The Bard

It's an easy ride isn't it? Well paid to train, be a good team man and get the occasional game. Bentley is experienced which is all they wanted for that spot (plus being homegrown).

We were 1.0 up till late on. A draw was fair. I didn't see the Hull game but it sounded like we should have won comfortably.

It's not hard at all. You take 8 points, divide it by 5 and multiply by 46... Another statistic I like that shows whether we are better or worse than before is comparative results. This season we are a point better off. 5 less points at home but 6 more points away from the equivalent fixtures. If we get ourselves on target for 70+ points after say 10 to 12 games that is a very good trend IMO. 17 points off 10 games means 3 wins and 2 losses or 2 wins and 3 draws from our next 5 games. It's really not that difficult. Some perspective is needed.

For all our panic/negativity etc, we have 8 points from 5 games. 1.6 points per game. Extrapolate that to 46 games and you have 73.6 points which is either in or very close to the play offs. When you consider we've lost our best player, have significant players out etc, it's hardly a disaster is it? We've had 2 poor performances IMO, one of which was a cup game. We were definitely the better side v Hull and Preston as well and could have stolen a point at home to Birmingham. In other words we are highly competitive. Perhaps a few of us need to chill the **** out?

Yes really. I am genuinely amazed that people think Bentley is better. If I were a centre half I know which keeper I'd rather have playing behind me. Give me solid, reliable and calm over spectacular but erratic and nervy anyday.

Bentley was dropped because he was a liability. Watch the highlights of Birmingham away last season to see the precise reason.

'We' don't. Unfortunately we've had a long line of owners who aren't good decision makers. It's that simple.

They will but if we show some improvement we could beat them. If I were betting on it, I would go with Argentina v Fiji and Australia v England in the quarters. Us v the Aussies is 50/50. Fiji at 16/1 to win the group is a fantastic bet though.

1. There's no luck of the draw. This one seems mostly engineered. Seedings from 3 years ago have given England a very kind draw and worked against South Africa, Scotland and Ireland in particular. 2. In 2007 we had a side with world cup winners in it who grabbed hold of things. We look rudderless now. We need to do more than perk up. 3. Having said all that, surely we can beat Japan, Chile and Samoa and thus get a QF vs Australia, Wales or Fiji? We can be shite and get to the semis basically. 4. As soon as we play one of France, South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand or Scotland we're surely going to come second.

Nurse!

Rumour was he got the job after someone from the FA was chatting to his sister at a reception at Downing Street celebrating women in sport.

I can remember Lauren Hemp's debut for City as a 16 year old. Had taken my daughter's team to a tournament at SGS in the afternoon and we watched City v Watford afterwards. She came on with half an hour left and within about 3 minutes the crowd were buzzing. She just got it and skinned 2 or 3 defenders every time she had it. Was blindingly obvious she was destined for great things.

If we've kept our cool about the spying nonsense and this then we'll have an edge over them. It is indicative of an inferiority complex on the Aussies' part

It looked like it. That tall left armer looked so out of depth it was painful. Just serving up a load of pies to get spanked all over the place

Or maybe he should just allow people who know what they're doing do those things?

He played earlier in the day..

Didn't do bad did it?

They closed off balls into midfield which is precisely why we ended up hitting long balls

I thought football wise we looked disjointed. Probably a reflection of our preseason being completely mixed ( Don't think Vyner and Dickie played together before yesterday). Was most disappointed with the midfield which got locked into 3 x 1 on 1 battles and left us isolated wide. Think.he got the strikers the wrong way round- Wells would've been far more effective off the bench, Conway better starting. Full backs were decent defensively but not good with the ball. Hopefully we'll soon settle as we are clearly match fit

Where's the pub? Like the sound of it

Reading/watching/listening to a few of these, all be it briefly, there is just so much laziness and/or slavish obsession to the established narratives that they aren't really going to be illuminating. They obsess about the 3 teams coming down, the 3 that came up and the ones that missed out in the play offs. Some teams literally go unmentioned. I think we've got our best chance of a play off challenge since the Webster season. Then we had a well balanced squad with a sprinkling of high quality and I think that's the case now. I think we will be more consistent and less likely to be 'found out'. If you consider that Millwall, Sunderland, Coventry and Blackburn basically fought it out for 4th and 5th places last season, it makes you realise there really isn't a massively high bar to reach to be a play off team. It's worth noting that 3 of those have seasoned managers in charge and so do we. We are in the position to challenge and it would be a big let down if we don't get amongst it this season. That's obviously different to saying we're getting promoted. However, I get the feeling that if we did get amongst it we would maintain our challenge in contrast to the previous 3 opportunities we had under Lee Johnson.

That's from the Times? Standard of journalism is at an all time low. * Bristol City or just City please. * What relevance is our manager's age? * Mcrorie has been bought as a Right back * If Dickie ever plays Left back you'd have to wonder what the **** has happened.

It's consistent with someone whose prefrontal cortex hasn't developed fully.

But the evidence is he scores goals when making runs from deeper isn't it? Even a few when he had to play wing back.

Yeah, nightmare watching him score 22 goals from there the other year wasn't it?