It will be very interesting to see if the facts of life, as told by Nigel in a very expressive manner, have any impact on the standard of play in the next 2 games? Sometimes the old methods of telling it like it is on a very public stage will work but regrettably today's pampered idiots will probably throw all the toys out of their respective prams. The only possible problem I see is that if there is any modicum of dissent in the dressing room then Nigel's rant may have a negative affect on the whole situation by hurting too many egos. I reckon that we are sitting on some less than solid ground and if there are too many tremors in the next couple of months then the whole building might come down.
The problem is that the senior core of this squad has seen off 2 managers and are well on their way to a 3rd. They have no shame whatsoever. The good news is he seems to have the full support of the younger players and some senior players like Weimann, Martin and James. The truth hurts and we have players that we cannot give away for one reason or another, nobody is prepared to take them on and pay the same wages that we pay these players. It has taken him 32 games of this season to say what I have been saying and thinking for 2 years now. I am glad that he said it, it's only a risky strategy for him, but it needed saying this has been going on since the opening game of this season.
The nonsense had to stop at some time and perhaps now is as good a time as any given how long we as mere observers seemed to be the only ones who spotted the rot. Over the last several years I, and many others, have continually posted about our thoughts as to the demons lurking in the back halls of Ashton Gate which have held us back without any logical input from the people at the top as to why it happened consistently just around the time we really thought we were close to getting it right. There was one season under the direction of Gary Johnson where at one point we only needed a limited amount of points to reach automatic promotion but for some reason the wheels fell off the bus. My recollection is fading but I think we were involved in one game at Wolves where if we had secured the points our chances of promotion was right up there with the best and we capitulated in shocking fashion which made me question at the time as to whether we were throwing the game because our shadow frightened us? It has been a long bumpy and at times uncomfortable ride as a City supporter and I don't reckon that success or stability will fill the seats down there in BS3 before I head off into the sunset. So sad.
Mike, the Wolves game was at Ashton Gate and it was under Lee not Gary. We’d just put in some cracking performances against the 2 Manchester clubs and we were second in the league at that time - then it went tits up. …. Unless you mean under GARY back in 2008 when once again we were second but we played Stoke away and fizzled out. We recovered briefly vs Palace in the playoffs but ended out losing to Hull in the final, with Windass scoring a goal of the quality/type he’d never scored before or would again.
This is going one way or the other-NP will walk when the crown jewels are taken away from him and sold again-or The Lansdowns back him and do everything in their power to build a team around them and get the deadwood gone. They need to see some ambition within the club to move forward and not see every decent player sold.Unless this happens they will go. For me i think NP will walk come the end.
The away p/o performance at Palace, who were favourites to win the p/os, was the best of the entire season. The p/o final started going tits up the night before when Boom Boom was ruled out followed by Orr's injury in the first half. Then GJ's worst substitute decision of all time - moving Marvin Elliott to RB.
That home game against Wolves, when we were 1-0 up with only a couple of minutes left (is this sounding familiar ?!!!) and had been the better side, yet still contrived to lose 2-1 is where the rot set in for that particular team and for LJ imo.. It was all Ski Sunday after that. Whether it knocked the belief out of the players, the Manager or both will never be known, but that's what it seemed like to me.
I criticised LJ in that game for pushing Flint forward vs 10 men vs a side good on the break. I’ve defended LJ a lot but he lost us that one I’m afraid imho.
bcfc I think it was the second suggestion you made because it was under GJ. We looked bang on for automatic and then we faded badly.
