-76. I great 1-0 win. Most of it since has been a bit of a disappointment 

To be fair it was like the Alamo. God knows how we managed to hold on for the win. That season we often found a way to win whatever the performance. 

Just as well give him a run of games. After all he can’t do worse than **** up every cross. 

Weinman  has reverted to his pre last season form which unfortunately appears to be the reality. That’s pretty much it. 

5 hours ago, Red DNA said:

Why bring in someone else - who also won’t have money to spend - in fact, even less as we’ll have to pay off Pearson and no doubt half of the back room staff who will also be replaced by the contacts of the new manager / coach?

It’s not pretty and it’s never going to be easy but a revolving door of managers is not the answer, Pearson is the best we expect to get at this moment in time  

 

I don’t get this can’t change the manager bollox. 
Watford for example change their manager at the drop of a hat and have had several promotions from our division. Frankly Pearson has been crap with as bad a win ratio as most any manager we have had. He’s had long enough and if you don’t change something then nothing will change. 

5 hours ago, gl2 said:

F.F.S yes, if every team below us win their games in hand we are one place above relegation, then take into account our undoubted form.....Rubbish.. who wouldnt be. Add in our next 3 games WBA, Reading and Swansea 

What has happened since the break? we are a shadow of what we were before, maybe the next W, Cup break will reverse our form? as I cant see multi million pound transfers for many of our lot in the next window.

NP has a good and not so good record unfortunately cant see anyone else doing much better atm; so we "should" be too good to go down but they are famous last words....worried.

Worried you bet I am. Frankly we are nailed on bottom 6. And the trouble is that may easily be bottom 3. 

In my opinion Preston and Millwall are pivotal to our season. The confidence must be low after 1 point in the last 5 games. Positive results in the next 2 games will obviously improve it (and out points total) but poor performances and defeats and confidence will be rock bottom. 

3 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Firstly, we were crap yesterday.

 

Ian starts off in arrogant mood, like he owns the pod.  The points he made were actually fine in his opening, why give it the “if anyone disagrees they can contact me”.  Dud he forget he’s on a podcast mate, why not wait to see what debate is sparked on the media channel you’re on?  Lordy, Lordy!!!

Mark over-reaction in his opening too…how many players does he think we have, and although it’s disappointing to see so many play badly “hope it’s the last time they pull on a City shirt” is a shit fan’s comment imho.  As you say Dave - severe comment - wished you’d followed up with asking him who else.

@Curr Avon can you name those players, you said it was more than Massengo?

So the pod started well for me then

Klose - maybe he wasn’t fit enough to start, just like Antoine wasn’t either this season.  What Klose did last season was come into the club with a level of fitness (having been at Basel training), not yesterday when he’s returning from injury.  That’s a big difference.  Surely there has to be a bit more thought than “if he’s fit to be on the bench, he’s fit to start”.  There’s more than one way to bring a player into the fold, especially after injury.

Possesion - when is anyone gonna realise there is often zilch correlation of possession to performance / result.

Unacceptable - agree.  First time this season - agree, so why not treat it as a one-off rather than the shitstorm  rhetoric that followed.

Dasilva - his corners v Cov were right on the money, open-play a different kettle of fish.  But I can see why he  was put on set-pieces?

Every now and again, it would help if someone just took a few seconds to think of the other side of the coin.  As host you can play Devil’s advocate too.

”I’ve never seen a zone score a goal” - what nonsense is that?  It’s a defensive corner set-up.  It isn’t meant to score from a 100 yards from the opponents goal.

Loans - c’mon start quoting his current stance.  He’s told you he’s up for loans.  Whether the finances are…more on that in a second.

Relegated teams - Burnley won yesterday.  Agree that it’s a tight division with no standout teams, but if that’s the case why try to prove a point when one of them loses?  It’s gonna happen regularly.

Compo for Gould?  Dave - you’re the headhunter, and with Ashton, you told us there would be no compo, he’d have an employment contract, you should’ve put Ian right at this point (you did later ).  We won’t get £1m! 

Re signings - and look at which pond we are getting them from.  Very few of the 12 are signings we’d have made in the spend thrift days.  We are cutting our cloth.  You all know that, none of you are stupid, but it’s never mentioned.  Back to loans, can we afford them?  Hopefully accounts out very soon (Womens have been published).  That’ll give us a clue to how tight the finances are.  You know I think we were just over the £39m in my estimates but that I reckon the EFL have allowed us a bit more covid allowance.  If that’s the case, there is no money for anything, perms nor loans.  When will that sink in?  You can’t doctor the accounts.  Okay, you can if you’re Derby!!!

Ian (Dave you can pass on this if he’s not having a little look on here) - it’s not a choice of “if you can’t get a player better than what you have, go and get a loan”…they use up the same effing budget.  Honestly, if you can’t get your head around that, any recruitment discussion is void through ignorance.  LOANS AREN’T FREE and THEY AREN’T NECESSARILY CHEAPER THAN PERM SIGNINGS EITHER.  In fact some work out more expensive.  We don’t have a pot to piss in.

Birmingham - FFP cycle working differently since they got done by EFL.  Plus don’t forget they sold Che Adams one season, Jude Bellingham the next, that sorted out their immediate issues.  You cannot compare their financial state to ours….currently.  That’s why they can afford loans.  But they also got rid of a dozen players too, mainly OOC but a couple of nominal fees for a couple to go back to Spain.

There has to be a modicum of “fact checking” / challenge to wild statements thrown out.  The pod lacks credibility in places if you don’t do that.  I have no issues with the football match opinions expressed (many I agree with today).  You tar a whole season with one shit performance.  That’s unfair isn’t it?.

By all means express the worrying trend over the past few / four / five games.  I can buy that.  But you completely resort to “everything is shit and has been all season”.  That’s not been the case has it.

Moving onto Wednesday

WSM - sensible comment from Ian re why Andi might not be playing as well.

Naismith signing - is he filling the squad up?

Followed by “I’d rather see the kids play”…that’s what we are doing anyway aren’t we?  That contradicts everything said earlier on re recruitment.

Key players out - yep, let’s be a little less reactive until most of them are available then.  Klose and Williams can come back in this week.

So then we get re Nige “I didn’t tell them to do that”, so why is it wholly his fault.  Of course he takes some of the flack, rightly so.

The window / Scott - good scouts will be looking beyond recent performances in an assumed poor bottom three City team!  Isn’t he allowed a poor game (in a poor team performance).  For me (and Nige) he was one player trying to drive us on.  It won’t affect his value.  Appreciate it’s a pod to discuss scenarios.

“You couldn’t sell them based on current performances” - how many games constitute “current performances” (plural) or is it just take a one game view, eh?.  A really pathetic take (for Semenyo / Scott).  Have they played particularly badly, not to my recollection.

Wage budget has gone down - it will potentially go down even further in the summer.  Do I trust him.  You trust him to bring a budget down at the expense of being able to recruit good enough players.  It’s not a one%way street! You then use Lg2 George Tanner (£300k and a relative small wage) to prove that point.  Crikey, this isn’t Marley Watkins level recruitment (£900k and £12k per week allegedly), let’s have some sense of scale in the debate.

Matty James - has anyone at the club given James a timescale?  Not to my knowledge.  Happy to be corrected.

Williams - what do you do with him then?  If you think he’s that bad, who would buy him?  He’s been available every league game bar suspension, Nige hinted there will have to be a time to stop carefully managing him.

Aspiration of 8 points from 4 games - nice to get, absolutely, but that is just hope not a basis to judge the results against.  That’s your own fault for setting it.  The club didn’t set it.

then it becomes…next week’s expectation

4 points from 2 games - why do we “have to”, why is it a “must”.

Better that we get back to being competitive, playing better, results will come.  If results come instantly great, but we need to play better first.

Richard Gould - thanks, you did correct him did Mark Ashton have a contract, he just saw his agreed notice out didn’t he?  “We don’t know”….correct.  So don’t make stuff up initially and state it as fact Ian!  My view (my guesswork) was that SL realised (eventually) MA had done the dirty on him and put him on gardening leave, calling him out for the odd public appearance.  Bit like Brezhnev who was allegedly dead for a year or so before they finally pronounced him dead!  They used to wheel him out, hands moved by someone else, like Spitting Image!

Recruitment Team - don’t disagree, the jury is out, has been over a long period of time.  But we also need to be mindful of the pond Nige has fished in versus Johnson.  If all those players do leave we should be in a financial position to recruit better.  Whether we can execute remains to be seen.  Agree (this summer) we should be able to compete to recruit with the likes of the teams you mentioned.  Naismith is an example of how we could recruit better, even in free transfers.

Mark Ashton was a good administrator / ops manager, shame he got ideas above his station.

Sorry if this come across critically….I did say there were bits I agreed with.

Dave - I know the challenge back will be - why don’t you come on.  I would love to but timing doesn’t suit.  Just think there’s too much “fake news” thrown in without thought, nor any challenge back to some statements.

“Fiercely Independent” is absolutely fine btw.

Balancing views doesn’t mean sucking up to the club either!!!  Sometimes it’s worth trying to put yourself in the decision makers shoes and trying to see the rationale.

Do you ever ask yourself why you bother to listen to the FBC podcast? For me it best represents my views so I listen to every episode. They are just passionate city fans, of very many years, like us who are expressing their views. If you don’t agree with them so what. It’s all no big deal really, don’t bother to listen. By the way I wish I could be as balanced as you are about the club I love and have been watching for 65 years. 

Mid table? Before the season started I considered us bottom 6. Problem with bottom 6 it could be bottom 3. 
I think 50 points plus may be required to stay up this season as there is no Derby, Peterborough or Barnsley.
I don’t think any of the current bottom 4 will go down (possibly Huddersfield?) and it’s not obvious who will finish below us. Perhaps Rotherham, Wigan, Blackpool, Hull but there’s no one nailed on like last season. 

26 minutes ago, Red-Robbo said:

 

I'm glad someone else noticed this.

Play him up front he scores goals. Play him wide or behind a front pairing he doesn't. 

When we played the W-S-M trio I thought Andi played behind the front 2 of CM & AS. He proceeded to have his most productive spell of the season (I think). 

4 hours ago, gl2 said:

What has happened to one of the previously most feared forwards/goalscorers in this division? Is it that he is now not playing such a forward roll? has Conway/Wells up top pushed his nose out and hes miffed? just a bad patch? the fire in his belly seems to have gone out and at the same time our results have dropped off.

Yes the defence has made many errors and the mid-field has been chopped and changed but Weimanns "form" "playing roll" has as well, all at the same time.....resulting in....well our results/form.

 What’s happened to Andi? He’s just reverted back to the Andi we knew prior to last season when many thought he was just an ordinary championship player. Perhaps last season was a freak season? (Hope not though as we need him back to last season’s form smartish). 

18 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Some might look at what Matty James brings when fit.

I’m not really sure what James brings as a midfielder. Tough tackler no, creating chances no, killer passes no, scoring goals no. Perhaps he brings qualities I cannot see such as a calm head and organisation which can be important.

Problem is whatever it is he brings injuries and missing games never seems far away. 

19 hours ago, ashton_fan said:

Our defence looked ok towards the end of last season once Klose came in, we seem to have gone backwards this season 

And Cundy for Kalas, make of that what you will. 

19 hours ago, And Its Smith said:

I’m not loving life after that performance.  You more than anyone must know how Ian thrives on a defeat. 

It is 4 defeats in last 5 though and 1 point from 15. Many fans will find that unacceptable especially the last 3 games. 

Just now, old_eastender said:

Long overdue but James (who has contributed nothing much today) off, HNM on

and AW. 

Just now, Super said:

For me Pearson should have made changes to starting line up today. Norwich was a tough game maybe a couple just to bring in fresh legs.

The fresh legs this half have made us worse. 

7 minutes ago, GlastonburyRed said:

soccer24hd has it, although often without sound bizarrely

Link please. 

Just now, RedorDead BCFC said:

Was that a save then? 

No before that. 

What was Bentley doing there?

3 minutes ago, ralphindevon said:

It was for me but now stopped

Started again but no sound. 
 

19 hours ago, Sir Geoff said:

Only by the negative bed wetters who crave instant success.

Crave instant success? I’ve been going to watch city since 1957/58. I don’t think Pearson is up to the job but that’s got nothing to do with craving instant success. 

22 hours ago, Robbored said:

Ian Gay is the most pessimistic City ‘fan’ that I’ve ever met and I’m convinced that he makes up loads of bullshit as you quite rightly say.

Must be an attempt to appear that he’s got special inside information that’s not accessible to anyone else - that of course strokes his already inflated ego.

What really irritates me with him is his constant knocking of Nige with ‘facts’ all of which have no reasoned context whatsoever.

He refuses to post on here because he reckons we have no idea about what’s really going on……… but the truth is it’s because his views and opinions would get ripped to shreds on here.

 I think he doesn’t post on here because some others, who also post their opinions, were perhaps rude and abusive. I appear to be about the only one who missed his contribution on OTIB and generally listen to the FBC podcast.  

Imagine the uproar in the Premier league if, for instance, relegated Norwich were playing Arsenal and fielded a team of mostly inexperienced youngsters. Arsenal won 7-0 which meant they finished 4th on goals scored and pushed Spurs to 5th therefore Arsenal securing the final Champions league spot and the financial rewards that go with it.

However this is only 4th division Northampton so no one in the EFL really cares (except NTFC and their fans). 

Just now, maxjak said:

Tiptoe through the Tulips!..........(For older Members!!)

Tiptoe through the east end.