Spike

Well played by Bell there, good battling

I knew we'd be up against it today but one down in 4 minutes from a deep diagonal ball and we can barely get a hold of the ball against a team who are better with less possession, it's about the worst start we could have had.

Can't say they haven't deserved that, we've been outplayed in so many areas, they've looked stronger and we've lacked anything coming forward. What I don't understand is every time we got the ball we didn't push up allowing them to pressure our players into losing the ball and inviting the pressure back on us.

and we had none. They set out to stop us and play on the break, they executed their plan well but didn't have the final ball they needed, we set out to play passes until we could find a gap and we did that and missed out chances... simply put we cancelled each other out, either team could have got all 3 points had they been clinical with final ball/finishing. I think had Mehmeti scored that header the game would have opened up a lot and we'd probably have seen a few goals but ultimately we cancelled each other out and lacked quality when it mattered most.

OK so a lot of people say you're trolling/attention seeking but you know what, I'll bite. Responses in bold

I mean when you put those names forward I'd say if Conway needs to go then Bell would too right? How is Weimann not in this conversation? Etc If you're not trolling then I'm just glad you have no say in anything to do with transfers.

I think it's odd that people say they're poor when they set out very well to neutralise our attack which for the majority they did. We had a few good chances but defensively they didn't look uncomfortable at all and they had a few counters where they looked dangerous. If anything I think we looked good on the ball, good passing and movement and yet they still managed to keep us from scoring.

By this logic we should want to play in the yellow kit right? I honestly don't get what all the fuss is about, from what Scotty said the players like playing in black, so what's the problem?

A lot of families with step-families do a second Christmas on boxing day, then you have all the people who have a good drink on xmas will be hungover and probably don't want to deal with frustrations that City will most likely bring. Boxing day games are great for those who don't have family commitments and I used to love them but I actually prefer being home on boxing day these days.

Not an unfair point as mentioned before but what did Jon say.... "The fans will still be there"... Simple fact is if you're at the ground and cheering on the team you're doing exactly what Jon expects of you and your opinion means nothing to him. My concern is at what point do the fans finally manage to get it through to Jon that we're not happy because right now the fans are still there and it's business as usual for Jon, in his eyes there is no real backlash over the changes because the fans are still doing what he wants. It's a lose lose situation for the fans, we go to the games and we do what Jon wants, we stay home and we contribute to the problem.

Honestly, utter rubbish. He's got a lot of qualities overlooked because of our defensive issues. Nigel had to change the defence to play to some of our defenders strengths and cover their weaknesses, Max does a lot of coming out and collecting to help with that, put Bentley back in and we may stop a few more shots but we'd ship a lot more goals because Max does so much that is overlooked. I'm at that point with Max where I'm quite happy to see him leave, if not just so the fans see how much he does. The lad gets nothing but abuse for his mistakes but when he makes fantastic plays and does sweeper keeper duties he gets no praise for it. Last night there was a situation where he had to come out and defended the ball at his own corner flag, his thinking was quick, precise and prevented them scoring again, he got nothing for it, in fact most fans bitched about him coming out in the first place. I think it's just a thing some of our fans do, they rag on players for their performances but overlook the actual issue that makes a player look so bad at times. I personally think max's kicking is an issue but when you consider how much he has to play passes and kick long passes compared to most other keepers I wonder how many would be capable of fulfilling his current role.

I've voted no but I will add, if Pearson was still in place I feel we may have had an outside chance. The change of football, tactics and very strange substitutions have pushed my vote very much deep down into the no. I'd say that of our squad 3-4 players who had found a place in Pearsons team/squad due to his ability to work a tactic that protected them against their weaknesses and play to their strengths are now likely to stagnate in our squad, one of which extended his contract meaning he'll probably be hard to shift. Sacking Pearson was one of the clubs worst decisions since I was a young boy which is saying a lot but ontop of that they now need to double down on Manning as his style will not work with these players so they need to invest money into changing players, essentially they've shot themselves in the foot as per usual and now we're in for a long rebuild, one that will most likely end with us buying a few, selling a few and then Manning leaving putting us in a state of a full rebuild again as we'll need to build around the manager who replaces Manning. I think it'll be a long while before we see old Brian on twitter again.

I mean yeah he likes it but in all fairness we looked a lot more problematic after he came on. He does need to get back to his beating a player and putting the ball in when going wide though.

Never is that a foul from Pring :laugh:

His kicking is bad at times but made to look so much worse when we don't have a single player on the pitch who can take control of a long ball or win a header, of course his kicking is going to look awful if none of our players can win a long ball.

cracking cross from Mehmeti that, any slight glancing header on that and it's in.

When you see Pring getting forward like this and the problems he can cause when he's allowed to attack it makes me wonder if it wouldn't be worth playing Roberts left back, Sykes in that right advanced position and allowing Pring a game or two in the advanced position on the left.

WHY?! Why didn't Knight play that out to Mehmeti!?

Sykes isn't that bad at finishing for a left back....

Blackburn must feel sorry for us, practically giving us a goal and a chance.

It's the same defence, it's just the tactics doesn't suit the players any more and where Pearson built tactics to safeguard against our players weaknesses and play to their strengths Manning has come in and said "these are my tactics, learn them". We could have 9 months of practising and preparing and the same thing will happen because we're not getting the best out of our players playing the way Manning wants. If we genuinely want to keep Manning as manager then the board are going to have to open up those purse strings because it's going to be a rebuild, none of this "top 6 squad" rubbish, the only way this squad is top 6 is with a manager who can get them punching above their weight, if only we had one of those....

None of our players look like they believe in this system. It reminds me of Arsenal before they had a bite, the whole passing around aimlessly and then feeling lost in the opposition's final third. It honestly feels like every team we play look dangerous when given a chance, we create a chance and we look toothless.

Same thing they've always thought, that they know better than anyone how to run this club. The issue is Nigel came in and proved them wrong so they've removed him because their egos can't take that someone showed them how wrong they were and did it with loads of restrictions in place. I genuinely think Pearson showed our board what a man with a plan can do and they hated that it wasn't their plan and that the fans appreciated him more than they've ever appreciated the board.

You say that like he's not already got his man to throw under the bus in place. Manning will go out and it'll all be about how we have a top 6 team and Manning didn't get them playing how he should yadda yadda yadda, meanwhile Nige is probably sat at home watching out of curiosity, wondering how he managed to clean up such a mess only for the board to come and **** it all up again.

I keep saying it and keep getting accused of being unfair on Vyner but, his positioning left him off the pace there again. I just don't think Vyner can keep up with this higher pace style of defending that we're trying to play, his reading of the game isn't good enough. He almost got caught out with a long ball earlier on again for the same reason.