Spike

I could accept the getting off of twitter, mental health and social media can really go against each other but the comment of "see you in the Premier League" just said everything, he's too arrogant to accept any criticism and being as he's in such a high position in the club and we already have this issue with the Lansdowns it's clear to see that Tinnion and the Lansdowns will never care what the fans think as "they know best", the truth is they don't and they're not strong enough to accept that they don't have the answers.

Simply put Zak isn't being protected as he was when Nigel was here. There is a reason Nigel changed us to a back 4 and that was to protect Zak. I've been saying for ages that his positioning and decision making under pressure are awful so what Nigel did was got us to sit deeper and counter attack, this meant the opposition had less space to play into around Zak so he could play with more protection around him and he had less space to cover. Manning had us attacking the game today towards the end with a higher line meaning we were on the front foot as opposed to when Nigel coached us we were usually on the back foot under more pressure and looking for that counter. Manning put faith in Zak to be able to cover that space and the goal happened because Zaks positioning was awful and he didn't know where to position himself which has always been his problem. The short of it is if we want to play possession football and attack the opposition by pushing the line up then Dickie and Atkinson playing there, Zak will always be prone to mistakes in this new set up. You won't see any improvement until Manning can get the right personnel for this new direction in how we are planning to play. Atkinson needs to replace Vyner and we need creativity on the wings, Weimann won't offer that, Sykes needs to find form and most of all the whole team need to adapt and improve in their passing decisions. Nigel has a different approach to most, he looked at what we had and built a system that got the best out of players by supporting those who needed it and building on the strengths in the squad. Manning appears to be taking what we have and finding the best combination to get his system to work, unfortunately we're missing key players for that so he's going to have to get them up to speed or move them on and bring in the quality he needs to make his system work. At no point have I said Manning is a better manager or coach, I simply said the only thing I see improvement in was in that we didn't sit back and try and soak up pressure for 30 minutes at the end of the game, instead we pushed forward. Ultimately today that actually cost us, but if we want to win games we do need to start taking control of games and imposing ourselves on the opposition rather than trying to allow them to dictate the game and catch them with a counter attack. I mean Vyner is a great professional but as I said above, to get the best out of him you have to build the defense and midfield around him to prevent him being in situations that he cannot handle. If we're going to play possession football where we actually try to impose ourselves on the opposition then we can't do that. Vyner is bad at reading positioning and today was a prime example, his own goal was another as he made a decision based on where he thought Max was. In a back 3 with him on the right or left he's prone to creating spaces behind him by pressing when he shouldn't or by tracking forward when the wing backs push up. Vyner is a great bloke, a great professional too, but that comes at a cost. You either set up to protect him from his own mistakes or you will see more incidents like today. Agreed, he's got a good attitude and drive but he's never been a player to take a man on, he rarely gets in behind players because we don't play those kinds of passes he thrives on and he's crap at coming in from wide positions to take shots. He works hard but he has no end product in this system. I think Manning, with the boards permission, may actually get rid of a few and look for more attacking minded players who are willing to run at a player or play a pass into more central advanced positions but for now Manning is playing a system that we don't have the quality in certain positions to pull off. I'm as frustrated as anyone, I'd also take Pearson back in a heart beat because Manning doesn't suit a club who won't invest in his vision and I don't think this club will. Pearson got the lads playing for him, he used strengths to cover weaknesses in players and most importantly he worked to the players strengths rather than asking players to do things that just aren't a part of their game and probably never will be.

100% Vyners positioning let him down again, I'm fed up of saying his positioning is shit.

For all the negatives the one positive I will say is we're looking for that late winner and we're on the front foot, that's something we rarely saw under Pearson, we'd usually be the team holding on for dear life at 1-1 in the dying minutes.

Yet another big waste of possession there, this time Williams. We waste so much possession by playing piss poor passes and I don't think the strikers are the real issue with us not doing anything, it's the chance creation. Yes we create chances but compare them to successful teams and our real quality type of chances are far and through, if we created more then we wouldn't be noticing strikers missing good chances because they'd be getting enough quality chances to find their consistency. I think if you give any of our strikers 3 quality chances they'll bury at least one, the issue is they're not getting 3, they're getting one, maybe two a game, the only striker who has a 100%/50% conversion with chances to goals will most likely be going up or moving to a Prem team. Our real issue is converting possession into the final third into real goal scoring opportunities as opposed to half chances regularly, something we've not done since Pearson first got us playing a fast counter style of football and in my personal opinion we have very few players who do that with this possession style of football, I'd say at best we have Mehmeti (when on form), Sykes (again, when on form) and occasionally Knight through his battling. We lack any real creative types who can create a dangerous attack by themselves, the kind of thing Scotty did regularly meaning we had better quality chances more often and allowed our strikers to find form.

Same issue with LM as when NP was here, Weimann is a worker, I'd imagine in training he looks sharp and on point, the issue is he's never been great on the pitch unless he's deployed as the out and out striker and he only had one season where he was given that chance but what with Wells, Bell, Conway, Cornick etc he'll never be given that role and in any other role he runs a whole lot and produces very little. I can see why managers pick him but they need to be braver when it comes to the games and his lack of impact and drop him or even move him on.

It's one of those things I don't think training can fix, to me it comes down to the mentalities of the players, you can't recreate a game where the outcome matters in training. In a match where points are on the line the pressure is higher, in training they can simulate it but ultimately the players know it's still training. Somehow the mentality has to be changed, maybe simulate a game and when someone scores the game stops, and they run through how that's affecting the league standings, which makes each goal show it's value in a real situation. I'm not sure how you train a player to be more composed but we certainly need someone who does because we concede so many silly goals, give away so much possession through bad passes and we're hardly firing regularly when it comes to goals so clean sheets matter more than ever.

Why are we always so "unlucky", Vyner with his headed own goal, Tanner with this deflection... I can't help but think it's down to our own composure when under pressure.

Yeah but this is our fans all over, even when we're winning there has to be someone to complain about. I mean I've seen us make so many wayward passes, despite being the better team of that half for the most and none of those players are being targeted.

I've got the Birmingham game on as well and at 3-1 down they're showing more fight than us currently.

Yeah, they may as well say "Yay Southampton"....

See I don't mind mash-up shirts but I wouldn't wear them out. I see them more as display art pieces, they're essentially little bits of nostalgia stitched together. I like them in a frame but in terms of an actual item of clothing I'd wear, no.

I have to disagree with that, we won games but I remember vividly watching us playing and thinking "damn we were lucky we got away with that" on numerous occasions under Cotterill and that was with arguably the best squad in the league at that time. I mean we made numerous mistakes whilst playing under Cotterill but they are often forgotten because ultimately we won the league and a cup to boot, so it's easy to forget the bad football we played under him too. I tend to focus on the negatives of a football team's set up because I'm very much of the eliminate the mistakes and you're only left with positives mindset, yes it can be flawed like any other mindset but it does mean the negatives remain in my head more often. I think some of our best football in the last 20 years was under LJ, but his issue was one week we looked like we could beat anyone and the next we seemed to lose all shape and identity, I think he just tinkered too much and it created inconsistency and frustration within the squad. Going further back than those 20 years ago and I was a teenager when we played really attractive football and I'd say in all of my years supporting Bristol City Pearsons time in control was actually the first time I saw a manager come into an unstable environment and slowly but surely turn it around after starting on such a bad footing.

I've never been overly worried about how a manager speaks, it's what he gets the team doing that matters, he could talk absolute waffle if he knows what he's doing. At the moment all I see is the club pushing how Manning is this tactical man and a top class coach. The lines on the training pitch look great, the videos of training looks great, Mannings talks of being a perfectionist sounds great but it all means nothing if you don't see it on the pitch. I think my concern is with him coming in half way through the season there will always be this scapegoat of "it's not his team yet" whereas with Pearson it finally was his team and that's why the lads would fight for him, it's going to take time for Manning to get that unity that the players had with Pearson so we're not really going to see what Manning can do until he's got the players he wants playing his style, until then I'm expecting repetitive cliches as all he can do is his coaching with a bunch of players that may not be capable of playing the way he wants. I honestly hope Manning can coach as well as he seems to think he can, he's certainly confident but I can't see this squad suiting the previous set ups he's created without some change in the players and as we saw with Nigel that takes a lot of time and our board are wiling to sell players regardless of what the manager wants if the price is right.

I don't think it'll matter what anyone asks, they'll have their key points they want to make, their pre-planned PR in place and you could ask them what the colour the sky is and they'll find a way to lead it into that pre-planned stuff. There is no way they'll address anything that they don't want to. I wouldn't be surprised if someone mentions Nigel Pearson and they'll go with the whole "we have a strong squad who we feel should be doing better, we appreciate Nigel and all the hard work he's done to create that squad and now we're looking to push forward with a strong, dynamic coach.... "yadda yadda. I mean this is why they're calling for this now, because they're in full PR drive so they'll have been talking to experts into how to divert discussions into the route they want etc The only question I can think that I'd really liked answered is "why sack Pearson after a derby game when more than a starting line up worth of players were unavailable and yet the following game we had a large number of players returning?", for me it gave Cardiff fans a chance to rub salt in the wound, Pearson didn't have a chance in hell of winning that game and so in my eyes they saw the injury situation, knew that game was a very likely loss and had pre-planned his removal without thinking about the fanbase at all.

In a manner I agree, but I don't think replacing one player will change that and James does so much that is overlooked but becomes more obvious when he's missing. Our issue is we have midfielders who are all good in their own rights but none of capable of doing all the things we need at this level. The key thing missing that makes James an easier target is direct passes, none of our midfield play that type of pass, and I'm not talking about a high long ball towards an attacking player, I'm talking about good vision of playing passes directly into danger areas. The only player that does this really well in our whole squad is Naismith and his issue is that by playing him in midfield we lose that burst of energy. We could play a midfield comprised of TGH, Naismith and Knight meaning Knight would do a lot of that graft that Naismith struggles with but again, this would make us one dimensional when the opposition knows we only have one player capable of making those kinds of passes, as soon as Naismith gets on the ball you just cut out passing options and tight mark. What we need is a midfield 3 who are all capable of making direct, to feet, or running onto option low passes that cause the opposition trouble. We lack height so the long diagonal balls that we've played for a lot of the season are nullified easily and just give possession back to the opposition, we comprise our front three of pacey, direct players but have no midfielders who can play the passes that they feed off of. Replacing James with an all around midfielder who can make that kind of pass and adding Naismith to the midfield would certainly improve us but then if either are injured that puts us back to square one where the opposition can easily set up to prevent that style of play. If we want to really push this system we need players in those 3 roles who are all willing and able to keep the ball on the ground and still make passes that put the opposition under pressure and give our attacking players something to work off of. We would also benefit massively by having a midfielder who looks to get just inside the edge of the box for low driven crosses and more than not when we play those passes into the box the strikers are closer to the 6 yard box and then rest of the area is empty so the ball just gets cleared. A midfielder who could get into that position would add a whole new level of danger to our attacks, especially when Sykes and mostly Bell, get into those areas where they cut the ball back with power across the box.

It depends really on your stance and feelings with the club. I'm not shooting him down but I won't be at the gate, I won't be buying any merch etc and this isn't Mannings fault, it's the boards. Many fans want to make their feelings clear, Crayola Jon said the fans will be there regardless so he no longer cares how they feel so long as they are there doing as he wants them to do, paying money and filling seats. It's hardly a surprise if many of the fans don't want to back Manning because they feel like the board don't care about them and Manning is their choice, it's unfortunate but we only have the board to blame. I, like all of our fans, want to see us do well, however there comes a point where you make a stand or you accept the club as it is with all of its failures, the only failures being the board as everyone has been replaced for the most part. I'm not financially backing this club anymore, not until Jon is out of the picture and many other fans obviously feel the same which gives the impression that it's Mannings fault, which it isn't, but we can't back Manning fully without also backing the board.

I mean we won a double in 14/15 season, I wouldn't describe it as a major trophy but you could call that far more recent than Oxford's Cup win that happened when I was 5 years old and I'm no spring chicken. I would say though that as far as how big clubs are, if winning a cup long ago counts then Grimsby must be bigger than us as they won a lot of trophies and the top flight twice. Therefore that League Two side, who haven't been in the second their since 03/04, must be bigger than us right? I would concede "more historic", but not a chance they are a bigger club than us in modern football.

I agree with this but what concerns me is Manning isn't a high press man, at least not in his recent set ups, he does have his team push to regain possession in the oppositions own third but not in the relentlessly chasing manner of which the team have been playing. My concern is much like your own, I don't think we have the personnel to play his style of possession football and what concerns me is that he may try and teach it to this squad as they are and in the Championship you get much less time on the ball. One thing Pearson did well was give us that high press so that much more talented players we played against were forced to play faster meaning they couldn't pick out as many key passes or get into the spaces where they could do damage. I think manning will still have our strikers press but I think the rest of the team will sit back a little and make sure they're behind the ball and try to pick opportunities to press instead and I'm not sure how well this team will adapt to that. One thing I do think we may see, more of Mehmeti, he's got an eye for a pass and when he's confident will go at players, I can see Manning favouring him over Bell, same goes for Sykes, I think Manning will enjoy having a player who drives into the middle from wide positions to create opportunities and move the opposition defence so I can see us with a frontline of Mehmeti, Conway and Sykes if everyone is fit and Manning has had enough time to implement his style of football. The one thing that Mehmeti will have to do though is improve his closing down of the opposition, I've noticed that if he tries to close down and the ball is passed away it's almost like his job is done in his head, he doesn't turn and keep chasing down and I think that may be why Bell was ahead of him , as well as scoring obviously. I do think Vyner as one of the good are passers may be a bit of a push mind, I mean for every great pass he makes he's just as likely to make a bad pass. I mean I've lost count of the cross pitch passes he's tried to play into midfield only to lose possession, it looks great when he pulls it off but it's more like a 60/40 chance of ending up with the opposition. I do think we'll see Naismith in the midfield though, maybe Naismith for his passing and vision, Knight for raw energy and closing down/battling and then TGH because of his overall passing game, corners, set pieces etc

As I said when Pearson was sacked, if the fans felt it was wrong then they should have said so by not attending and standing up to the board, it would seem that Jon Lansdown was right though, the fans will be there regardless proving that no matter what you want the board will do as they please. All this appointment has done for me is prove that the board can do whatever they like and the fans will accept it which frustrates me as living in Cardiff I saw this with the Cardiff board too and even when they switched from Blue to red it took them a while to finally act up enough to change the boards mind. I don't dislike this appointment, I do see what they are going for but I still feel they pulled the trigger to regain control of the narrative of what is going on at the club and I still remain thinking that under manning the fans will not be privy to as much information about what is going on unless the board ok it. I am not saying this makes Manning a "yes man", but I do think that it'll have been made clear that the club wants to handle it's PR itself and that he'll be required to stay inline with that regardless of if meaning not disclosing information that the fans may deem important. I'm still very much angered by the Lansdowns which says a lot when if you search through my posts in the past you'll find me defending them when many were not happy about them at all. I still maintain that Pearson was not let go to create progression within the club, I feel that if that were the case they would have done it at the end of this season as it would have benefitted both ourselves and Oxford not to have made such major changes now, the fans would have been less angered by the situation and Liam would have a better window to make any changes that he wanted. I know there are some issues with the situation being discussed at this point, we many not have got Liam or Pearson may not have wanted to see the season out but I don't think that would be the case. I stand by my statement that this was about control and ego and it's that control and ego that has come off best and the fans have been proven to be easy to manipulate as so many are now already over Pearson and many who were supporting him are now saying "ah well, he didn't do much anyway" having spun a full 180 based on a few PR moves from the club. All of that aside I do like the appointment of Manning, I can understand that they want a coach rather than a manager as they now feel the club is controllable within their hands, this I'm not so sure about but I guess we'll see, either way it doesn't matter as the fans have turned around and moved on already so the best we can hope for is that Manning does hit the ground running. I know a lot of our fans don't like to hear negative opinions so I'm sure there will be a good bunch of facepalm or crying face emotes on this post and you know what, have at it because I do feel like a lot of our fans lack the conviction of standing up to the board and would happily sell out whomever it takes to get to the Prem which is probably why they deserve the Lansdowns, because they'd do that to the fans too.

And I did say that he didn't do it until a lot later in the game when we had spent time playing direct and tiring ourselves out effortlessly. It also reaffirms that a 42 year old man, sat at home with no coaching qualifications could identify the problem within 5 minutes of the red card but our assistant manager didn't act until we were approaching the half way point of the second half. I'm not saying I could manage, I'm saying that if someone with no experience can identify the problem you would certainly expect a professional in the coaching game to be able to and act quickly on it, which he didn't. It also shows that had he changed us up earlier we wouldn't have tired out so many players returning from injury and given ourselves more time to impact the game positively. We need a proactive coaches/management team, one that identifies issues in okay early allowing us to get on the front foot and start ahead of the opposition. I didn't see that yesterday, I saw a coach who was hesitent and wanted to stick to what he was comfortable with.

Not a chance, whatever club takes that on will see a massive backlash regardless of if she's qualified or not. With the backlash they're already receiving from letting Pearson go I honestly think that appointment would see a lot of fans finally say "I'm not going". Id be accepting of a woman taking the position if there was one out there that you could make a fair case for, but as it stands I don't think there is and so it won't be us that makes that appointment, I think that's far more likely to happen a lot further down the league system.

I'm actually not that bothered if Fleming is gone based on yesterday. I think he was like a deer in headlights as they had Bannan sent off and he didn't try to change anything up despite our tactics actually favouring Wednesday. Once Bannan was sent off I expected to see Fleming get word out to the team to stop playing the long and direct counter pass as Wednesday were obviously going to sit back and defend it. Instead, he didn't change anything and we continued to stick to our direct passing which nullified the extra man in attacking pushes as we just wasted the possession. I think he got the tactics all wrong and didn't know how to adapt to what was going on, almost like he expected everything to go as planned and when it didn't he didn't know how to react. With that man advantage and their strength in their defensive players we should have switched up to a possession style play where we used the extra man to make easier praying opinions and use that advantage to tire their players out and in turn create spaces to attack through as we move then about. This didn't happen until much later in the game and by then the constant direct balls and having to press to get the ball back actually tired some of our players out. I don't think Nigel would have reacted to that card the way Fleming did, I think it showed Flemings lack of experience in being the man to make a decision under pressure and it could have cost us points. I'm sure as a second man to Pearson he's more than adequate but without Pearson there I think that match proved he's not as tactically sharp as we need a man leading the team to be.

Wednesday have nothing to lose, never going to be easy when you opposition is a man down, losing and essentially have nothing left to fear.

He has one of the highest shot save percentages in the league but apparently, he's terrible