Another Angle

Well Saturday was very underwhelming, although I did not expect a great deal of impact from Manning right out the gate.

Something I’m starting to think about with a very likely potential issue with Manning is the draw he brings for future signings and holding onto existing talent.

From his press conferences and interviews, I see a man with very little about him character/personality wise. This combined with severely low experience in management, I struggle to see what players from other clubs would find exciting about joining our club under Manning.

Not that we seem to be in the market for any truly hot prospects, but I’m failing to see what Manning offers in the future. I’m completely open to being proven wrong and I hope I am. But wondered what others thoughts are on this?

From an insiders fan view our back office looks a mess and as all competitive players have a rightfully money making, career progression mind attitude. I don’t see what Bristol offers right now. Money? No. Coaching experience/reputation? No. Ambition? Not really when any player with a decent season under their belt is sold off every year. Kodja. Flint. Bryan. Brownhill. Reid. Bentley. Semenyo. Scott.

 

welcome back

 

Exactly my concerns-summed up very well.
This guy has big boots to fill in taking over from Nige.
I hope the Lansdowns have got this right-if we go by everything else outside of structures they have always got it wrong.

 

You keep saying this RR, what big boots, improve on 15th place. Doesn’t seem those boots are that big to me. Pearson had bigger boots to fill, and failed.

 

Supcon72
You keep repeating yourself.
You ignore context.

The vast majority who support City recognise the efforts of NP righting the predicament we were in when he was appointed.

 

You, and others keep repeating this line as well RP. That was 2.5 years ago, and I agree it was a difficult time financially due to COVID, but that has long gone, and our performances, and league positions have not improved, nor looked like they will under Pearson. I know you and other think he was the messiah, certainly compared to a previous manager, but the stark reality is, we are worse of on the pitch than that tenure. Context is just an excuse that has now worn incredibly thin.

At the end of the day, the board have seen through him, and his boring tactics, and constant whining, so you and others can keep tugging it to Nige if you like. I'm going to focus on the new manager and hopefully getting back to challenging for the top 6 like we did before COVID hit.

 

BCFC would have had to go into a period of significant cost cutting without COVID. It wasn't COVID that trebled the clubs wage bill.

 

COVID killed the transfer market which was the mechanism by which we operated within FFP. This was our strategy under Ashton which collapsed as soon as a crisis hit.
If it wasn’t for COVID we would have been able to continue to move players on quickly to relieve the costs, but once the bottom fell out of the market we were stuck with them.

 

possibly not the case! without Covid ........ Transfers in out would have been higher loss would not have been the same wages on a par with then being paid .... income from peripherals would have have been accounted for etc etc
House keeping / budget/ ffp would have meant a continuation of what was in force in January 2020 ...... COVID made a big difference to the picture be it BCFC or the bigger picture ...football in general!

 

You won't get that through to some people mate. As someone on here once said "you can't educate pork"...

 

It was the case and I made a post on here regarding the need to cut costs prior to COVID. Bristol City losses were going to be twenty five million pounds plus necessitating the trading of players prior to COVID. Bristol City have been sailing close to FFP limits for seasons and these limits are not breached because BCFC as they stated were heavily reliant on trading players to balance the books. Players were always going to be sold and wages cut.

 

The irony

 

Your agreeing with cliftonville there as City always had to cut costs by selling players COVID or no COVID. A **** off loss with selling players turned into a bigger **** off loss without sellin. if City spunked less money up the wall in the first place the club wouldn't be in that spend and sell sell cycles.

 

Not quite.
I think Cliftonville was saying that COVID was irrelevant and we simply overspent.
I’m arguing that Covid WAS relevant in that it halted our buying and selling process which was how we made our money at that time and the debts mounted up.
If COVID hadn’t hit then we probably would’ve carried on using money from sales to offset expenditure.

 

dont think he did say it was irrelevant. City were already overspending so players had to go again and covid halted that increasing a big loss of into a thirty eight million!! He was 100% posting about this and citys debts before covid on here.

 

Thanks, Wiz, good info. What were the last 2 season's out of interest?

Sorry to pi$$ on some people's bonfires here, but, we went from a loss in 17/18, to profit in 18/19 to a loss in 2019/20 season. Someone remind me when COVID hit again......

 

Thanks again, Wiz.

So back to 2017/18 levels, hence selling Alex and Antoine to offset losses. Things don't seem to have changed that much then do they, except now we have virtually no high value assets left to sell.

It can't all have been wages then, as the 2021/22 figures would be far better, as we had income then that we didn't have in 20/21 to offset wages, and we ditched the higher earners. I have long suspected (and stated many times) that the figures didn't stack up just on player fees and wages. There must be still some stadium or HPC upgrade costs stashed in these figures.

 

and your point is?

exactly, the point is COVID stopped the "new system on place in 2016/17 whereby we bought "better quality younger players" to go into academy and join/ed the youngsters coming through so that they helped make up the squad and excess would be moved on at a fee! ... a "cash flow" exercise [ bigger picture! you can make most things firt a smaller picture to make them look good or bad! ]. it started with a profit, and would/ could/ should of been a stream that reduced losses to less than £10m PA, or made a profit!

You have to realise, and it is a sad feature of football / transfers, that a good youngster only becomes of £larger fee when has had a good run in the first team!
COVID SCREWED THAT .... GETTING RID of the players we did [ NP did.... under orders ] could well have raised £xxm under normal trading! l