Been down the park with city fans knocking the ball about. Know what questioning the O'driscoll after two games isn't a conversation. See what it is like in fifteen. There are very very obvious changes. Always look at support as being fun not something that is endured despite football always getting duller.
Few simple adjustments to be made without putting Liam F on a cross. Midfieild press the ball. Subs brought out a bucket of sand to balance the ball on there was so much time out there. Emmanuelle Thomas will Adidas find a shirt to fiit him by 2014!
Our Defence and Fontaine in particular has been a problem for several years I can not work out what has gone wrong when he first arrived he looked so good, calm and collected but he started going down hill performance wise towards the end of the second season. Just perhaps he does need either a break or to be with another club, personally I would have a couple of games with Flint and Williams or even Flint and Carey if Flint needs another experienced head alongside him. Thinking about the game and what I saw on youtube Flint and Fontaine are not at present a partnership they get pulled apart too easily just perhaps they will become one I don't have a crystal ball so I don't know. What I will say though is Fontaine needs to be out of the firing line for a while or whatever confidence he has left will completely disappear never to be seen again. I am doing my best to be thoughtful and thinking long term there could easily be a time this season where Fontaine could be the senior fit CB and unless he gets some confidence in his ability back then we could have serious problems. It looks more and more like he no longer has confidence in his ability to head the ball the 4th goal he completely lost track of the ball but on other occasions he hardly jumped off the ground at least once leading to a Coventry goal. Now regarding people saying we should have made changes in the first half yes we could have done that and had we done so and Taylor or anyone else been injured either in the first Half or early in the second we would have been down to 10 players had we conceeded the second goal earlier there might have been changes but as it was still 1-0 approaching half time the management would have been hoping to keep it that way and try and get things sorted at halftime the fact we shipped 2 more goals so close to halftime means hindsight is wonderful. In preseason I thought playing 3 at the back might be a good tactic for us a back 3 of Carey-Flint-Williams with our 2 full backs acting as wingbacks but it was not as successful because we had no fullbacks in the match we tried it in. With Carey having a dead leg playing 3 at the back will leave us somewhat exposed as it means Fontaine in the middle of the 3 and he seems to have forgotten how to head a ball. Leaving all that aside when Jay E Thomas broke through and was heading into the box could anyone see why the referee pulled play back? I was under the impression that the rules stated that if an advantage was had by the team that had been fouled then play should be allowed to continue and the only reason for the game to be stopped was if the referee deemed the challenge to be serious enough for a red card to be issued. Now looking on the highlights I didn't even see anyone spoken to let alone cautioned. The standard of officiating seems to be far worse in L1 than it was in the championship and it was pretty dire there at times.
God help Bristol City's players and staff if we lose one more in the next few games, what if we lose the next two, cor blimey I dread to think what the comments will be..."it's a marathon not a sprint"
Hawk when he pulled JET up he was ready to pull the trigger and blast the back of the net,the standard of refs in this league is a joke.
Mike, get your ass over here and then you will be entitled to comment. A large part of the side is NEW with one very glaring exception, the first half was poor, very poor BUT, the team showed a determination and resiliance to put it right and wiped out the deficit as quickly as it was incurred and to lose by a single goal is hardly a humilation is it. 5-0 as it would have been last year WOULD have been... I agree with Angelic that Saturday was VERY disappointing and we should have beaten a team in disarray however after weeks of having it rammed doen their throats, I guess they had something to prove. The one good thing that came out of it was that if he wasn't going to act before, SoD can see what he needs to do now. It is very early days in the formation of this new unit and it will get stronger and learn from this and provide the manager deals with the issue in defence, I think this unit will be too strong for a lot of the teams in this division. So, in answer to the thread, the mentaility of MOST of the squad is not tainted by the failure of recent years so it is badly misguided and we do NOT need to undermine the newbies wit hthe same old stuff so kindly refrain...
That is unfair Prem. I also live abroad but with radio commentary and video highlights (or lowlights as the case may be) those of us who are absent supporters actually have a tremendous amount of data, visual and audio, that was not available to us even four years ago. I do agree that it is early days in the season and we have an almost totally new group of under 24's who will need time to gain experience and gel as a team. That will not happen overnight. But after just two league matches we have seen our new team shedding goals like a team of seven year olds, not because of the aforementioned gelling and experience, but because one or two of the remaining failures from the last four years are still making the same elementary cock-ups and so far have cost us FIVE POINTS OUT OF SIX. When I saw the fixture list for August, I actually thought we'll be lucky to get one or two points from this lot by 31st August because of the youngsters and gelling. But that is not the reason and we really should be sitting on top of the pile NOW, not down among the also rans. Nobody wins the league in August, but you sure as hell can lose it!
I remember Nicky Hunt having similar difficulty in heading a ball and being beaten for pace- It wont take teams long to work out where any weak links are
The space given Bradford and Coventry Isnt due to elementary cocks ups or players not trying hard enough it's due to players still adjusting. It remains to see how it will work have doubts about a new player an old one possessing enough abiilty on the ball to fit in.
I still don't get it? Was we supposed to win every game this year? Norwich got dicked 7-1 and went onto win the league at ease, not saying we change manager but halftime he took Kilkenny off so it might twig that's one weak link gone, he would of noticed the other one and possibly thinking of replacements not necessarily this weekend but by transfer deadline day. I never imagined winning the league this year even tipped Coventry to finish higher than us until their 10 point deduction. I won't ever tip another team in the prediction game but always did not think in my head we would beat them. I'm sorry everyone but we will lose more games this season, we need to be patient with the young team and we will return to the championship just IMO not this season. Some think we will walk it hopefully this will be a wake up call this is not an easy league.
A) No B) No C) No But i'm not into annihilating the management before September has arrived on the strength of one freak match. On the other hand, I will be surprised and alarmed if Fontaine and Fielding keep their places. Both are shot for confidence and need to be rested. I suggest that SOD will invest some of the Adomah money in the best centre half he can find to play alongside Flint, and work a bit harder on protecting his defence from midfield. I venture to suggest that Sunday would not have happened if Wynter or Kelly had played 90 mins. We do have 3 good young players at the club who are capable of playing in front of the defence, and SOD needs to work with the 2 who are available to stop teams running through us like kebab skewers. Angelic - many of us have a similar depth of experience regarding the club, but although what you say rings true and Bristol should have seen more of a profile in World football never mind English, the fact is we are still a backwater because cricket and rugby are nearly as popular. Even on the estates its different elsewhere to Bristol. I live in Leeds (not through choice) and the attitude of the kids up here is something akin to how it must have been in the 50s and 60s. Up here many kids cant afford the new Playstation, and the only thing that gets them through is dreaming of the big game they are playing in the field at the end of the road on Saturday. There really is nothing else. Those too old to play (they get old quickly up here) have their dream about watching Leeds or any one of the ridiculous glut of clubs within spitting distance of where they live. You cant go 20 miles down the road without bumping into at least 2 Premiership clubs or at least that size of club. Thats why the average crowd at Elland Road was considerably larger than ours even when they were in div 1. London and the midlands are pretty much the same, but Bristol is isolated geographically and that is why we havent got the heritage or the fanatical support that exists elsewhere. The best we can hope for is to achieve what Swansea, Ipswich and Norwich have done, and therein lies the hope for other clubs in outlying areas.
I was never looking for agreement on my post and was prepared to take stick from my usual detractors. My thread was obviously going to open up negative comments and that was it's intention but mainly it was created to see how many posters were going to say that they had heard and seen all this before and how many were going to get on the wait and see bandwagon. From my point of view this let's wait and see attitude has been well documented over the last few years and look where we ended up, and my fear is that we are going to go down the same road again but this season the same result is unthinkable. Our club is well known for it's supposed commitment to excellence but regrettably even more well known for it's lack of ability to get it right. This is the history of my 50+ years of supporting Bristol City through thick and thin. Sorry guys but those are the cold hard facts and like everyone else I hope the signs are about to change.
There has been enough corrective action to not need the wait and see approach, but it could be said that we are still short of a left centre back, a striker and given Kelly's injury, a creative midfielder. That to me is called a spine and what teams tend to be built around- Fielding has received a certain amount of stick but I think its far to early to change yet. I will agree that he can appear hesitant, Some Derby fans were saying that, but having seen the action from Sunday, I would only put him partially at fault for their 4th goal and that should have been dealt with comfortably beforehand. On the plus side, JET has been a different class and could be playing at a higher standard, he's scored 2 and created 3 or 4 others. Baldock has scored 3 and with better accuracy, might have had more.Flint was like a rock against Bradford, so it could be argued that there is the spine again and I suppose that's where the inconsistency comes in- There is good but there is still some action needed.
JET and Baldock have been very good so far, so let's hope they can stay injury or suspension free because without them...............................
I have a giggle to myself when I read about needing a creative midfielder and play with a winger. We're not in the Championship and SOD and a few on here need to realise we play in L1. Don't get me wrong I love great wing play but in L1 it's a war of attrition. JET's created more chance this season than we saw all last season, so we have more than enough creativity in JET. I'm not advocating the YTFC model of getting out of L1, just pointing out there's more than 1 way of skinning a cat. Last season YTFC went up without a winger in sight but with 4 midfielders who worked their butt off and knew the areas of the pitch they needed to occupy.They also had great understanding of their role with full backs, in short they were superbly organised. Play Kilkenny and you play with 10 men.
Wynter should be back against Wolves Kilkenny should start on the Bench if anywhere the same with Fontaine, I'm probably his biggest critic certainly the one who has been saying the longest that he is our weak link at the back but even I can see that he needs to be out of the shooting gallery for a time if he is ever going to be able to play in a red shirt again because if we can not sign another good CB before the end of the window we are going to need him sometime during the season. I said Flint and Williams should be the starters for the next few games at least, in other threads, they are the future so lets start the future now, yes they will make mistakes but what's new we are making mistakes at the back now. Part of the problem we are having with the defence is that the defenders and the goalkeeper need to be a unit at the moment they are still trying to develop some cohesion if the forwards or midfielders make a mistake it is rarely serious it might be a missed goal scoring chance at most when defenders make mistakes it's more likely to be a goal conceded. Fielding and the defenders are still trying to work out who does what in different situations Against Bradford Fielding came rushing too far from his goal and we conceded as a result he didn't do that against Coventry for their 4th as he waited for the Defender to clear the ball which he didn't, result we conceded again these are things that will get sorted on the training ground Fielding will get used to who he can expect to get his head to the ball and who he can expect to cover when someone breaks through and then work out when he needs to rush out. It is a very young back 5 without Fontaine or Carey there and it is going to take a while to sort itself out, if we had not needed to find a second keeper at the start of preseason many of these problems would have been ironed out then, but that is in the past. At the moment Fielding does not yet know if he is to stick or twist with the way we are defending but that works the other way as well the defenders are still trying to work out how Fielding plays best. At first I said that we should expect thing to be a bit rocky in the early part of the season but like others I think I got a bit carried away with the way Jay settled in and started pulling the strings so well and sort of expected that it would be easier than I first thought. I think Jay E Thomas will be far more influential to us that Albert was because of where he plays if they double and triple mark him as they did against Albert to stop him playing it won't be a case of hemming him against a touchline because he is more central they are going to have to take Baldocks marker away as well or leave a massive big hole for one of our midfielders to stroll through so we more or less have the front sorted creativity wise when the defenders and keeper learn each others foibles we will be sorted come October things will look very different to today and probably it will be sooner than that give it 3 or 4 weeks and the climb up the table will be on in earnest and the worries about this start will be behind us after all so far we have played ONLY 3 GAMES against L1 opposition 2 away 1 at home 1 win 1 draw 1 defeat. It is not a case of Deja Vue like last year when we were shipping goals because we were not creating many chances in a game last year now we are creating the chances. I know managers would rather teams won 1-0 but fans would rather see excitement and once we start hitting the back of their net more than the ball hits ours the crowds will be back it is not just winning that brings in the crowds it is entertainment.
'Against Bradford Fielding came rushing too far from his goal and we conceded' Knowing when to come for a through ball is God given - You CAN'T teach it on training grounds. Ask Gerkin. 'as a result he didn't do that against Coventry for their 4th as he waited for the Defender to clear the ball which he didn't, result we conceded again these are things that will get sorted on the training ground' I'm sorry, anyone who thinks they can 2nd guess what Fontaine's likely to do is deluded. 'It is not a case of Deja Vue like last year when we were shipping goals because we were not creating many chances' ???? Where were you last August - we scored for fun, this August we're shipping goals 7 in 2 league games. It went tits up after a decent start (we scored 8 against the 2 promoted sides), this year we don't even have a good start. Have a look at the table at the end of August - if SOD doesn't sort the side and set up NOW we'll be bottom 3.
