IAmNick

In other news does anyone else think Nahki is really great on the co commentary? Really insightful and confident to chat away. Would happily have him on more often (although even better if he's on the pitch ofc).

Sykes just pulled up and signalled he needs to come off?

Southampton goal: https://streamin.one/v/df8cfe98

Agreed mate, we're looking decent so let's just enjoy it and not try to score points against each other!

Old RedDave there has done it every match thread for about 10 years, just ignore it

Great play and a great cross/chance

I think we just have to accept that those of us who are regularly on here are the "hardcore" - not necessarily in terms of going to games, but in keeping up to date on what's going on in and around the club and discussing things to a really high level of detail. A lot of fans watch the games, read the odd headline in the post, maybe check BBC sport, and that's mostly it. It is frustrating at times like this but that's just reality. They probably don't know that BT has talked about being Cat 1 before and so on. I assumed that the people who would give up their Monday to go to this would be more clued up, but obviously not!

It's just the shot, not where they picked the ball up. Lots of sites do xG now, and most have their own models which is why you might see conflicting numbers. The most basic would just be shots from the position. Nowadays they take into account loads of other things - for example Opta use the position of the keeper, how much of the goal is blocked by players, the "pressure" the player was under, the type of shot (which foot, header), the type of play the shot came from (corner, break, free kick), and so on. I've seen some models take into account now the height of the ball as they receive it (i.e. at shin height will be less chance) and so on. It's extremely complex as you can imagine! edit: One of the problems is as soon as you add another dimension, you greatly reduce the amount of available data which will then make your results less accurate. It's a delicate balance.

Being there it didn't feel like we'd taken twice as many on target as we usually do. Maybe the first goal is a pass instead under Nige? Hard to say! He could do with being a bit more specific with which end he means with Vyner and Dickie though!

At the game!

I think if you look at the stats which are most aligned to what I see as his role in the team - screening the defence, acting as an easy outlet, and recycling possession, they look better. The stats above are quite forward focussed which I don't think is his role in the team at the moment. I don't expect many progressive carries, assists, or take ons from him (although obviously that's not excusing the fact his stats there are poor!): (Last year above) I think he's a quality player, and an important player for us. Will he be this time next year? I don't know, but I think he'd be quite tough to replace at the moment. I look more to some of the other players around him currently - although I would like to see him turn more when he does receive the ball.

I think "slow and cumbersome" is a bit OTT. I definitely agree we're a better team with him in it. He's the epitomy of a "The first 5 yards is in your head" player for me. The amount of interceptions and tackles he makes just by being in the right place at the right time is incredible. I'd be loathed to drop him. I think he's great.

Nobody is trying to dox you. Even if you were RMLF, there is nothing personally identifiable there. As far as I know all their posts have been deleted anyway. Linking someone with a potential old username is not doxing or breaking privacy. It also doesn't break the law in any way. I do have sympathy but every thread you participate in currently ends up in an argument with you at the centre and it's getting extremely tiring - I think it's your manner rather than your opinions in that it always becomes aggressive and personal very quickly. To be blunt there are about 3 potentially interesting threads on the first page at the moment which are just you trading blows with anyone who comes near and it's getting very tiring.

It can, and has been done before (at least on the old forum, dunno about whether it can since the move to the cloud).

I just wish the idiot club just hadn't made that top 6 comment, they've made a rod for their own back there and put unnecessary pressure on Manning and given easy ammo to his detractors. Generally I see managers as earning their keep if they're getting the squad performing at or preferably above their expected level - so our side (hah!), a top 6 side finishing in the top 6 is just par, it's not even impressive... it's expected. That's clearly pretty ridiculous as we all know, but that's what they've laid out. I feel for the bloke. Wasn't going to take much away from this game but he's clearly got his work cut out - but it'll be evolution rather than revolution and compromises will have to be made on the playing style he wants I suspect. The performance was poor but it's still an away point and could have been much worse. In the circumstance it was a bit of a banana skin game if anything... nobody would have been impressed if we won, disaster if we lost. A couple of weeks now to get some of his processes and behaviours in place. Fingers crossed!

Would be equally as relevant for us this game to be fair!

He was talking about QPR wasn't he? And that awful shot they took

This was some pandemic localised to Bristol was it?

He's the head coach, as long as he fits within the wage structure / budgets that are set why shouldn't he be able to make changes to the squad? I'm sure Pearson would have done gradually over the next few windows. It'd also be bloody ridiculous to intentionally not set your new coach up for success as much as you can, and yes, that may even involve giving him a little more leeway than your outgoing manager at the start if he strongly feels he needs certain types of player we don't currently have. What's the downside exactly? The goal is to progress in the league, not fight some battle you've made up in your head to judge who the greatest coach at Bristol City is in the last few years.

Yep that's fair. This is why one of the first things I usually do when consulting is try and build a shared understanding of language with people!

Have you come across the concept of cognitive load before? It's basically an understanding of the "amount" of stuff people can hold in their working memory at any one time. My personal thought is that when coaching becomes too much, and an inordinate number of memorised processes exist, then the availability of mental processing time and power for inventive solutions is greatly reduced. It's not that simple of course, but I think there's something there. I'm not sure that maverick players are stopped being mavericks directly, but their minds are focussed on replicating memorised passages/processes rather than free to come up with their own solutions. Which one of us is going to mention The Phoenix Project first then? If you have a chain of 10 processes to produce an outcome, you have to be focussed on that end goal. Focussing on the individual processes and local optimisations will never efficiently address bottlenecks and overall improvement of your outcome. When Toyota pull their andon cord, the entire production line stops and focusses on fixing that problem - all the processes are aware of the overarching outcome they want to achieve, and any issues which might prevent it. They're not just focussed on their own process. It helps find and eliminate non value-add activities. I think we probably have roughly the same opinion, we're just looking at it from different angles. I guess I'm not saying don't continually improve processes, I'm more saying that can only be done when they have the context of the outcome they're trying to achieve. Sometimes in football (to bring it back) I feel like players are too focussed on replicating their patterns and processes without taking into account if they're working - if they're achieving the outcome they need. Valve always sound great, and if you're interested in that there's a good book called "A Radical Enterprise" about the same sort of set ups elsewhere - although most not as extensive. There's a very interesting series of blog posts from an ex senior employee at Valve too explaining all the bizarre fifedoms and issues that are the reality. Of course, as you said if they didn't have a money printing machine in their basement it probably wouldn't work as they actually produce very little of value in reality!

Wonderful, thanks all for taking the time. Some great perspectives @chinapig / @Spud21 / @Davefevs / @Harry / @Fordy62. I won't bother quoting you all fully as this would be ridiculously long. I think in fact I was probably misunderstanding the language. It sounds like by processes, it's about equipping the players with the tools (processes) to identify and solve problems on the pitch themselves to achieve an outcome, rather than just focussing on the outcome itself. That makes a lot more sense. My hesitancy as I said came from the tech world - I see a lot of companies who see some popular giant (Spotify were the classic one 5/6 years ago) and assume if they just do things they way they do things, they'll naturally be successful as well. That's where my "Good teams pass it around the back, so if we pass it around the back we'll be good too!" thinking came from. The key is to understand why the processes work for them - because those processes will have been created bespoke to fit that company... or players in this case I suppose, so they can't just be lifted into any old situation. Yes - which is why the outcome should be the focus in my original understanding, rather than the process! Focus on the outcome, and find the processes that are most effective to make it happen which is driven by an understanding of the outcome, not following processes. I agree, but I would respond by saying if you don't focus on the outcomes, how do you know if your processes are having a net positive or negative effect? In your lever example, your desired outcome was to increase the calls answered. If you were focussed on the processes, giving overtime or whatever, you weren't to know if you were achieving that outcome. Do you train your staff to give overtime every time calls answered dips, or to have the tools to use achieve that outcome via your (or even their own!) methods? Again, without focussing on the outcome, how do you know that process is right? I agree with this - I suppose my framing of that was to think about the outcome you're trying to achieve, rather than the in the minute action you're taking. We want to... hit the byline and get a cross in, here are the processes I know to achieve that. Rather than focussing on a process... I know that in this position, I do X then Y, even if that process isn't producing the desired outcome. Ok, the long chipped balls down the line to Bell aren't working this game - stop just trying them repeatedly (the process) and think about the outcome we're trying to achieve. How else could you do that? I think we're arriving at the same conclusion just with mixed language (likely confused on my part)! I'm an advocate of minimum viable process. Give intelligent people a clear understanding of the outcome you want, and give them the tools to discover problems and solutions to achieve it. Explain why you want to get across a river, don't tell people to build a bridge or whatever that common naff metaphor is. You need the processes in place, the fundamentals, but I think people should be outcome focussed, not process focussed personally. Christ... I feel like I'm at work now.

Can someone explain this to me? At work I'm used to the opposite being beneficial - focusing on processes rather than outcomes may not achieve anything and can promote almost cargo cult behaviour (which I see a lot in the tech world). What's the point in processes if they don't achieve an outcome? Does it matter how you achieve the outcome? Why is this seen as a good thing here? Am I wrong thinking that an example would be passing it around the back (because good teams do it) without focusing on the outcome l outcome (what they achieve by doing it)?

We also appointed Pearson...