Today The game against Oldham showed me this club is on it knees,you take JET out of the team and it is complete and utter garbage. Oldham deserved to take the three points. Everytime they attacked they looked dangerous,their players were hungry ours were not. A side that is worth a fraction of BCFC and a wages budget that LJ could only dream off,yet they looked a far better team than ours. Six points was a must with the two home games,we look like a side that could not score in a brothel at present. We can blame the manager all we like,but those players are shocking considering what they are earning. Yes SODs substitutions were shocking and you have to question them,but these players apart from JET,Williams,Waggy,Reid the rest were shocking today. Why oh why do we need more defenders and midfielders we have enough,we need a striker that can bang the ball in the net to help JET out,Baldock needs ten chances to score one not good enough. Taylor will never score even though he can hold the ball up,Harwood does not seem to get a game"why sign him" Very very concerning times at the gate at the moment. Anybody see any hope, I simply find it harder as games go by. Struggleing to even want to go Tuesday night,if the players cannot be bothered then why should we as fans.
"We can blame the manager all we like,but those players are shocking considering what they are earning" They aint earning anywhere near what last seasons players were.! When the same thing was said to you about Mckinnes you said "the buck must stop with the manager" You cant have it both ways RR, you are starting your backtracking now because you know the majority of fans are losing patience.! Your adulation of O'driscoll is beginning to look pretty foolish now...
Rubbish players that SoD bought to the club, as Banksy says you say one thing for one manager then another for a manger you ****ed over daily. I said when he was appointed from a Forest friend, no plan B and worries too much about the opposition never let's the other teams worry about his. I'm now starting to fall of my fence.
No adulation just saying what i am seeing,The players are not performing to their potential ,the managers decision were baffling.Certainly not invincible and i do question his decisions today.
He certainly is not invincible,we all have our opinions but i am not at all impressed with the majority of this team at present.
Fell off the fence a week or so back.......last week was just a "blip" obviously. I give up, I realy do...............
Sod is not immune from critassism his subs today were poor,his loan signings are baffleing,but the players his recruits and players he inherited are not at the races.
Poor game, we were lucky to be 1-0 up for so long. The least Oldham deserved was a point. Williams had a good game and JET was willing, Wagstaff occasionally threatened but otherwise there wasn't a lot to shout about. Flint for me was looking the weak link of the back 4. In the first half, you could have driven a tank through our defence. Nobody otherwise had a particularly good or bad game, but we just couldn't keep the ball. Several midfield tackles were won and we just give the ball away again. Taylor wasn't doing a lot, so I agree with his subbing other than it should have been 20 mins earlier and not Reid to come off. To my mind, the players individually might have been ok, but as a team we were inept. Sorry, but one guy picks the team, creates the tactics, game plan etc, that man being SOD- I think I saw enough again today to say its time to go.
I believe that this is the worst Bristol City team that I have ever seen and that includes seven relegation seasons and the first five months in the Fourth Division in 1982-3. There appears to be no cohesion between players, a total lack of passion from the football management and the downward slide is gathering pace. I did not like some of LJ's niggly tactics like carrying the ball away after conceding free kicks, but he has taken a side that looked destined for the drop last season and got them playing as a unit and working hard for each other. Which is totally different to O'Driscoll's inept attempts to put a team together that can compete to a respectable standard in a very ordinary Third tier of English football. I am still absolutely convinced that McInnes would have sorted it out if he had been left in control and we had been relegated under him. SO"D must go now, otherwise we do not stand any chance of escaping the drop. If he stays, we'll be in the Conference by 2015.
We are on a 2 game unbeaten run Taylor has only just returned to the side, so surely it makes sense to see how he shapes up with JET, before shelling out more money on a striker (bearing in mind we are not going to get Adebayor or even Shane Long in our position) If we were lucky to scrape a draw, well then that is 1 point more than we deserved - which is better than what we have been getting earlier in the season And as we saw today from the Sheffield United result, changing the Manager doesn't guarantee a miraculous recovery...just a false dawn As much as it hurts, my opinion is still to be patient. I know that puts me in a minority of one.
Glen i agree with you,the football is a million miles from Delboys stint,but those players are not playing to their potential,SOD can only put out a team to play,then the players have to take the bull by the horns and take it to the opposition. Those players are shocking and deserve to be at the bottom of the division. LJ can be proud of what he has done, his team gave it all and made our players look shocking for the majority of the time. SOD needs to get s striker in on lone Baldock,Taylor,and it seems Harewood are not going to get the goals.That is where the problem sits.
Right I'm going to spell this out to you, so you can grasp it. Parish bought in by SoD Maloney bought in by SoD Williams bought in by SoD Fling bought in by SoD Shorey bought in by Sod Wagstaff bought in by SoD Pack bought in by SoD Elliott bought in by Johnston Reid Youth project, played once or twice prior to SoD JET bought in by SoD Taylor bought in by Millen (who did have the choice out of Le Fondre or Taylor, but choose Taylor because we had Maynard ) So there you have it Red Robin 8 and a half players bought by SoD who chose these players because they play the way HE likes. Now are these players ****, or are they just not the players he really wanted, because you are running out of excuses for the man you love. We had endless threads from you saying SoD's going to get us doing this and doing that, we will finish first as the first division is full of crap etc. Well guess what the crap teams are looking forward to playing us.
So you are blaming SOD for the players inept performances ,he cannot play for them,he can only give them a starting spot,they then have to perform for 90 minutes. Clearly they are letting the man down that has given them the shirt, i am sure you realise in any job staff have to take responcibility for their actions and do their job to the best of there ability.
But when Del was in charge you said the buck stops with him? If your sales staff don't preform do you look at your training or just sack them? After all you employed them in the first place.
Training Direction Motivation Discipline These are the 4 main functions of management, and reasons why management must be judged on their results. Training should be hard, but fun. The end result should be a desire to train because of increased fitness and the enjoyment of participating (aside from the obvious benefits like professional success and fulfilling the contract) Direction should be simple and instinctive to follow, yet very effective in terms of winning matches. It should strike a balance between science and art in pure footballing terms, and between entertainment and result attainment in the interests of the club. Motivation is a basic animal instinct, and the manager would need to inspire that within the players. Shankly, it was said, could inspire men to run up mountains all day. Most managers achieve it through wisdom and mutual respect. Discipline is the bedrock of that mutual respect between manager and players, and the club. Clough took the 2nd division Nottingham Forest and dressed them all in suits from day 1. They went from nowhere to European Champions in next to no time. How many boxes would SOD tick would you say ? I am of the opinion that Johnson senior is the last City manager to come close, and before him Alan Dicks. Maybe this gives us an idea why a city the size of Bristol has sooooo underperformed in the area of association football.
Interesting observation by GJ in a Radio Bristol interview broadcast on Saturday a week or so ago. He actually said that some at Bristol City thought that he was a bully, but in fact he will own up to making demands of players. He thought that there was an important difference.
