Not sure I have an armchair in the Eastend, or in on S... BS4 bus. Not sure I replied to your post either fella. Now is the time for defiance, bloody minded defiance, not defeatism. Our positivity can on occassion affect the team. There have been times where ideas on forums particularly subcider/wtms have had a positive effect on fans and the atmosphere in the ground. I can accept that as a fact, even have knowledge of it. So, being negative on forums, and one or two are being overtly negative can eventually affect others.
Negativity can only rub off on you if you let it! I'm not negative, I have said for weeks it will all come down to Charlton and this weekend won't relegate us but it has made it harder. When you have the upper hand don't let your opponent off those ropes. Play dirty if you have too but don't let the ****ers get any momentum.
"So, being negative on forums, and one or two are being overtly negative can eventually affect others" You better get used to it on here mate! I've been listening to negativity on here for years. but I also defend everybody's right to say what they want whether I like it or not and thats the way its gonna stay! This forum is for debating different views and we've been doing it a long time without many major fall outs, I may disagree today and agree tomorrow! if someone makes a good enough argument I may even change my mind there and then. Thats the way it is...
I just don't see how people disagreeing with the sit back and invite pressure tactics is being negative. Surely there have been times you have disagreed with something? For instance a particular manager being at the club when you think he should go. We are passionate supporters and thats what keeps turnstiles turning, you take that away, you get a few fans visiting from the happy home who are just happy for the day out and thats it. I'm not saying sack the manager, or that the players we have are all useless, I am saying what he did on saturday was the incorrect way to get the result we need, and I would be staggered if SOD didnt realise that as well now in hindsight.
I can't see how any fan can realistically claim calling saturday a disgrace and fans sheep is not negative fella!!!
Lets just correct a few misguided thoughts. Yes, I supported Derek McInnes because I thought he would be the breath of fresh air that this club needed and indeed, he did an awful lot of the groundwork putting the foundations of the new accademy in place which will eventually rebuiild this club from the bottom up. Also and contrary to the opinion of some on here, the majority of the players he signed have been better than what we had. The fact that he, like every other manager since GJ, inherited basically the same inadequate defence and team that had no clue how to play (and this is not a new thing, there has been no pattern of play since the first season in the NPC) that eventually did for him and all his predecessors is no coincidence. Nicky Maynard pretty much kept us up single handed for a couple of seasons however as all have discovered to their cost, you can organise as much as you like but ultimately, you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Interestingly, the 2 defenders that McDel did manage to bring in on loan last season in McManus and Bikey played a pretty major part in keeping us up last year. I can't answer the question as to why our defence wasn't revamped but perhaps it was down to the fact that Fontaine and Nyatanga both had a year and 2 years left respectively on their lucrative contracts signed under GJ plus the fact that Coppell and Millen signed more and more squad players so our budget was broke so Del spent what he had on a we score more than you philosphy. After all, the number of goals we scored has declined every season down to barely a goal a game last year - now THAT is certain relegation material, at least we are scoring more now... Anyway, Del is gone so we move on and just to be clear, I think that SoD will be good for the club in the long run as he will get us playing the joined up football that I have been begging for for 5 years now but I would rather we give it all guns blazing and try and stay in this division THIS YEAR rather than start again in league one next year. Its almost like he has already accepted we are down and even if we ultimately do, what is the point of not going for it - we ALL know that sitting back away from home is pointless as we ALL KNOW that we will lose - the evidence is staring anyone who cares to look, in the face so why the **** don't we just go for it, flat out, hit teams when they aren't expecting it and maybe go 1 or 2 up early and just keep going - not all teams would recover from that. Is it just me or do others just not see that in our current situation, playing it safe just ain't going to cut it - do not make the mistake of confusing my frustration with an apparent lack of ambition on the part of the manager with negativity (surely the ultimate irony), we are down if we do not produce something pretty damn special so lets try it after all... WHAT'S THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN...????!!!!
I wholly agree Prem. I have supported City all of my life, managers and players come and go. But one thing has always been constant. I want City to try to win every game. Sitting back and trying to defend your way to victory never works. Brighton at the Millennium proved that. My loyalty is to Bristol City FC and if I voice an opinion contrary to others, it is not negativity. Even at my age, I can still be broken hearted at another relegation staring us in the face.
Everyone seems to have forgotten one thing on Saturday the tactics were working until one player did something special like Maynard often did for us in years gone by. Sean arrived at the club to find a team that had either forgotten how to defend or had never learned how to defend properly, and he like many of us older ones and older managers were taught you start any successful team from the back, unless you are blessed with ultra gifted players(ie Brazil some years - Barcelona - Man Utd the Busby Babes and the 1968 team or the Earlier Galacticos of Real Madrid). So his first priority was to make us harder to beat this in the MAIN he has done we have not been thrashed since he arrived and yes it has been at the expense of some attacking 'WHAT'S THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN' We start losing 4-0 consistantly We have a chance if we can keep clean sheets if we continually ship goals we have no chance. IT COULD ALL COME DOWN TO GOAL DIFFERENCE and we must continue to improve ours by conceeding fewer goals we don't have the players to outscore all other teams in the division, Stead out for the season Taylor might or might not play this season, Anderson could be out for the rest of the season and Baldock and Davies are not the fittest players we have had at the Gate and we are just as unlikely to be without one or both of them as to have them both fit. Regarding the youngsters there are 2 schools of thought you can throw them in to a relegation fight 'Sink or Swim' which could cause either effect brings out the best or destroys their confidence or you can hold them back I don't know any of the youngsters well enough to have any idea which way they would go so have to trust the coaching staff. Sean has said it is proving hard to get better players in on loan and what would be the point in bringing in players who are available who are no better than we have it's all very well saying bring in X Y or Z but if they do not want to come they are not going to come are they? and some clubs are demanding silly money to allow players to go on loan, Even Wolves with all their parachute monies struggled to pay what was wanted by some clubs as a monthly loan fee plus the players wages read some of the comments of their previous manager. Yes I wold love to see the City playing as they have done in some of the years gone by attacking in waves but in those days we had a fairly rock solid defence plus forwards/wingers/inside halves who could score for fun, something we no longer have. I happen to think that Sean O'Driscoll is our best chance of bringing those days back in fact he is about our only chance of bringing those days back with the advent of the joke called FFP which will unfairly advantage those clubs already with a history of success over those trying to join the elite. Under FFP I doubt if we will see another Wimbledon in my lifetime.
"Everyone seems to have forgotten one thing on Saturday the tactics were working until one player did something" I can appreciate your thoughts Hawk, but a game of football is 90+ minutes. Saturday wasn't one moment of something special, it was 45+ minutes of us not trying to kill the game off. Therefore the argument of "the tactics were working until" is irrelevant, as at the end of the game, the tactics didn't work. You can't say "for the first 3 minutes of the football game we were the better team, so all credit to the manager and players" if for the other 87 minutes they let in 15 goals! Football becomes too much of an expensive lottery if you go along just to witness one moment of Nicky Maynard magic and then nothing else. I can see why 4 members of my family and half a dozen people in my row in the Dolman stopped buying a season ticket during the GJ days. Because it was lump it up to Dele and hope we can win 1-0. It never bothered me, but I can see why fans don't want to pay through the nose to watch that failing tactic.
Everyone seems to have forgotten one thing on Saturday the tactics were working ... Not everyone, some have pointed it out but been hit by a deluge of despair, miserablism, negativity that sort of sketch. Relegated with eight games they reckon, gone, dead, spoilt, ruined might as well stay at home and be cruel to the cat.
What you on about? Everything is hunky dory, and my support saturday as well as the 3 other games away I've been to under SOD really mattered didn't it? I love the fickle hypocrisy of some. No doubt you have never uttered a single negative word about the club, a manager, or a player. Still no one answers the vital question that has been asked about a hundred times since Saturday. IF SO'D HAD IT RIGHT ON THE LAST 5 AWAY GAMES, WHY HASN'T IT WORKED??? Just keep droning on about negativity that isn't really negative! Claiming people are bad mouthing a manager ALL have either said is the right man for the job or in my case thinks is too good for us! That's not support at all is it??
I believe 'SO'D HAD IT RIGHT ON THE LAST 5 AWAY GAMES' even though we've lost most. With the sh*t he was left with it's nonsense to say 'we should adopt a more positive attitude'. SOD's setting the team out as positive as he can be with the players available. It's their ability that's lacking not an attitude thing and it's utter madness to say attack attack etc. Words such as 'let's give it a go' don't make one jot of difference when you get the other side of the white line. If only football was that simple. Words are easy on here and from the Stands but doing it is a much different proposition. SOD has massively improved our home form but I accept it's much harder to change away form. If you lot think different - then we disagree.
Whatever I may think about our future, I will still be at The Gate for the games with Bolton and Birmingham. However down I am about our position, I will continue to get to matches whenever I can this season and in the years that are left to me!
You're damn ****ing right I was miserablist on Saturday night, that was the first time that I had to admit that there was a very real possibilty that we are going to be playing league one football next year. If I had a cat, it would have been in severe difficulties... Up until Saturday at 5pm however I think you will find (if you bother to look) that I have without exception, hesitation or deviation, been saying that I was 100% certain that we would not be relegated if we could win the games that I highlghted in several threads before the Barnsley game so don't accuse me of negativity. Wolves was one of these games and frankly, they were in a far worse mess than we are having only taken 3 points from their last 7 home games . If we had been playing Man Utd, you could bet any amount of money that the team would find an extra 25/50/100% extra from somewhere, just like the struggling Oldham side did against Liverpool and Everton so surely the fact that their championship status (and quite possibly their wages if we put the right clauses in the contracts) are at stake would be a spur, an incentive yet we can't muster enough moxy to put a side who have been on the slide for months, away.... Our players are paid many £1,000's of pounds a week and yet some would seem to say that they are not really much better than an under 11's side so we really can't expect that much of them - bull****....!!! - they didn't earn lucrative contracts from us being being rubbish so its time to step up to the plate and find that extra bit of passion, will, determination - whatever it is that separates winners from losers... The one thing I don't doubt is the effort applied since SoD arrived so like others, its the away tactics I question. We can beat good sides (Watford, Forest, Boro) keeping 4 clean sheets in the process at home so what's the problem playing the same way away. The received wisdom is that for some reason, the home side must dominate and that the away side has to be subservient. This is however defective thinking and all good managers and teams take no notice of and have no respect for this faulty concept and play the same home and away. After all, the pitch is the same, the ball is the same, the players are the same, the only thing that is different is THE LOCATION AND THE NUMBER OF OUR FANS PRESENT however go on a good run, and the latter will not be so much of an issue. As for "we might lose 4-0 if we attack", I would rather that than witness the spineless wimper of a performance that we mustered at the likes of Blackburn (twice in the space of a few weeks) where we offered nothing and had our 1st effort of any note after 70 odd minutes. If you allow sides to attack you constantly, we will a), concede and b). lose so if we pick up 0 points, frankly our goal difference will make f-all difference. If you are happy going down having mustered 8 0-0 draws then I really do have to wonder about how you enjoy your football...
