Pearson and Tanner Pre Hull.

[Bristol Oil Services]

10 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

I think Steve needed a good football person.  Now, that might’ve been PH telling SL that’s what he needed.

 

(on an aside, did you watch the Beatles: Get Back documentary on Apple TV?  It’s worth a watch to see the dynamics of the 4 of them as they put together a number of songs at Twickenham Studios)

Don’t have Apple TV Dave, sadly, would love to see that documentary. My favourite era is mid-Beatles before they went hippy-beardie. 

[Mr Popodopolous]

12 minutes ago, Nogbad the Bad said:

That's right, if we're going to be mid table that's actually fine for me for now but in that case there must be some entertainment, at home at least.

I think Nige knows that and is in fact really keen to provide a team that entertains, but he's clearly not being given the tools to do so.

Still have high hopes for Anis in the slightly longer term, but it looks like we might have to be patient there.

Basically we're just a workmanlike team lacking any real spark who probably won't go down but fans have very little to look forward to as they trudge towards the Gate.

Away from home at Millwall, watched on a stream good control, good chances created after a tight first half but most fans won't see that highlights aside.

Okay the away fans plus those who seee it on streams or VPN Airways but a majority won't IMO. Full match after the event on Robins T.V. sure yeah but not in real time.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Mr Popodopolous

[Davefevs]

Just now, Spike said:

I'll be honest, if we won 1-0 every week I don't think anyone would complain, evergreen if it were "boring defensive play", the issue is we're neither exciting or winning, if anything we're boring and looking very wobbly at best and that's what bothers me. 

We need some creativity if we're going to win, our home games have shown that. 

I'd be happy with boring wins but let's face it, we don't have wins in us right now, we can barely get a shot on target. 

Fair comment, but it’s a small sample of 3 (league) games.  Of which we did win one, and didn’t look wobbly at all in that game.

Its also 3 games against teams that are usually defensively sound / hard to break down.  That’s not an excuse, it just me doing my usual “it’s not always about what we do, but what our opponents stop us doing”.

You can’t make comments like “we don’t have wins in us”, when we won the game before last.  That’s crap isn’t it?  You can say the trend is looking like we might struggle based on x, y and z, but if you make comments like you have, that’s just knee-jerking imho.

You can win games by being attritional.  LJ’s 17/18 team showed that in the first half of the season.  If you watch a lot of those games, they were quite dull, but we ground teams down, we suffocated them.  Over a season they blew a gasket.  Nige talked about that yesterday.

If you watch the Brum game back, we were grinding Brum down first half, getting into more and more “better” positions, starting to open them up, or force corners, starting to see Dickie advance, starting to create chances.  The noise in the ground was starting to build.  We shot ourselves in the foot by stupid passing or poor final ball.

I think we have to wait a bit longer, see us against a wider range of opponents.

We seem desperate to define a whole season so soon, or as per FBC “over the next 12 days”.  Why???

 

 

[spudski]

Just now, bcfc01 said:

Mark Ashton.

Imo MA was like LJ...a yes man. Towed the party line. The more you say yes, the more leeway you get. 

Rock the boat a little, be constructive in criticism, have a strong or different opinion...then less given. 

[Alessandro]

3 hours ago, IAmNick said:

Maybe I've misunderstood, but with FFP does it not make sense to reinvest money ASAP so you can maximise the benefit?

As in, we could pay decent fees and offer a couple of decent 3 year contracts at this point safely due to the 3 year cycle. If we ditch Nige and spend the money instead in 18 months time instead we're semi limited to 18 months or we'd have bigger contracts persisting outside of the Scott money period, which then makes us dependent on another sale.

I'm not saying spend it all, but there is some argument there right?

Clearly you don't want to smash your wage budget or destabilise the current squad, but I'm surprised it doesn't ebb and flow a bit with income - as long as it's done so you're not needing to sell to sustain things.

Edit: although I suppose the wages are over time and the incoming money is a one off so it doesn't work like that exactly

Is it not also dependant on payment schedules? 

I.E Bournemouth didn't just direct transfer us £25m.

Maybe £10m upfront and £5m for next two years? The add ons may a) never come b) take 2/3 years to see?

I don't know how it works with the FFP accounting, but it certainly affects cash flow.

[Davefevs]

3 minutes ago, Alessandro said:

His record tells the truth. Very little touched has turned to gold unfortunately - which is why I don't understand why he's taken so long to get the right people in the right positions behind the scenes:

As well as all the usual coaches and physio's and board of directors etc...where is the:

Director of football?

Technical director?

Head of data/analysis?

Head of performance?

Director of recruitment?

Individual people in the right roles, focusing on excelling in those roles. Some of these are only just coming into place.

For far too long, one or two people have been doing the work of what 10 people do at top premier league clubs.

 

Couldn’t agree more.

At the last fans forum, someone asked a question on my behalf as I couldn’t attend.  It was along the lines of “with RG moving on, is there an opportunity to change / improve the structure”.  The answer was “we are always looking, blah, blah, blah”.

I was of course alluding to the stuff you mention above.

Shortly afterwards Tins was appointed as TD which you’ll see from another post this morning changes the dynamic, for the better in my opinion.  We certainly needed this role for donkeys years.  Criminal we haven’t.  This is where imho Ashton overstepped his skillset.

We do have the other roles, the question is whether they are the best people for the club and it’s objectives.

[Davefevs]

3 minutes ago, Alessandro said:

Is it not also dependant on payment schedules? 

I.E Bournemouth didn't just direct transfer us £25m.

Maybe £10m upfront and £5m for next two years? The add ons may a) never come b) take 2/3 years to see?

I don't know how it works with the FFP accounting, but it certainly affects cash flow.

From an FFP point of view, the £25m is “booked” immediately, regardless of payment terms.  That only affects Cashflow.

We are very likely to book a profit this season, as it stands we will.

[Mr Popodopolous]

7 minutes ago, Alessandro said:

Is it not also dependant on payment schedules? 

I.E Bournemouth didn't just direct transfer us £25m.

Maybe £10m upfront and £5m for next two years? The add ons may a) never come b) take 2/3 years to see?

I don't know how it works with the FFP accounting, but it certainly affects cash flow.

Cash flow shouldn't be an issue, SL has always kept it aok to date. Not a consideration for us. Under the current rules £25m in as profit this year.

SL where required fills the cash, equity whatever.

The new rules... @Davefevs knows more about than me! Could be more relevant to these?

Edited August 24, 2023 by Mr Popodopolous

[Alessandro]

@Davefevs and @Mr Popodopolous - so then, as you say, fascinating to see what happens now till the end of the transfer window....

[Bristol Oil Services]

11 hours ago, Rocking Red Cyril said:

I thought it Interesting at the end of the Nige Presser I caught today. Nige particularly went on about in both Preston and Brum game. How when we did break and where able to attack players just did not want the ball and where not brave enough to attack on the opportunities that opened up.

Now he seemed a bit narked by that and rightfully so. 

Bit worrying if we have players who don't have the bravery to play the game 

Aye, and if we are moving toward a "possession" game, players not making themselves available for a pass is going to be a bit of a problem. I would imagine Nige might forgive them many things but not lack of effort or courage. 

[Daniro]

I've just watched Nige's interview - 

He's still really pissed off about the performances in the last two games.    

"I expect wide players to want the ball"  

 "when you've got the opportunity to give your opponents a real test win wide areas, you've got to want the ball ... and we didn't".

He's asked if you can coach bravery into players and he says you can't get into their heads:   "If a player doesn't want the ball, you have to ask the question."

 

I didn't see the games.  Does he mean anyone in particular?

 

 

[mozo]

Just now, Daniro said:

I've just watched Nige's interview - 

He's still really pissed off about the performances in the last two games.    

"I expect wide players to want the ball"  

 "when you've got the opportunity to give your opponents a real test win wide areas, you've got to want the ball ... and we didn't".

He's asked if you can coach bravery into players and he says you can't get into their heads:   "If a player doesn't want the ball, you have to ask the question."

 

I didn't see the games.  Does he mean anyone in particular?

 

 

Well Cornick, Mehmeti, Tanner and Pring are the obvious candidates. All of them were substituted before the hour mark.

[italian dave]

3 hours ago, GrahamC said:

That’s exactly where I am.

I (unlike some on here) was never expecting some spending spree as a result of the Scott sale but the level of cost reduction is stark & even with McCrorie, Dickie & Knight joining, the wages saved from the Chelsea 3 alone, plus many others, Bentley, Baker, Martin, Klose etc must be significant & that’s before you look at the £35m raised by sales.

I agree with much of what @Harry says but it just seems like he operating with even greater restrictions than are necessary & you cannot escape the feeling that as SL rarely says anything positive about him at all these 2 things aren’t unrelated.

Just to focus on the goalkeeper situation again, LJ was allowed to waste money by SL on shite like Gilmartin as a third keeper, now we don’t even have a deputy with any real experience.

Isn’t that more to do with SL than with LJ though? And with the point that’s been made several times during this thread: his tendency to flip flop, for want of a better word.

We went for broke 2017-19. You can’t really blame LJ for wanting keepers with experience as cover, and for spending the money he was given. He’s got a ‘top 6 or the sack’ ultimatum himself.

And we were no different to many others in that respect. But what we didn’t do was to stick with it. Either like Bournemouth/Forest to the point where you reach the dizzy heights, the big money, and can get away with FFP breaches. Or like Reading, where you fail and suffer points deductions as a result.

But SL lost his nerve. And to be fair, had the added issue of covid arrive at just the time he was having to make that call. And has now reverted from the Bournemouth/Reading model to the Des Williams model! 

[Merrick's Marvels]

6 minutes ago, Bristol Oil Services said:

Aye, and if we are moving toward a "possession" game, players not making themselves available for a pass is going to be a bit of a problem. I would imagine Nige might forgive them many things but not lack of effort or courage. 

His voice seemed a little hoarse - I'm guessing he's spent the last couple of days being a little more hands on than usual in training, telling certain players, in no uncertain terms, what's expected of them. 

[chinapig]

12 minutes ago, Daniro said:

I've just watched Nige's interview - 

He's still really pissed off about the performances in the last two games.    

"I expect wide players to want the ball"  

 "when you've got the opportunity to give your opponents a real test win wide areas, you've got to want the ball ... and we didn't".

He's asked if you can coach bravery into players and he says you can't get into their heads:   "If a player doesn't want the ball, you have to ask the question."

 

I didn't see the games.  Does he mean anyone in particular?

 

 

After the Preston game he specifically referred to the full backs.

[italian dave]

3 hours ago, glynriley said:

About 9 goalkeepers was it? Geifer, Lucic, Marinovic, Steele, O’Donnel, Bentley, Nikki M, Begovic and Gilmartin. Have I missed any?
 

All that while Frankie was already here and Max was coming through. Definitely not backed to the hilt was LJ, oh no. 

Begović was very much an under 18 keeper. If his name had been Smith no-one would have really noticed him at the time, never mind remember him half a decade later! And Gilmartin was explicitly bought in as a coach, but retaining his registration so he could play if needed.

So, say 9.5. Which over 4.5 years isn’t particularly unusual is it? NP has had 6 in 2.5 years. You can argue about quality, cost etc, but in terms of pure numbers I don’t think there’s a lot of difference and nothing unusual in either reign. 

Edited August 24, 2023 by italian dave

[chinapig]

47 minutes ago, spudski said:

Imo MA was like LJ...a yes man. Towed the party line. The more you say yes, the more leeway you get. 

Rock the boat a little, be constructive in criticism, have a strong or different opinion...then less given. 

Nigel is failing to say on a weekly basis how wonderful the Lansdowns are. This may be a breach of contract.

[glynriley]

8 minutes ago, italian dave said:

Begović was very much an under 18 keeper. If his name had been Smith no-one would have really noticed him at the time, never mind remember him half a decade later! And Gilmartin was explicitly bought in as a coach, but retaining his registration so he could play if needed.

So, say 9.5. Which over 4.5 years isn’t particularly unusual is it? NP has had 6 in 2.5 years. You can argue about quality, cost etc, but in terms of pure numbers I don’t think there’s a lot of difference and nothing unusual in either reign. 

Pearson has signed Bajic permanently and Haikin(?) on a short term deal.

Promoted Max and HWR through the ranks. If you think that stacks up against LJ's GK transfer activity, knock yourself out.

[Bristol Oil Services]

1 hour ago, ExiledAjax said:

 

If you're taking the job title of "Chairman" to mean the guy who does the appointments. In that case Jon gets the credit for appointing Pearson doesn't he? Dawe appointed Lee Johnson then? LJ was during Dawe's tenure as "Chairman".

What's the criteria for attribution here?

Steve's been majority shareholder during all of those appointments, I thought that was the problem people had with this? That the shareholder was appointing the manager?

When Cotts was fired, Keith Dawe was quoted on the club website: "I brought Steve Cotterill into Bristol City just over two years ago because I thought he could keep us up ..... "

[bcfc01]

8 minutes ago, chinapig said:

Nigel is failing to say on a weekly basis how wonderful the Lansdowns are. This may be a breach of contract.

I don't know why, but I get the impression that NP isn't into massaging egos.

 

[Barrs Court Red]

15 minutes ago, chinapig said:

Nigel is failing to say on a weekly basis how wonderful the Lansdowns are. This may be a breach of contract.

I noticed Scott’s leaving message didn’t have the obligatory “thanks to the Lansdown family”. That’s his cards marked 

[Spike]

49 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Fair comment, but it’s a small sample of 3 (league) games.  Of which we did win one, and didn’t look wobbly at all in that game.

Its also 3 games against teams that are usually defensively sound / hard to break down.  That’s not an excuse, it just me doing my usual “it’s not always about what we do, but what our opponents stop us doing”.

You can’t make comments like “we don’t have wins in us”, when we won the game before last.  That’s crap isn’t it?  You can say the trend is looking like we might struggle based on x, y and z, but if you make comments like you have, that’s just knee-jerking imho.

You can win games by being attritional.  LJ’s 17/18 team showed that in the first half of the season.  If you watch a lot of those games, they were quite dull, but we ground teams down, we suffocated them.  Over a season they blew a gasket.  Nige talked about that yesterday.

If you watch the Brum game back, we were grinding Brum down first half, getting into more and more “better” positions, starting to open them up, or force corners, starting to see Dickie advance, starting to create chances.  The noise in the ground was starting to build.  We shot ourselves in the foot by stupid passing or poor final ball.

I think we have to wait a bit longer, see us against a wider range of opponents.

We seem desperate to define a whole season so soon, or as per FBC “over the next 12 days”.  Why???

 

 

Oh I agree that these teams look defensively sound but that's exactly our issue, if a team can defend we look toothless and whilst we were better against Millwall we still only managed a single shot on target. James won't be scoring goals like that often and it's my main cause for concern, we look completely unable to create anything decent and on the one occasion we created what looked to be a certain goal Wells missed from 6 yards, it's not a good look to the start of the season and with so many players out now it's not looking likely to change any time soon.

I suppose it's a fair comment about the not having wins in us, it's a poor wording, but it's fair to say we don't look like a team likely to score many goals and you can't win games if you can't score goals. At this point I feel like the main issue with our 4-3-3 set up, other than turning defence into attack quickly and effectively, is that we may as well play without a front man. Wells, Bell, doesn't matter who plays in the middle, they don't win the long balls up to them and we don't use our wide men to come narrow to win the second chances to retain possession so essentially all a team has to do is keep their back line deep enough to prevent us from getting in behind them and use their forwards and midfield to pressure us as we eventually play it back to Max or Vyner who then hoof it up the pitch where we can't retain the ball and the opposition get to come at us again.

With regards to the first half of the Brum game, I don't feel like we were grinding them down at all, yes we pressured them but they maintained control of the ball and just made our players work harder and as you mentioned, we made so many stupid, basic bad passes which pretty much just put us under more pressure. To highlight how bad we were, if you look at the stats it looks like we were in the game, but then having watched the match you can look at 2 stats and pretty much see how the game played out. We had 64% of the possession which would suggest we could hold onto the ball, especially when we made more passes and were more accurate too, but then the telling stat comes in... Birmingham City with 6 clearances, Bristol City with 35!! That's because they let us have possession in our own half, and chased us about whilst it was there until we inevitably couldn't manage to play it out and we hoofed it clear up the pitch. 

I'm sure there will be games where we look better, but ultimately Brum knew how to beat us and in the manner that they approached the game they did it convincingly. I mean watching the game live I'd be interested if anyone thought we looked like the better side at any point in that game as I certainly didn't think so. I actually watched the game with a Dutch friend of mine and afterwards I had to explain to him that we looked so much better last season and he simple remarked "yeah, you didn't look good at all" and I couldn't really fault him for having that opinion. If that was my first experience of a Bristol City match as a young lad who enjoys football I could totally see myself thinking "I'd rather watch the Premier League football".

I just want to clear up I'm not defining a whole season over three games, I'm defining our performances thus far, and whilst Millwall wasn't awful and was improved by James scoring a blinder the opening home games have just been an advert on saving money on tickets.

[italian dave]

5 minutes ago, glynriley said:

Pearson has signed Bajic permanently and Haikin(?) on a short term deal.

Promoted Max and HWR through the ranks. If you think that stacks up against LJ's GK transfer activity, knock yourself out.

I’m not saying it does. I very clearly made that point. All I was pointing out was that in terms of pure numbers - you seemed to be suggesting that 9 was an excessive number - there’s not a lot of difference,

As I said, quality, cost etc a different matter. But that’s when you get into a much broader debate as I just touched on in my response to Graham. Rightly or wrongly LJ was given the resources and it’s perhaps not surprising that he used them to sign proven players - especially given that he was under a top 6 or bust ultimatum.

 

[glynriley]

8 minutes ago, italian dave said:

I’m not saying it does. I very clearly made that point. All I was pointing out was that in terms of pure numbers - you seemed to be suggesting that 9 was an excessive number - there’s not a lot of difference,

As I said, quality, cost etc a different matter. But that’s when you get into a much broader debate as I just touched on in my response to Graham. Rightly or wrongly LJ was given the resources and it’s perhaps not surprising that he used them to sign proven players - especially given that he was under a top 6 or bust ultimatum.

 

LJ signed 9, NP 2. I don't think signing 9 GK's in 4.5 years is particularly normal for most footballl clubs.

LJ had Frankie and some kids in the building, NP had Bentley and some kids. To say NP has had 6 GK's is disingenuous, if your including the likes Mac Boyd and dismissing the signing of Begovic. Bentley had to go to bring the wage bill down for a start.

We're not going to agree, clearly, so I'll leave it there.

[italian dave]

7 minutes ago, glynriley said:

LJ signed 9, NP 2. I don't think signing 9 GK's in 4.5 years is particularly normal for most footballl clubs.

LJ had Frankie and some kids in the building, NP had Bentley and some kids. To say NP has had 6 GK's is disingenuous, if your including the likes Mac Boyd and dismissing the signing of Begovic. Bentley had to go to bring the wage bill down for a start.

We're not going to agree, clearly, so I'll leave it there.

Fair enough: just to say though that I wasn’t including the likes of Mac Boyd - for precisely that reason. Bentley, O’Leary, Woollcott, Wiles-Richard, Haikin, Bajic. 

As I said, not disputing the quality/cost/resource issues but that’s a different issues and one where lots more factors come into play.

I take your point about ‘signing’ as opposed to inheriting: but again, very different times 2016-19 compared to 2021-23. Externally and internally. 

[ChippenhamRed]

3 hours ago, Out of his pie crust said:

It’s given you resilience. This is what I tell the kids 

It’s made me bitter is what it’s done!

Depresses me so much that Luton, Bournemouth, Huddersfield, Wigan, Swansea, Cardiff, Brentford, Bradford, Ipswich, Blackpool, Portsmouth, Stoke, Barnsley, Reading, Swindon, QPR and Blackburn fans have all enjoyed more success than us in my lifetime. It’s absolutely pathetic for a city as big as Bristol.

[megansdad]

just watched the press conference and seemed no different to many others NP has given so see nothing new in it.

[Mr Popodopolous]

This also kind could feed into transfers but NP said that Leeson, Knight-Lebel and Araoye well the odds on they won't be going out on loan.

Exceptional offers could change it of course..Yeboah too but we knew that already.

[Davefevs]

34 minutes ago, Spike said:

Oh I agree that these teams look defensively sound but that's exactly our issue, if a team can defend we look toothless and whilst we were better against Millwall we still only managed a single shot on target. James won't be scoring goals like that often and it's my main cause for concern, we look completely unable to create anything decent and on the one occasion we created what looked to be a certain goal Wells missed from 6 yards, it's not a good look to the start of the season and with so many players out now it's not looking likely to change any time soon.

I guess if you use SoT you’ll get a very simplistic view of what our attacking threat is.  If you start to build some quality into that data, even SoT vs total Shots, you have a better metric, and then add in something like xG too, you improve it more.  But then there is the comparison to other teams.  How does our data compare to their teams.

Some pics below.

I suppose it's a fair comment about the not having wins in us, it's a poor wording, but it's fair to say we don't look like a team likely to score many goals and you can't win games if you can't score goals. At this point I feel like the main issue with our 4-3-3 set up, other than turning defence into attack quickly and effectively, is that we may as well play without a front man. Wells, Bell, doesn't matter who plays in the middle, they don't win the long balls up to them and we don't use our wide men to come narrow to win the second chances to retain possession so essentially all a team has to do is keep their back line deep enough to prevent us from getting in behind them and use their forwards and midfield to pressure us as we eventually play it back to Max or Vyner who then hoof it up the pitch where we can't retain the ball and the opposition get to come at us again.

you’ll know I’m not a big fan of the way our front 3 are played.  I could go into chapter and verse, but I won’t for now.  Planning a similar tactical review article like I wrote re pre-season.  I’ll probably do it after the Swansea game, even though that’s only the 5th league game.  But assuming us and Norwich play relatively strong elevens in the cup, that’ll make it 6 games against Champ oppositions, 3 home, 3 away.  We will see some different opposition styles in those 3 games v Hull, Norwich and Swansea, so a better time to baseline my thoughts.

With regards to the first half of the Brum game, I don't feel like we were grinding them down at all, yes we pressured them but they maintained control of the ball and just made our players work harder and as you mentioned, we made so many stupid, basic bad passes which pretty much just put us under more pressure. To highlight how bad we were, if you look at the stats it looks like we were in the game, but then having watched the match you can look at 2 stats and pretty much see how the game played out. We had 64% of the possession which would suggest we could hold onto the ball, especially when we made more passes and were more accurate too, but then the telling stat comes in... Birmingham City with 6 clearances, Bristol City with 35!! That's because they let us have possession in our own half, and chased us about whilst it was there until we inevitably couldn't manage to play it out and we hoofed it clear up the pitch.

I’ll disagree on some of that.  You sure you’ve got the data the right way around?  We made 9, they made 43 according to Wyscout data - pics below?

I'm sure there will be games where we look better, but ultimately Brum knew how to beat us and in the manner that they approached the game they did it convincingly. I mean watching the game live I'd be interested if anyone thought we looked like the better side at any point in that game as I certainly didn't think so.

me, I did.  For that period from circa 15mins-40mins.

I actually watched the game with a Dutch friend of mine and afterwards I had to explain to him that we looked so much better last season and he simple remarked "yeah, you didn't look good at all" and I couldn't really fault him for having that opinion. If that was my first experience of a Bristol City match as a young lad who enjoys football I could totally see myself thinking "I'd rather watch the Premier League football".

I just want to clear up I'm not defining a whole season over three games, I'm defining our performances thus far, and whilst Millwall wasn't awful and was improved by James scoring a blinder the opening home games have just been an advert on saving money on tickets.

Millwall wasn’t defined by a James blinder but a good 90 mins performance.  Could’ve easily finished 0-0 without his goal, but that would’ve been unjust imho.  Could’ve just as easily have been playing against ten men for the whole second half or given a penalty for McNamara barge on Bell after a high press regain.

Ta for reply.  Comments

Pics:

Clearances.

Bristol City attacking and defensive comparison to the rest of the Champ:

summary: poor attacking / above average defending

Preston: just below average attack / bloody good defence

Millwall: poor attack / average defence

.

Birmingham: average attack / decent defence

These tables will be good to reflect upon in another 3 or 4 games.  They have too much single game bias in them currently, but some interesting trends to watch.

Here is Hull’s overall:

A slight caveat on their data.  They beat Blackburn last weekend with 630 passes made.  They gave up a lot of chances…despite Blackburn being down to ten men for 70+ minutes.

They made 662 passes last week at home v Sheffield W.  Wednesday are the worst pressing side in the Champ.

Nige was cautious in his summary yesterday.  “They like to pass it” - well yeah, they do against ten men or a crap Wednesday side.  “They might let us have it” - yep, they don’t press well themselves.

Roll on tomorrow night!

 

[Bristol Oil Services]

1 hour ago, Merrick's Marvels said:

His voice seemed a little hoarse - I'm guessing he's spent the last couple of days being a little more hands on than usual in training, telling certain players, in no uncertain terms, what's expected of them. 

We've fine tooth comb-ed most things on here - the owner, his boy, the manager, the previous manager/s, the CEO before the previous one, the players, the recruitment, the kit, the crowd, the atmosphere, the ffp, the "High" Performance Centre, the parking, the ticketing, the club shop, the concourse- but not so much whoever drills the lads Mon - Thursday up Failand  (assuming Nige mostly leaves that to his staff).

Are we good enough as far as training ground coaching goes?