Spike

Really don't understand this comment. The lad is usually a great finisher, I would say that was well out of character for him.

I just don't understand referees these days, gives a foul and says play on, Bell loses the ball from the pass in an arguable foul and the referee gives nothing.... so where is the advantage?!

That's a shocking miss from Bell!

Get in Dickie! Now let's see if Fleming will try and sit back or if he'll try and keep Sheffield on the back foot and use the extra man on the counter to really punish Wednesday.

I actually disagree, same tactics but no change in tactics based on the game at hand. The second we went ahead in men the tactics should have been changed up to suit the situation, instead Fleming hasn't told us to change up at all. I'm not talking about substitutions but in how we're approaching the game. Sheffield Wednesday have sat back to protect the point, we've continued to play the tactics that we started with, Pearson would not have had this team playing the same way in the second half and he'd also still have some influence on the players. Fleming might be a nice guy, I don't know, but I don't think the players are concerned how he reacts to this game as there will be a new man in charge soon. Our issue today is that we've not adapted our tactics to deal with Wednesdays situation, hence we look like we have the same number of players out there when we have one more. I think at this point our fans are just looking for justification on the Pearson decision because it'll make them feel better about it.

I mean that's what Jon Lansdown said our fans would do, he literally doesn't care how the fans feel so long as they're there and cheering the team on, exactly why our fans should stay away. There is no sign that the fanbase is unhappy other than social media so what do the board have to fear from the fans? Knight for me is that hard-working deep player for this exact reason and Weimann is far past his prime and doesn't suit the new style of play at all.

This is so frustrating to watch, we have the extra player and it looks like we don't, Wednesday look pretty comfortable sitting back. This is where we're missing a man on the touchline who will read the situation and adapt, it doesn't look like we have that today as we're just doing the same thing over and over and creating nothing.

There isn't anything that cannot be said to the fans, it's the decision of the board what is sensible to share and the only reason not to share something is that it would have a negative impact on the club. I think your thoughts are purely speculation and clutching at straws. The board want us to see Pearson as a failure, otherwise they've sacked a good manager, they are creating the only narrative that they could after sacking Pearson, that he didn't achieve what they wanted him to, the issue with this is if you don't take the PR spin at face value and instead look at the statistics, the time Pearson was here and what he achieved despite not being backed nearly as much as he should have been based on the boards goals it's clear to see who is at fault. At this point Pearson is gone, he has nothing to gain from making the details come out, it won't make him get his job back and having a slanging match with the club would make him less desirable for other football clubs so he is doing what he has always done, being sensible and showing class in his departure. Meanwhile the board have come out after being silent during Pearsons struggles because they've been forced to speak due to the fan outrage. They have been caught in their contradiction of what they expect and what they have supplied and they have shown that it's all a PR spin to keep the fans compliant with the most frustrating part being that it's worked. We're currently playing bottom of the league with an extra man and struggling to take the lead, our tactics are poor based on what's happening on the pitch and yet the fans have still gone, no protesting, no standing up to the board proving Jon Lansdown correct when he said that the fans will turn up and cheer regardless.

I think our biggest issue in the game so far is Weimann is offering nothing and we keep trying to play long balls in behind despite them being a man down and so they are sitting back and setting up for that. If we want to have any success in this game we need to make the most of the extra player, move them about, play passes that create space, not lump it up and essentially waste the man advantage. I know people don't want to hear this right now but this is where we need a manager who can identify that issue and make the changes, to speak to the players and tell them this, not to stick to the one plan they had before the game. I actually think I'm even more frustrated than I was before the game watching this, to me this is football 101, you get a man advantage early enough in the game you don't play a style that doesn't work on a team who are sitting back, Sheffield Wednesday will see this situation as if they can take a point it's a good result, we on the other hand will see it as an utter failure, and rightfully so as we have the advantage, we're at home, we have a lot of players back, this team put out today is arguably our strongest line up if you put Bell in for Weimann. If this team can't beat a 10-man team who are bottom of the league at home then questions are really going to be raised, especially when the performance against Cardiff with a bare-bones starting line up had more teeth to it than this one has so far.

We really need to stop trying to constantly long ball for players to run onto, it's not working and it's just giving the possession away. We have an extra player, we should be looking to take the game to them with the ball when we have one more player.

Well that red has to mean we need to win this game more than ever, bottom of the league, down to 10 men, 60 minutes to play.

I just don't think he looks like he offers anything in this system at all, he doesn't get in positions to score goals, he doesn't make the runs in behind the defence that he used to, he basically is just there and I honestly think even Mehmeti out of form offers more.

Weimanns strength used to be making those runs in behind the defence, man off the pitch there, Pring plays the ball and Weimann doesn't make the run. He honestly looks like a player we finally need to let go off, he doesn't offer anything in this system, his form is poor, he just seems to be in the team because he'll run for a full 90.

Terrible marking then, free header in a dangerous position.

The wages only lowered under the time of Nigel, not once did they go higher than when he joined and they never went up, always down. I can accept the Steve Lansdown not wanting to bankroll the club whilst it continues to lose money but again, under Pearson the wages were on a constant decline, the spend and outgoing on fees was heavily in favour of us taking more in, hence in the interviews it was said there would be money for transfers in 2024.

This is what just screams out that they're dishonest, they have to control the narrative and not be challenged when speaking out, to me that's a sign of someone lacking confidence in their own narrative.

Prior to the injury crisis reaching it's peak he was 1.5 points per game this season, 1.5 points per game would be 69 points over the 46 games which is how many points Sunderland had to get into the play offs last season. When you consider the injuries started a lot sooner than it's peak and that after 12 games we were 1 point off the play offs I think it's fair to say that the last two games with an injury ravaged squad was his real undoing.

I never understand why people use the bookies as some kind of guide to who will get a job, I mean most people who bet tend to go with the outside chance so they get better odds which in turn causes that bet to rise up the odds, essentially pushing the unlikely candidates higher up. About the only time the bookies are worth looking at is when the bookies stop taking bets and by that point the fanbase will already know it's pretty much a done deal. Lampard is one that concerned me purely because I could see the club seeing him as a way to get more eyes on the club and potentially improve it's chances of being sold to a buyer with the whole "big name" angle but I don't think any intelligent investor would be swayed by that so I just never saw it being likely, but I also didn't see us signing David James in the past and football has a funny way of surprising the fans. I can't see us signing anyone who is in the top 10 of the bookies at the moment being the next manager, I think the club will go with someone who isn't a big name as that would probably mean a more costly contract, I think they'll go up and coming and so far the only name that I think may have any legs is the Liam Manning rumour. I know the club would have to pay more because he's at a club but I still think they'd be more milling to pay a little more in that respect and get someone who will tow the line than getting someone for the same money who is uncontracted but would be more likely to rock the boat with the board.

23/24 - Spend - £5.41m / Sold - £23m 22/23 - Spend - £0 / Sold - £10.31m 21/22 - Spend - £1.875m / Sold - £0m These are the figures for the last three seasons transfersleaving out the following due to no confirmed fees: Out Adam Nagy - Unknown Tyreeq Bakinson - reported "five-figure sum" Ryley Towler - reported "above 50k" Kane Wilson - Unknown In Mehmeti £1m + future payments based on landmarks Cornick - Undisclosed Meaning, we've brought in a minimum of £33.31m and spent around £7.01m- £9m. I fail to see how the club expects to be in a top-end, challenging position having spent less than £10m over the last three seasons but has seen 28 players leave the club in that time including Alex Scott, Antione Semenyo, Han-Noah Massengo, Daniel Bentley, Famara Diedhiou etc To me it feels like Pearson was allowed to make changes but ultimately he was restricted a lot and the club seemed to be under the illusion that with that kind of spend, all whilst selling some of the top talents we were going to end up being a top-end team? I'm not surprised Pearson was frustrated. When asked if he thinks will the new appointment be an exciting one for the fans he replies with: This irked me a little, I mean one hundred percent confident that they'll solve the puzzle of getting us to their goal of us being a top-end team. I mean they had a man who was already doing that in many fans eyes had an injury crisis not hampered our good start. That aside, I still find it hard to believe they will "solve the puzzle" when he openly states that they're going through a process and that a lot of people have put their name forward. I feel like if they had the man who could solve the puzzle so to speak then they'd not be going through so many names and looking at people putting their name forward, I mean if you have the answer to a question, you don't keep looking at other answers. He also goes on to re-affirm that we're looking to get to the Premier League this season, to me this is deluded and very short sighted. If this squad were to manage a promotion we all know that we'd have to spend to strengthen to have any chance of survival, but usually when a team get promoted to the Premier league and survive their first season it is because they were so much better in terms of quality of players that they began that building process on. Looking at our squad if we were to get promoted this season who would realistically be good enough to compete in the Premier League? I think we have a hand full at best and none of them would make a top half team which means we'd be going into that situation with an almost guaranteed return to the Championship. I just do not believe this talk of the Premier League goal at all, the investment is less, the manager who took the club when it was an utter mess and made it capable of competing was let go against the fans wishes, the sale of Scott so close to the beginning of the season etc. I think this is damage control, they are talking up the want to do better to wash over the anger and frustration of the fans about letting Pearson go, to add to that they have no clear candidate lined up which they have made clear, which again does not sound like a board that let Nigel go with a man to replace him in mind. A further frustration: I still think this makes the club look more inept, this doesn't reassure me, it does the opposite because any football-minded person who knew the status of our squad, the form of the opposition, the fact it's a derby game and every other factor would have expected us to lose it, some would suggest they'd have expected us to lose it in a much more damning fashion. I think considering the squad situation we looked a very competitive side, I mean we had multiple players playing out of position and a teenager making his debut just to be able to field a side and the game wasn't over by any means until it was almost full time and the second went in. Based on the past that performance was better than many we saw before Nigel when the squad only had a few injuries so essentially the board saying "win this game or you lose your job" in those circumstances is ludicrous, especially when the next game is bottom of the league at home, if Nigel lost that game then you could fully understand the decision as I think many of our fans would look at losing to the bottom of the league with less injuries as a far more worthy stackable offence. I think the decision to terminate after Cardiff also seemed to lack the understanding of football fans for another reason, no fan of a club wants to see their manager sacked after a derby game, it gives the fans of the rival club a chance to gloat and to further upset the fanbase. Had we lost to a bottom-of-the-league team who aren't rivals I think a lot of fans would have accepted the decision and it wouldn't have been so frustrating but I feel that is this board through and through, they can talk a good game in a setting where they are prepared and can re-record their statements but the second they are under pressure and need to stand up and speak without that buffer they are nowhere to be seen. Another double down was I found this to be the most insulting thing that Jon Lansdown said and is doubled down on here. He does mention Alex going out but when you mention one player going out and five coming in, it does make it sound like there was a good investment. That does, however, lose it's weight when you see that actually six players went out, including Alex, which included a very hefty signing in Tomas Kalas going out for free, another costly signing in Han-Noah Massengo going out for free as well as Kane Wilson who never got a chance and Dasilva going out too. Now I know at that point these players probably needed to go, but it's still a lot of big signings going out the door and arguably only Knight and McCrorie would be considered players who were likely to hit the ground running with us. Roberts is a gamble, Dickie was arguably not as good as he once was with many QPR fans not being bothered about him leaving. The saving grace is that I think Nigels signings have all been good this pre-season but I wouldn't look at this pre-season and see £5.41m spent on those players as a "significant investment", more of a shrewd-ish one, especially when you look at the players we let go for nothing. When asked about what it will take to actually get this club to the Premier League: I felt like this was another clever turn on the situation, I mean he's essentially saying "look at all this awesome stuff we have, ignore the fact we still can't do it when other clubs have managed it without all of this". Obviously he words it so that it sounds like it's just unfortunate but I think realistically it says is that whilst we may not be the biggest club in the league we have a lot more than other clubs in terms of resources and we've still not managed to achieve that goal. To me that is just an admission of failure, spun to make it sound like it's inevitable that we will succeed when the truth is there is no guarantee of that. What I will see after seeing this interview is the professionalism is far superior to the Jon Lansdown interview and although there is a little more to this interview than that one I still think the club are putting a very strong spin on the whole situation and I still don't believe they are being honest with the fans in regards to their aim being to make the Premier League this season, I feel that was the constructed lie to give the sacking of Pearson "validation". When mentioned about the Lansdowns bearing the brunt of the blowback for sacking Pearson he also mentioned that they'd look into how they handled it with the fans but again, I think the reason it was such a big backlash was the timing and any fan of football would understand that before pulling the trigger. If they haven't learned how to handle the timing when firing and hiring by now then they simply just don't have it in their skill set because the timing was about as bad as it can get, after a derby match, with half the squad injured and despite all of that next to no fans asking for it to happen and the most frustrating part of it all is that they still don't seem to understand that. My interest now lays with what the board will say if they bring in their puzzle solver and they end up no where near their goal, will they sack the new man at the end of the season if that happens, after all, they belive we have a squad capable of being up there, right? I'm glad some people feel a little more comfortable after watching this but I just see better PR at a piss poor decision and even worse handling of the situation which has forced the extra damage control PR machine to be rolled out. I still don't believe their goals for this season that they have stated and I still think the decision was not about football but more about not having control of the narrative with person refusing to play the yes game to the board. Our next appointment certainly won't be bad talking the club and how it is run, I can be sure of that, so that will allow them to keep pulling the strings, controlling what the fans hear and what they don't which is what this change of management was really about.

I mean I could invest £250m into the beef trade in India, I doubt people would give me a pat on the back and be like "you did your best", instead they'd say "why did you just invest that money into something so stupid?". The Lansdowns haven't been quite that level of stupid, I mean the business side of developing the stadium and the training ground have been fantastic but beyond that what have they done? The management choices have been questionable and if you look at the ones that have been a success for us even those appear to have been tainted. Id say of all the successful managers I've seen at this club the most successful was Cotterill and he was sacked after the club refused to allow him to go after the targets he wanted to leaving the team short of what he felt it needed, the club refusing the man who got us two trophies in a single season, unbacked because at that point there was a rift between them. Gary Johnson was probably the only man they didn't piss off that did well for us, maybe his son could be included but I would say LJ was hacked more than any manager I've ever seen at this club and he still failed to achieve the Premier League goal. Coppell for me was the real sign that there was an issue at the top, he came in and within 4 months lost his passion for management and resigned, then went on to work for 5 other clubs. Something still doesn't sit right with me about that whole situation and I think it was a case of him knowing that he couldn't get success with that board/owners. Then you have Pearson, probably the only manager I've seen in my time as a City fan that's been sacked without any fan fare for it, hence I think it's receiving such a big backlash. Even those who weren't sure of Pearson at his times here where it looked like he'd lost the fanbase came around and backed him again, I still can't think of many managers who recovered from losing the fans here. The result, the board doesn't like him, get rid, the fans will keep coming anyway (Jon Lansdowns words, not mine). Then you could address decisions like Tinnion being manager because it was cheap and he's very much in the owners pockets, that ended well. Or how about the endless weeks we waited to hear who our new manager would be, only for it to end up being the assistant manager of the man who was sacked, to the utter disbelief of the fans. The only constant in all of this is the Lansdowns so let's just forget all of that because they slung a quarter of a billion at the wall making all those awful decisions.

Support and blind support sums up the situation imo. Some will support the club by refusing to tow the line when the club is lying to them and taking them for granted, that's blind support. Of my boss is running the business into the ground it's not a great stance to say "well done boss, I'm right behind you" when you could say "I don't agree with this, I think it's not helping". The bloke support will see the business fail, the support of standing against the bad decision gives the business a fighting chance and therefore is still supporting it. I'm not going to be a blind supporter, Jon Lansdown and this board are the only constant in our failure to achieve what they say they're trying to achieve. Pearson set out to keep us competetive despite being tasked to cut costs and have key assets sold out from underneath him, he did that and still got sacked, essentially the board got impatient of him trying to do a heart impossible task of getting Premiership football whilst selling all of our Premier League quality players and then being expected to find replacements for pennies. I support this club, you call it what you like, I've been assaulted more times than I care to discuss for wearing my City shirt as I live in Cardiff, I've gone to work and taken endless amounts of abuse when Cardiff were in the Premier League and I don't regret it. I've put more money than I care to admit into this club and I'll continue to support it. What I don't support is a board that demands we turn up and support the team whilst they hamstring it and then lie about it. There have been so many statements such as "Pearson is not bigger than the club, we should support the players" etc but does this mean the board are bigger than the club because our fans seem happy for them to remain, or at least complicent enough to keep doing what the board want of them by turning up and cheering the lads on whilst they put out crap interviews that are pre planned and full of shit. You can call my support into question all you like, but sometimes you have to take a stand and as I've said before, the only consistent in our failure at this point is the board, everyone else has come and gone with the result staying the same.

Fantastic write up this and although it sounds like the bloke can manage a club with the right support he sounds like the complete opposite of what we need right now. Jon Lansdown said in his interviews that we have a squad that should be up the top and that we're top 10 in budget. If that's the truth (something I doubt) then why would we bring in a manager who has a very specific style that doesn't match ours and who needs to buy in order to create that style. According to Jon we already have a squad that is capable of being up the top, if that is the case we shouldn't need to spend any money to get into the play offs. Also according to Jon we are already in the top 10 of budgets and NP wasn't allowed to spend so therefore Manning wouldn't be able to buy either right? Something just doesn't add up to me, I feel like Manning coming in would mean a rebuild, but we apparently can't afford that. We've also just heard Tinnion saying how we have a style and the new manager coming in would have to adapt to that style, not create a new one, so again this suggests that Manning would need to play the style already in place, not his own that has generated some of his success. Everything about Manning sounds like his appointment would be contradicting to JL and Tinnions statements, which is exactly why I can see it happening, because the board just can't seem to get their stories straight anymore.

That's the problem when the blame lays with you and you're asked to explain yourself, there really isn't much you can say that's going to change minds. Ultimately the board have messed up and now they're trying to spin it so it sounds like they haven't. What Lansdown said sounds like utter lies and if its not then the club is being run piss poorly, which again, is down to the board. Am I see is someone caught in the headlights as they're to blame and they're trying every angle to shift that blame, but after so many repeats of the same mistakes there really isn't anyone left to blame.

I mean by that logic I should support the Lansdowns too... I'll pass, every one has their limits.

8 years of failure? Based on what? Not winning something you value? Almost every club that's had Pearson has said he'd helped their club in some form of another. If you think that's failure then that's your interpretation, I would consider having the admiration of previous clubs is a massive success considering agonist every manager who is sacked from a job will be hated by that clubs fans. I think it's fair to say Pearson is a fixer, he goes to clubs and fixes what's broken and usually gets sacked because he tells it as it is and boards don't like their fans hearing what actually going on. Or the board gets over ambitious based on how well Pearson is turning things around and they think that it's their doing entirely. I mean in Leicesters case maybe that was the one occasion where the infrastructure was right and they appointed well after Pearson left which allowed them to build on what he did but in most cases you get the board realising that despite Pearson being too vocal what he was saying was actually true, and what follows is a bad appointment followed by a manager who can't maintain what Pearson put in place. Nothing anyone says will change my mind that Pearson did an incredible job here because he was given nothing and improved us despite that, despite the board not wanting him any more and despite the fact that they even hamstringed him right before this season. Lampard managed Chelsea for the same reason we had Tinnion, would you say Tinnion was a manager because he was the best manager available? Or would you say the board took the cheap option that would at the very least have the fans back the manager because of his history as a player? You don't have to actually answer that, we both know the answer. By the way, Franks first game game in charge of Chelsea, biggest loss they'd suffered since 1978. Another fun fact about Lampard at Chelsea, his second run as mashed produced the first bottom half finish since 1996 and the lowest points and goals scored in Chelseas Premier League era. He also got sacked with the worst percentage (9%) of all Chelsea managers who managed for more than 3 games, but let's not let those statistics ruin a big name manager.