Davefevs

Pretty much my thoughts too. Bar Simpson’s comedic back pass last week, I thought he was generally solid, got tight, made challenges, etc, but of course the back pass overshadows everything, which in some respects is fair. King had played 50% of minutes up until his injury, which is probably about right. A goal and an assist in 545 minutes….not far off Paterson levels believe it or not! As for the 18: For me there is only one space up for grabs, and that’s because Baker is injured. If Vyner doesn’t come in to give CB cover then I’d be very surprised, or conspiracy theories will start. Kasey Palmer didn’t make the 18 last week, so for Benarous to jump those two would be a surprise, let alone calls for 20 mins. Same with Janneh. But you never know.

That one just gets fed through the boardroom speakers. The Dreadnoughts one seems so obvious.

Plus the fact that Ball is with the first team all this week, shows it wasn’t just for WBA. It might not be forever, but he’s with the first team for the foreseeable. Mainly because Swansea had PPs and could get the likes of Guehi who would’ve been on high cost side. We are skint(ish), nor were Keith and Simmo the manager. We did bring in Sessegnon!

Assume because he had a very poor game.

As long as it’s 5 from 7 I’ll just about accept it. I don’t want 5/9. I’d prefer today if it was 3/5 rather than 3/7.

Every Loser Wins - Nick Berry

Broadcasting deal for FA Cup in place. Can’t have random matches. Hope it’s red button though.

And it appears that it’s another decision needed to move us forward in the plan.

Family home in Nailsea I believe?

Not very familiar with hardly any Yate players: Duran Duran keyboard player at Left Back. Boris’s son up-front. Mark Thuo, let go by City in the summer, and I’ve heard of Liam Angel. Sam Kamara was at Rovers.

As at the last break.

Pass maps from Wyscout come in these varieties: Player (above) showing pass direction / length, successful / unsuccessful / key - but they don’t show who they passed to Player Heatmap (above) showing where they made passes from, the brighter colour the more passes they made - but they lack things like the arrows in the first example on top of recipient. Team passing network (above) showing who passes to who, but the blobs are based on their average position they made their passes. I want to click on two players and see exactly what I see in pic 1. Would be nice to look at the connection between 26-Vyner and 9-Martin. I can see they made 7 passes between each other, but I don’t know where on the pitch those passes were made or received. As you (Nick) will know, you can scrape x,y location data but it requires a bit of work to turn into something usable. There is an app called Statzone that used to do all of this….cost me £3.99pa for the whole of the Championship or £9.99 for lots of other leagues, but they stopped supporting the Championship last season.

The “problem” (define problem!) with Chris Martin is that he’s perceived as a “target man” (define target man!). I (and others) have described him as a “chest down target man”, and at 5’10”(ish) he is not gonna win tonnes of headers. But he is strong, holds off his opponent well, and capable of bringing others into play. However Martin is at his best doing this from within the attacking third, around the area (give and go’s) from well secured possession / territory….not around the halfway line from “punts” clear where a defender can watch the flight and beat him in the air. We saw early last season him setting up goals for Wells and linking with Semenyo in the cup too when he can isolate his man in / around the box. Early this season the much maligned Zak Vyner showed an improvement to his game, rather than pinging diags early in the possession phase, he started to get his head-up and look to play into Martin’s feet. Martin dropping off of his marker, then linking with the midfield in something resembling a pattern of play! Ultimately we aren’t using Martin in the best way, some of that is because of the overall style of play that Nige has gone for (in some respects forced on him), the other is over-use. I took a long time to type my reply…..wish I’d read yours whilst creating it.

Does the term “come out” really help here? Seems a crass, outdated term.

Undoubtedly has value….but how much would we get for him? How much over the initial c£3m we paid in the current market? And if more, some of that will be owed to Brentford. I doubt it would find the striker we need.

Haha, good analogy! In many respects it’s true. The squad has not been assembled with a plan in mind, so Nige is trying to find a way of playing that clicks. I think he had it early season, but has deviated away from it a bit. It wasn’t exciting, but it was methodical, structured, disciplined. From Luton onwards we’ve conceded too many chances in most matches (bar Millwall). I don’t think a back 3 suits us. Back in the summer I wrote about England going to a back three, and suggested that the only reason we were going with a three is because our CBs aren’t good enough and Southgate thinks playing 3 bad ones is better than 2 bad ones….whereas all it did (in my amateur analysis) was mean you have one less player in front of them providing protection….so they end up more exposed. In City’s case Kalas, Atkinson and Baker are three of our better performers (unlike England), but I don’t think any of them suit a 3. Kalas has always played in a 4 for Fulham, Boro, Czech Republic. Atkinson partnered Elliott Moore in a typical back 4 for Oxford, and Baker has played the majority of his career in a 4 too. In fact it was him leading Flint in 15/16 as LJ went to a back 4 that many of us thought Flint would struggle in. I think it’s been made worse by playing Atkinson and Baker the wrong way around (imho), certainly from a playing out from the back. I’d add to this further that I don’t think either of them suit being the spare man….both like to mark and attack the ball. Kalas is the only one who is comfy being spare….and there lies another issue with a back 3. So, start with a back 4 and build out the other 6 from there. Nige himself says he doesn’t really want to play a back 3….so don’t!

The first bit is something I mentioned in an earlier post, i.e. there are very few of the 60+ players signed I thought were bad players, but some I questioned how they’d fit in, and some I questioned how much game time they’d get with a plethora of players in their position already (clubs in the bag). A few I worried they’d block pathway. The second bit, I take comfort from this bit of the Gregor interview: Recruitment meetings and what Nige wants "It starts with Nige," says Gilhespy. The recruitment team works to find players that Nigel Pearson wants, focusing on what a player can bring to the team rather than what they can't do.. "He sets the criteria for what he wants: positionally, at what point he wants certain players. He's really well planned in what he wants to do, and it's so underrated the clarity of the message that comes into us, it's important, because if it's not quite right or it waivers then you get further away from what's needed as the filtering develops. "It's all part of a plan over a few windows where we can get to a place where he's got what he wants.” As a business analyst, if the person who wants something can’t articulate the need / requirement properly, or I can’t understand / interpret it correctly, then we build the wrong thing. Almost everywhere I’ve seen something written about Nige, the word clarity is used. It’s so important. I can’t comment on the agent stuff, but whatever we think about going back to Leicester for players, Tanner and Atkinson have come in and got up to speed very quickly. None of this “it’s takes 6 months to learn the system” rubbish. That suggests the system is too complex….and then it changed every week!

No

Through

I thought they’d issued restated FFP reports / accounts for years back, but aren’t they still yet to publish all accounts at Companies House? I don’t know the company names to check.

So, EFL could impose that Derby remain in embargo because of lack of audited accounts? How can the EFL be expected to check the FFP submissions for previous years without something to compare to?

You finally did it then? Good on you! ??????

There are costs you can exclude, we just don’t know the full extent. We also know that years 19/20 and 20/21 are added together and halved. So in effect where your cycle includes those 2 seasons, then it’s 2 full years and 2 half years, to make it like the normal 3 year cycle. So whilst our losses for 20/21 might be £35m, we might be able to exclude £10m of them (guess) for lost revenue. How much of that £30m revenue in 18/19 did we lose in 19/20 (a few months covid) and 20/21 (a whole year)? How much are we allowed to exclude from the losses? How much revenue lost didn’t attract any cost, e.g. if you normally take £5m from concerts, but it costs you £4m to put on the events, and you haven’t incurred those costs, then you won’t be able to offset £5m. Its a big unknown. Last years accounts will tell us a lot. I wonder when they’ll come out.

Guessing that the new owner would have to submit accounts to Companies House? Can’t leave a year unfiled can you? Or do Administrators have to do it?

Agree. Not least with the wages they are on too. The classic example is Kasey Palmer - £20-25k p.w. allegedly, assuming City paid him what he was on at Chelsea. Will have 18 months left on his contract in January, and be sat with an asset value of c£1.3m. If you fancy signing Palmer I don’t see how we would get both a fee and someone to cover his wages. He might accept less at a new club, for a longer contract, but it will cost us £1.3m as an impairment. Not good business. We saw the market with Adam Nagy.