Mikjizzle

How is it a weird take- it was in response to you solely talking about the aims this season and how we were against a benchmark of promotion. You didn’t explain the other factors that you consider to be the metric for being sacked. But if Manning was sacked now I’d be happy to let a new manager see out the season and have their own full transfer window and have a proper crack at next season.

So if any manager going forward is not in the top half in their first full season after 9 games, going forward you think they should be sacked? I'd rather not become that club to be honest.

yeah sorry - bad maths from me. I was referring to 2 of the draws becoming wins. Still same idea in terms of having 4 more points though.

Exactly - fine margins. But if you look at the xg (which I don't fully understand myself as I've not read about it properly), we should be higher up than we are, not further down. Also I didn't think Pearson should have been sacked when he was either, so I don't think Manning should be, as I can see progress in lots of areas on the pitch. I'd still rather us give a manager a decent shot each season. If we are still where we are at Christmas then fair enough, looks like he can't get us the results.

I just think it's an incredibly tough/competitive league, with fine margins. We are basically a couple of goals from people thinking we are doing alright this season? ie if Armstrong scored 2 of the many one on ones he has had this season we could have 6 more points and be in a play off place. With that in mind, I think we are trying to do the right things it's just very hard to put it all together, when you are facing other clubs with similar wage bill, similar players and good coaches. Everything you have said is massively over the top to me.

I'm not saying Leeds won't be better than both Cardiff and Bristol City. I'm just saying I've not seen a team that have looked shoddy this season in the champ. Thought quite a few did last season.

To be honest, Cardiff were much better than I was anticipating. I thought both teams looked decent. I don't think I've seen us play a team that looks bad this season, usually a few teams look really disorganised. There seems to be about 15 almost identical teams. I still think our level is is considerably better this season than last season or before Manning came in - so I still think our basics on the pitch are much better, particularly on the ball. But admittedly it doesn't seem to be achieving better results at the moment. I also think it's very dramatic to say we have gone backwards in every area of club? There has been a shuffle around high up but we are still making the same types of signings as before - I'm not sure what difference any of that has made. You can say you don't like Manning and should have someone different but other than that the club is basically the same - we just have a manager that you don't like.

Tanner, Knight and Mehmetti have improved I’d say. Tanner by quite a lot. not sure how relevant the point about academy is as seems the current batch of u21s aren’t all that. Think some of the 18/19 year olds could be good but a way off from championship football right now. I would rather have first team depth - the majority of our academy players traditionally haven’t broken into being first team regulars until early to mid 20’s. completely disagree that we have massively regressed at the back. We had 2 terrible games but beyond that our defensive record is still pretty good under manning. I think we are finding our feet this season in terms of balance between attack and defence but it’s a risk that’s worth it. i would quite like to see him change more stuff in game. When you listen to him he’s all about players problem solving in game. So he’s wanting to coach the players to deal with the tactical changes that happen from opponents in game and make the right adjustments- whether that works, I don’t know but I don’t think it’s a lack of awareness or stubbornness. I think he thinks he’s given the players all the information required to make in game decisions to deal with different phases and tactics that unfold. It’s certainly drastically different to what Pearson was and my view is that the pay off could be big but takes time - the signs and progression are very promising to my eye. That probably makes me seem more pro manning than I actually am. I’m glass half full and I want it to work and on paper it makes sense right now. But the reason I posted is because I’m amazed by how negative people are about manning compared to Pearson.

Obviously we think differently about that or I wouldn't have done my original post. Sheff W, Oxford & Coventry I thought we were really good (I wasn't at Millwall game). Should have beaten Coventry. I thought we were impressive against Sheff W first half but couldn't break through - I was also quite impressed with how organised they were though. People seem to dismiss the Oxford victory because of who they are but they are still going pretty strong.

yeah well that's where we differ. I think we do both well. We played the transition really well against Swansea second half (plan B). And we have had some really good games in possession at home this season (Plan A). I just think we need to be a bit more consistent and more clinical but the signs are very promising to me - although if the results don't follow soon I will be disappointed. I think people are also being a bit dismissive of how hard it is to break teams down if they sit deep and do it well - that naturally means you will have a lot of the ball. I also think we do play a high press? We pressed Sheff W high from what I could see.

it has led to a lot more chances created though than the last few seasons though.. admittedly not many against Sheff W

Surely you want to have a team that can do both - so you can adapt to different opposition and phases of the game? I think City have been fairly decent as a transition counter attacking team for a while now (under Pearson and Manning). But Manning is transforming us into or trying to make us be able to control games and dominate the ball as well, which is another string to our bow in my opinion. If you can do both well then it's ideal. I think that is one of the reasons we struggled at home under Pearson, we had a side that were good at counter attack football, which gave us good away performances- but how do you utilise that when a team sits in their own half at Ashton Gate - you need to find another way.

doesn't exactly entice me to post again haha

I'm not going to lose any sleep if people on the forum think I work for Bristol Sport - would be more interesting work than what I actually do.

I thought they were very organised and we were trying to shift them across the pitch & out of shape by moving the ball side ways because we couldn't see a way through. We probably could have done with Bird on earlier to get the ball forward faster and into Twine's feet. We have created a lot of chances in other games recently. But Sheff W are the most organised team I've seen us play so far this season and I think they grew in confidence by not slipping up in the first half.