What a mess this club is in...

[PFree]

Let me caveat this with the fact I've been following City for approaching 30 years and have been a ST holder for over a decade, I will also fully support LJ during his tenure as he is currently employed to lead and guide our team.

Anyway, after the debacle of transfers last summer followed the 'stubborn Steve's' unwillingness to change which caused his exit, what have we actually learned as a club?

As fans, we were supposedly to be surprised just who had applied for the manager's role, and our expectancy was therefore raised in that at last, a new, positive period was hopefully before us - happy days, we were starting to go for it again and invest for the future, we all felt better and more positive about the future.

In reality, we appointed a new Manager who wasn't proven at this level and who came towards the bottom of most polls around who we wanted. Okay, we've all got behind him (which is absolutely right) but after an initial flurry of positivity upon his arrival, it now feels like same old, same old as we fight relegation.  Whilst trying to be positive, when I see strange tactics each week and us then signing a right-back (who isn't match fit and won't be for some time) when we actually need an attacking midfielder and striker, it just makes me feel that once again we are taking the cheap option and that within the club we lack relevant experience...

We are at a time when we need strong ST sales again, and let's be honest, how many of us have the feel-good factor right? Only our hard core ST fans will come back for more (I will renew whatever happens) as we have a strong contingent of fair-weather fans I'm afraid.

The obvious positive is the shiny new stadium but we have a youth set-up that has cost a fortune but produced little (are those who have come through the youth set up any better than players we could pick up for fairly cheap prices?), we have very little in the way of quality in the squad (three or four players who can cut it at this level, one of which is on loan), we've made a managerial appointment few wanted, I just wonder when the point comes IF we ever want to demonstrate ambition once again?

Okay Steve wants to run City like a business but in reality, football isn't a business, as much as I'm a fan of SL, are we to therefore stagnate in the footballing backwaters for evermore? The longer it takes for us to invest and to go for it, the wider the gulf becomes between where we are and where we want to get to?

I sincerely hope that Little Lee turns it around and proves many of us wrong, I also hope I'm completely wrong and that the situation isn't as bad as I currently and that the club grows from here - I'm just concerned that MY club is run in a really poor way and that as a club, we just haven't learned from past disappointments and poor decisions...?

[simon uk]

Have to agree, if we go down then it will be fairly staggering how we managed to mess it up so badly after being so dominant the year before especially as that would probably mean mk and preston both survive. If we stay up its still been very poor. There are more guys in suits than first team pros to put on the bench. We talk about the club debt, and not spending money on wages but then sl shouldnt be coming out saying we are aiming for the stars.

its pretty embarrasing, but it happens to us all to often.

 

[BCFC_Dan]

So in summary: you don't like the manager.

[adamc6203]

12 minutes ago, Thatch35 said:

Very good PFree. Not sure anyone can argue with that.

BOOOOOOOOOO

[Fordy62]

15 minutes ago, BCFC_Dan said:

So in summary: you don't like the manager.

Hahahaha. Posts like this disappoint me that I'm only allowed to like it once. 

[Marina's Rolls Royce]

2 minutes ago, Fordy62 said:

Hahahaha. Posts like this disappoint me that I'm only allowed to like it once. 

So in summary: the OP doesn't like the manager.

[ExiledAjax]

The amount of opinion dressed up as fact in this OP is surpassed only by the loquaciousness of the prose.

[SecretSam]

I don't think there's anything new about our situation.  That's the most depressing thing.  It's not new.  And it's not anyone's "fault", really.  It's just where we are and the nature of the wider football macroeconomy.

If you talk to fans of other clubs, they also whinge incessantly - to the extent that the Guardian's "Fiver" e-mail took the piss out of Arsenal fans the other day:

“What a dismal time of it Arsenal are having, eh? Misery hasn’t been this wince-inducing since Kathy Bates acquainted herself with James Caan’s ankles. There they are, a club trapped in the sort of bottomless well of despair only those third in the Premier League, in the fifth round of the FA Cup and the last 16 of Big Cup can really understand. Just been given more time to pay your £2.2m tax bill while staring down the barrel of liquidation? Tch, try having a manager who has barely parted company with £100m in the past four transfer windows, the tightwad. Owners destroying your club one corporate buzzword at a time? Huh, at least you haven’t got a deep-lying midfielder who doesn’t always tackle particularly well.

The Gunners are in danger of becoming the mopey middle-class emo kids of the Premier League, wallowing in self-pity and you-don’t-know-what-it’s-like-to-be-me misery, while everyone else rolls their eyes, points out things really aren’t so bad, that there are clubs much worse off than they are and waits for them to grow out of it.”

 

 

 

[Fordy62]

4 minutes ago, Marina's Rolls Royce said:

So in summary: the OP doesn't like the manager.

Cheap MRR. Cheap but effective. 

[Big C]

I don't really understand the right back debate malarkey? Did the OP miss the two matches when we played an out of position youth team player there? Little seems to be still struggling with either match fitness or injury and Ayling must be still struggling a bit as he didn't even make the bench on Tuesday. Now I don't deny that we need strengthening in the positions he mentions but bringing in a right back with Champions League experience is still a bit of a no brainer I believe, he may not be match fit but neither are the two we have and he seems to be an improvement on the pair of them.

[BRISTOL86]

CRISIS BALDRICK, CRISIS!

[Tipps69]

12 minutes ago, Big C said:

I don't really understand the right back debate malarkey? Did the OP miss the two matches when we played an out of position youth team player there? Little seems to be still struggling with either match fitness or injury and Ayling must be still struggling a bit as he didn't even make the bench on Tuesday. Now I don't deny that we need strengthening in the positions he mentions but bringing in a right back with Champions League experience is still a bit of a no brainer I believe, he may not be match fit but neither are the two we have and he seems to be an improvement on the pair of them.

My view regarding Matthews is it isn't just a signing for the rest of this season but a signing for the next 2 or 3 seasons & as you state, it is a position that needs sorting out.

It may not of been the most immediate of positions that needed filling now but it may well of been that the opportunity arose to sign him now & it would help in the long run!

Whereas we could of turned down the chance to sign Matthews now & he could of gone somewhere else on loan & then joined that club permanently in the summer & then we would of still been looking for a right back!!

Some times you just have to take what is on offer even if it wasn't something that you desperately needed now for the benefit of the long term.

[reddogkev]

Holy crap, see what I mean, we lose 2 in a row and suddenly the club is in a mess and it's the end of the world again!

PFree, you've been supporting for 30 years, just a couple of more years more than me, so how many times have you wrote that this club is in a mess?

WE ARE NOT IN A MESS - JUST A RELEGATION BATTLE - THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE!

[EstoniaTallinnRed]

9 minutes ago, reddogkev said:

Holy crap, see what I mean, we lose 2 in a row and suddenly the club is in a mess and it's the end of the world again!

PFree, you've been supporting for 30 years, just a couple of more years more than me, so how many times have you wrote that this club is in a mess?

WE ARE NOT IN A MESS - JUST A RELEGATION BATTLE - THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE!

Yes!  The big difference is that we will be in a mess,  if we get relegated.

[adamc6203]

41 minutes ago, Thatch35 said:

What you think of the topic and first post? Can't articulate anything constructive?

I personally think that a lot of what was said is true, but it seems to be more of same old same old. How many more threads are we going to have where the same thing is said but worded differently.

-Lee Johnson wasn't at the top of many fans list, but we need to learn that we're not quite as big a club as we think we are. The people at the top of our polls are now being linked with jobs like Newcastle, If I was a neutral I know where I'd rather be.

-If teams are sending out players on loan they usually like to keep them close to home, same with players leaving on loan. They don't want to move 200 miles away from their family because they might get first team football for three months. What striker with the class that so many of fans want, is available to come to us.

-Our youth system has seen three players make it into our first team in recent years. Wes Burns has now gone to Fleetwood on loan, but that will be good for his development, and I don't think the amount of players we produce is that different to any other Championship side.

-Football is a business, maybe not to you or me, but to the money men, it is what it is. We are lucky that we have a chairman in Steve Lansdown who actually supports our club and so we are probably less business like than most others. This is probably a major factor in why we are where we are, because we aren't quite as ruthless behind the scenes.

[richwwtk]

We're all behind the manager but he's actually a little bit shit isn't he? I never wanted him but I'll support him fully until he relegates us and we start showing more ambition because appointing an intelligent, young and hungry manager who impressed hugely at the interview stage isn't ambitious at all. A much more ambitious appointment would have been Colin, because we really want a hoary old warhorse in charge don't we? Like I said though, the manager will have my full support for as long as he's here, I just don't think he'll be here for long because he's not very good and I didn't like him as a player but I'm right behind him all the way blah blah blah blah

[BCFC_Dan]

8 minutes ago, EstoniaTallinnRed said:

Yes!  The big difference is that we will be in a mess,  if we get relegated.

No we won't. We'll be in league one. Just like we were last year.

We don't have a huge squad on big wages and long contracts. We don't rely heavily on revenue from being in the Championship. We're not going to go under if we get relegated.

There's a good core of young players at the club, most of whom have proven to be very good indeed at league one level. Some will leave but we have no trouble recruiting for that level. We have a manager who'd gone six or seven games unbeaten before he came to us.

Relegation would be a setback and it might take more than one season to get back to the Championship but a mess? Don't be silly. Villa and Newcastle are in a mess. We're in a spot of mild bother by comparison.

[reddogkev]

22 minutes ago, BCFC_Dan said:

No we won't. We'll be in league one. Just like we were last year.

We don't have a huge squad on big wages and long contracts. We don't rely heavily on revenue from being in the Championship. We're not going to go under if we get relegated.

There's a good core of young players at the club, most of whom have proven to be very good indeed at league one level. Some will leave but we have no trouble recruiting for that level. We have a manager who'd gone six or seven games unbeaten before he came to us.

Relegation would be a setback and it might take more than one season to get back to the Championship but a mess? Don't be silly. Villa and Newcastle are in a mess. We're in a spot of mild bother by comparison.

Dan, you've done me proud with that response, where's the evidence of the mess?

[slartibartfast]

1 hour ago, PFree said:

Let me caveat this with the fact I've been following City for approaching 30 years and have been a ST holder for over a decade,

Ah, a newbie then. Welcome aboard sir !

[Redtucks]

2 hours ago, PFree said:

.......Steve wants to run City like a business but ......

.......I'm just concerned that MY club is run in a really poor way.....

I'm confused!

Who owns the club???   

    

 

[42nite]

10 minutes ago, Redtucks said:

I'm confused!

Who owns the club???   

    

 

I own a brick, not sure where it is though!

[Jack Dawe]

1 hour ago, PFree said:

 

Okay Steve wants to run City like a business but in reality, football isn't a business, as much as I'm a fan of SL, are we to therefore stagnate in the footballing backwaters for evermore? The longer it takes for us to invest and to go for it, the wider the gulf becomes between where we are and where we want to get to?

I sincerely hope that Little Lee turns it around and proves many of us wrong, I also hope I'm completely wrong and that the situation isn't as bad as I currently and that the club grows from here - I'm just concerned that MY club is run in a really poor way and that as a club, we just haven't learned from past disappointments and poor decisions...?

It's not true to say "we just haven't learned from past disappointments and poor decisions" as we are not buying up highly paid players with their best years behind them on long contracts, for one thing (all, or most, of our big wage players are on loan and will be off the wage bill, pronto, once we finish in May). If we go down, we will have a nucleas of players in the 23 - 27 year age bracket (if they hang around) on wages more within our budget than the previous relegation.

So, there's one lesson learned. The debt will be small, manageable and not crippling, compared to 2013 (I think/hope, if I've understood SL correctly). And we will have a group of players coming into, theoretically, their best years, and ones we can sell on at a profit, should we wish or need to do so.

We are being run more sustainably, more business-like, more professionally. However, the result, on the pitch, could well be the same.

The summer transfer fiasco was a new one on me, too. Never known anything quite like it (others might be able to?) No one seems to be 100% sure on what happened - who did what when; who didn't do what when etc, etc - and I still can't make head nor tail about responsibility, but either way, I cannot remember a time when we have been so poorly prepared and undercooked going into a season. Maybe in 82 or 83, I don't know, I can't remember. Certainly not following a promotion.

So, new mistakes this time, but same result - if we do go down. If - back to L1. This is the key, for me: different errors, same/similar outcome: struggling in tier 2.

It occurs to me that SL is attempting to put right what went wrong in 2010-13, to do now what he wished he had done back then. If the Championship has changed, in two years, as much as they wanted us to believe last summer, I'm left wondering if this is the right way to go about things in 2016?

After all that's said and done though, the measure of the club is what we do out on the pitch, and we have managed to yo-yo between this league and L1 quite comfortably before without a billionaire backer, a sporting umbrella thingy, without a modern ground, or any of all that stuff going on down AG now. The whole point of having all this is to take us beyond what we have achieved for decades previously, to "take us to another level."

It is fair to SL to wait until the ground is done and income is duly increased before judging him on whether he has "taken us to another level." 

SL's generosity is not in question. His intention (for the majority) is not in question. His decency and likeability as a man is not in question. It is simply, as the chap with his name over the door presiding over everthing, his competency to "take us to another level" is in question. Or, as @BCFC_Dan will want to, quite rightly, remind me, his competency and good luck.

I think it is right to say, though, that SL has learned from before. Unfortunately, there are more things to be learned again from this season than he would've liked this time

[Porto Red]

20 minutes ago, 42nite said:

I own a brick, not sure where it is though!

Part of a sh*thouse in the new SS?

[Jack Dawe]

1 hour ago, BCFC_Dan said:

No we won't. We'll be in league one. Just like we were last year.

We don't have a huge squad on big wages and long contracts. We don't rely heavily on revenue from being in the Championship. We're not going to go under if we get relegated.

There's a good core of young players at the club, most of whom have proven to be very good indeed at league one level. Some will leave but we have no trouble recruiting for that level. We have a manager who'd gone six or seven games unbeaten before he came to us.

Relegation would be a setback and it might take more than one season to get back to the Championship but a mess? Don't be silly. Villa and Newcastle are in a mess. We're in a spot of mild bother by comparison.

We are pretty much where we've always been, give or take a few freaky/extraordinary periods (76-80; 82-84). 

It is no great surprise to me if some fans resort to hyperbole when we are faced with a very real possibility of relegation, given the amount of hope and expectation generated by a record breaking promotion and title winning team, talk of competing in the Championship "one way or another" over the summer, talk of the manager being capable of taking a team to the PL, the ground development, the Bristol Sport stuff ("working to make Bristol a world class sporting city"), bids of many millions for top class forwards, talk of competing at the other end of the championship next season, PL aspirations reitedated, COO speaking of a "surprising" interest in coach job, and so on. 

Given all this, from the club not the fans, is it any wonder some see a "mess"?

[ashton_fan]

I just hope the players have more mental strength than some of the people on here

Far from being in a hopeless situation provided we can keep our heads above water this season with the extra revenue from the new stadium next season we should be able to compete properly at this level. Next season I'm sure we'll be in the top half, of course we've got to pick up about four more wins this year first.

[Major Isewater]

3 hours ago, ExiledAjax said:

The amount of opinion dressed up as fact in this OP is surpassed only by the loquaciousness of the prose.

I like loquacious , especially in those sherbert fountains .

[Major Isewater]

10 minutes ago, ashton_fan said:

I just hope the players have more mental strength than some of the people on here

Far from being in a hopeless situation provided we can keep our heads above water this season with the extra revenue from the new stadium next season we should be able to compete properly at this level. Next season I'm sure we'll be in the top half, of course we've got to pick up about four more wins this year first.

No problem . 

City are coming for you ! 

[Major Isewater]

2 hours ago, BCFC_Dan said:

No we won't. We'll be in league one. Just like we were last year.

We don't have a huge squad on big wages and long contracts. We don't rely heavily on revenue from being in the Championship. We're not going to go under if we get relegated.

There's a good core of young players at the club, most of whom have proven to be very good indeed at league one level. Some will leave but we have no trouble recruiting for that level. We have a manager who'd gone six or seven games unbeaten before he came to us.

Relegation would be a setback and it might take more than one season to get back to the Championship but a mess? Don't be silly. Villa and Newcastle are in a mess. We're in a spot of mild bother by comparison.

Except that it's never easy to get out of the Third division , even with all the advantages we have over smaller clubs .

Sheff Utd are a prime example .

The longer we stink out the lower division the wider the gap grows between us and the clubs in the divisions above us .

Relegation would not signal the end of Bristol City but it would be a serious set back , many supporters will lose interest as we once again take on the Gillingham's and Chesterfields of this world .

 

[Robin1988]

4 hours ago, PFree said:

In reality, we appointed a new Manager who wasn't proven at this level and who came towards the bottom of most polls around who we wanted. Okay, we've all got behind him (which is absolutely right) but after an initial flurry of positivity upon his arrival, it now feels like same old, same old as we fight relegation.  Whilst trying to be positive, when I see strange tactics each week and us then signing a right-back (who isn't match fit and won't be for some time) when we actually need an attacking midfielder and striker, it just makes me feel that once again we are taking the cheap option and that within the club we lack relevant experience...

Agree with most of the rest but must take you to task with this. We've won three of the six games LJ has managed so far, steady form. Would see us in midtable if stretched over a season (which is ludicrous but if we're in the business of making quick conclusions...)

What exactly is so weird about LJ's tactics? As far as I can see it, the oddest thing is putting Freeman on the right, which is pretty normal these days anyway.

The thing that seems most same-old, same-old is the idea that if you need players in multiple positions, you can only focus on one at a time. So because we need a striker, the fact Mark Little isn't good enough and Ayling isn't fit is completely irrelevant. We do need a right-back, give Matthews a couple of games to get back his match sharpness (he might not have been playing but I doubt he hasn't trained) and we'll have a good player. We might even have him next season, which would be even better.

[Fiale]

4 hours ago, PFree said:

I see strange tactics each week and us then signing a right-back (who isn't match fit and won't be for some time) when we actually need an attacking midfielder and striker, it just makes me feel that once again we are taking the cheap option and that within the club we lack relevant experience...

 

What world do people live in where they can only do one thing/task at a time ? This morning I put some toast in toaster, put the kettle on, did up my tie in the mirror, got the butter out of the fridge, buttered the bread, poured hot water into a cup adding a tea bag... all these events happening within the same time frame... and I am just one person, imagine if I had a Director of breakfast, breakfast operations manager, a head breakfast coach, a CEO, board members... wow... People will obviously be amazed that at work I also have several things on the go at the same time. I don't turn things/task away whilst stareing at my screen awaiting that one reply to a email "sorry boss, done nothing this week, still awaiting a email reply to something else, only one thing at a time you know".

 

Anyway we need a Right back, it has been obvious for a while, and if Matthews can ramp up his fitness then he should be a asset. As for a striker, I imagine only us fans know we lack firepower... what the hell would the club know eh !