With all of this debate about our Stadium, Owner, Manager, Players, Systems, Debt, the facts are..... * We've got our new stadium.. * We've got our brilliant owner. * We've got no debt, that has been sorted by Mr Lansdown. * We've got our successful manager. * We've got our first team squad, just. * We've got our playing system. * We've got our promotion & Championship status. * We've got reasonable loyal support. And... * We've got ourselves deep in the brown stuff, WHAT are we doing about it.?
At present nowt it seem wiz. The manager is not for change,the screw will get tighter as the weeks go by.
Just not good enough, this was my worry when coming up. This league is basically a 2nd premier league. We needed to spend and we haven't. Our "quality" players are now average at best in this league. A lot needs to be done, whether we can do it or not remains to be seen.
Some of those are opinions. If you numbered them number three is wrong. City have debts around twenty five million pounds and will almost certainly lose a considerable sum of money again this season. It remains to be seen how the next losses will be serviced. Any what are we going to do about it have to take the above into consideration.
Okay but as you comprehensively explained on various other threads, which I must add helped, Mr Lansdown has taken care of our debts to date, opinions to some, facts to others, fairy stories to maybe a few but to me our basic structure is sound on all fronts except for the fact we are in the brown stuff league status wise. This was the point I was gently trying to make and was wondering what constructive suggestions others might have to improve our current situation.
Fans accepting that Bristol City is in debt, is continuing to lose money , but Mr Lansdown is putting in place a costly structure beyond just buildings that can alter that would be an improvement. I would do something entirely different, but I obviously am neither the owner, or a billionaire and while I would prefer Ashton Gate to be owned by the club i.e. Its fans I accept that the majority of City fans ARE HAPPY with the status quo. My view that much of Bristol Sport is unnecessary guff in the grand scheme of things is irrelevant. Fans on the whole again do not care about this mammoth restructuring either- fans are happy with the status quo. So its a case of accept [I do] or affect. In the case of affect I cannot see any cogent plan B from the dissenters who see Bristol City as results or any having the means, knowledge to affect anything. Better to accept and enjoy it for what it is good and bad.
Whilst you cannot knock what SL has done for the club financially, stadium etc and lets be honest we could have been broke out of business without his help. Fact is he is still top of the tree and therefore must shoulder the blame for the fcuk up that has been the start of this season. I think the concern of most fans is that they can see that this team is nowhere near good enough and despite being early in the season the writing is on the wall. We do not appear to have learned lessons from our last foray into the championship when despite it being obvious that we needed to sign a decent centre back, creative midfielder it never happened. Indeed Liam Fontaines mistakes probably cost us our championship status on his own. Just like this season the attitude was it will sort itself eventually, well it did not. If SC carries on playing a 3 5 2 without players who are good enough to play that system in the championship then its only going one way.
We've all seen it A lot of us have now said it Most of us knew what we had in terms of squad quality wasn't going to be good enough this season. Despite the pain of the last relegation, the basic lessons have certainly still not be learned and within less than 5 games this season. All of last years achievements are now just a memory as the reality of the size of the task required to just stay in this league begins to dawn on people.
Spot on Angelic - last season is now a distant memory. We all knew that this would be a big step up and maybe our cup game against West Ham gave us false hope that we were better than we actually were - cup games are a one off and as we all know, every underdog has it's day. Relegation this year would be a disaster and the way to stop it is to change fortunes earlier rather than later. We simply have to stop leaking goals and then find some ammunition to supply for the strikers. Seems we have tons of possession but no real quality where it counts. We make a few mistakles at the back and the goals fly in. MK Dons & Preston are in the same boat as us in terms of struggling and both of those teams invested heavily over the summer. This shows that it's not about throwing money around but how you spend it that matters. It's still too early to hit the panic button yet but unless we start to see an upturn over the next 5 games, drastic actions may be the order of the day....
I still feel we need to put things in a bit of perspective, we've only played 8 games. In the season we got relegated after 8 games we had twice as many points as we have now and stuffed both Palace and Cardiff who both got promoted to the Premiership. In the year Johnson got us promoted from League One we lost 5 of our first 8 games. There is still a long way to go and still a lot of points to play for. Yes, the transfer window was poor, Yes Saturday was awful and yes we are conceding far to many goals but we can score goals as well and we have played some good football this season, much better than the year we got relegated so lets focus on the good, hope that the inept performance on Saturday was a one off and not a sign of the team losing faith and off things to come and hope that they can resolve the bad . We need to get behind the team, because lets face it we can moan on forums all we like but the only thing we can do as supporters that can make a different is support the team and I'm fed of reading threads of doom and gloom on here
The problem is the more they loose,the lower their confidence goes with it,you could see it draining away on Saturday. As said Reading were able to take their feet of the gas,second half was a training game for them. Big Big improvement required by the management and players required.
Unfortunately we had such a poor start that the confidence from last season was probably all gone by the time we'd lost to Wednesday, Luton, and Brentford. SC has a mammoth task on this hands to get the confidence back, but I'm sorry to say that with the squad we have it's likely that we will continue to struggle for the foreseeable future.
The simple fact is that although we have been led to believe that Bristol City have high ambitions I just can't see how they think those goals can ever be achieved with the sort of policies currently in place at Ashton Gate. Couple this philosophy with the namby pamby statements coming from the boardroom via SC and it is evident we haven't got a clue who we are or where we want to be in the future, and worst of all no idea how we are going to get to the promised land of anywhere. Do the powers to be actually know we are out here and, if by some miracle they do, do they really give a rat's ass? Our current situation, although not critical yet, will soon turn ugly and then the heavy messy stuff will start hitting the fan and from there who knows what the future will bring. Like most others I am distressed by the approach to this season, or rather a total lack of any approach, and I begin to wonder who's running the show 'and if it is who we think then why don't they stick their head above the parapet and face the music for their dereliction of duty to the club and it's supporters? How on earth can the management sit back and stay virtually silent, other than the ludicrous comments coming from those who should know better, and expect us to believe that their actions will build a squad capable of staying in the Championship long enough to perhaps go even higher? Frankly I am a little disgusted at the cavalier way in which my lifetime club is being run and, apart from last season, I have thought the same way for many years. So where did it go wrong, because along the way we have all seen what success brings to Ashton Gate and that is generally failure accompanied by excuses. I know it's early days and we must not fall over and die but I cannot see how we are going to get out of this mess until something changes in our overall philosophy of how to run a successful football club, and the bad news is that I don't think we have anyone at Bristol City who fits the bill. So sad.
It's called the Bristol City, let's build the fans hopes up again and then let them down with a resounding crash. More of what I saw on Saturday and I seriously am ready to throw in the towel because I can see my lifetime statistics of 8 promotions and 7 relegations becoming 8 all! I'm sick of Third Division football against Walsall and the rest.
TESCO do a double size toilet roll pack packs of 12 = 24 rolls equivalent, ASDA do a very good squeegee and Sainsbury a mop and bucket a good bucket and shovel can purchased from Screwfix plus the Avon isn't that far away .....
From my side of the fence it seems to me that strangely SL is not willing to go that extra mile to spend the money to bring in quality players. It all seems so near and yet so far. It is admirable to be careful with the dosh and not break the bank but at some stage SL has to be prepared to splash the money and go for it. He seems to go so far then pulls up short. Don't know how that fits in with FFP.......just my opinion.
You overlooked the stadium is being rebuilt, the academy is now cat 2, the training ground facilities upgraded and professionals in Bristol Sport brought in to increase revenue through the stadium.
Perhaps he is doing what every City chairman ( owner) has done during my lifetime of supporting City. Provide enough funds to block the plughole of losses but never put in enough to get the Club out of the continual cycle up and down between tiers two and three. And as for the funding of a rebuilt stadium. For Harry Dolmans indoor bowling rinks with seats on the top, read Lansdown's plush conference centre with a new stadium around it as an afterthought. I really am feeling bitter, twisted and having see seven relegations in my lifetime, I kid you not that this one is looking very ominous to me.
Perhaps Higgs is giving him advise on how to run a football club. Seriously though SL stated that he had learned a lesson from last time in the championship. However the championship is, excuse the pun a different ball game and more like a premier league 2 and bares no resemblance to the league of a few years ago. Its a necessity now to have a large squad of championship quality players and most teams rotate their players from game to game without weakening their team. A large number of teams have had the benefit of prem parachute payments and can pay significantly higher wages than we have budgeted for. I think the answer is spend the money or accept that you may not be able to compete. FFP is just something for accountants to get around.
So who put the simiiar amounts in as Lansdown has and is now? Kew, Davidson, Laycok? I dont rate everything SL does but those former Chairman certainly were not in the same category. you seem to be rating chairman and owners by how much they spend and thats it.
