Lee Johnson

[Rob k]

4 minutes ago, headhunter said:

I'd classify myself as one of LJs strongest critics but I must disagree that he had to sell his best players. Reid, Bryan & Flint all caught the eye in taking City into the Top 2 in the first half of 2017/18 plus the cup run. I think they all had their heads turned by agents saying they could engineer moves in the summer of 2018 and I believe this played some part in the collapse of form for the last 20 games of the season. They all wanted to leave. Whether City did enough to keep them is a separate argument. It is no argument that Webster was a massive upgrade on Flint and when he left summer of 2019 there is not a single non-parachute payment club in the Championship that would not cash in the on the uplift in value that presented itself and then add to this the [probable] quadrupling of wages for the player, it left the club no option.

Don't make excuses for LJ

I’m not actually sure what your disagreeing with me about - All or LJs best players got sold, including Webster.  I don’t think it’s an excuse, it’s a fact. The club is where it is now due to the horrific recruitment and wages offered from 2018 onwards.
 

Edited January 5, 2023 by Rob k

[Big C]

Hopefully it will be like the Ferguson situation at Peterbro and we will have him back soon

[ashton_fan]

8 minutes ago, Rob k said:

I’m not actually sure what your disagreeing with me about - All or LJs best players got sold, including Webster.  I don’t think it’s an excuse, it’s a fact. The club is where it is now due to the horrific recruitment and wages offered from 2018 onwards.
 

The main reason for the financial problems was COVID which killed the transfer market after a long period of massively reduced revenue

[Rob k]

2 minutes ago, ashton_fan said:

The main reason for the financial problems was COVID which killed the transfer market after a long period of massively reduced revenue

Yes - fair point, the pandemic certainly added to the issues 

Edited January 5, 2023 by Rob k

[headhunter]

3 minutes ago, Rob k said:

I’m not actually sure what your disagreeing with me about - All or LJs best players got sold, including Webster.  I don’t think it’s an excuse, it’s a fact. The club is where it is now due to the horrific recruitment and wages offered from 2018 onwards.
 

It is my interpretation of your use of the phrase "had to sell". These sales were not imposed on him by the owner's desire to free up cash but players wanting to better themselves. The money from the sale of Webster & Kelly was squandered of that there is no doubt. 

Am I right in thinking Brownhill had a release clause? IIRC he was sold so late in the Jan window there was no time to sign a replacement. Who knows, if we had kept him or used the money wisely in that January we may have made the play offs that season [19/20] but then the pandemic happened and as a club we bleat on about the effect of Covid on club finances as if we were the only one affected by it; much like the state of our economy relative to other countries!!

[GrahamC]

20 minutes ago, ashton_fan said:

The main reason for the financial problems was COVID which killed the transfer market after a long period of massively reduced revenue

Actually it was trying to run on a model that meant we had to sell a player at huge profit every season in order to tread water.

That wasn’t sustainable, COVID or not, eventually you either don’t have a buyer or an asset big enough to sell.

I’m a bit more neutral on LJ than most but believe he brought in 15 players last summer, that is far more than Pearson has been able to do so with us in 2 years, which suggests the squad is already significantly his & so comments about not liking their bravery in the final third (!), are all a bit desperate.

His career does seem on a downward trajectory, he was unlucky at Sunderland but despite how it turned out for them with Neil, they’ll think they made the right one.

Edited January 5, 2023 by GrahamC

[spudski]

11 minutes ago, headhunter said:

I'd classify myself as one of LJs strongest critics but I must disagree that he had to sell his best players. Reid, Bryan & Flint all caught the eye in taking City into the Top 2 in the first half of 2017/18 plus the cup run. I think they all had their heads turned by agents saying they could engineer moves in the summer of 2018 and I believe this played some part in the collapse of form for the last 20 games of the season. They all wanted to leave. Whether City did enough to keep them is a separate argument. It is no argument that Webster was a massive upgrade on Flint and when he left summer of 2019 there is not a single non-parachute payment club in the Championship that would not cash in the on the uplift in value that presented itself and then add to this the [probable] quadrupling of wages for the player, it left the club no option.

Don't make excuses for LJ

And here in lies the problem for any manager running this Club.

Any young players doing well, they catch the eye of bigger teams that are either in a higher division or can pay more. We either cash in on them, or the players wants to move. Even if they are tied into a contract, how do you motivate a player when they know interest is elsewhere. It's natural to start thinking about possibilities elsewhere to ' better' themselves. Getting them to be 100% commited and focussed is nigh on impossible.

So we get left with young hungry players with little experience, joined by older pros towards the end of their careers. Mixed with academy products. 

The only way imo, that we will progress, is if we were to keep those promising better young players, keep developing them over more than two years. Great in a perfect world...but it isn't...those players will want to move to better themselves, regardless of how hard we try to convince them otherwise.

The older pros are happy to be professional and pass on their experience and take a decent wage that is often one of their last contracts. They also have found their level. They know they've peaked and know how to give just enough to tread water. 

Does anyone really believe we will ever get promoted unless it's a freak season? Seriously?

It's nigh on impossible.

Academy products with no experience. Older pros at the end of their careers. Young players from leagues below, with no experience at this level. Signed and designed to develop. If any are decent...after two to three seasons they get sold. 

All we can hope for imo, under this structure is a team that will be mid table championship level at most on average. 

 

 

 

[Davefevs]

54 minutes ago, Rob k said:

Fairly sure the owners 29 year old son is in charge of recruiting players at Hibs!! God knows what credentials he has for that role, when will clubs (ours included) start to look at this area as where they are failing rather than the manager all the time. 
easy to slag LJ off here but he had to sell every single one of his best players off. 

Do you mean at City or Hibs?

12 minutes ago, headhunter said:

It is my interpretation of your use of the phrase "had to sell". These sales were not imposed on him by the owner's desire to free up cash but players wanting to better themselves. The money from the sale of Webster & Kelly was squandered of that there is no doubt. 

Am I right in thinking Brownhill had a release clause? IIRC he was sold so late in the Jan window there was no time to sign a replacement. Who knows, if we had kept him or used the money wisely in that January we may have made the play offs that season [19/20] but then the pandemic happened and as a club we bleat on about the effect of Covid on club finances as if we were the only one affected by it; much like the state of our economy relative to other countries!!

We bought Nahki Wells, we signed Markus Henriksen.

[pongo88]

14 hours ago, alexukhc said:

Reuben McAllister showing he made a wise move

I could never understand his logic when he moved to Scotland. The vast majority of managers and coaches, even the good ones, get sacked on a regular basis. Some last two or three years or, if unlucky, only two or three months. He was only 16 when he moved and, if he’d stayed at City,  it would have meant being away from his family but that’s what a lot of young players put up with when starting their career. What’s he going to do when dad and LJ are eventually sacked? Follow them from club to club? 

12 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

 

The lopsided 4-4-1-1, Paterson behind Reid was a bit of a masterstroke but only really came about as injuries forced his hand!

If only LJ and stuck with this system when the injured players got fit! A sensible manager would have continued playing 4-4-1-1 as it was working, but LJ had to tinker and change things. He made quite a few mistakes at City but this must be his biggest 

[Rob k]

1 minute ago, Davefevs said:

Do you mean at City or Hibs?

We bought Nahki Wells, we signed Markus Henriksen.

Here, i would say it was fairly clear that LJ didn’t want Wells and that was an Ashton signing, kudos to Pearson tbf for getting the best out of Nahki. 
 

[cidercity1987]

2 minutes ago, spudski said:

And here in lies the problem for any manager running this Club.

Any young players doing well, they catch the eye of bigger teams that are either in a higher division or can pay more. We either cash in on them, or the players wants to move. Even if they are tied into a contract, how do you motivate a player when they know interest is elsewhere. It's natural to start thinking about possibilities elsewhere to ' better' themselves. Getting them to be 100% commited and focussed is nigh on impossible.

So we get left with young hungry players with little experience, joined by older pros towards the end of their careers. Mixed with academy products. 

The only way imo, that we will progress, is if we were to keep those promising better young players, keep developing them over more than two years. Great in a perfect world...but it isn't...those players will want to move to better themselves, regardless of how hard we try to convince them otherwise.

The older pros are happy to be professional and pass on their experience and take a decent wage that is often one of their last contracts. They also have found their level. They know they've peaked and know how to give just enough to tread water. 

Does anyone really believe we will ever get promoted unless it's a freak season? Seriously?

It's nigh on impossible.

Academy products with no experience. Older pros at the end of their careers. Young players from leagues below, with no experience at this level. Signed and designed to develop. If any are decent...after two to three seasons they get sold. 

All we can hope for imo, under this structure is a team that will be mid table championship level at most on average. 

 

 

 

I do agree with most of the above but then you look at the league table and teams paying much lower wages than us are having a right go at promotion

Blackburn

Millwall

Luton

Preston always finish above us

Brentford have made it, Palace, as many many clubs in the past that would be lower payers than us. Burnley (at the time of their first promotion), QPR, Reading, Swansea, Cardiff presumably similar to us, Blackpool, Huddersfield, etc etc the list goes on.

I appreciate some of it is cyclical but we have to take the chance when we peak (2008, 2017,2018) and we never do.

[GrahamC]

4 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Do you mean at City or Hibs?

We bought Nahki Wells, we signed Markus Henriksen.

He will be barely remembered now but Henriksen is a very good example of how scattergun it just all became.

He was a very experienced Championship player at his peak, a regular for his country, yet was ditched by LJ after 4 games & didn’t feature again.

Just like the Adelakun/Watkins & Szmodics/Palmer/Paterson nonsense it was shambolic.

I get that Ashton is to blame as well but what a shitshow.

[Merrick's Marvels]

16 minutes ago, ashton_fan said:

The main reason for the financial problems was COVID which killed the transfer market after a long period of massively reduced revenue

The wages and transfer fees we were paying - from the time we started shopping at Chelsea onwards - were completely unsustainable for a club our size. Unless every year we made massive profits on transfers by selling our best players. Again, completely unsustainable and complete madness. 

That's the main reason for our financial problems.

Covid just accelerated the time it took for the shit to hit the fan, for our day of reckoning to arrive. 

Mark Ashton has a lot to answer for, as do the people who let him get away with it. 

[spudski]

3 minutes ago, Rob k said:

Here, i would say it was fairly clear that LJ didn’t want Wells and that was an Ashton signing, kudos to Pearson tbf for getting the best out of Nahki. 
 

He's got a worse problem at Hibs...the owners son is also head of recruitment with no experience. Worth a read... https://www.footballscotland.co.uk/spfl/scottish-premiership/ian-gordons-hibs-recruitment-savaged-24883646

[The Humble Realist]

3 minutes ago, Rob k said:

Here, i would say it was fairly clear that LJ didn’t want Wells and that was an Ashton signing, kudos to Pearson tbf for getting the best out of Nahki. 
 

If I remember rightly Henrikson was brought in to replace brownhill til the end of the season who had just gone to Burnley?

Henrikson barely played and was let go well before the end of the season. 

Safe to say one of the biggest downgrades ever replacing brownhill. 

[Davefevs]

13 minutes ago, spudski said:

And here in lies the problem for any manager running this Club.

Any young players doing well, they catch the eye of bigger teams that are either in a higher division or can pay more. We either cash in on them, or the players wants to move. Even if they are tied into a contract, how do you motivate a player when they know interest is elsewhere. It's natural to start thinking about possibilities elsewhere to ' better' themselves. Getting them to be 100% commited and focussed is nigh on impossible.

So we get left with young hungry players with little experience, joined by older pros towards the end of their careers. Mixed with academy products. 

The only way imo, that we will progress, is if we were to keep those promising better young players, keep developing them over more than two years. Great in a perfect world...but it isn't...those players will want to move to better themselves, regardless of how hard we try to convince them otherwise.

The older pros are happy to be professional and pass on their experience and take a decent wage that is often one of their last contracts. They also have found their level. They know they've peaked and know how to give just enough to tread water. 

Does anyone really believe we will ever get promoted unless it's a freak season? Seriously?

It's nigh on impossible.

Academy products with no experience. Older pros at the end of their careers. Young players from leagues below, with no experience at this level. Signed and designed to develop. If any are decent...after two to three seasons they get sold. 

All we can hope for imo, under this structure is a team that will be mid table championship level at most on average. 

 

 

 

Agree to a large extent.  A club like ours has to grow its performance at a slightly higher rate that it’s individual players.

We saw with the SOD / Cotts players plus Bryan and Reid from Academy (that he inherited), that if you can get on an upward turn, grow the team with the odd signing to improve you, you can move forward quickly.  But unless you achieve success, those players outgrow you.

Always a big Q for me - had we got to the playoffs in 17/18, might the holy trinity of Bryan, Reid and Flint stayed for another run at promotion?

We started to look at “established” players in summer 18, Weimann, Watkins and Hunt (plus Webster). Webster was the right model, young at this level with upside.  We needed to raid Championship clubs for 21, 22, 23 year olds, making the most of out upward trend.  Hindsight, yep, but we went to Eisa, Adelakun, lower League.

It was actually the summer LJ recruited the least number of players, just 6!!!  And spent the least money!!!  But I think we wasted it on Watkins, Eisa and Adelakun.  They weren’t going to improve us.  Hence why in January we went for the Chelsea not-so-holy trinity of Dasilva, Kalas and Palmer.

Going forward, once we get out of this mess left behind, we need to find a way to pillage the weaker teams in this division for their youngsters, sell the HPC and AG to them, sell the culture.  You’ve got to get them on “low” wages, so you can can give them another contract to keep them that extra season.  I don’t hear enough if that forward planning, the plan should be to sign players who are good enough to grow.  Of course the odd senior pro on a free like James and Naismith, but the only way City will do it is to get a good young core and grow together quickly.

[ray savino]

6 minutes ago, pongo88 said:

If only LJ and stuck with this system when the injured players got fit! A sensible manager would have continued playing 4-4-1-1 as it was working, but LJ had to tinker and change things. He made quite a few mistakes at City but this must be his biggest 

Yes, found this baffling. Okay players got injured, burnt out, left (Reid, Bryan) etc., but surely we should have tried recruiting around that style that was the most successful 6 month period of LJ’s tenure and probably of the last 8 years. ( We finished in a higher league position the next season - 8th? - but there seems no doubt that the first 6 months of 2017/18 showed the most promise and potential. We seemed to tear up the latest strategy everytime we had a downturn. Hence we recruited in what appears to have been a scattergun manner. Compare this with the likes of Brentford during the same time. With us it seems to have been long term planning for the club infrastructure but not the team. Who was to blame, LJ? MA? SL? Or all 3, to greater or lesser degrees? Whoever, we’re still certainly feeling the effects of the waste of vital funds from that post 17/18 period. 

[Davefevs]

18 minutes ago, Rob k said:

Here, i would say it was fairly clear that LJ didn’t want Wells and that was an Ashton signing, kudos to Pearson tbf for getting the best out of Nahki. 
 

This really bugs me.  Why didn’t he say no then?

As per a chat with our mutual friend…LJ wanted Toney that window.  Well, guess what?  DMac went on Sky and said he wanted £10m and player loaned back to see if Posh could get promoted.  Ok, some of that was DMac bluster, but essentially we couldn’t afford what LJ wanted in the winter window.  So you start to explore other avenues.

Even if LJ himself told me himself he didn’t want Wells, I wouldn’t believe him.  He might have wanted Toney over Wells, wouldn’t we all.  But for a manager who has gone on record saying he has final say (not just the once either) to say he had a player hoisted onto him is bullshit imho. Not having a go at you btw.  We broke our recruitment model for Wells.  LJ knew what he was getting.

13 minutes ago, spudski said:

He's got a worse problem at Hibs...the owners son is also head of recruitment with no experience. Worth a read... https://www.footballscotland.co.uk/spfl/scottish-premiership/ian-gordons-hibs-recruitment-savaged-24883646

Again, LJ will have final say.

12 minutes ago, The Humble Realist said:

If I remember rightly Henrikson was brought in to replace brownhill til the end of the season who had just gone to Burnley?

Henrikson barely played and was let go well before the end of the season. 

Safe to say one of the biggest downgrades ever replacing brownhill. 

Was excellent on his debut, having not played for 6 months, but LJ flogged him, subbed him because he was knackered, and it ended up in a dressing room argument.  He signed Benkovic and didn’t play him too.

 

I like aspects of LJ, but I just don’t buy the “it was a Mark Ashton signing”, much as I’d love to shift 100% of the blame onto him!

[ScottishRed]

32 minutes ago, pongo88 said:

I could never understand his logic when he moved to Scotland. The vast majority of managers and coaches, even the good ones, get sacked on a regular basis. Some last two or three years or, if unlucky, only two or three months. He was only 16 when he moved and, if he’d stayed at City,  it would have meant being away from his family but that’s what a lot of young players put up with when starting their career. What’s he going to do when dad and LJ are eventually sacked? Follow them from club to club? 

If only LJ and stuck with this system when the injured players got fit! A sensible manager would have continued playing 4-4-1-1 as it was working, but LJ had to tinker and change things. He made quite a few mistakes at City but this must be his biggest 

I firmly believe that LJ ‘stumbled’ across that formation when Fam was unavailable and it worked.

The minute Fam was available he was straight back and we were way less effective.

In my opinion one of his biggest mistakes.

[2015]

2 minutes ago, ScottishRed said:

I firmly believe that LJ ‘stumbled’ across that formation when Fam was unavailable and it worked.

The minute Fam was available he was straight back and we were way less effective.

In my opinion one of his biggest mistakes.

He also stumbled across Reid being an adequate Striker. We had no forwards in pre season before Diedhiou signed that were fully fit so he tried Reid up front with Hinds in pre season and it worked well. It wasn't no tactical masterclass by him.

Too many hung up on 4 months of good football in 2017/18. There were home performances under LJ in his final 3 years that were much worse than we've been served up recently.

LJ was too interested in winning tactical battles against other Managers, the success in 17/18 went to his head a bit and thought he was some sort of genius, the next Eddie Howe of English football management. He was anything but. An extremely cautious manager from 2018 onwards and we bottled the playoffs massively in 18/19. We should have made them with the squad we had. He should have gone after that, he'd lost his way.

[spudski]

18 minutes ago, ray savino said:

Yes, found this baffling. Okay players got injured, burnt out, left (Reid, Bryan) etc., but surely we should have tried recruiting around that style that was the most successful 6 month period of LJ’s tenure and probably of the last 8 years. ( We finished in a higher league position the next season - 8th? - but there seems no doubt that the first 6 months of 2017/18 showed the most promise and potential. We seemed to tear up the latest strategy everytime we had a downturn. Hence we recruited in what appears to have been a scattergun manner. Compare this with the likes of Brentford during the same time. With us it seems to have been long term planning for the club infrastructure but not the team. Who was to blame, LJ? MA? SL? Or all 3, to greater or lesser degrees? Whoever, we’re still certainly feeling the effects of the waste of vital funds from that post 17/18 period. 

Agreed... however the conundrum I stated still exists. We just don't keep our best players long enough to develop with the others coming through. If we did...they would become the experienced players, used to the club and it's playing philosophy. And they would be playing with the starlets coming up from the Academy. Imagine having Semenyo, Scott, Conway, Atkinson, Pring all developing longer here, getting even better and having the likes of Bell, Benorous, Towler all coming through and developing at the same pace, and combining together. It needs more time than we have now. 

6 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

This really bugs me.  Why didn’t he say no then?

As per a chat with our mutual friend…LJ wanted Toney that window.  Well, guess what?  DMac went on Sky and said he wanted £10m and player loaned back to see if Posh could get promoted.  Ok, some of that was DMac bluster, but essentially we couldn’t afford what LJ wanted in the winter window.  So you start to explore other avenues.

Even if LJ himself told me himself he didn’t want Wells, I wouldn’t believe him.  He might have wanted Toney over Wells, wouldn’t we all.  But for a manager who has gone on record saying he has final say (not just the once either) to say he had a player hoisted onto him is bullshit imho. Not having a go at you btw.  We broke our recruitment model for Wells.  LJ knew what he was getting.

Again, LJ will have final say.

Was excellent on his debut, having not played for 6 months, but LJ flogged him, subbed him because he was knackered, and it ended up in a dressing room argument.  He signed Benkovic and didn’t play him too.

 

I like aspects of LJ, but I just don’t buy the “it was a Mark Ashton signing”, much as I’d love to shift 100% of the blame onto him!

I guess he can only have the final day on what he's offered.

[Bris Red]

4 minutes ago, 2015 said:

He also stumbled across Reid being an adequate Striker. We had no forwards in pre season before Diedhiou signed that were fully fit so he tried Reid up front with Hinds in pre season and it worked well. It wasn't no tactical masterclass by him.

Too many hung up on 4 months of good football in 2017/18. There were home performances under LJ in his final 3 years that were much worse than we've been served up recently.

LJ was too interested in winning tactical battles against other Managers, the success in 17/18 went to his head a bit and thought he was some sort of genius, the next Eddie Howe of English football management. He was anything but. An extremely cautious manager from 2018 onwards and we bottled the playoffs massively in 18/19. We should have made them with the squad we had. He should have gone after that, he'd lost his way.

Indeed. But what did SL and our board do, sanctioned him and MA to spend to the levels that have never been seen at BCFC before in the summer of 19.
 

As i said previously getting in somebody like Hughton or Pearson around 2018/19 with the available funds we had to spend would have almost guaranteed a play-off place at the very minimum IMO.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Bris Red

[ScottishRed]

1 minute ago, 2015 said:

He also stumbled across Reid being an adequate Striker. We had no forwards in pre season before Diedhiou signed that were fully fit so he tried Reid up front with Hinds in pre season and it worked well. It wasn't no tactical masterclass by him.

Too many hung up on 4 months of good football in 2017/18. There were home performances under LJ in his final 3 years that were much worse than we've been served up recently.

LJ was too interested in winning tactical battles against other Managers, the success in 17/18 went to his head a bit and thought he was some sort of genius, the next Eddie Howe of English football management. He was anything but. An extremely cautious manager from 2018 onwards and we bottled the playoffs massively in 18/19. We should have made them with the squad we had. He should have gone after that, he'd lost his way.

Agreed. I also think,as a general point, particularly at home, LJ was way to concerned with countering the opposition rather than trying to impose his team on theirs.

I watched his ‘exclusive’ interview on Sky last night, change the tracksuit he had on to a City one and he could have been talking about one of his losing runs here!

[LondonBristolian]

16 hours ago, Bris Red said:

LJ did fine for me in his first couple of years here - the problem that the powers that be didn’t see was that by about the summer of 2018 he had taken us as far as he could.

IMO he did a very good job after Cotts. Don’t get me wrong i loved Cotts but we we’re heading down that season under him. Yes he wasn’t backed etc etc but his obsession with playing 3-5-2 week in week out when it just wasn’t working was his downfall. I think SL got rid of him at the right time.

As I just said the summer of 2018 was the time to have given LJ the boot. Yes it would have been harsh maybe as he had us knocking on the door and fair play he got us established at this level and the cup run was fantastic but that was the summer to have gotten in a Pearson or Hughton IMO. Managers who have proven at this level if they have heaps of cash to spend (like LJ was allowed to spunk) then they will more than likely get you into the play-offs as a bare minimum.

If LJ had gone in 2018, I think he'd have been remembered very differently and there'd be a lot of fans saying "what would have happened if we'd stuck with him?" each time we lost a game.

However I actually think - cup run aside - LJ built a stronger team in 2018-2019 than the season before. That was the season we had the ten/eleven game winning run and it felt like we had a strong foundation for the future. It was also a season where we were desperately unlucky with goalkeeping injuries, with Max having an extended run at a young age - alongside a solitary dismal performance by Marinovic - due to both senior goalkeepers being injured. LJ (or someone at the club) also deserves credit for losing Bryan, Flint and Reid yet actually improving the team via Weimann, Webster, the loans of Kalas and Dasilva and the emergence of Kelly. 

The transfer window of January 2018 was a missed opportunity and a bit of a disaster but I honestly still think the summer of 2019 was really the place LJ and MA's reputation for poor transfers comes from. (I also think it is a misnomer to blame COVID, as another poster did, as the rot had set in before then.)

In 2019 we did what felt at the time to be great early busy in terms of securing Kalas and I think Dasilva quite early too. However we spent the summer gambling on Nketiah and then scrambled for options when that fell through, plus signed Szmodics because we couldn't get Palmer and then signed Palmer anyway leaving us with approximately 963 attacking midfielders. We then sold Webster days before our opening game - after a preseason of preparing to play one formation and system - ditched it completely after a poor performance against Leeds and suddenly the club went on a Supermarket Sweep-esque trolley dash, ditching Pack and signing two very different midfielders without replacing his function in the team and signing Benik Afobe only after we were seemingly rebuffed by every other striker in the Championship. We went into that season with a desperately unbalanced team that did not complement each other and everything collapsed from there. 

If LJ had left in the summer of 2019, I honestly think his reputation amongst our fans would be significantly better than it was when he left ten months later. 

Edited January 5, 2023 by LondonBristolian

[Mendip City]

9 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

This really bugs me.  Why didn’t he say no then?

As per a chat with our mutual friend…LJ wanted Toney that window.  Well, guess what?  DMac went on Sky and said he wanted £10m and player loaned back to see if Posh could get promoted.  Ok, some of that was DMac bluster, but essentially we couldn’t afford what LJ wanted in the winter window.  So you start to explore other avenues.

Even if LJ himself told me himself he didn’t want Wells, I wouldn’t believe him.  He might have wanted Toney over Wells, wouldn’t we all.  But for a manager who has gone on record saying he has final say (not just the once either) to say he had a player hoisted onto him is bullshit imho. Not having a go at you btw.  We broke our recruitment model for Wells.  LJ knew what he was getting.

Again, LJ will have final say.

Was excellent on his debut, having not played for 6 months, but LJ flogged him, subbed him because he was knackered, and it ended up in a dressing room argument.  He signed Benkovic and didn’t play him too.

 

I like aspects of LJ, but I just don’t buy the “it was a Mark Ashton signing”, much as I’d love to shift 100% of the blame onto him!

Agree…. Much as Ashton was a slimy so and so… JL had final say on all signings (as you say, he said this over and over) and SL had final say on spending.  Ashton paraded around a lot but was, ultimately, chief negotiator…..

Because of his persona, Ashton became an easy target to deflect attention away from the real decision makers/purse-string holders. Every time there is criticism of our spending through this period it needs to be shared between the 3 of them. 

[2015]

9 minutes ago, Bris Red said:

Indeed. But what did SL and our board do, sanctioned him and MA to spend to the levels that have never been seen at BCFC before in the summer of 19.
 

As i said previously getting in somebody like Hughton or Pearson around 2018/19 with the available funds we had to spend would have almost guaranteed a play-off place at the very minimum IMO.

LJ did do well though in 18/19 up until March when he did his special of bottling when it really mattered. 4 Points clear of 7th with 4 games to go and somehow we ended up 8th.

Too worried about the opposition all the time

[Sir Geoff]

51 minutes ago, cidercity1987 said:

I do agree with most of the above but then you look at the league table and teams paying much lower wages than us are having a right go at promotion

Blackburn

Millwall

Luton

Preston always finish above us

Brentford have made it, Palace, as many many clubs in the past that would be lower payers than us. Burnley (at the time of their first promotion), QPR, Reading, Swansea, Cardiff presumably similar to us, Blackpool, Huddersfield, etc etc the list goes on.

I appreciate some of it is cyclical but we have to take the chance when we peak (2008, 2017,2018) and we never do.

I accept that in the Premier League a higher wage bill probably means a higher league position. However is there any correlation that this is actually the case in the Championship ?

Of the clubs you quote 2 have a recent history similar to ours, one has spent 9 seasons in league 2 and conference. Three of QPR, Reading, Swansea and Cardiff have had or are currently in financial difficulty. Blackpool have recently spent 5 seasons outside the Championship.

Yes it would be nice to get promoted but it can turn into a bit of a poisoned chalice too. Let's walk before we can run. Some decent football and a few wins at home would be a good start before we start comparing ourselves to the likes of Blackpool and Huddersfield (who spent a massive 3 seasons between them in the top flight).

[Rob k]

41 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

This really bugs me.  Why didn’t he say no then?

As per a chat with our mutual friend…LJ wanted Toney that window.  Well, guess what?  DMac went on Sky and said he wanted £10m and player loaned back to see if Posh could get promoted.  Ok, some of that was DMac bluster, but essentially we couldn’t afford what LJ wanted in the winter window.  So you start to explore other avenues.

Even if LJ himself told me himself he didn’t want Wells, I wouldn’t believe him.  He might have wanted Toney over Wells, wouldn’t we all.  But for a manager who has gone on record saying he has final say (not just the once either) to say he had a player hoisted onto him is bullshit imho. Not having a go at you btw.  We broke our recruitment model for Wells.  LJ knew what he was getting.

Again, LJ will have final say.

Was excellent on his debut, having not played for 6 months, but LJ flogged him, subbed him because he was knackered, and it ended up in a dressing room argument.  He signed Benkovic and didn’t play him too.

 

I like aspects of LJ, but I just don’t buy the “it was a Mark Ashton signing”, much as I’d love to shift 100% of the blame onto him!

We were paying 8m for defenders at that point, is 10m for a striker that obscene? And there would have been no chance of signing Toney and loaning him back, that would have been down to Ashton to negotiate properly which I’m sure he would have done 

Edited January 5, 2023 by Rob k

[OneTeamInBristol]

But what a signing Gustav Engvall was!

[Rob k]

6 minutes ago, OneTeamInBristol said:

But what a signing Gustav Engvall was!

And that tells you everything about our recruitment strategy at that point, 2.5m, Pearson’s biggest outlay is half of that so far on a single player.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Rob k