After hearing all the excuses from the "bad manager" playbook it must surely be time for the board to act decisively and sack SOD. However if you look at the past record of our board who have clearly been reading another book called "How to fail at football by spending recklessly" and it's sequel " The status quo might work if we stick our heads in the sand long enough". Trying to put some humour in to my thoughts on Bristol City just makes me more upset at the people down at the club who should all be fired because there isn't one of them who can actually say that they earn their salaries. How on earth can they get it consistently wrong over so many years and then say they have developed 5 pillars on which we can build our future success? At this sad point in our history we are starting to run out of "future" unless someone can step forward to not only change our fortunes but also save the future that is currently in serious jeopardy of burning down the building including those stupid 5 pillars. Get real board members and fire one of the most unsuccessful managers of all time and the worst part of all of this is that you hired him, along with his predecessors, with false hopes and promises. You should all be ashamed of your total lack of professionalism and integrity, and should you come up with the fortitude to do the right thing and put him out of his misery then you should all pack your bags and join him. I never thought that the club I have supported for over 50 years would end up becoming such a total farce and still seem incapable of getting the message, but when you have your head buried so deep in the sand it is very easy to become blind to the truth staring you right between the eyes. Perhaps if you had just one person who understands what is happening you might, just might, stand a chance of redemption but I won't hold my breath. No apologies necessary! Ouch that hurt but I just had to vent my anger.
Mike You're not alone but the board have no spine and they wont sack SOD yet. I really thought that after last weeks result we'd beat Oldham with something to spare, but all of the frailties were there again yesterday. Ball watching, giving the ball away, not closing people down. Either the players aren't listening to SOD or they don't have the ability to start with. I strongly suspect the latter, but this on-going misery wont end just yet I'm afraid.
Mike, Supporters like you, me and thousands of others can see what is going to happen to OUR CLUB unless the owner and the board start acting like proper businessmen. Even the local greengrocer and butcher have more sense in their little fingers than the combined brains of our board. As for the manager, who was turned into a deity and the saviour of the known universe by some, he does not appear to have the foggiest idea of putting and team and playing pattern together. We spend endless time passing the ball around our back four, and then when one gets closed down by an opponent, the ball is just lumped as high and long as possible to JET in the air - he cannot jump or even head it any better than Elliott and a 5ft 9inch Baldock. Wingers who don't go near the touchline, midfielder with the ball control of a Bedouin camel and a central defender who yesterday, decided to not play at least four dangerous balls into our box for a reason totally beyond me and everyone sat near me. Substitutions that appear to be picked out of a hat like a draw ticket. I could go on for hours but will repeat what I've said on other posts recently. We will be in League Two next season, The Conference in 2014-15 and looking forward to local derbies with Bath City, Clevedon and Weston-Super-Mare in 2015-16. We are a Football Club in free fall and where the fall ends is anybody's guess. PS, get Warnock in now to get us out of the quicksand mire before it is too late.
To play the "Warnock Way" we would need at least 4 or 5 different types of player. A big STRONG centre forward plus tough tackling midfield players, leadership, pace up front etc Arguably we need that anyway!! I hear what you say about yesterday's game, however, given the financial restraints can we afford to sack the manager - get someone new - get more players - change back room staff. Have we been down that road before?
Can we afford not to replace SO'D? I detest Warnock as a person but he would breathe some fire into our players who are performing with about the same passion as SO'D shows in interviews and during a match.
To be fair a good point. I must admit that having backed the manager 100% in previous posts, yesterday's performance means I am now at least thinking about a change
You can't just get Warnock in Warnock would want money to spend - SOD has had to clear out bring in and re establish, which isn't a easy job and not many managers would want to work like that I know yesterday's result and performance was under par but people saying bring 'this manager in' isn't as straightforward as it seems
I agree it is not an easy thing to do, but to sit on one's hands and ignore all the very visible signs is even worse. I have a feeling that Warnock would come to us for the rest of the season, probably for low salary but a good bonus if he keeps us up, even without a big transfer pot / wages pot. He is probably now in semi retirement in his Cornwall home and this would be a great challenge with which to end his management career. PS, if he brought Keith Curle, there is the next City manager, someone with some real affinity with the club.
Been thinking about this and I can see a way around this, people won't like it but it is a solution and does gone on in real life, SL sell the club lock stock and barrell to his son, his son then starts the club debt free. But also in the sale SL pays off these high earners with SL sponsoring a stand. We now have a club that debt free and free of the high earners. SL still then controls the club but in his sons name. It happens maybe not to the extreme of this one, the taxes ain't been broken only a way round FFP for a while.
I suppose it would depend how much SL wants to stay involved? Paying off high earners (like Kilkenny/Pearson) would be expensive - would the pay-off's constitute player expenditure under FFP rules? If not it is an option.
Don't know but if it was paid off by Lansdown senior on sponsorship, which classes as income then that could resolve that?
What reason on earth do we have to suppose that Warnock would even consider coming here, or anyone else for that matter. We are a poisoned chalice im afraid, and no manager worth a dime would touch us. Its just typical of the unrealistic nonsense that comes out of our supporters, who dont really understand what goes on in football but think they do. Fact is, our cast of idiots in the board room have shunted us up a cul-de-sac and we can do nothing about it. Back in 2010, SL was dumb enough to listen to the supporters baying for blood because they believed we were bigger than reality. The reality is Bristol City are a small, country club. Smaller than Norwich, Ipswich, Coventry, Southampton, Portsmouth and the like. On a size-of-club level we are about the same as Swindon or Brighton. Unfortunately our supporters seemed to think we should compete with the giants of the north or London. Maybe if we had been a footballing area we may have got our new stadium and grown, but we are not. Bristol is not about football, unless you are one of a hardcore fanbase of about 14000. That unfortunately does not put us in with the elite, or even the also rans. The history of football places Bristol City squarely in the 3rd tier, with a toe in the Championship. What happened in the 70s was a freak event, and a testimony to what individuals can achieve when inspired and left to do their job. So its about time we all got real and just enjoyed the experience of supporting Bristol City for the love of itself. That is what makes English football strong
When we were in the old First Division, we were never really that well supported. In the first year, I had several of my mates come with me, but they were more often watching the other team! We really are on a sad decline, that I cant frankly see the end of. Yesterdays performance looked like that of a conference side, which where quite honesty we will be and deserve to be heading if we carry on playing like that. Time to act, but do what?- This is an oil tanker trying to turn at the moment
I completely agree inver.... I think there are very few of us that believe the board warrant any kind of praise or applause. Daddy Lansdown has been hiding behind his wallet and for a long time we were thankful he bankrolled us, not realising he was the problem all along and his money if anything was slowly poisoning the club. We have long long missed the boat on rising up and becoming a city that will have first class top division football. We had the chance, and we blew it through collective errors from everyone involved that run the club. With FFP, a generation more interested in watching the worlds elite rather than a team filled with loan signings and other cast offs fail week in week out, and the bottom of the game ready to fall out in a decade or so, I wonder if there will be a Bristol City for my grandchildren to support.
I wrote this thread late last night whilst you were all tucked up in bed dreaming of Bristol City. My anger was palpable knowing that unless something drastic happens now we could be in the fourth tier fighting for our very survival. Just about every one of my previous threads have been met with skepticism and downright disapproval from a lot of our posters but I thought maybe this time would be different and imagine my shock when I just came down to the computer about 10 minutes ago (07:15 Pacific Time) to find all of you generally in agreement that Bristol City is a club in serious trouble and decline. I often turn my mind back to the hiring of Steve Coppell and remember thinking at the time that City had finally got the right man, and I still believe he was, but my reading of his body language during his first interview told me a different story. Like most of our recent revolving door of mangers he was saying all the right things but I smelled something different, and had my suspicion that the happenings behind the doors to the ivory towers were not to his liking and his swift departure all but confirmed my fears. Those fears have never gone away in my mind and I believe we have seen the manifestation of that over the last few years with a succession of managers who were supposed to the saviours of Bristol City and have been proven to be anything but our future. So the questions still remain as to who is at fault and I am strongly of the opinion that we are run by people who couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery. Please remember that these people are quick to blame the paying public who have to fork over good money to watch a total shambles and go home after the match questioning what the hell is happening and chatting amongst themselves in person or on such sites as this to satisfy their individual curiosities. If we as mere mortals can see the blatantly obvious it begs the question as to why the powers that be are stumbling out of the blocks each and every day? Will they ever see the forest for the tress or are their rose coloured glasses giving them a different view on life than us? Not sure anymore to be honest.
BRR; In the autumn after Warnock had taken Huddersfield to promotion by beating the Gas at Wembley an just after he had joined Plymouth as their manager, I sat next to him at a City reserve match at the Hand stadium, Clevedon. He was scouting but very willing to talk "football" with a group of us. I remember him saying quite forcefully that Bristol should have a team in the top tier and that one day, someone would go to City or Rovers and drag them kicking and screaming into the big boys league. He emphasised this quite hard. He has always said publicly that Ashton Gate is a hard place for away teams, so I am just surmising that if we do need to recruit again in the not too distant future that he might be up for it. With his ego to satisfy, he might think that it would be a massive achievement to do the dragging.
BRR; In the autumn after Warnock had taken Huddersfield to promotion by beating the Gas at Wembley an just after he had joined Plymouth as their manager, I sat next to him at a City reserve match at the Hand stadium, Clevedon. He was scouting but very willing to talk "football" with a group of us. I remember him saying quite forcefully that Bristol should have a team in the top tier and that one day, someone would go to City or Rovers and drag them kicking and screaming into the big boys league. He emphasised this quite hard. He has always said publicly that Ashton Gate is a hard place for away teams, so I am just surmising that if we do need to recruit again in the not too distant future that he might be up for it. With his ego to satisfy, he might think that it would be a massive achievement to do the dragging.
BRR; In the autumn after Warnock had taken Huddersfield to promotion by beating the Gas at Wembley an just after he had joined Plymouth as their manager, I sat next to him at a City reserve match at the Hand stadium, Clevedon. He was scouting but very willing to talk "football" with a group of us. I remember him saying quite forcefully that Bristol should have a team in the top tier and that one day, someone would go to City or Rovers and drag them kicking and screaming into the big boys league. He emphasised this quite hard. He has always said publicly that Ashton Gate is a hard place for away teams, so I am just surmising that if we do need to recruit again in the not too distant future that he might be up for it. With his ego to satisfy, he might think that it would be a massive achievement to do the dragging.
