Red-Robbo

I guess every footballer knows the rules; placing just one bet is illegal. Whether he's strictly an addict or not, being unable (or unwilling) to control the need to bet on such matches suggests a lack of impulse-control. It isn't hard to be found out. Bet on the nags instead! People in racing I know bet on anything other than horses. Their bans are even more severe than football's, because of the history of the sport.

One assumes it'll be Luton going up. Coventry sort of crept in to the play-offs on the back of some good results late on, but Luton were more consistently impressive. Anyone's game though. I don't think anyone should be downhearted though. We are moving in the right direction and are nearer the play-offs (10 points away) than relegation (15 away). Last season the play-offs were 20 points away and relegation 14; the one before the figures were 26 points off the play-offs, 7 points off relegation. I think the composition of the midfield that emerges after the summer will be key for us. It always seems that we lose a number of key battles there.

Never say never, but it's extremely unlikely. For one thing, I think Scott is a really good player who can hold his own in the second tier and be outstanding on occasions. But PL clubs will hope they can improve him and; by the example of his team-mates, with extensive coaching and by testing himself against better opposition, make him something beyond "outstanding on occasions" - make him exceptional, world-class. Young players are sometimes loaned back when they need more experience. Alex has played first-team football in the second tier since he was 17 and has made more than 80 appearances at this level. It isn't game time he needs to push him on, it's higher-level experience.

That's true, but Truro have Torquay and Taunton to give a derby flavour and Dover have Maidstone, Tonbridge and Eastbourne within easy striking distance. There isn't a sensible away around it, other than to have leagues of uneven size, which would make promotion to a national league a bit inconsistent.

I feel it's a bit tough on a non-league club like Gloucester that they have to travel extensively to teams that are - Hereford excepted - mainly a bloomin' long way away. I mean to go to Blyth Spartans they probably face a round trip of more than 500 miles. At the same time, if they were in NLS, they'd have reasonable derbies with Bath, Chippenham, Hungerford and other tasty fixtures with the large number of West Country clubs now in that division. It's just unfortunate that the way things balance out means a club from Gloucs and one from Hertfordshire have to play in a league with the majority of its clubs in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Northumberland.

And we had "Dr Feelbad" leading the medical team that tried to get that lot fit. Afobe was the real loss. His loss made a massive difference to where the team was going, it was too little, too late by the time he returned.

You made the basic error there of listening to talkSPORT. If I wanted to listen to someone being very boring about football, I'd turn round and talk to the bloke sitting in the seat behind mine in the Dolman.

As King will turn 35 in October, and James will be 32 when the season starts, it's fair to say, we definitely need an extra MF even if Scott stays.

The smallprint states "you may find yourself sitting on a bag of cement behind someone's back garden..."

My dad set "The North" as beginning at Painswick Bishop Stortford drew the short straw here; had Oxford City not won promotion from the National League South, it looked as if they'd be shifted into the NL North. No wonder they played so well to avoid that!

He's very often the initiator of an attacking move. The guy who makes that pass to a player in space outside our final third, allowing us to get it up the field.

My nephew and his mate were sitting watching in that little uncovered stand that used to exist at the end of the Atyeo. They looked liked drowned rats at full-time.

While I agree with your post, I'm not sure I'd call the signing a "vanity project" - Eliasson was unknown in England - more of a symptom of the Mark Ashton initiated scattergun "trawl everything up" approach to recruitment. Someone who is a natural winger brought in to a team that mainly did not play wingers. And as has been pointed on, we didn't coach to improve this young player. It was just accepted that 100% of his game was crosses from near the touch-line. If he was limited, we certainly didn't do much to improve his skill-set.

Deliberately so. Market research has shown R4 has a majority graduate, politically engaged audience. The 1 and 6 and especially Breakfast News straddles the "news as light entertainment" boundary.

And what there is, could easily be provided in the commercial sector. Commercial radio is never going to give lower league football the prominence it gets on BBC local radio at present.

It annoys me that the cash-eating monolith that is BBC One rarely gets touched, yet local radio and TV that has yearly costs a fraction of it, gets routinely f-ed over. These are old costs, but the proportions are roughly the same:

Yep. Pissed on by the rain and pissed on by the ref.

I've never been more soaking in my life than watching us play at Saltergate once in the 90s. I may as well have jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed.

Got to agree, DB. We didn't really improve his game other than making him a bit more physically robust, and age probably took care of most of that, but I always thought he might've done better elsewhere.

Not the first time we've said that about a Bristol City side...

Sad to read. FC Groningen are my "Dutch club" - sorry Willem II - and it's a nice little city and great place to visit. Back in the Eerste Divisie for only the second time in 44 years.

You make a good point. I know at least 7 so-called "hardcore" Gasheads in my local area: none of them attends the Mem, but occasionally they might make a journey for a "big" match elsewhere. It wouldn't surprise me if you surveyed everyone who said they were a City or Rovers fan, that the numbers were slightly more even than attendances suggest - not equivalent - but a much smaller fraction of the 15ers actually watches live football, and, as I've noted elsewhere, we're actually picking up younger fans and new-to-Bristol fans in a way they can't. Can you imagine anything more depressing for a neutral than a trip to that foetid swamp?

What I was going to say. If anything, you can say Arsenal overachieved by leading the table for so long. English top-flight football is a depressing thing, with the same team about to win its fifth title in 6 seasons. You can only enjoy it by rooting for plucky underdogs like Brighton and Brentford, and laughing at Chelsea.

Hahaha. Limp Gas. No doubt one of the majority at the Mem, endlessly droning out anti-City "songs" to avoid the reality that his team are losing to Exeter or Boreham Wood etc etc etc....

I'd like to think play-offs might be attainable: There will still be cash issues at the club - even if what we think might happen, does happen - and the Championship will still be distorted by parachute payment clubs. Ultimately, if we have a decent shot at the play-offs but fall a bit short I'll not be disappointed. As long as we've contended for them seriously and NP continues to bring on young stars, that's a good season in my book. Sometimes an unlucky injury or two at the wrong time can throw the best laid plans into chaos, although equally sometimes 'injury unluckiness' can shake the team up in ways that prove unexpectedly good; you need luck as well as hard-work to make it in this league. The only unacceptable season would be one where we are constantly in the gravitational pull of relegation. I don't expect that to happen but, as someone once said, it is a funny old game.