Red-Robbo

As football clichés go, it isn't up there with "a bad day at the office" or "we go again". Making an AI managerial post-match interview would be the easiest task ever.

Remember watching it happen live on World Of Sport. It was an utterly jaw-dropping moment and the magnitude of the disaster soon became obvious. Many of the dead hadn't even left their seats. Like others, I watched it a second time when the YTV footage was used on a fire-warden course I went on for an old employer.

Interesting. Based in Milton Keynes and aimed at small business startups. Their website states they don't need to look at clients' credit scores. ?

I'm sure it's been said before but "onwards and upwards"....

It describes the state of mind of being Lionel Messi.

Liam's play seemed to go to pieces after he failed that medical to go to Southampton. Psychologically, you can see how this would be a crushing blow: suddenly your dreams and aspirations are quashed - I seem to remember Saints were in a promotion season; secondly, although you've been playing week-in-week-out you've been told you're unfit and possibly have some as-yet-to-manifest itself career-limiting problem. At the time, the attitude of most fans - and the club it seems - was "Oh great, he's still with us", but, as you say, if we'd considered the man a bit more, perhaps a break from the first team and careful re-motivation would've been more sensible.

They absolutely are not an obnoxious club. Based in a fairly small town in Hertfordshire, they are owned by a local small businessman and have slowly worked their way up the non-league structure and now are persistently on the verge of League status. I've been to Meadow Park a few times with my late father-in-law (who lived in the area) and they really have a community club, family atmosphere there. Nothing obnoxious at all. A narrow loss to big-money County is no shame though. The Wood could be there or thereabouts next season.

The presiding genius guided them to a thrilling 17th place finish. There's a lot of very capable PE teachers managing in that league, aren't there?

I like real sports teams named after fictional ones. A mate's girlfriend played for the London Silly Nannies, a netball team named after the American Football team Peter Griffin coaches in Family Guy.

The Curse of the Claw ("Chief Petty Office Russell was right. He was a woman!") is my favourite, but Golden Gordon (the Barnestoneworth one) was also great. Didn't someone start an amateur club called Barnestoneworth United as a tribute?

Sorry, I'm going to break ranks and go Go The Wood!

Traffic-clogged and too many investment bankers for me. I visited the new Plough Lane last year to see the Real Dons. Compact and bijou, as they say, but still modern with safe standing areas and as ever, a great family atmosphere. Just 15 minutes trot from the mainline/District Line station, and there are plenty of boozers in Wimbledon proper. The stadium itself is in the badlands on the verges of Tooting, so best not linger.

And to be fair, those few who did come down, for a nothing match for them, applauded City and were excellent sports.

That isn't as set-in-stone as many believe. The right to light act doesn't apply to gardens or outbuildings and regarding the windows of your home: "rights of light is not a right to direct sunlight. Rather, it entitles the beneficiary to a minimum level of natural illumination, not the sun’s direct rays." Why do I know this? From bitter personal experience. ? I understand the club is involved in purchasing such properties as and when they become vacant in Ashton Road. Can anyone confirm this?

The day the Dolman shook like it was about to collapse, amid all the full-time celebrations.

Fewer fans but more w*****s ?

A470/A483 is a really good-quality fast road, as is the A44. Both, a pleasure to drive. Both put the so-called A roads in Somerset to shame. ?

I think plastics is just something you have to accept if you get sustained top-flight success. I love how you get West Country Liverpool fans (who tend to be aged in their 50s and 40s), West Country Man U fans (40s and late 30s) and you are starting to see some West Country schoolkids identifying as Man City fans. Hell, there are even some 60-year-old West Country "Leeds fans" and I know one old-bloke in his 70s who has rarely travelled further north than Radstock, but who supports WBA, the big team when he first got into football in the mid-1950s.

I expect he'd rather like being in a team that's seventh in the Prem and to be earning squillions of quid, but let's face it where any upward-bound player goes is based on an equation to do with money and likely/promised game time. Sometimes, a favoured manager will swing it, but I'd suggest for most professionals it comes down to cash + opportunities.

Most seats where I sit are occupied by SC holders, but there are a couple that are free near our group, and I sometime chat to the people occupying them. This season, we've had a Bristol Uni student from Southport who is a Liverpool fan but told me City are becoming his "second team" and his gf (for whom AG was her first visit to a match); a dad and son from Westbury in Wilts who had also never watched live football at this level and who were really enthused; two blokes in IT - one of whom had moved to Bristol from Kent - and who were new City fans, and a guy from Canada who had ancestors in Bristol and decided to watch a match on his visit to the UK. Toronto FC were his main club, but he said he was going to try to watch City whenever he came to the UK. A very unscientific sample, but it suggests that better facilities, a safer environment, larger crowds and second tier football is attracting those who've moved to or study in Bristol. We are building that fanbase. Let's face it, if you were a neutral and you fancy watching a game in Bristol whatcha gonna do? Ashton Gate or go to a set of embarrassing tents and temporary stands, eat stale crisps and unidentified flat fizzy pop while watching a team of on-loan cloggers, managed by an egotistical psychopath.

Loving all the confused emoticons you are posting @Lewisdabaron I imagine that's the facial expression you pull for the vast majority of your life.

Is that where Steptoe & Son went for a bevvy?

TBH I'd drink in central London then get the tube to White City or Shepherds Bush Market. Pubs on the White city estate are vile, while the Green is a QPR stronghold and The Defectors Weld, The Bull and the Shepherd's Bush are gastro pub/cocktail places.

It's clear the Hollywood touch gives you the sort of glamour that brings attention and more money. My post was a joke, but two of those actors have West Country homes and the other has one in the Cotswolds so - why not! ? (As long as they don't make one of their kids chairman)

There are ex-City players who'd be booed or jeered (for various reasons) if and when they return to Ashton Gate. Others, like Josh Brownhill, get the respectful welcome of someone who had been a model pro for us - and he of course reciprocated that respect by clapping City fans. But I could never imagine City fans singing songs hoping for the death of one of our ex-players or posting that they want him seriously injured or to fall ill. That level of unpleasantness seems to breed among the swamplike conditions of the Mem, and you are right to note that a disrespectful a-hole like Barton encourages the mentality.