Nigel Pearson’s hopes for Bristol City as international break offers much-needed relief Bristol City boss Nigel Pearson talks mental tiredness and is confident that key men will be back for clash against Reading “We’ve got three groups within our squad, internationals who will go away and we will hope they come back fit, players who have played lots and lots of games and will need to recover, but they still have programmes of work to do, and we then have a smaller group who need to do some work because they’re playing catch-up.” https://www.bristolworld.com/sport/...ional-break-offers-much-needed-relief-4070743
So, it seems the injuries that blighted us in recent years are still here, despite Red Robin saying many times how much further on we are as a club under NP and the medical team... The normal, non-haters amongst us, know the reality is that all clubs have injuries, and isn't always down to the manager, or medical staff. Our current injury issues are every bit as bad, if not worse than at any point over the past 5 years. So many things that many on here hung a previous regime over, are still here. Who knew....
It is something that all clubs will have to deal with at some time during the season and the resultant effect is a lottery. The deeper your bench the better you should be able to cope given that you have players to fit in at all spots in the roster but when your subs are a weaker point then you will probably struggle if the injury bug hits nearly all of your top players. When you look at us with Weimann and Wells on the bench to start I wonder what is going on and just put it down to our league position and the availability of younger players getting a good run out. We have been playing way below par over the last month and I will admit that injuries have hit us hard, but I consider it is the job of the manager to build a squad that is more resilient than current situation and if we don't pay attention to our limitations for next season then we could be asking the same questions. We have rarely had a squad capable of riding the injury wave probably because it would cost too much in transfers and wages, plus players don't like sitting on the bench for too long due to frustration and so it becomes a game of juggling that can prove dangerous. So where should we go with our policies - stick or twist?
The issue is as wiz has already stated we have a very very small squad due to the financial situation that NP has addressed by culling the squad. The problem is we are relying on 5/6 key players and youngsters being given game time. Then injuries are bound to happen during a long and hard season.Next season I believe we will see a significant improvement in the squad with the 30 million Nige will have to spend for this third year promotion push. The pressure this year was no where near what it will be next year. The remit was to cull and keep us in the division-reducing costs making sure we did not get a points deduction that has been done. Next year the pressures will be higher and Nige and his team will be under a lot more scrutiny.
Where’s the 30 million coming from? You do realise we’ve got to plow the money we got from Semenyo or potential money from Scott into sorting out our finances don’t you?
We won’t have anywhere near £30m, but if Scott is sold we’ll have some money to invest in the squad, we’ll also have Kalas wages off the books as well. We won’t have money to splash around though as we’ll need to bring quite a few in to replace players leaving and to try to improve our squad size. It’s going to be a busy window.
we were in one and if you go by present table results would have still been but for a serious drop in points of the teams above us and failure of teams below us! We have maintained a fairly average number of points throughout the season every 10 games has shown we have been on a steady course. SINCE START OF 2023 WE HAVE Won 6 Drew 4 Lost 3 [ last 5 w 1 d 1 L 3 ] To be really fair when you look at the results of "when we had a much better number of fit players" squad, the results were poor. The last 10 results [ with 3 losses in 5 ] and since addition of Mehmeti and Cornick has been worse! [ granted more injuries, but defence has actually been quite sound 8 goals in 10 games attack ... 8 goals in 10 games [ 2 against Bpool/ PNE 2 x 1-0 wins 2 x 1-1 draws] pre FEB scoring 1.32 goals a game since .8 goals a game / conceeding 1.35 before Feb 1st and since .8! just putting up the figures .. breakfast over ..!