anymore? if its knocked up top and it bounces off Armstrong is that the trampoline??? when O'leary wont come off his line is that the Loctite??
IF the unthinkable happens and we do get promoted, I think Manning, style and tactics would be good enough to keep us up. Obviously we would need a huge clearout, but ‘Manningball’ is better suited with better players. That sounds obvious of course - anyone’s tactics are more effective with better players, but we see flashes of brilliance with our current squad and I can see what LM is trying to achieve - it’s just that we simply don’t have the quality players needed to carry it off week in week out. In the Prem, with Prem quality players I think we’d surprise a few.
It would be an absolutely mammoth task to keep a club like ours in the top flight and it would also depend on how much the owner was prepared to, and/or be allowed to spend. When you see big clubs like Southampton, Leicester, Man U and Tottenham struggling badly this season it illustrates just how hard it would be to even compete and not get walloped by a cricket score every week, let alone stay up. Recent yo-yo clubs like Leicester, Burnley and co don't spend a lot of money. They make do, take the mega money from Sky/Amazon and accept relegation as and when it inevitably comes. The game has changed, unfortunately, and this is not 1976 where sheer guts give you a fighting chance of surviving. I'd be worried about us breaking all sorts of records and all for the wrong reasons if we went up and didn't spend much money. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see us in the top flight, but not at the cost of us shipping 6 goals a game (or more) and being humiliated because we didn't spend money to be able to compete.
Liam Manning attempts to progress the ball up the pitch by overloading flanks and using numerical superiority. He pushes the full backs/wingback up and wide joining the left midfielder/right midfielder, his central midfielders play quite high, his attacking midfielder likewise, so from the centre backs to the full backs to the midfield the team has a sort of U shape (horseshoe) in the first and second third.. The ball logically gets passed around the U shape/horseshoe - Across and up, and if the team cannot penetrate back, across, up attempting to get the opposition out of shape.
Isn't this very similar to the system explained by Will Still on Sky the other night. All sounds good till you come up against Sam Allardyce and the way Luton beat us on Monday.....albeit O'leary gave them a helping hand.
Brentford and Brighton are doing ok, you’re right though I think we’d struggle not to be hammered most weeks. I don’t really follow the PL so don’t really know how Brentford have managed to make the step up, I imagine they have excellent owners. Isn’t it something to do with their recruitment?
Nor do I, but Brentford, Fulham, Bournemouth (and now Burnley again) are all smaller than us support wise but 3 of them are established PL teams Whether it's better ownership, recruitment, money management (creative accountancy), or in the case of the London teams having a bigger pool of talent to choose from and easy loan possibilities I don't know
I’d add Crystal Palace to the list of clubs smaller than us - for now. Selhurst Park holds 25,286 whereas AG holds 27k. They are planing to increase SP to 34k but no idea how long that will take to build.
Considering the sheer number of clubs in London, especially those who already get very good crowds - Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, West Ham, then Palace must be doing well and have ambition if they are looking to increase capacity to 34k. Although our official capacity is 27,000, with Police separation and the like, and presumably that's also dependent on the visitors selling out the Atyeo, we never actually get very close that number of spectators normally 25,915 is the best this season v Sunderland
The game would have been VERY different at 2-2 with them down to 10 men and us on the ascendancy….. Ah well…….
About as blatantly a penalty as I have ever seen in my football history and could not believe he didn't consult the assistant on that side of the pitch to get another view. Those are the moments that either lose you something special, and I believe that could have been a play-off place in our season, or walk away from wondering what could have happened. Having just looked at today's scores we are still in with a chance and the best way to get there is a good win against Leeds on Monday and hope that others do their business as best suits Bristol City. Having to come back to Ashton Gate for the match against PNE needing to get a result is as close to a banana skin game if ever there was one. Three points from Leeds would fill the bill nicely and give us that long awaited play-off spot that we have been begging for over many years but even that prospect is loaded with twists and turns unknown as yet.
