tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046617884803898782024-03-13T11:05:07.877+00:00To The Left Of Rosswillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-32882246078211811242020-04-15T19:26:00.002+01:002020-04-16T08:01:00.145+01:00I don't mind deviant activity like playing in League One. I just don't want it shoved down my throat.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The 2014/15 season - five years later</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The official Bristol City channels have been spending the
lockdown pumping out vintage content. Much of it lovely (the Donowa derby, the Taylor/Turner
FA Cup win over Chelsea – interesting old games I was either too young for or
only dimly remember). But much of it – more than half perhaps - centred around
the League One-winning 2015/15 season. And to be perfectly honest about it I’m
getting a bit fed up of hearing about that season.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our fanbase can sometimes work itself up into a frenzy about
whether other clubs are ‘smalltime’ or not. Your own definition of ‘smalltime’
may vary. Mine would quite possibly include getting worked up about a season in
which we beat a bunch of League One (and Two). If the other lot lionised their season in non-league because, after
all, they beat a lot of other non-league teams (who could forget that historic
day they completed the league double over Nuneaton Town?), we’d justifiably
take the piss. But it would amount to largely the same thing as celebrating 14/15; a season in which
we may have landed a lot of blows, but largely because we were punching
considerably below our weight.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2014/15 was a season in which we finished 45<sup>th</sup>
out of 92 clubs. We’ve done better than that in 62 of our 108 seasons in the
Football League. It comes just below mid-table in our all-time league positions;
it’s the Crystal Palace of seasons. The Burnley. Fine, respectable, nowhere
near the worst. But nowhere near the best either.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the thing is, we probably <i>were</i> the 45<sup>th</sup>
best team in the country, there or thereabouts. The same squad and the same
manager had a good old go in the tier above, and it was looking like a disaster
until Cotterill got the boot and Johnson came in. That side couldn’t compete in
the top half of the Football League. Call me peculiar but my favourite Bristol
City teams all could.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was capable of not just competing in League One of
course, but winning it. Great, best way to go up. But you know what? Damn right
we won it. We bloody should have done. We outspent that division, we looked
around at the other clubs and chucked money their best players. Korey, Luke Freeman,
Mark Little – <i>yoink</i>, we’ll have them. And quite right too! We were operating
on a different financial level to most of that tier. Why shouldn’t we have
exploited that advantage? (The real mistake of course was convincing ourselves that Little at right wing-back and Freeman at number 10 would be able to prosper at the level above.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://totheleftofross.blogspot.com/2015/02/unmoved-by-success.html">Even at the time though I found wage-bill victories hard to get excited about</a>. Oh look, we’ve beaten Rochdale who have a quarter of our
wage budget 1-0 with a late winner. Good-o. Football’s about the breakage of
tension; goals and victories are sweetest when they’ve been hard-fought and were
in doubt. Jeopardy, anxiety, surprise. There was very little of that in 14/15,
just a series of exercises in flat-track bullying to come top of a division we
should have been too good for. What’s the value of a triumph if it doesn’t cost
a single fingernail?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m not making the case that it wasn’t diverting, that it wasn’t
fun; but its place in the pantheon deserves a bit of a review. It’s built up of
course by the slightly spurious claim that it’s a ‘double winning’ season. I
was there at Wembley, of course I was, and a winning day out at Wembley’s never
not enjoyable, but there’s a limit to how much delight you can take from winning
a cup which all being well you’d want to avoid entering in the first place,
combined with a league which should only ever be transient for a club built the
way ours is, a league we should leave with relief more than joy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nah. Let’s have retrospectives of some of our really entertaining
21<sup>st</sup> century seasons: 08/09 maybe, when we bounced back from the
playoff final defeat to become a solid, consistent hardworking team who punched
way above their weight and didn’t lose at home between Christmas and the end of
the season.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or what about 11/12? Maddest season in modern times, 11/12 –
David James! Steve Coppell! For two matches! Millen steps up, we look like we’re
snookered, we fight our way clear by the skin of our teeth, and the euphoria I
got from those back to back Easter wins over Forest and Coventry beat anything
14/15 had to offer. Yeah, we lost a hell of a lot of games too but that’s a
factor of playing in a division that’s worth playing in.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or, for that matter, 15/16; a total change in football philosophy,
a mid-season squad overhaul, unexpected players turn up at the club (Peter Odemwingie
anyone?) and we survive in fine style; Tomlin at Fulham, 6-0 against Bolton,
4-0 against Huddersfield…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Championship seasons in which we didn’t get relegated. Seasons
with a bit of warp and weft; with a bit of <i>narrative</i>. All, therefore,
better than 14/15 by definition – our successes were hard-fought and came
against teams that were… well, teams that were <i>good</i>. Those are the
seasons we should be valorising. Not a season in a division we don’t want to be
in. We at Bristol City know that success is relative. But some successes are
more relative than others.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oh and our manager was a cock.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-60411818448986792572016-02-13T17:56:00.000+00:002016-02-13T18:10:21.828+00:00Revenge of the Noobs<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>6 February 2016 - Charlton Athletic 0 Bristol City 1</b><br />
<br />
One of the debates
that’s been taking place since the appointment of Lee Johnson,
which took place an hour or so before kick-off, is the experienced vs
inexperienced manager question; do we want a big-name who has a
better chance of getting us promoted, or do we want an up-and-coming
manager as a gamble which might pay off?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What’s interesting
about that debate isn’t so much the question itself, which has been
done to death now, as the very basis of the discussion. Whichever
camp a person is in, they tend to accept the basic premise – that a
name manager would have a greater chance of taking the club on in the
short term, potentially as far as the top six or even the Premier
League. The division seems to be between those who think that’s
something to aim for in and of itself, and those who think we should
be cannier and strategic, even if it carries the risk of missing an
opportunity to progress. Even the club’s official channels have
been complicit in this thinking, with Johnson asked in his first
interview whether the club had taken a ‘risk’ bringing him in –
not a question you’d expect Nigel Pearson, say, to have been posed.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But I’d not seen any
quantification of this received wisdom; any demonstration that a
manager with 200 Premier League games under his belt is automatically
a better short-term choice than a man with 200 games in League One.
Sure, there’s an apparent logic in the idea that someone who’s
worked with higher-calibre players can teach ours more, that someone
who’s achieved success knows how to do so and can import that
knowledge. And there are the examples of a safe pair of hands taking
an underachieving club into the top flight – Neil Warnock at QPR,
say, or Steve Bruce at Hull. But how much of that is a sign of a
genuine trend, and how much is confirmation bias? I wanted to find
out.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So I’ve looked at the
data. Specifically, I looked at every managerial change made in the
Championship between the 2005-06 season and the 20014-15 one,
inclusive – 144 managerial changes made by 42 clubs, from Barnsley
to Wolves. That’s a pretty clear set of data.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Then, the slightly
trickier bit. Defining precisely who is a ‘Name’ manager and who
is ‘up-and-coming’ is difficult. Defining success or failure is
tough, too, particularly given that most managerial appointments end
up in failure. Nevertheless, I had a good go. I worked on the
principle that a Name manager had managed in a major top flight
and/or internationally, while an Up-and-coming manager hadn’t
managed at an equivalent level to the Championship before. This left
a middle category, the Experienced manager, someone who’d had at
least one job in the Championship or at a comparable European league
before being hired. Inevitably this led to judgement calls – is the
Scottish Premiership comparable to the Championship? You could argue
that it is, but having managed St Johnstone meant that Derek McInnes
<i>felt</i> like an Up-and-coming rather than Experienced manager.
But the three categories broadly seemed to work. The majority of
appointments – 60 – were unsurprisingly of Experienced managers,
with Up-and-coming coaches receiving 49 jobs and Name managers being
tempted into the remaining 35.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
(Sometimes the same
manager can be considered in multiple ways, of course, as their
career progresses – Phil Brown is an Experienced manager when he
takes the Hull job, but that job makes him a Name as he moves into
the Premier League, so he is in that category when Preston bring him
in. And Lee Clark’s tenure at Birmingham gives him the Championship
experience to move him from Up-and-coming to counting as Experienced
by the time Blackpool come in.)</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Quantifying success and
failure was even harder, and I realised very early that there had to
be a middle category here – Neither. How many managers took over a
club around 18<sup>th</sup> in the middle of the season, took them to
8<sup>th</sup> the following year, but then got sacked with the club
19<sup>th</sup> in season three? It would be arbitrary to describe
either of these as success or failure, so I didn’t. Broadly,
promotion, a top-six finish in the final season, or improvement on
improvement before departure counted as Success – relegation, being
in the bottom three when sacked, or never achieving good quality
results throughout a tenure counted as Failure.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are more Failures
than anything, perhaps unsurprisingly – 60 out of those 144
appointments ended badly. Nearly as many ended in a great big 'meh' –
56 of 144. Only 28 appointments, less than 20% of the total, ended in
what feels to me like a real Success.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A lot of this, of
course, is attempting to quantify opinions, so in order to show my
working I've created a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WxW781bdh3E519i_8hegjQ7aGqW3_N5SW8HcqLYscoQ/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true">Google
Doc</a> you can check and use as a basis to argue with me.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
(A side note on our
team. You’ll notice that every Bristol City manager appointed at
this level, from Coppell onward, qualifies as a Failure under my
system, and that spans a Name in Coppell, two Up-and-coming managers
in Millen and McInnes, and the Experienced O’Driscoll. Indeed,
Bristol City are the only team in the entire list to have hired as
many as four managers, all of whom have to be judged as failures.
It's fairly clear that the common link in their performance is the
club, rather than the ability or otherwise of a set who've
collectively won promotions, managed and coached in the Premier
League, and threatened to break the Celtic stranglehold on the SPL.
More than anything, the fact that no other Championship club however
poorly run have been so hard to succeed with speaks to the state the
club had got itself into toward the end of the Gary Johnson era, and
the amount of work most of those managers were obliged to do to try
to change things around.)</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Anyway. With the facts,
such as they were, at my disposal, the analysis was the easy bit.
Let's look first at those 28 successes.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
42% of managers were
Experienced, and 43% of Successes were achieved by Experienced
managers – all things being equal, exactly what you'd expect. Tony
Pulis gets Stoke to the Premier League. Nigel Pearson does the same
for Leicester. Paul Hart, of all people, takes a short-term contract
to save Crystal Palace, and does so. Hiring an experienced manager
can clearly work.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
More interesting
results came from looking at the other two. 34% of hires were
Up-and-coming, yet they accounted for 39% of successes – really
overperforming, thanks to, say, Owen Coyle at Burnley, Brian
McDermott at Leicester, or (right now) Gary Rowett at Birmingham. And
those 24% of managers with Names? They accounted for just 19% of
successes, making the likes of Bruce and Warnock much more like the
exceptions than the rules.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Given the existence of
the 'Neither' category, it wasn't a sure thing that the failures
would follow the same rule. But while those 24% of Names had only
been 19% of the successes, they made up a full 30% of the failures,
thanks to the likes of Ian Holloway at Millwall, Malky Mackay at
Wigan, and Steve McClaren at Forest. The Up-and-coming managers
weren't terrific at avoiding failure – 34% of hires, 32% of
failures (thanks Andy Thorn, Uwe Rosler and Jim Gannon) – but it's
still a little less than the law of averages would predict, and a far
better performance than the Names. Experienced hires were just about
the safest bets, at 38% failure to 42% of hires, but that's not a
notably more significant over-performance than the Up-and-comers.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There we have it, then.
The idea that hiring a big-name manager is a guaranteed route to the
land of ambrosia and nectar is a nonsensical one, not borne out by
statistics at all. And while a wily head at this level has the
slightest of slight chances of doing better than a bright young
thing, there's very little in it, and certainly not enough to justify
a preference on general principle for one over the other.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Because this is about
general principles. None of this means that Lee Johnson is guaranteed
to outperform his relegation rival at Rotherham, Neil Warnock. But
what it does mean is that Warnock having managed in the Premier
League compared to Johnson's third tier experience is not a reason to
prefer one to the other. Indeed, based on experience alone <i>you'd
predict that Johnson has a better chance than Warnock</i>.
He may not do as well, the same way that in 2006 an up-and-coming
crop of Parkinson, Wise, Grant, Simpson and Waddock were outperformed
by Mick McCarthy. But then, who won the league that season? Tyro boss
Roy Keane's Sunderland, that's who.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And
if bringing in an up-and-coming manager isn't a risk (and it clearly,
now, isn't), it might just have a higher level of reward attached.
Look at the nine Premier League clubs we've played as equals over the
last decade or so, now achieving far more than us: Leicester,
Southampton, Watford, Stoke, Crystal Palace, West Brom, Bournemouth,
Swansea and Norwich. Only one, Palace, were taken up by a Name
manager, Ian Holloway, who built on the good work done by the
up-and-coming Dougie Freedman and was then sacked to make way for
someone better suited to the Premier League. Sacking the manager who
got you up is pretty much the way of things, and only three of the
clubs haven't done it – the last three. Those managers? Eddie Howe,
Brendan Rodgers and Alex Neil.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I
had to stick to my system when classifying Howe and Rodgers, whose
spells at other Championship clubs made them both technically
Experienced, but neither had the sort of CV on their initial
appointment at Bournemouth and Swansea that City fans would have been
excited about. In terms of a club going from the bottom division to
being a sustainable challenger at the top, these two clubs are the
big stories, and they've both achieved the final stage under the
guidance of a manager who is, at best, a pretty inexperienced
Experienced higher.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Both
are run in an intelligent, far-sighted way; both are cited as models
for a club like City to attend to; and both had the gumption to
believe that a manager with no record of doing anything like it could
take them into the Premier League.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If
we want to be anything like those clubs, we be excited about doing
what they did – giving a chance to someone with everything to
prove, and then allowing them the best possible shot at doing so.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-50701589567943683272016-01-03T19:13:00.002+00:002016-01-03T19:13:32.592+00:00Failings of the Chief<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Saturday 2 January - Reading 1 Bristol City 0</b></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Let's start by putting
our cards on the table, shall we?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Even after this game,
when yet again we played “well” without looking that likely to
score and always looking as though we could concede, I am not
particularly strongly bothered about whether Cotterill stays or goes.
However, I must confess that if the board were to move him on, I
wouldn't shed a tear. Given a binary choice, I'm very vaguely on the
'sack' side. My concern, principally, is that I don't see a great
deal of evidence that he'll turn around our form and start winning
more than a game a month. His diagnosis of why we're in the bottom
three is light on areas for improvement and heavy on bad luck. After
half a season, that's frankly a bit thin. If I get something wrong at
work, I want to be able to say to my boss “this is what's wrong and
this is how I'll fix it”, or I'd expect to lose his faith. I'm not
hearing anything like that from Cotterill and that's why I've lost my
faith. He – and, indeed, <a href="http://www.bcfc.co.uk/news/article/we-owe-fans-a-result-wilbraham-2875409.aspx">his
captain</a> – have been using the language of “keeping on doing
what we're doing”, despite the fact that “what we're doing” has
us in the bottom three. It's like watching the residents of
Springfield trying to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b97zJxKEqAk">dig
their way out</a> of the deep hole they've dug themselves into.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But it wouldn't be in
character for Cotterill suddenly to decide that everything's broke
and needs fixing. Changing isn't what he does. Last season, I
identified my two chief concerns about the manager: <a href="http://totheleftofross.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/big-in-lincolnshire.html">his
tactical flexibility and his ability to change a game</a>. These
weaknesses have been ruthlessly exposed this season, but they are
core to Cotterill's management style. He likes a small squad so he
can keep his players motivated, something he's clearly exceptionally
good at, but this leaves him with little leeway to make changes when
necessary. He stumbled upon the 3-5-2 at the end of a difficult spell
in his first season, and he's barely dared to change it since. This
was fine when we had the League One cheat code of Steve Lansdown's
backing, but it's not the same in the Championship.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Our poor form has also
exposed a bit more of Cotterill's character, without the glare of
good results to blind us. And it's, frankly, a bit rum. He doesn't
seem to be too good at taking blame for defeats, whilst being happy
to bask in the credit for good decisions. The 1-1 draw from behind
with QPR was down to him being cunning enough to rest our strikers,
apparently, while the 1-1 draw from in front with Charlton had
nothing to do with him failing to respond after Pack missed his
penalty and the team was gripped by anxiety. He can be pretty
disingenuous about the quality of the team's performance, the number
of games we play in a week (Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday is <i>not </i>three
games in a week, Steve) and indeed his own managerial career,
moaning in December that he'd “never had a golden ticket” unlike
certain managers, rather ignoring the cash advantage he had over most
of the division <i>last</i> season.
His interviews after defeats are painful to watch, full of awkward
silences, cliched footballese, and astonishingly frequent references
to a game which <i>might</i>
have happened, were it not for the opposition's bad manners in
scoring against us.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
(Seriously,
this has gone beyond a joke now – how often does he say he'd “have
been interested to see what would have happened if we'd got to half
time 0-0”? I'd have been “interested to see what would have
happened” if I'd been posted last week's lottery numbers, Steve,
but sadly that's not the way it panned out.)</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If
that reads like a bit of a character assassination, it's because –
fundamentally – Steve Cotterill isn't really my sort of football
manager. And that's OK. I'd never demand that Bristol City appointed
only the sorts of managers I personally get on with. But does it
matter, for me personally, if the guy in charge isn't somebody whose
Kool-Aid I'm comfortable drinking? If he turns the season around
[now?], how does my personal antipathy to him affect my relationship
with the club?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I
think a lot of people would say that it's completely irrelevant. If a
manager wins games, he wins games, and that's all there is to it.
Managers aren't in the charm business, they're here to accrue points.
That's a fair philosophy and a perfectly reasonable position to hold.
But scratch the surface, and I'm not sure it's as widespread as you
might think.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When
a club needs a new manager, results might be the main criterion by
which fans will draw up their personal shortlists, but they're
unlikely to be the only one. Look at Manchester United right now, a
club which could well be the next stop of a manager, Mourinho, with a
nigh-unsurpassed record of success over the past decade. It's not,
however, at all clear that United fans want him to right their
listing ship. For all the badly-printed Mourinho scarves, he fails to
embody the ethos that fans of the great old club desire. Partly this
is because his reputation is that of a defensive, negative 1-0
merchant, but partly it's because of his focus on the short-term and
inability or unwillingness to develop players, and partly because he
comes across as an unpleasant sort, with his eye-gouging of Tito
Vilanova only the most egregious of his misdemenanors. It's rumoured
that it was this reputation which led Bobby Charlton to veto his
shortlisting for the post after Alex Ferguson's depature. Most would
expect Mourinho to give United a title, and few expect van Gaal to do
so, but that doesn't mean that their fans are clamouring for the
Portuguese.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Across
the M62, Liverpool have a new manager who was welcomed not simply
because of some immaculate record – indeed, like Mourinho, J<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">ü</span>rgen
Klopp's most recent season consisted of a surprising, prolonged
battle against relegation – but because he was seen as a good fit
for the club, both in terms of style and personality.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It's
clear then that many, perhaps most, fans are looking for something
more than guaranteed results. And as soon as you make that
concession, you're just arguing about where you draw the line. How
much do you want your side to be a paragon, and how much do you just
want it to be a champion? Are you an idealist or a pragmatist?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I've
never made a secret of my idealism. I want my club to model the right
behaviours and to have a manager who I can respect. I was encouraged,
around the time of our relegation, by the much mocked “five
pillars”, and disillusioned when the strategy was either abandoned
or just comprehensively played down. I've said before that over the
course of your life, you'll probably see as many defeats as wins,
have as many lows as highs. That taken into account, I want to come
by those highs in something approaching the right way.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I
don't think this makes me particularly special. Nor do I necessarily
think it's the right way to follow football. And I'm conscious that,
despite the amount of internal time I dedicate to City, my exiled
status makes me a semi-detached fan, not part of the perpetual
bragging rights battle in many a Bristol workplace, which I should
imagine sharpens the pragmatic instincts somewhat. But, in my
personal experience, Cotterill's Bristol City have been just that
fraction harder to get behind than Johnson's, or, frankly, McInnes'
or O'Driscoll's.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Is
that heretical? Should every fan be 100% behind the club at all
times? Well, possibly, but clearly they're not. Many of the best
managers create something close to a personality cult, pulling fans
in, making them feel part of a wider endeavour. Johnson did this.
Klopp did, at Dortmund. Van Gaal isn't interested in it and that's
part of his problem at United. But if fans can be pulled in, can give
more, than it follows that they aren't giving 100% as a default
setting. I think that right now I've lapsed to the bare minimum
support. It's still a lot, enough to propel me to games, enough to
have caused me immense pain when Nick Blackman scored yesterday, but
it's not all-consuming. I feel like there's a sheet of glass between
me and the club right now. Being regularly presented with 'Bristol
Sport' branding doesn't help with that, frankly, and neither does the
club's permanent figurehead being that vilest kind of hypocrite, the
grammar-school educated tax exile.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It's
the red that keeps me coming back, the red and the players who are
very clearly trying their best. I applauded them off at Reading not
because they'd played outstandingly, but because they'd done what
they could, and it simply isn't their fault that as a group they
aren't quite good enough.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Now.
None of the above is a good reason for wanting Cotterill to go,
although as I've said I wouldn't be disappointed if he did not.
Nobody's job should depend upon capturing the heart of every member
of a group as diffuse as fans of a football club. While Cotterill's
in charge, I'll keep going, I'll keep supporting the team, I'll pay
for matches and I'll hope for wins. I don't want to be in League One
next season more than anybody else. But I can't help thinking that I
might be more engaged in the next managerial cycle.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Unless
we employ Steve Evans, or Harry Redknapp.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-22998795293568432082015-11-02T20:34:00.003+00:002015-11-03T08:28:50.255+00:00The myth of the good performance<b>31 October 2015 - Bristol City 1 Fulham 4</b><br />
<br />
What does 'playing well' mean?<br />
<br />
Because Steve Cotterill is convinced we did it in the first half-hour at Ashton Gate. He said as much to the club's media team after the match. <a href="http://www.bcfc.co.uk/news/article/that-sums-up-our-season-cotterill-2775305.aspx">We were the better team for the first 30 minutes</a>, apparently, despite conceding two goals in that time. And the manager's right when he says that, in a way, the weekend's game sums up our season, because we keep hearing this. We played really well, we were probably the better team but then – oh no! - somehow the opposition have a chance, they take it, and we've got catching up to do. We lose, maybe we draw, we don't (yet) win once we've conceded. Afterwards, we console ourselves with the fact that we've played well and we have lots of positives that we can take into the next game. And on we go.<br />
<br />
Playing well presumably means playing in such a way as to maximise your chance of winning the match. It can't refer to a particular playing style, as such. All those victories for Mourinho over Wenger over the years have come as a result of Chelsea executing their game-plan – normally involving breaking up play, snapping the ball as soon as it crosses the halfway line, staying drilled in defence and maximising crosses and set-pieces – better than Arsenal execute theirs, which involves possession, fluid interchange, quick passing and committing midfielders forward. Most football fans will probably admit a preference for Arsenal's way of playing, but clearly the simple fact of playing in one particular style doesn't itself mean 'playing better'.<br />
<br />
This applies to Bristol City because Steve Cotterill has embraced a creditably entertaining, direct form of football – not Arsenal, perhaps, but something closer to the Brendan Rodgers or Jürgen Klopp model. It's based on high pressing, aggressive, direct running, moving the ball forward from front to back and giving almost all the team's players license to join the attack. When it works it works brilliantly, and we stormed a weak League One last season largely by blowing other sides away with our speed and relentlessness. That basic principles haven't changed this season yet – as we've seen – the results to date have.<br />
<br />
So if we've stuck with our successful system, and have been playing well in more games than not, why have the results not started to turn our way as – over 14 games – you'd expect them to?<br />
<br />
A look at the statistics doesn't help us much. In our last five defeats – <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34623483">1-4</a> this weekend, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34512293">1-2</a> against Brighton before that, then <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34229759">0-2</a> against Reading, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34160354">2-4</a> against Birmingham and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34024913">1-2</a> against Burnley – we appear to have done quite well. In four of those five games we saw more of the ball than our opponents, averaging 53% possession. And we've created chances, taking 54 shots in the four games. So, yep, fine, we're playing well – we're dominating possession, as we try to do, and we're creating chances.<br />
<br />
But of course these are all attacking metrics. They show that the plan is working in an offensive sense. They don't tell us too much about what's happening at the other end. And this looks a bit less rosy.<br />
<br />
In those five games we've allowed our opponents 65 shots on goal. Cotterill argues that the main difference between the sides in these 'good performances' is the clinical nature of our opponents, but the stats don't bear this out. In fact, our opponents have a 38% shots/shots on target ratio compared to our own 37%. The other sides aren't more clinical than us. What they are is better at defending.<br />
<br />
This is pretty clear if you watch <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqgfWbkTA4Y">the goals</a> from this particular game. (I know, I didn't either, but go on.) Fulham do well, but certainly for the first two, they don't really need to. Look at the first. One of our centre-backs, Luke Ayling, starts the clip in effectively the right midfield position, losing the ball. Once he does so, our actual right wing-back (wing-back, not winger, despite his starting position) fails to track their runner. This causes the only one of our centre-backs to start the clip in the right position, Aden Flint, to be dragged out of said position in order to cover. The Fulham ball is good and Dembele, in the space left by Flint, finishes well, but it's an easy run, an easy pass, and a fairly routine finish in all honesty.<br />
<br />
The second goal is worse. I've absolutely no idea where Luke Ayling is – the camera focuses for much of the clip on the area to Flint's right, where you'd expect to see our right-sided CB in a three, but he's not there – and Flint is forced to knock the ball a bit long to one of our midfielders, neither of whom appears to have considered coming short to receive it. The pass is sloppy, it's immediately 3v2, and we're picked off.<br />
<br />
The third goal is a beautiful free-kick (although at a saveable height), but the clip misses out the build-up. In that instance, Luke Freeman lost possesion on the halway line, and their player was able to burst forward to the edge of our box unimpeded by right wing-back, defensive midfielder or right centre-back. Freeman himself had to track back to make the challenge. He's an attacker, he got it wrong, got booked and they scored from the free kick.<br />
<br />
Then the final goal – yes, OK, a good finish, but once more. Ayling is nowhere to be seen, Flint is pulled into his position, which means that once again a simple ball completely opens us up. Neither Marlon Pack nor Korey Smith are helping out, and Tunnicliffe finishes the one on one rather nicely.<br />
<br />
These aren't just any old chances. The third aside, these are a tap-in, a 3v2, and a one on one. They're the sort of chances you expect strikers to take. Not all chances are created equal. Fulham were well organised at the back, hard to get around, and ensured that the shots we got away were largely from distance or after long, patient passing. It's not acceptable to say that Fulham happened to be more clinical or that we made mistakes. You'll never cut every error out of the game, it's played by humans. Ronaldo's missed sitters. Messi's miscontrolled the ball. Pirlo's undercooked passes. Our problem is that we play in such a way that a single mistake can immediately open us up.<br />
<br />
And yet those goals came in the first half an hour when we were 'playing well'. And this is what concerns me. We were playing in such a way that we were always going to be vulnerable – playing with our centre-backs out wide, our wing-backs in the attack at all times, none of our midfielders further back than the centre circle. You know what? Of course it's possible to force the issue when you've eight players in the opponents' area at all times. Of course you'll pin them back a bit. Of course you'll control possession. You've more options than the other lot, more people to receive the ball.<br />
<br />
But the flip side of this strategy is that you are permanently five seconds from conceding. It's like committing every chess piece on the board forward. You will by definition pin a number of your adversary's pieces back, because you'll control a lot of the angles by which their king can be reached. But your own king can be completely exposed. If they get a rook down the side you're done for almost immediately.<br />
<br />
City's “good performances” and their habit of conceding goals have regularly been expressed as a baffling correlation. The <a href="http://www.bcfc.co.uk/fixtures-results/match-report/?matchid=3833331&tcmuri=2515427">official match report</a> for this game makes this exact mistake, saying that “Seven would become eight by the 18th minute despite the fact that much of the time between the goals was spent in Fulham territory.” It's not 'despite', it's 'partly owing to', particularly when just two paragraphs later the report approvingly describes a centre-back joining the attack. We have seven players who should play further forward than our centre-backs. They don't need to be that far forward on the quarter-hour!<br />
<br />
Let's stop claiming we're playing wonderfully when we're turning Championship matches into wide-open turkey shoots. Let's stop pretending to be baffled when we keep using Luke Ayling and Derrick Williams as auxiliary midfielders, then let in goals.<br />
<br />
And let's not blame the system – 3-5-2 is a perfectly valid way to set up. It's not the fault of those three numbers and two dashes that our centre-backs are instructed to take the halfway line as their default starting position, that our wing-backs play like wingers (understandable; one is a winger, the other is far more winger than full-back, and Mark Little's not a great deal more defensively-minded), that our holding midfielders play like number 8s more than number 4s (which of the two is the committed DM, and why can't I easily work that out)?<br />
<br />
These are tactical instructions coming from the manager. And they need sorting out or else we'll be in a relegation battle for the entire season.<br />
<br />
And if we go down, I've no interest in hearing that we did so 'despite playing great football all season', thanks very much.willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-53425360718154631872015-08-05T21:23:00.000+01:002015-08-05T21:23:28.669+01:00Doing bad things<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I’ve done a couple of
things I’m not proud of this month. I’ve handed over money for
service I won’t boast about. And the worst thing is that, I know,
I’ll go back.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I’ve bought Forever
Bristol membership, and I’ve bought a ticket to Hillsbrough for the
opening game of the season. While neither of these are shameful,
precisely, both of them have left me at the very edge of my moral
comfort zone.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Second things first.
The ticket for Sheffield Wednesday cost me £39. Which, undeniably,
is a hell of a lot; enough for a lot of people, very reasonably, to
decide that it’s not worth the candle. And the Supporters’ Club
and Trust have gone further, and announced that they’re not going
to attend. They’ve stopped short of calling a boycott because some
people have already booked travel, but they’ve made it very clear
that this is the next best thing.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
They are, of course,
absolutely right. Exploitative pricing is a major issue in football
at the moment, especially in the revoltingly rich upper divisions of
the English game. Fans prize loyalty above any other trait, but the
clubs upon which they bestow this prized characteristic strip-mine it
for money. It’s a bad, bad business, and City fans are right to
stand up to it.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But. This was the game
I looked for when the results came out. This is the game which my
friend Dave the big Sheffield Wednesday fan were planning to organise
a night out around. And there it was, first game of the season,
barely a month after the fixtures came out. It was too perfect not
to.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So I'm going up on
Saturday; I've held my nose, not looked at the bank account, and
bought a ticket. I'll <a href="http://bristolcitysupporters.org/for-football-heritage-against-modern-greed/">send
some money Sheffield FC's way</a>, but I won't be able to pretend
that's any better than giving a quid to one homeless guy in every
twenty as an assuaging of the conscience. I'm looking forward to the
first game of the season, looking forward more to the evening out in
a lovely city – but don't get me wrong, if the SC&T had
announced a full boycott I'd have fallen in line. I'd never break a
boycott. I'm all too aware I'm using a semantic distinction as
justification; but it has to be enough.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Before I even bought
that ticket, though, I'd caved and bought Forever Bristol membership
– and that really stuck in the craw. I dislike the concept of
Forever Bristol immensely. It's the Speedy Boarding of the football
world – an opportunity for the seller to monetise, rather than the
provision of a service, the non-removal of an already existing
service. If you don't offer Speedy Boarding, everyone gets the same
chance to board the plane – as soon as you do, you take away that
first chance from passengers who don't pay the premium. Forever
Bristol is precisely the same. If it didn't exist, everyone would
have the same chance to buy tickets. Introduce it, and suddenly you
create a second tier of fans, which we all have to pay £20 to avoid
joining. The club has to do nothing – literally nothing – extra,
except stick out a virtual hand and extract a crispy purple note from
fans who'll be buying tickets anyway.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The only way this can
work, of course, is by frightening people into joining the upper
tier. After all, if nobody bought Speedy Boarding, nobody else would
feel they had to. There would no longer be a queue to jump. And all
last season the club's website yelled at us that we had to become FB
members if we wanted to see the games. This reached a particular
nadir after the FA Cup draw pitting us against West Ham when a
Forever Bristol membership ad, rather than news of the fixture
itself, took pride of place on the website.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The West Ham game still
didn't sell out to members, mind; I think only the last game of the
season did. Which must have provoked sighs of relief from the
accounts department. A Cup game hadn't, the game where we sealed the
title hadn't; thank God that at the very last minute they showed the
fans that without paying the premium you risked getting bupkis.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Hang on... now I think
of it, it's odd that a match didn't sell out to members until the
last possible opportunity for one to do so...</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
...and after some more
attractive games had failed to. You don't think...?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Surely not...?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
No. I'm sure it was all
above board and honest.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Now I'm not an idiot
and I understand that scarcity = demand = increased pricing. I get
that. But we seem to have the worst of both here – increased prices
this season <u>and</u> a
membership fee if you actually want the opportunity to pay any of
them.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And
yet I know all this, and I complain about it, but once again I have
the wallet out. Why? Why have I chosen willingly to be exploited,
once by my own club, once by a bunch of Yorkshire blue-and-whites to
whom I have no allegiance?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As
ever, the answer at its most reductionist is: because football. But
that won't quite do. The simple action of walloping a ball into a net
can be exciting, sure, but it's hard to believe it's exciting enough
to mesmerise us all into agreeing to this mechanised asset-stripping.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Football
isn't just football for most of us. It's not the 'bunch of lads
kicking a ball around' of repute. It's a weird bundle of connections
in our mind, pre-season most of all – echoes of triumph ringing
around the brain, the chemical memory of those endorphin rushes,
those odd moments when everything aligns in a wonderful, natural
high. It's the friendships it's connected with, the old friends I
most often see at Ashton Gate now, the new friendships the game
throws our way, the sharing of something mutually beloved. And more
than that it's the primal sense of identity, of belonging; as humans
we congregate, if not at football games then music festivals,
airshows, comic book conventions, whatever you like. For everyone
reading this, football provides something – several somethings –
that I think drive us as animals. Great swathes of <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Maslow's_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg">Maslow's
Hierarchy of Needs</a> can be fulfilled at your local Championship
ground, 3pm every other winter Saturday.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That's
why advertisers are so desperate to stick Ray Winstone's stupid face
into the Champion's League; why David Fishwick Minibus Sales hangs on
to that prime location at Turf Moor; why Manchester United have an
Official Office Equipment Partner. Everyone knows that – but it's
indirect. “When football strips away their higher brain functions”
runs the commercial logic, “we'll step in and shove our tat right
down their pleasure centres”.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What
I've been paying for is the real thing. The direct hit. Liquid
football. And like anyone who comes back for more when they know they
shouldn't, who spends money they don't really have, who has an order
of priority they probably won't admit to anybody, I'm far too
tarnished to start pretending my hands aren't dirty.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And
I can't wait for the season to start, so that my millions of
fellow-sufferers and I can debase ourselves once again.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-86286160582834294472015-04-19T22:06:00.000+01:002015-04-19T22:06:07.093+01:00A theory of relativity<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I remember another
sell-out home game against Coventry City. An equally vital one,
potentially decisive in terms of the division we'd spend the
following season in; League One or the Championship.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Three years and nine
days earlier, we met Coventry in a massive relegation tussle at the
bottom of the Championship. Tied at 1-1 after Jon Stead had scored
at both ends (or rather, the same end in different halves), Derek
McInnes brought on a raw young winger called Yannick Bolasie. You'll
remember him – he's apparently now worth £20m, although in fact he
probably isn't. His goal with his first or second touch has
evidently “lived long in the memory”, since I can remember it
now. I can remember calling “go on, Yannick, make yourself a hero”
when he came on; well, didn't he just.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And I can also remember
that goal taking the lid off the place. According to Google it was
in the 82<sup>nd</sup> minute and put us four points clear of
relegation with four to play. So you'd expect the fans to have been
pretty damn chuffed.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But it's perhaps still
odd that the atmosphere that day – at the end of a completely awful
season – was so much better than the atmosphere against the same
opposition this weekend, when we won League One at the end of a
completely brilliant one.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We know the facts:
we've just claimed our first league title of any kind for sixty years
and we'll set our highest ever points total in doing so. Yet Ashton
Gate was a little flat on Saturday afternoon, there's no question
about it. The pitch invasion at the end felt a bit token, a bit
forced, the product of obligation rather than effervescence. Having
been at all three matches, I'm fairly sure much less of the pitch was
covered than after the game in 2012 against Barnsley which kept us
up, let alone after our last promotion, in 2007. And yet these games
came at the end of seasons which were, in the first instance, pretty
awful, and in the second, really good but still not title-winning.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I think there are a few
contributing factors here but I think one is absolutely key.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
First of all, of
course, we've now got a smaller capacity as a result of having a
three-sided ground. So not only were fewer people present, but the
atmosphere wasn't locked in – it wasn't bouncing off every side,
being sent back into the centre with interest by every group of City
fans. But that's not all. It can't be, because not everyone went on
the pitch anyway, and because there were large sections of the ground
where not much singing was taking place at all – including around
me, in the north end of the Williams.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Secondly, it was in the
end a 0-0 draw. There's always been something slightly unsatisfying
about 0-0 draws; the lack of a goal denies you the release of tension
which elation in football is all about. After Tuesday's astonishing
result at Valley Parade, I expect that most people (including me)
were expecting the odd goal on Saturday. But that's not all either.
It can't be, because we've all seen occasions in which a draw (or
even a defeat – see Monaco v Arsenal earlier this season) has led
to untrammelled joy.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Thirdly, let's be
honest; we all knew we were going to win the league, didn't we? I'm
not sure that anyone would have expected Preston to win every
remaining match, not in this league that's wanted consistency
throughout. And we've not lost three in a row all season – clearly
it was unlikely we'd start now. But that's not all either. It can't
be, because you can be damn well sure that Chelsea fans will
celebrate when they win the league. And I assume Bayern fans will as
well, although even that must be getting a little dull for them, now.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I think the fourth
reason has a lot more to do with it. In the end, what we did this
weekend was win a league we should never have been in to start with.
Sure, after six promotions in which we don't win the division,
finally breaking that statistically anomalous run was great. But if
someone had said to you, five years ago, when Keith Millen was in
caretaker charge of a team that had spent a couple of years starting
to slip “don't worry, it gets better, you'll win the League One
title soon” I'm not sure that would have been much comfort. You
might in fact have been tempted to hit your imaginary comforter.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This is the problem
with a lot of what we've been offered this season – all of this
“once in 60 years we get something this good”, “best season
ever” narrative. It just isn't true. It can't be. Because this
season came with a ceiling, and that ceiling was “45<sup>th</sup>
best club in Britain”. We've just had several years of beating
that automatically, of being unable to finish below 44<sup>th</sup>.
I think it's reasonable to be slightly nonplussed at finishing 45<sup>th</sup>.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Nothing says more about
who we are as a club than our record for winning the Football League
Trophy – whether you call it the Freight Rover, the LDV or the
Johnstone's Paint – more than any other side. It means we're
theoretically a bit too good for this level, but we keep finding
ourselves here all the same. Lots was made about Mark Little
“retaining” the JPT having won it with Peterborough last season,
but again I wonder whether that's the accolade it sounds like. Is
he, too, better than this division but not quite Championship level?
We'll know in a year, I suppose; certainly I think you can only call
someone a record-breaker <i>if it's a record anyone ever mentioned or
might conceivably have hoped to claim</i>.
I'm not sure any young player dreams of winning the thing once, let
alone twice on the bounce.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
None
of this of course means that we shouldn't enjoy winning a competition
or two, if because of systemic mismanagement we end up in them again.
Of course we should. But there's always going to be an upper limit
to the joy you can take from winning a division containing Crawley,
Fleetwood and Rochdale. The game I enjoyed most this season was the
away-day at Preston because, you know what, it felt like the
Championship again. It felt like the sort of game we'll get a lot
next season. Two good sides, in a proper stadium, in a proper city,
going at it. It's worth a thousand 2-1 wins at “the
checkatrade.com stadium” and I'm looking forward to lots more of
that. I'm also very pleased we got this done in what felt like, when
we went down, the minimum time possible; we haven't got stuck like
poor old Sheffield United, and that's a good thing.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But
if we were to accept this as “one of the great Bristol City
seasons”, we'd also have to accept that in finishing in the
Conference's top two, Bristol Rovers are currently enjoying one of
the greatest in their history; their first placing this high in a
generation. And come on. Nobody's going to accept <i>that</i>,
are they?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Context
is important. That's why we can't go too mad at success in League
One, but why we had damn well better enjoy next season more, whatever
we do and wherever we finish.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-86319235969332760862015-04-14T08:30:00.005+01:002015-04-14T08:30:42.782+01:00Forced perspective<b>11 April 2015 - Preston North End 1 Bristol City 1</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Over the last 18
months, Aden Flint has metamorphosed from lumbering, gaffe-prone
lummox to the latest member of that part-lovable, part-tiresome gang,
the “Cult Hero”. From Gary Caldwell to Robin Friday in 50
matches is quite the achievement, but this is a man with every
qualification for the job. He used to be a tarmacker, he's hard to
miss on the pitch at 6'6”, and he's inherently likeable, with a dry
turn of phrase it's difficult not to warm to. Plus he's playing
extremely well at the moment; the current League One Player of the
Month, he's responsible for the unsual sense of calm amongst City
fans when a high ball swigs into our box (a favourite stratagem at
this level), as well as the sense of anticipation when we win a
corner.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Oh, and when he was
asked whether he wanted Swindon Town to go up, he used his mastery of
repartee, of the easy bon mot, and came out with the timeless quip,
“no”.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Maybe you had to be
there.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I'm being a bit harsh,
perhaps. City fans may have adopted this as one of the great
footballing witticisms of the ages, up there with “we discuss it
and agree I'm right” and all those times Lineker reminded Hansen
that he'd been wrong about Manchester United's youth policy, but
Flint wasn't trying to be funny. He was simply speaking his mind.
His lack of diplomacy is a significant component of what we like
about him; he's a bluff Northerner whose head is for heading balls
rather than weighing words. But following the enjoyable victory over
Swindon Town, the travelling contingent at Deepdale this weekend had
made up a cheery little number set to that great Oasis B-side “Cum
On Feel the Noize”. The main difference is that the lyrics aren't
about a weekend on the razzle in the Black Country any more, but
about how Swindon won't be promoted and serves them right too.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Now there is,
obviously, nothing wrong with this. That needs saying now. In a
division short on obvious rivals Swindon fit the bill well. They're
from up the road (although if you have to specify why a derby is a
derby, <i>pace</i> “the M4 derby”,
it probably isn't a real derby) and they've been near us in the
league for most of the season. So we can not like them at we can
sing songs about them, fine. But, to borrow terminology from the
election campaign, making Swindon's non-promotion a red line –
saying “I'm not bothered who else goes up as long as it's not
Swindon” - well, that just won't do, I'm afraid.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I think most of us
would agree that there are levels of good and bad within football.
Bad, especially. You've got the things people <i>say</i> are bad:
swapping shirts at half-time, not returning the ball if your
opponents have put it out of play, whatever. These mostly exist
within the game itself. And then you've got the things that are
<i>actually</i> bad: major tournaments consistently being awarded to
oil-rich despots, say, or the pricing out of the working class, or
Robbie Savage. These are things that exist outside the game –
meta-football, if you like. What happens on the pitch matters, I'm
not arguing that it doesn't; but it doesn't matter anything like as
much as what happens beyond it, in the superstructure of football,
where actual people's actual lives are affected. It doesn't matter
one quintillionth as much.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And yeah, that brings
me to MK Dons.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I've been fed up with
MK Dons all season. Them beating Manchester United early on, that
was amusing, of course, but when they kept hanging around the novelty
wore off. The joke wasn't funny any more when City fans
congratulated themselves for buying 5,000 seats at Stadium:MK, and it
was positively tiresome when some cheered MK's victory at Swindon, of
all people, the other weekend.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In terms of what they
do on the pitch, MK Dons don't seem that bad; they play neat football
with young players and they do it quite well. The manager's a bit
difficult to swallow, but a lot of them are, including some a hell of
a lot closer to home than Karl Robinson. They're a bit bland,
because there's no half-century of animus with them as there is with
most teams in this league, but not unpleasantly so. And they
produced Sam Baldock, so cheers to them for that.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But off the pitch, in
the realm of the important, they are quite obviously loathsome. They
shouldn't exist, not only because they're objectionable but because
they're dangerous. Their existence serves as a permanent threat to
91 other league clubs, or more precisely to their fans. MK Dons are
a totem, sending the message that anyone could take your club away
from you and there's nothing at all the football authorities can do
about it.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sure, we play this game
about not liking teams. We don't like Crystal Palace because we used
to play them a lot and we got grumpy with one another. We don't
like Rovers because they're the other lot in Bristol and we want to
be better than them. It spices up football, it creates a bit more
narrative, a bit more fun. But it's a game; it has rules, and one of
them is that we'll have a drink with a Rovers fan or a Palace fan
later. I think we'd all believe that someone not prepared to do so
would be taking the whole thing a bit too seriously.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
MK Dons exist outside
that. (Cardiff, of course, rather beautifully combine being
game-rivals with an actually unpleasant football club beyond the
pitch as well, and it's hard not to look forward to playing that lot
next year.) Even if we don't have game-reasons for not liking them,
the real reasons to despise them are clear, present and unignorable.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
My local team, Dulwich
Hamlet, have a slogan amongst the fans; “Ordinary Morality is for
Ordinary Football Clubs”, they say. Now if I'm honest I'm not
quite sure what that means. I think most football clubs are quite a
few moral niches below ordinary; amoral at best, the 92 collectively
are. But if a football club has any value, if those colours, that
history, that dear old stadium has any meaning whatsoever, it must be
morally right to resist the trend of devaluing, asset-stripping and
preying upon those dear old associations for the sake of a quick,
dirty buck. And as an ordinary football club, which is the most
important thing in the the British sporting tradition, let's aspire
to a bit of ordinary morality.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Let's keep Swindon as
our rivals. But let's not forget what's really important. And if
Swindon play MK Dons in the playoff final, let's be Robins together
for a day.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-22293740443925558512015-02-25T23:08:00.002+00:002015-02-27T08:26:19.848+00:00Unmoved by success<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>24 February 2015 -
Millwall 1 Sheffield Wednesday 3</b></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
My
mate Dave is a big Sheffield Wednesday fan. That is to say he's a
fan of the Owls who happens to be sodding enormous – clear of 6' 6”
I'd guess. He follows the team a bit, and he'll go and watch them
when he can work attendance at their game into his real hobby, which
is getting drunk with pretty women and silly men.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Somehow
he talked me into attending this one to fill the “silly men”
quota. So I dragged myself out to South Bermondsey when I could have
been watching Barcelona beat Man City, under the specious
rationalisation that I was scouting the sort of mediocre opposition
from which I expect City will need to take points next season.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
(On
which point, by the way, I have few concerns. Despite Wednesday's
excellent performance in the second half, which owed a lot to the
genuinely fine attacking play of Jacques Maghoma, I felt that on
present form City would beat either team relatively comfortably.
We'll have no problems adapting to the middle of that division, I
suspect.)</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I
went in the spirit of companionship and bonhomie, and as someone who
always enjoys live football, rather than because I was expecting the
team third-bottom of the divion and the team whose previous
seven-game form read D3 L4 to produce an encounter for the ages. And
the first half lived down to my expectations, a scoreless heap of
nothing in particular distinguished perhaps by the moment Wednesday
left-back Claude Dielna took a touch of the ball, found himself with
time to think, considered his options, and very calmly and
deliberately lobbed it over the left-hand touchline and out of play.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
After
the break though things were different, and once the badly out of
form Yorkshiremen had scored the goal that gee'd them up whilst
demolishing the fragile confidence of Ian Holloway's men the game was
almost entirely played in one direction – right down the pitch
towards the voluble travelling support. We were up towards the back
where, at the Den as everywhere, the loudest and least inhibited of
the away support tend to congregate. I found myself almost entirely
sucked in by the frisson Wednesday's performance generated, and
celebrated the goals like I had swallowed Henderson's Relish
from the teat. It was exhilarating.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It
was also probably the most exhilarated I've been at any football
match this season. Since my team is top of the league, and I've been
to quite a lot of their games, that has to be a concern.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Part
of the reason I think is that I was caught in a very particular mood
felt by the Wednesday fans. Both behind me at the ground, and on the
train back home, I kept catching variations on the same theme. “Two
goals from open play!” a Wednesdayite would exclaim in great
surprise. “An away win...” sighed another lad in reverent,
mine-eyes-have-seen-the-glory tones.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You
know what that's like, don't you? When you come away from a game
thinking “we won. We actually went and <i>bloody won</i>!”</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It's
the best feeling in football. There's satisfaction in winning a game
you ought to win by a nice, routine 2-0. There's great pleasure in
seeing your team demonstrate clear superiority when running goal
after goal past some hapless bunch of lower-league chancers. But
coming into a game you may not win, entering an uncertain situation,
scales balanced, nervous, turning up because it's what you do rather
than because of your scintillating run of form, <i>then</i>
scoring all the goals and claiming the points – that, my friends,
is the good stuff.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And
League One just doesn't offer that. Not when you've been there less
than a couple of years it doesn't, anyway. Sure, last time around,
when we'd had seven solid seasons before the glorious eighth, we'd
become accustomed to playing at that level and really didn't expect
to beat the better sides. So when we did it was terrific.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But this time is different, isn't it? It feels that way to me,
certainly. We've not been in the doldrums long enough for victories
to have the same meaning. We had two understandable wobbles in the
first season, a just-relegated-building-a-team one and a
new-manager-not-getting results one, overcome them, and been doing
absolutely fine thankyouverymuch since then. We'll get promoted this
season. We've been favourites, probably, since the opening day. The
game we played that day, at Sheffield United, may in fact have been
the most recent game we didn't expect to win, but did.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I've not once walked out of a game feeling utterly thrilled to the
core, that wonderful pinch-myself thrumming through me like a plucked
string. I've been happy quite a lot. I've thought “that's
absolutely fine” a fair bit, I've thought “didn't we play well”
from time to time. But overjoyed, no; not by winning a game
comfortably in this dreary League One.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Because it plainly is dreary. What came down was so much worse
than what went up that it was pretty clear this was a major
opportunity to get out of the division. I'd guess we have a bigger
budget than 21 other clubs. The two of a comparable size – Preston
and Sheffield United – are underachieving, not because
they're behind us but because they're scrapping with Bradford,
Doncaster and Fleetwood. That won't do for famous sides like those two.
And it's left the way open for us to run the division simply on account of
hitting par for our budget whilst they fail to do so.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There's also the fact that even our close competitors are failing to
give us a run for our money. The main reason we're seven points
clear of third is that in both of the last two weekends, we've lost
but so have Swindon. That's it. They could be a point behind us,
but they're not. That's because they're a League One club on a small
budget, so they'll be inconsistent and drop silly points. It's
perfectly reasonable but it hardly adds to the tension of it all.
And a break in tension is what creates real joy at football. It's
why a late winner feels so much better than a fourth goal midway
through the second half.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This time last year, our record – 67 points from 32 games, with a
goal difference of 31 – would have put us third in the table. We'd
have been level on points with Orient and Wolves above us, though –
a three way tie! - having played a game more than Orient and a game
fewer than Wanderers. Brentford would be a point behind us in fourth
with a game in hand. It would have been completely brilliant.
Imagine how vital every game would have felt. Imagine those clashes
in Wolverhampton, in East and West London.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But there we are. Instead we're competently navigating a mediocre
iteration of the division. We'll go up, great, but as far as I'm
concerned the real thing will only start then. Getting back into the
Championship and having to play well every week just to keep our
heads above water. Real competition. Parachute payments.
International players at the Gate. Difficult matches every week.
And once again, that most underrated of footballing emotions –
relief. The same relief, breeding the same delight, those Sheffield
Wednesday fans felt last night.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-40463870799033175112015-01-17T12:10:00.000+00:002015-01-17T12:53:56.134+00:00Big in Lincolnshire<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The full version of the Scunthorpe Telegraph "Spy in the Camp" article I provided ahead of this weekend's game with Scunthorpe United.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <b>City
have been top of the table for much of the season and are clear
favourites with the bookies for promotion - is there any fear they
won't go up?</b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No
football fan would ever say his team's a certainty for promotion,
surely? But at time of writing it's hard to deny that things look
good. We're duking it out with Swindon for top spot at the moment,
but we've played a game fewer and are starting to put a bit of space
between ourselves and third spot in the table.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That
said, we know from earlier in the season how quickly a gap of several
points can become a gap of just one or two, and the other three teams
up there with us – MK Dons and Preston, as well as Swindon – have
done a good job of keeping us honest so far. It seems fairly clear
that two of the current top four will go up automatically, simply
because it would take a surprisingly collective stumble for a
Sheffield United or a Rochdale to catch three of us up. But we will
have to continue to play well in order to stay at the front of the
group. That's fine with me, I don't want us to go up by default –
I want us to win the division with a bit of style if we can.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
think every City fan would also be terrified of a drop into the
playoffs, since our record in that competition is so poor. Even a
comfortable third-place finish would leave nobody at Ashton Gate
confident that we'd navigate the end-of-season shootout with out
opponents.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <b>Have
the Robins been as convincing as a glance at their results would
suggest?</b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Largely
yes. We had a little spell at the end of 2014 when we were only
winning games by a single very late goal, but I'm not convinced
that's a sign of weakness. We're capable of dominating games against
any side in the bottom two-thirds of the division, and at home we
mostly do so. Away from home we're quick on the counter-attack,
comfortable moving the ball around and a difficult team to beat. The
squad balance between canny old pros with Premier League experience
and young players coming into the prime of their career is
impressive, and we always look to play on the front foot and attack.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our
main weakness is that we can always concede goals, the inevitable
consequence of our attack-minded style and formation – although we
haven't actually conceded more than anyone else in the division, I
think we'll always give opponents a chance to score away from home.
We've not been too bad at outscoring teams, though, and we're yet to
lose a league game in which we score.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">•<b>Steve
Cotterill has been at the helm for a year now, could he have done a
better job?</b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In
terms of this season at least, it's hard to think how! The manager
is a wily old football man with something of the old school about
him, a motivator and team-builder with infectious enthusiasm. He's
well supported by our transfer mastermind Keith Burt, and by a
chairman who obviously has a lot of faith in him.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Looking
back over the year it's often forgotten that it actually took a while
to come right for Cotterill – he got us out of the relegation zone
after arriving, but plunged us back in, too, and was bailed out by
some critical loan arrivals last February. But since the spring he's
done little wrong and a lot right. I have my own concerns about his
tactical flexibility and his ability to change a game, but it's
looking increasingly likely that those aren't weaknesses many other
teams in League One are well-enough equipped to exploit.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <b>City
seem on course for a trip to Wembley in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy.
That doesn't appear to have been a distraction thus far, can you see
that changing?</b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With
a maximum of two games left I'd be surprised if it did! Cotterill
has been adept this season at rotating his squad when we have two or
three games to play within seven days. Most of the players have
looked fresh game after game, which is an advantage of having a
largely young side, and progress in the JPT and FA Cup has if
anything helped us keep our momentum up in the league. The truism is
that when you're winning you want to keep playing games, and that's
certainly how our players appear to have been thinking this season.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inevitably
there will be now extra games to play on the wet pitches of February
and March, and that's where we might suffer any consequences of our
success, but I think that our progress in the knock-out competitions
has actually helped us get to where we are.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <b>If
they do back up to the Championship, what will they have learned from
their last season at that level?</b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
hope we'll learn from our last three seasons in the Championship,
which saw a slow, inevitable slide down the table culminating in a
failure to escape from relegation at the third attempt. In those
three seasons we had four different managers and that, rather than
anything we might choose to criticise any of those individuals for, I
think was the critical factor. The club wasn't being run well at
that point – Steve Lansdown is a wealthy benefactor but a deeply
impatient man, and regular chopping and changing was never more
likely to produce survival than picking a man and giving him a couple
of years to make the squad his own. I think Keith Burt's arrival as
director of football pretty much as soon as we got relegated
demonstrates that we have learnt, and we accept that a good club
needs to be coherent in the medium term.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Part
of the reason those four managers had a difficult job to do was
because they inherited a club which had massively over-spent under
Gary Johnson, and at one point was paying more in wages than it made
at the gate. Clearly that's unsustainable and both McInnes and
O'Driscoll did a lot to change that around, however unpopular they
may now be in South Bristol! But I hope we don't get over-excited
again and mortgage our future on an attempt to reach the top flight.
I'd be happy with progress and with squad development linked to our
ground improvements, even if that means sitting in mid-table for a
few seasons. The Championship's a great division to be in, after all
– we needn't be quite so desperate to leave it this time.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <b>Matt
Smith looked a good recruit on loan, but seemed to be getting a bit
of stick prior to Christmas. Has his eight goals in four games going
into the weekend silenced his critics?</b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
don't think we're the only club in the League whose supporters can be
guilty of taking a short-term view! Matt Smith arrived short on
match practice and therefore on sharpness, but since Boxing Day he's
found his rhythm and has scored in every game since. A particular
highlight would be the four he scored against Gillingham, which
demonstrated his range of ability – he gets headers, sure, but he's
far from a League One clogger. His third that day was a backheel
reminiscent, go on then, of Thierry Henry, and his fourth was a
left-foot volley from the edge of the box with a touch of Van Basten
about it, if I'm allowed to keep getting overexcited.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Scunthorpe
fans probably shouldn't expect him to play like an Henry/Van Basten
hybrid on Saturday, and City fans shouldn't expect it every week.
But it's fair to say that you won't find many in the away end who
expect him not to score this weekend.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <b>Speaking
of strikers, Keiran Agard and Aaron Wilbraham led the line when the
Iron were beaten 2-0 at Ashton Gate in September. What's happened to
that duo?</b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both
have suffered from relatively long-term injuries which have limited
their appearances in the past couple of months. I think one of them
might be fit enough for a place on the bench at Glanford Park but I
can't be certain.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even
if both were now fit I wouldn't expect them to start because, in
their absence, Smith and Jay Emmanuel-Thomas have struck up quite the
rapport and on merit are clearly now our first-choice partnership.
Squad depth like this is a reason I don't expect the JPT to have too
much of a negative effect on us – I can't think of another club in
the division with four attackers of this calibre available to them.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <b>Where
will Saturday’s game be won or lost?</b></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="western">
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In
wide positions. The speed and intelligence of our wing-backs, Joe
Bryan and Mark Little, has caused problems for every team we've
played this season. Shut them down and you remove a good part of our
threat. They also tend to leave gaps behind them when they attack –
our centre-backs are good at covering for them, but nevertheless a
pacy winger if you have one is just the sort of player likely to
cause us problems.</span></div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-55407966682378381722014-09-24T22:03:00.000+01:002014-09-24T22:03:03.821+01:00How I tried to stop worrying and love Bristol City<b>13 September 2014 - Bristol City 3 Doncaster Rovers 0</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This was a formality.
Against a team with, hitherto, a 4-from-4 perfect away record, City
had control of the game from its outset, capitalised on – sure –
some poor defending to score the first couple of goals, but hey. It
was an easy afternoon, and following one of the stupider dismissals
you'll see in a professional football game (first yellow for a dive,
second for kicking the ball a long way away) it turned from
“comfortable win” into “stroll in the park”. Even with the
game dead at 11v10, City played a very composed, mature, sensible
game, keeping possession, not taking silly chances, and scoring a
well-worked third goal to bury the men from Yorkshire.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A satisfactory
afternoon on its own terms then, and as part of an unbeaten League
run that (at time of writing) encompasses the first nine games of the
nascent season to take us five points clear at the top of the young
League One table, the bigger picture is all the more impressive. Win
has followed win, three goal haul has followed three goal haul, with
metronomic regularity. After all those years in the bottom half of
divisions it's a refreshing, not to say somewhat surprising, state of
affairs.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So why haven't I been
enjoying it as much as I ought to've been?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I haven't, you know;
not really. Oh, it's been fun going to the games. And even from
afar, it's certainly been nice not to have that heartsinking feeling
as Twitter informs me that we've conceded yet another early goal.
I've been pleased when we've won, but that's a long way from the
delight I really ought to be feeling; the delight I've every right to
enjoy now after what City have been putting me through in recent
years. Given how impressive the results have been, I've been feeling
oddly flat.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are a couple of
things which, while not major contributors, are probably relevant.
The first is having given up the season ticket, which has slightly
reduced my exposure to the team and players (especially as we've not
yet had a south-eastern away game I can easily reach). I haven't
formed any sort of bond with these players yet; of our current first
XI, six didn't play for City last year, one did so only on loan, and
50% of the remainder I'm working hard to forgive for their poor
performances this time last year which led directly to our poor start
to the season. It's only Williams and Bryan for whom I have that
affection born of a season's exposure. I think they're the only
squad members Ross and I have come up with nicknames for (“Degsy”
and “GI” if you must know) and that tells its own story.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Combine that with not
living in Bristol and the emotional side of the game takes a further
blow. If you live in Bristol your investment in the team is, I
think, just as much about getting the win so that on Monday morning
you're quicker on the draw when you bump into the Gashead you work or
study with. Certainly that was the case when I was at school. My
best friend Pete lives in London, and is a Gashead, but he makes
about one game every five years so isn't much of a whetstone for the
rivalry. For this reason the entire rivalry, when conducted two
divisions and a league structure apart, seems a feeble affair; the
cult of Colin Daniel leaves me rather cold, I'm afraid, as the effect
is that the only thing reminding me of the existence of Bristol
Rovers is, um, Bristol City fans. As I say though I can understand
why it continues to matter within the city itself; but there's an
entire buttress of passion which I'm not really part of.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
No, Buttress of Passion
is not an architecture-themed adult movie. Let's move on.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A more fundamental
reason, I think, might be that so far it's seemed almost <i>too</i>
easy. I feel nervous writing that, as though I'm the character in
the horror film describing something as “<i>too</i>
quiet”; but you know what I mean? One of our main targets in
summer 2013 was Britt Assombalonga. We couldn't match his wage
demands, so he went to Peterborough, scored lots of goals, and has
earned them a £3m profit moving to Forest. This summer, finally
free of the squad's deadwood and in a weaker division, we were the
ones able to take on the players you'd have to assume the whole
division was after. This isn't just a guess; a right-back from
direct promotion rivals, an attacking midfielder we'd all been
talking about since January, the a third member of the top four goalscorers from last time (the other three of whom all now play in the Championship);
the young, impressive captain of a good passing team. Keith Burt has
spoken openly about the policy being “buy the best players in the
division”, and there's a pretty clear Championship Manager logic
here – if you buy all the best players you will have the best team.
Indeed, we know that league placings, by and large, follow wage
bills rather than the other way round. I would be quite surprised if
we're not paying the second-highest wages in the division, and since
we are now spending our wages on first-team players it ought to
follow that we finish in the top two.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Now
of course that doesn't always work; we all know that. And Cotterill
deserves great credit for getting through one transfer window at the
speed it would normally take to get through two, and then being able
to create a proper team out of the group of players so assembled.
But it still means that the early part of the season has had a slight
sense of unreality, of playing Pro Evo with the settings on beginner
(or indeed just playing against Pete the Gashead). It's nice to win,
but the games just haven't seemed all that competitive yet. Again,
though, this is from afar – the experience may have been different
at many of the matches – but certainly the Doncaster game only
reinforced that view. That second goal! That sending off! Dickov
may as well have asked Cotterill if he wanted to take advantage of
the gift-wrapping service at no extra cost.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I'm
sure the pressure will come – quite possibly against MK Dons this
weekend. I'd like us to be in a heartracing promotion battle with
four points separating first and sixth. That's something I could get
behind.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And while this gets
closest to the matter at hand, I don't really think that's what's
going on here. I think that, building on my last blog, my
disaffection has actually come from a less obvious result of being an
exile in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Having to
follow a successful football club on Twitter.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I mean, this can't be
specific to City. I'm sure many other clubs have the potential to be
this awful, if you follow the right (wrong?) people. The problem
with fandom, though, is that it's your own side you're exposed to the
most. And the Soccer AM-ification of modern football is something I
experience most as a City fan.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I'm talking about the
retweets of imbeciles with their endless hashtags and breezy
disregard for anything approaching originality. I'm talking about
the match reports providing enough material for @FootballCliches to
write his second book (yes, I know they're written fast, and partly I
think that's the problem – we can wait that extra hour for a
genuinely illuminating report, surely?). But most of all I'm
talking about the #banter. The awful, ongoing, never even remotely
funny #banter.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A few quick caveats. I
know this isn't only my club that does this; but it's only mine I
see. I know the media team have a bloody hard job pleasing every fan
and I think their coverage is often excellent – the Botswana tour
videos were wonderful, even the one where every player universally
describes a safari as “great experience” as though they've just
played out a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful cup tie against
Liverpool. And I follow, and am fortunate enough to be followed by,
a number of intelligent, witty, grounded Bristol City fans who I
would not have met otherwise and with whom I greatly enjoy discussing
the club.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But the most important
caveat is that <i>I don't have to watch the stuff</i>.
Advice I've given myself for some time now, but have only just got
around to taking. Because of my attachment to City I've been trying
to consume everything we produce, and it's been an enormous mistake.
Much of it simply isn't targeted at me, and that's fine. We'd be in
a lot of trouble if it was. So I am doing something that we now all
have the opportunity to do; I am tailoring myself a bespoke
interaction with the club.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I've
got rid of the Twitter accounts of buffoons like Scott Murray, the
matchday DJ and (for the time being at least) the head of media, thus
at a stroke removing vast amounts of guff from my consciousness; it's
still there, and it's not funny, but I don't have to know about it.
I'm focusing in on the matches, what the players do, and what the
manager says. I really miss having the manager's programme notes on
the website and I wish they'd come back. I've realised that while I
love much of the experience of football, it doesn't follow that I
must love all the extraneous noise and confusion around it. We all
know that 90%, at least, of what any football club says is nonsense.
Get rid of that – pare back to the game, the experience of going,
travelling, watching it, spending time with friends, all of that –
and the whole thing is a lot more satisfying.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This
is where it all connects up I think. I've lost a fair bit of the
experience of going to games this season, but like someone who loses
their vegetable garden so eats Haribo to make up the difference I've
become bloated, unsatisfied and left with an unpleasant taste in my
mouth. I need to focus on the real nutritional stuff and maybe I'll
be served up something I can really look forward to.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I
want to salivate again. And I hope the new diet will make me do
that.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-950025192036220862014-08-25T21:54:00.001+01:002014-08-25T21:54:19.410+01:00The fan who knew too much<b>Saturday 16 August - Bristol City 2 Colchester United 1</b><br />
<b>Saturday 23 August - Dulwich Hamlet 2 Lewes 0</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Growing up is a process
of complication. That's a given, right? Experience means seeing a
series of tiny fragments of the whole – nowhere near enough to
understand, but enough to learn how complicated, and how ultimately
incomprehensible, existence is. Paradoxically, the more you learn,
the clearer it becomes that you can understand only an infinitesimal
sliver of the totality. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v9WhRpQw8E">Which
may have been what Paul Weller was getting at</a>.) And that's why
we get nostalgic – if we miss anything at all, we miss that time
when the world seemed simpler, possible to observe and catalogue in
its entirety if only one could live long enough and find the right
vantage point.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And clearly football's
no exception to this. In fact there's a whole class of websites,
magazines, and cheap late-night ITV4 clip shows pandering to our
desire to return to that simple time somewhere between Toto
Schillaci's brief spurt out of obscurity and Gareth Southgate's
underhit penalty, when the world – by which we mean major football
tournaments – seemed a simpler place.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I remember going to
Ashton Gate in the early '90s, and supporting City in just that
uncomplicated, no-strings-attached way was the simplest thing in the
world. I knew we were the ones in red; I knew which way we were
shooting in each half; and I picked up the players' names. Their
names – Gary Shelton, Rob Newman, Junior Bent - were all I really
needed to know. Where they'd come from, how old they were, how they
had been playing recently – these were irrelevancies. Less than
irrelevancies, they simply didn't occur. I knew that Bob Taylor
scored the most goals, both from watching him do so and from seeing
his name followed by a number between 1 and 90 beneath our score in
the Evening Post, so he got his poster on my bedroom door. Other
than that City were just the red team, with players as
interchangeable as those in a game of Sensible Soccer (and, to my
lasting frustration, a kit the manufacturers of Subbuteo considered
to be interchangeable with that of Wrexham, Benfica, Barnsley, and
even hated rivals Swindon Town).</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It's not like that now,
is it? Partly because we've come to learn more about the world, and
partly because the process of doing so has expanded from <i>Match</i>
magazine to Wikipedia, YouTube, Football Weekly and all that, the
idea of watching the game in this charmingly juvenile way has become
a remote, prelapsarian dream.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Now
we know so much – in fact we know too much. Every touch is
contextualised, becoming either an OptaJoe stat, ammunition for one
side of a tedious forum argument, or both. Adam El-Abd came on for
Bristol City against Colchester and did fairly well. However his
first touch was misjudged and saw him pass the ball out of play
rather than knock it in front of Derrick Williams. My first reaction
wasn't to think that losing possession cheaply was a shame; it was to
think about the “narrative” of Adam El-Abd, more construct now
than human being, and how him giving away the ball played to one part
of it just as his thereafter solid defensive performance played to
the other. Shouldn't I just have been watching the game?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To
a degree this is my fault – after all it's up to me what I focus on
– but it's no great surprise if my internal football brain has been
contaminated with the same asides, pop-ups and captions that plague
televised football now. And the problem with this exposure isn't
just that it's distracting; it's also something that can actively
damage my perception of my club and reduce the wholeheartedness of my
support. I should have been pleased that the Reds beat the Blues
2-1. Instead, I was thinking about how we've got the bigger wage
bill by quite some distance and therefore 2-1 is a par score at best
– about how Colchester would have been delighted to have players of
the calibre of Luke Freeman, Wade Elliott and Luke Ayling lining up
in their shirts.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This
stuff spreads. We signed Kieron Agard the other day for a fee
reportedly not too far off a million pounds. Agard scored plenty for
Rotherham in this division last season and will, I'm sure, do
something similar for us. Yet a colleague at work pointed out how
unexcited I seemed. He was right; I was thinking about how we'd
become a huge spender in the division and therefore far from an
underdog. Given my natural sympathies to the less resourced and
funded sides I was having trouble squaring the circle. I've no
natural inclination to want a bigger side to go to Rochdale and pound
them yet my 24-year support of City tells me that I must. It's
heinously complicated.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Then
there's the rest of it – the former club legend, now kit man, who
spends his time on Twitter trying to see precisely how close to overt
sexism and transphobia he can get before anyone at all calls him out
on it (oh and Twitter, my God, how it fuels this stuff with its
constant retweeting of facts, “banter” and awful, awful jokes);
arguments about net spend, FFP compliance and all the other
accountancy shite which were not contributing factors to any of our
love affairs with football; the very existence of Jose Mourinho.
From micro to macro it's just offputting and every single bit of
extra information corrupts the basic purity of a game a five-year-old
can enjoy, and enjoy for the right reasons.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So
last weekend I went to Dulwich. And my God, what a relief; what an
incredible relief.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Suddenly
the team I want to win is just the team in the right colours (and the
pink/blue combination is <u>clearly</u>
the right set of colours). The manager doesn't have a Wikipedia
page. The only player I've heard of is Terrell Forbes, who captained
them and played for Yeovil for a bit. Their star man, Ashley Carew,
sounds like a Championship Manager regen. I couldn't name the
goalkeeper.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I
stood by the side of the pitch, drinking a pint or two of local ale,
in an atmosphere akin to a village fete's attempt to recreate the
Curva Sud on derby day – but even better than that sounds. I
spotted some people I vaguely recognised. The matchday sponsor was
<a href="http://www.thegowlett.com/">my local</a>, which happens to
do the best pizza in London. The local butcher sponsors the dugouts.
The fans were wonderful – behind whichever goal the home side
attacked, they chanted for 90 minutes and spent almost no time
moaning about misplaced passes or an insufficiently gung-ho
formation. Nobody appeared disappointed that the right winger failed
to combine Ronaldo's power and energy with Cruyff's football brain
and Makelele's workrate (something that enrages certain residents of
BS3). In the inevitably transient world of lower-league football
this was support for a team, a set of colours, an ideology even, far
more than a group of men looking forward to being disappointed by a
signing fee/goal return ratio.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It
was hard to feel that I hadn't found a gateway to a simpler, better
time. Whether it would feel the same without the trappings above I'm
not sure, but as a release from all the noise of modern-day football
<i>without having
to give up football</i>
it was unbeatable.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And
yet – I now know some of the players. I know how they play. I
know how a kid called Abdul came on and changed the game, injecting
genuine craft into the attack. I know about Ashley Carew and Xavier
Vidal. I know how much I like Terrell Forbes. Surfing the internet
after the game I found an article about Rio Ferdinand supporting the
club's academy and I turned away quickly. A little learning can
indeed be a dangerous thing.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I
can already feel the taint of knowledge starting to ruin Dulwich
Hamlet for me, turning what is at present a delightfully idealised
little crush into a tediously flesh-and-blood pursuit. It'll happen,
of course it will – and that's good, because it means that Bristol
City, flaws, financial aggression and all, will always be number one.
But I'll keep spending the odd Saturday at Champion Hill, little
enough to avoid developing insidious opinions, sufficient however to
scratch the itch of football for the sake of football, rather than as
fodder for an argument. If I'm very lucky then some of the love
rekindled that way will spill back into the old relationship and
we'll all benefit. If not then hey; the Dulwich scarves will make a
lovely accessory this winter.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-13295806451584742732014-05-12T21:23:00.002+01:002014-05-12T21:23:49.803+01:00An insular life<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Saturday 3 May - Crawley Town 1 Bristol City 1</b></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I think most people who
were at this match would agree that it was a particularly strange
occasion. For most of the crowd, events on the pitch had already
ceased to be the focus of attention long before Simon Gillett scored
his equaliser just after the hour. The celebrations at the final
whistle had nothing to do with a bang mid-table finish taken from the
teeth of a second successive relegation and everything to do with
Bristol Rovers dropping out of the Football League for the first time
in 94 years.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We were celebrating the
end of a two-club era in Bristol football; the new state of affairs
may last for a year or a decade, we don't know yet. But undeniably
things are changing. Back in Bristol, the Ashton Gate pitch had
already been torn up, the scoreboard of the East End was about to
come down, the seats had been sold and the ancient home end at BS3
began the process of being removed. And Louis Carey, our record
appearance holder, would be released within the week as expected.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Furthermore, the club
appears to have arrested the spiral of decline it's been on for four
or five years; certainly as long as I've been writing this blog. And
with half the team, including loanees, departing it'll be very
different watching a new side, with a more optimistic crowd behind
them, in a three-sided stadium come August. At the very least I'll
need to pick on a new player for miscontrolling the ball out of play.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That's not the only
amendment I'll have to make to that box at the top right though.
Because this is a personal end of an era as well. For the first time
in six years I'll no longer be a season ticket holder.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You see, we're all in
our thirties now, me and my friends from Bristol. That meant a spate
of weddings which we seem to be coming to the end of now, which has
given way to the spate of pregnancies one might expect. And Ross,
being the virile chap that he is, has played a full and active part
in all this. Ross Jnr is on its way, with paternity leave handily
scheduled for the middle of the World Cup.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Perfectly
understandably that makes his season ticket an unrealistic commitment
both financially and temporally; you don't want to guarantee nineteen
Saturday afternoons and four Tuesday nights out of the house when
you're raising a not-even-one-year-old. So my gesture of
solidarity-slash-acceptance that regular solo football is less fun
has been to not renew my season ticket either.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This may not, initially
at least, make a huge difference. I still have a pool of friends I
can go to games with; Ross himself will no doubt be back at some
stage; and certainly until and unless City make a major promotion
push, getting home tickets ought to be possible even given the
reduced capacity. But the significance of it is clear, and was
rammed home against Crawley. As he has done for many years, Ross
spent the Saturday night at my place in Peckham. He won't be doing
that again for a long, long time. And without the need to justify
the already-outlaid spending on a season ticket, I quite possibly
won't find myself booking the long winter journey to home games
against mediocre opposition as often in the future. Even recently
it's felt like lunacy sometimes and I think that this blog has become
a way of ameliorating that.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I've had many moments
in those dark, horrible, 2-0 home defeat, 23<sup>rd</sup> in the
table train journeys where I've questioned the purpose of the trip;
when I've sat alone on a cold night in some southeastern retail park
backwater and wondered what it's all about. Why am I dragging myself
to these painful encounters; why is so much of my income and leisure
time going on watching football matches when there are football
matches on TV and all over London, when I have options other than
going to football matches at all? Why?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It's not even as though
I'm the obsessive sort of fan, although I know people who'd snort
derisively at that comment. I don't have to do the 92, I don't have
to watch every Premier League game on Sky, it doesn't bother me that
the Spanish title decider clashes with the Cup Final. So my journeys
cannot realistically be in the pursuit of football, that strange 90
minutes of shouting and wrestling and occasional magnificence. There
must be something else that keeps me going. I think it's the part of
football that really is more than just a game. With a resounding
capital F I am travelling for Football.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I am travelling because
Football has, in the 24 years (to the day!) since I watched
Manchester United and Crystal Palace contest the FA Cup final, become
the major narrative of my life. That's not to say that it has been
all-consuming – there's no programme collection, no set of ticket
stubs – but it has become the bedrock upon which the rest of my
life, school, university, work, falling in and out of love,
friendships, nights out, days in – has been built. I haven't been
in education for over a decade now but I still think of years that
start and finish in late summer. Not school years. Football
seasons.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
1998 means Zidane and
Ronaldo and Guivarc'h before it means anything else. 2008 is Xavi,
Iniesta and Torres. 1994, true, has competition from Parklife and
His 'n' Hers (a certain strand of indie music being the
countervailing narrative) but it still means Baggio's penalty when it
comes down to it. Now we're in another World Cup year and I'm sure
that I'll look back at 2014 and remember this summer's heroes,
Neymar, Ronaldo, Messi or whomever it is, before anything else
springs to mind.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Partly this is because
these events are always connected with the dates – France '98 is
called France '98, none of my other memories from that summer are so
denoted – but if you're reading this you will have a similar
highlights reel for each year, I'm sure. Anyway it's not just the
dates, it's the way that the brain can mix up memories based on what
really mattered – your life – and what felt like it mattered –
football – because the feelings at the time were exactly the same.
I can't think of one breakup without remembering that the 7-1 defeat
at Swansea coincided with it. Nor can I forget starting to fall in
love again the night after Gary Johnson's first game, a 3-2 victory
at Brentford.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
(No, there wasn't much
time between the two. Dirty stopout.)</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And Football has
brought me so much closer to so many friends because my narrative is
also theirs; doubly so for fellow City fans but it goes for fans of
Arsenal, Tottenham, Blackburn, Northwich Victoria or any team you
could name. There's a lazy cliché about men together always talking
about football, but take away the sexism and it's close to
irresistible. You forge friendships, relationships, through common
ground, and if two people have that same narrative then it makes
perfect sense to share it.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But for Ross, Football
won't be the main narrative any more. He'll be a father, and while
the two will chug along nicely together (particularly given the
expected date of birth of his child, which does make my point rather
fabulously) he won't have the same time to invest in Football for a
while. No more should he, of course. It's right that his priorities
will shift. His awfully big adventure won't be next season's
promotion battle but his first chance to nurture and inspire life.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As for this blog? Who
knows. I'll be going to fewer games, sure, but I don't update every
time I go to a game (you can have too much reflection, you know) and
I've always tried to write about more than just football – I've
tried to write about Football, what goes on around the game,
principles, philosophies, bad jokes. That will all still exist in
future. And it doesn't just happen at Bristol City. Perhaps going
to fewer games will allow me to get up to Dulwich Hamlet from time to
time; to go with my friends to Arsenal matches; to watch more of the
big games in the Premier League that kick off when I'm normally
arriving at Temple Meads these days.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And, just as I
sometimes am now, I'll be to the left of other people in future. I
know some great people through shared love of Football. Maybe their
stories are worth telling as well.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don't know what life
To The Left of My Friends looks like. I do know I'm not going to
change the name of the blog. And I'm sure I'll continue – an
unexamined life not being worth living, and all that. I may not be
to the left of Ross every week in future, but it's far too late for
my narrative to change. I expect to continue exploring my
relationship – everyone's relationship – with this mad, stupid
game for as long it feels right.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-32846450228238398972014-04-29T21:31:00.001+01:002014-04-29T21:31:15.971+01:00What of our future?<b>26 April 2014: Bristol City 0 Crewe Alexandra 0</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I'd not looked forward to the opening
day of the season with such anticipation in years; probably not since
we responded to reaching the Championship playoff final by signing
Nicky Maynard, and anyway the first game of the season that year was
in Blackpool so I didn't go. The summer of 2013 saw phase one of a
clearout of the older, more expensive players – or those we were
able to clear out – and an influx of young, talented ones. Jordan
Wynter, Frank Fielding, Derek Williams, Marlon Pack, Jay
Emmanuel-Thomas, all under the tutelage of Sean O'Driscoll.
Relegation or no relegation it was an exciting concept.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And that first game, that 2-2 draw with
Bradford, was encouraging in itself. OK, it wasn't a perfect
performance; the first of those Frank Fielding moments that perhaps
defined Phase 1 of the season took place, the keeper dashing madly
out of his area and allowing Nakhi Wells to equalise in the first
half. But it was an entertaining, attacking game of passing
football, plenty of goals, and a real sense of a new beginning.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This weekend I went to another draw at
Ashton Gate, and it was awful; very few attacks, neither goalkeeper
massively stretched, a pathetic pitch celebration at the end, a
simultaneous victory for Bristol Rovers, all against a poor Crewe
side who may still go down. I can't, of course, criticise the team
too much – our lack of vigour was surely borne from our status as
mid-table survivors, and I'd <a href="http://totheleftofross.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/entertain-me.html">hoped
earlier in the season</a> that Cotterill would bring the season to a
humdrum end simply because it'd mean we weren't fighting a relegation
battle. So in that sense I got what I wanted, but it wasn't much of
a football match, and it wasn't a patch on that opening day 2-2.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But you can pick and choose selectively
to prove anything, and everyone reading this knows that a hell of a
lot happened between those two draws bookending the Ashton Gate
season. We know what happened to that “project”, to use the
footballing term, before winter had really set in.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Because the first third of the season
was an attempt to do something for the long-term, an attempt sunk by
poor results, only one of which came anywhere near the date at which
the manager was removed.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That first third ranks as one of the
most frustrating three-month spells of my life as a City fan, which
is saying something. The consistent promising talk. The periods of
games which would seem to live up to it. The periods of games which,
yes, composed of sterile domination followed by a loss of nerve and a
long ball to a short man. Those knocking-on-the-door 0-0s which
looked like turning into 1-0s only for two great chances to come and
go, and actually turned into 0-1s thanks to the outstretched foot of
Aden Flint.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Nearly” will always be the most
disappointing, and perhaps the most damning, word in the football
vernacular. Better to not compete than to lose in the 90<sup>th</sup>
minute, perhaps, and we lost in the 90<sup>th</sup> minute a lot. We
didn't take our chances, defenders made individual errors, things
didn't quite click. But would you expect them to? A rebuilt team,
half the wage bill on the treatment table or out of favour in the
pockets of Pearson, Kilkenny, Fontaine, Marv. A side learning, a
side chronically unable to get that bit of confidence that a win
would have given them.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And then of course the infamous
seven-game mini run, with its single defeat that was leapt on and
picked over. It counted more because it had happened at home, one
felt, a fine performance at Prenton Park seven days before
unaccounted for. And more frustration now as, one good performance
later, the die was cast. Frustration for those who thought they'd
seen signs of things coming together, but would never, ever know.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Which took us into the second section
of the season. The section that made you long for mere frustration,
the section that was agony.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Steve Cotterill ripped it up and
started again. And why not? He'd been given a different goal, the
transfer window was evidence of that. In came experience, out went
youth (a single start and plentiful sub appearances for Wes Burns not
outweighing the sudden dearth of opportunities awarded to Bobby Reid
and Joe Bryan), Steve: you have to keep us up and this time ain't
doing it. Build another one.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And Cotterill's Survival Machine Phase
I didn't work. No reason it should, it had been pulled together
quickly enough from spare parts, made out of this and made out of
that and whatever was at hand. But the early weeks of 2014, in
particular, were painful, the defeat at Brentford probably the nadir
– Parrish, El-Abd, Flint and Barnett will probably never be in the
same City team again, and without writing them off too much,<i> thank
Christ</i>.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Still learning about his players,
players we largely knew better than he did, the manager didn't seem
to get his formation right from week to week. In a rare spell of
good fortune I saw both of our wins in that period – a 2-1 at home
to Carlisle in a real pig of a game, and a 3-1 at Leyton Orient that
was pleasant at the time, but was followed by two more poor
performances and poor results leading up to that nadir at Brammall
Lane. I am a man of an optimistic disposition, however I try and
hide it: I walked out of <i>that</i>
Sheffield United game telling my friend Rich not to be silly, of
course we weren't going down. But earlier this year I was working
out the route from Peckham to Dagenham (or is it Redbridge?).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And then. And then. Things started to
click, and the final phase of the season turned into our most
enjoyable in years.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It was The Redemption of Frank Fielding
that night at London Road that did it for me. Peterborough's borne
witness to both false dawns (the Sam Baldock-inspired 2-1 win last
season) and indeed false sunsets (after a 3-0 defeat there the season
before I was convinced we were fading out of the Championship. And a
bit of me wondered if this wasn't another inaccurate omen; after all
a backs-to-the-wall 10-man performance is something even the poorest
sides can pull out of the bag once in a while. But it really did
feel like a turning point, trailing into the cold Cambridgeshire air
that night. It was a third win on the bounce and we were only to
lose once more between then and now. It was the moment Steve
Cotterill found himself playing the right defence. But more than
that it was when we became a team again, not the hesitant collection
of footballers of the autumn, nor the disparate group of
near-strangers we'd seen that winter.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It was Bristol City. It was
constructed of loanees, it was designed to float rather than to fly,
but no matter – it was Bristol City and it was a joy to watch. How
much of it runs out at Ashton Gate in August we'll have to see. But
this spring it was a team, and it was ours.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A baffling season, with some of the
strangest swings in quality and in apparent ability I can remember.
And probably one we'll never be able to agree on.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To some, nothing happened bar the
removal of a poor manager not getting results. To others –
including me – an exciting concept prematurely dispensed with due
to teething troubles. We'll never know what would have happened if
the board had kept their nerve, or perhaps more accurately swallowed
their apparent dislike of O'Driscoll the man.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I'm not getting into the SOD v
Cotterill argument because we'll never have enough data, or I don't
think we will. I was into the promise of the future that the Board
and SOD sold, and I thought it was abandoned far too quickly. As the
team developed experience, both in terms of playing more games
together and in terms of being augmented by experienced additions, it
became a better side – something that could quite easily have been
predicted in September, and certainly came true in March.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But what future do we have now? The
next few months will be important as we really ought to be preparing
for a promotion race. The fans' expectations have been raised –
Cotterill has shown he can get us performing to the level our wage
bill indicates we should reach, and that will surely be a Top Six
wage bill next season. But coming with that will be the increased
expectation of fans who will, surely, no longer accept a 0-0 home
draw with Swindon followed by the loss of a 2-0 lead at Colchester
with such equanimity. Equally the manager will have to start talking
less about the form table, a mathematical construct with no prizes
attached, and more about the real table for which he will have
complete responsibility.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In order to do that one assumes we will
need to hold on to some of that external experience, or to similar
sorts of player. You can make a case either way for Wade Elliott's
signing – he's been excellent but he is, after all, 36 – but the
improvement we've shown with him and Simon Gillett in the centre has
been plain. The balancing act between doing this and continuing to
develop younger players will be key, though; we're in League One in
part because of a series of short-term decisions, and now we're safe
we cannot neglect the long-term.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We may need to replace the goals, and
the leadership from the front, of Sam Baldock, although the size of
bid you'd assume we'd need to cover a) the remainder of his contract,
b) transfer and signing-on fees for his replacement, and c) a bit of
profit for the books is starting to make me think he might stay after
all. (That said, if the right offer comes in we <i>must</i>
accept it; we cannot find ourselves in a Maynard situation if it can
be avoided.)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When
Steve Cotterill came in I said I'd judge him after two years, and
I'll stick with that – fans have to be as serious about the
long-term as they expect the club to be. But this is an important
moment because, for the second time this season, we've been shown a
vision of the future that is attractive. It's the near future,
rather than the medium-term, this time; but it's exciting, and it
could be an enormous amount of fun. We'll know by Christmas whether
we've arrived. But what we do in the next few months will have a lot
to do with whether we get there, or whether we go down yet another
Bristol City dead end and find ourselves starting over again in a
year.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
An odd
conclusion to draw after this weekend's game, but: it's never boring,
is it?</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-47276408374601844352014-04-12T14:28:00.003+01:002014-04-12T14:28:42.416+01:00What maketh a football club?<b><strike>19 April 2014 </strike>18 April 2014 - Bristol City v Notts County</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Running a football club
must ultimately be a difficult business. With tens of thousands of
fans, each of whom has different priorities, different levels of
support and a different idea of the ideal football club in their
mind, it's hard to unite every member of the fanbase over one clear,
simple issue. But to give them credit, City's management succeeded
in doing so this week. By moving the Notts County game forward by a
day from next Saturday to Good Friday, they managed to bring every
fan together in condemnation of an absurd decision.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It barely needs
explaining why it was so appalling. Over Easter, when people tend to
plan time away from work, to relax with friends and family, to enjoy
the spring, the club's decision will have meant that many supporters
will have to decide between dropping keenly-anticipated activities
and supporting the team in a big game that could well seal the deal
of City's survival. Not to mention those fans who will have long ago
arranged cheap trains (and even flights!) to get them to Ashton Gate
by Saturday afternoon. (Full disclosure: I am <u>not</u>
one of those people this time. The game will be the last I miss all
season, and was always planned as such.)</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This
was announced by means of a terse, unapologetic statement on the
website, followed up a day or so later by the club's reasoning for
doing so. The fact that this took a day makes it pretty clear that
the club, somehow, hadn't expected fans to be outraged by the
decision, as though saying it's “for football reasons” would be
enough. The explanatory statement wasn't great either, easily
interpretable as pinning the blame on the previous management team,
who happened not to be in the building any more, since they hadn't
requested a move of the fixture initially.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This
won't do for a couple of reasons. The previous management team may
well have been targeting points from home games, and seen an extra
day's recovery time after this weekend's trip to Walsall as more
significant than a lost day's preparation for the Stevenage game.
That's their prerogative; we'll never know how that decision would
have played out. The new management team have the prerogative to
disagree, of course; but to be apparently unaware that the FA rules
permitted a switch of dates until prompted to ask by another club,
Sheffield United, changing their Easter Saturday game, is pretty lax,
and it's tempting to suggest that once months in advance turned into
nine days in advance the club should have gone ahead with the hand
dealt.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
While
we can argue as much as we like about the rights and wrongs of this
particular incident, the question of taking a perceived sporting
advantage at the cost of significantly inconveniencing fans bears
further thought. Ultimately the issue at stake here is what's more
important for a football club; to pick up as many points as possible,
or to maintain a good relationship with its supporters and the
community in which it sits.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There's
not a right answer here. By purchasing tickets, rather than
expecting entrance to be provided for free, we accept that
maintaining a competitive football club at this level comes at cost,
that without requiring money in exchange for access the club couldn't
exist. Volunteer players and Sport England funding won't, we
realise, allow City to challenge for the playoffs next season.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But
does this mean that the club is entitled to go to the other extreme,
to charge whatever the market will bear for football tickets, to
accept money to change its name, its colours, to close down the
Community Trust and to kick off games late at night in order to hit
peak time in Hong Kong? Is that OK? And at what extreme does it
stop becoming OK, for you?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We've
seen clubs that begin to push in that direction, such as our friends
Cardiff City from over the bridge, get a certain level of success.
Cardiff shrugged off the loss of a section of their fanbase on the
basis that promotion to the Premier League would see those seats
filled by new fans, there to see Rooney, Suarez and co, as much as to
see the Bluebirds. The Redbirds. Whoever. Vincent Tan will think
he's been successful, that he got his decision right – whatever he
may now be thinking about his later decision to remove Malky Mackay –
and there's no covenant a football club owner has to swear that
stipulates the traditions by which they must be bound.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But
this logic only works if you see the club and the fans as two
distinct actors, rather than two parts of a weird gestalt entity.
The less a person knows about football culture, the less I suspect
they will appreciate this symbiotic bond – the thing that causes us
to talk about how “we” did at Walsall today, even if “we”
didn't play, didn't go, or even weren't in the country at final
whistle. In order for football to be anything more than a
combination corporate muscle/feats of skill demonstration – in
order for it to avoid becoming Formula One, essentially – that
emotional connection is vital (and the smart ones know that and
exploit it to sell Sky Sports subscriptions, third kits and
mousemats). It's not just a sense of affection, it's a sense of
belonging.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Robert
Peel, the man who codified what we understand as the modern police
force, famously said that “the police are the public and the public
are the police”. The truer we feel that is, the more we trust the
police and, in theory, the better they should do their job. Every
racial incident and dead newspaper vendor tests this, but policing by
consent – essentially, we allow them to lock us up because we think
that the consequences of not doing so would be worse – requires
this bond to be seen to exist. Football support is the same really.
The fans are the club, and the club are the fans. If they lose our
trust they begin to seem like a separate entity, and no longer
deserve our support. It's why the club's off-pitch actions matter,
and why having a club that isn't just a three-points generating
machine (fat chance, but still...) is important. We need, as far as
possible, for the club to do right by the fans.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The
Notts County mistake alone won't, of course, threaten that tension in
the long term. Of course it won't – it's an isolated, stupid
decision which I still trust we won't see repeated. But football
clubs need to be careful, and need to consider the less quantifiable
consequences of any decision they make that effects the fanbase.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
For
what shall it profit a club if it shall gain the whole world and lose
its own soul? Or, put another way, if City get three points and
nobody's there to see it, did it happen?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Or,
if it's only seen on pay-per-view TV and by day-trippers from afar,
when do we have to say that it simply isn't City any more?</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-83035077702362677342014-03-04T18:59:00.003+00:002014-03-04T19:02:33.015+00:00Long way south<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>1 March 2014 - Bristol City 2 Gillingham 1</b></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furthest_South">Farthest
South</a> is one of my favourite pages on Wikipedia. A lot of the
Wiki-holes I fall down have started there, terminated there, or led
me there apparently by chance. I tend to find polar exploration
endlessly fascinating. The true stories of men (pretty much
exclusively men, I'm afraid) from our past battling against an
environment as far removed from their experience as the surface of
the Moon is from ours today is the closest real-life equivalent I've
found to the beloved science-fiction tales of my youth; and the way
in which one can see every facet of a person cast against that bleak
white ice makes for some of the most enthralling historical character
studies you'll find.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Getting to the South
Pole was an incremental process spanning centuries, each expedition
besting the last by degrees of latitude, ranging from the ten degrees
Captain Cook gained in 1773 to the half-degrees and fractional
degrees that the focus narrowed to as explorers in the second half of
the 19<sup>th</sup> and first half of the 20<sup>th</sup> centuries
closed in on 90<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">°.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">There's
not much, really, that separates an expedition like James Ross' which
gets to the edge of the Antarctic landmass from an expedition like
Roald Amundsen's which makes history by reaching the South Pole. Not
to the untrained eye, at least. If you saw two boats preparing at
the same dock, the gear they'd be loading would like rather similar;
furs, grease, dogs, sledges, Bibles, scientists, risqué postcards,
and so on.</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> But the
differences would be there, those fractional anomalies marking one
expedition out for success and the other for (relative) failure.
It's the equivalent of what sportspeople, proper, Olympic-gold
winning athletes, trainers and team managers, talk about as the 1% -
those marginal gains that make all the difference. One set of
provisions and equipment will get you to 88</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">°</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">23',
which is a long old, cold old way, but it's not all the way. You
need a (only very slightly) different set to 90</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">°</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">And
I guess footballers must be like that too. Sure, we've got that
trained eye to a degree, we can tell Iniesta's control from
Elliott's; but to the non-fan there's no difference, they're two
footballers. Frankly if Andr</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">é</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">s
and Marvin turned up to your local five-a-side kickabout they'd
probably impress you roughly the same amount; Marvin might even have
the edge if you principally wanted stories about Ivan Sproule.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">All
the difference here, as you and I well know, is in technical ability
– and while the two seem sometimes to be worlds apart, there
probably is only 1% between being able to manipulate a football to
professional level, and to manipulate it at world-class level. While
we do, of course, hear from time to time about players who didn't
make it because their head is “not right” - a Michael Johnson or,
frankly, a Jay Emmanuel-Thomas – by the time you've become a
professional this cannot commonly be a deciding factor. We don't
like to admit it sometimes but becoming a professional footballer is
</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>hard</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">.
It requires great discipline, great self-denial, the commitment and
focus to carry on during your developing years when other temptations
present themselves, the resilience to deal with knockdowns, get up
and do it all again; all that Rudyard Kipling stuff. The process of
getting to professional status is in many ways a process eliminating
those who don't have that stuff. It's not perfect, sure, no process
is; but you weigh those with the discipline it must continue to take
in order to draw a paycheck from Rochdale, Alloa or FC Paris month-in
month-out against those identifiable-by-name outliers with the talent
but not the application, and the proportion who fall at the last
hurdle looks fractional.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">What
I'm describing and saying is a given is that intangible thing which
we like to call “passion”. By definition a professional
footballer has that, just as a well-off scion of the British ruling
class who decides to brave possible death and certain frostbite in
the Antarctic has passion for his calling. Yet football fans are
obsessed with it; in this country, at least. It's the thing which
makes our boys different from everybody else – the passionate Brit
vs the milquetoast foreigner with his diving and his technical
ability. As though the sacrifices to be made to become Francesco
Totti are lower than those necessary to become Smokin' Jack Wilshere.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The
other thing we're painfully guilty of doing is conflating “passion”
and “effort” with winning and losing. This weekend, you can be
sure that City would have been criticised for “not wanting to win
enough”, “not trying enough”, or “being pampered” had Simon
Gillett's fabulous effort caught the outside of the post and bounces
harmlessly out of play. Even if every other move in the game had
been identical, our superstitious search for uncountable outside
agencies would kick in. Just as when City played Tranmere the other
week it was, on certain forums, unacceptable to describe the players
as “tired”. They've got large cars you see, they don't work 40
hours weeks, so tiredness isn't acceptable. The scientific fact that
a set of athletes exerting themselves for the second time in five
days will always lag behind a similar set for endurance, technique
and reaction time doesn't come into it. They shouldn't be tired;
they should want it enough to overcome it, and their pay packet
should somehow guarantee it. The unquantifiable triumphing over the
factual.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">(None
of this of course absolves the manager from a) refusing to make
subsitutions until very late in the previous game; b) naming an
unchanged side; or c) failing to take advantage when presented with
identically disadvantaged opposition at Bramall Lane the following
weekend. But that's a side issue.)</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">It's
handy to have something science can't account for in order to explain
the outcome bias we all suffer from when it comes to football – the
feeling that if a manager did something, and the team won, then it
must by definition have been a good decision, rather than simply a
rebalancing of risk and probability in what becomes a largely random
environment. In the same way that arguments about football (this
happens a lot on TV) often boil down the attempted refuting of
statistical evidence based upon “the evidence of my own eyes”; a
canard used by those who then mistakenly believe themselves to have
won, rather than conceded, the debate. We all have eyes, but we also
have brains riddled with confirmation bias to interpret our optical
input. And it's helpful to invent a perceived gap – a mythical
disjoint between one player's ability to “run through brick walls”
- in order to smooth over the equivalent gap between reality and
interpretation. “Desire” then moves from useful idiot to crucial
lens through which the game must be seen. The cheer that goes up at
the Gate every week for the player who loses the ball, but pursues
his tackler twenty yards toward our goal to win it back at the cost
of a throw, losing possession and territorial advantage but
demonstrating desire, never fails to amuse me.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The
1% isn't desire. Apart from in the rarest of cases, that's a given.
It's technique, ability, and crucially making the right decisions
consistently that gets you success. Scott of the Antarctic had every
ounce of desire you could possibly want, and by all accounts was a
leader of men. Roald Amundsen was a colder, more obsessive
character. But he had the sort of obsession that led to living with
the Inuit to prepare for polar conditions; using dog-driven sleds to go
above the ice rather than ponies to trudge through it; understanding
how the food they ate and their customs allowed them to maintain a
society in some of the most inhospitable conditions on the planet.
That's the learning that allowed him to stock that boat in such a way
that everything on board would take him to the South Pole.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Scott's
passion got him damn close. But his British belief that “how it
has been done” is “how it should be done”, and his conviction
that our way was right and there was little to learn from others, saw
him prepare that marginally different ship that was marginally unfit
for purpose. Not totally wrong. But maybe 1% out. That crucial 1%.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I
don't know what you want from football. Personally I'd like to see
us win enough games to stay up. And I'd like to see us do that by
having a bit more than the opposition on sufficient occasions. So
I'll continue to be interested in what's quantifiable and measurable,
understanding that in a one-off game, or even a dozen one-off games,
cause and effect don't necessarily exist as two points on a nice
clear line. What I won't do is waste my time shouting for a given.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">We've
all got the same Bibles on the boat. But faith alone won't get us to
the Pole.</span></div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-28802970481604558932014-02-08T12:00:00.003+00:002014-02-08T12:00:30.309+00:00The tale of the Rich Merchant and the Six Architects<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In the reign of Caliph
Haroun Alrashid, or perhaps even later, there was a wealthy merchant
in a city called Bagdad, or Balsora, or something of that kind. The
merchant had become not by selling his own merchandise, but by
advising all of the other merchants of the bazaar what to do with
their gold; where to hide it, and how to spend it, and who would best
look after it. And, as is often the fashion with men who advise
wealthy men on how to spend their gold, he had plentiful gold
himself.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Now this merchant had a
home unbefitting newly acquired status; less a house than a mere
shack, with rotten walls, unglazed windows, and an insubstantial roof
which allowed in the rain. As a man of some substance, he would that
his home was decorated to the same rich standard as his vestments,
the caparison of his horse, and the cane with which he disported
about the city. His home, he decided, must stand comparison with the
finest homes in the country. He must be able to invite the visier
Giafar there to dine without feeling shame for this reminder of his
humble origins. So he cast about for a man who could transform his
humble shack into a palace.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It happened that in a
nearby town there was an architect of some repute who had taken a
shack humbler even than the merchant's and had transformed it into a
pagoda which made all the people of the town proud. But this town
was humble, and stricken with great poverty. The merchant went to
the town, and by offering more pieces of gold than the architect had
ever seen, he persuaded him to return to the city and build him a
palace. And this was the First Architect.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The First Architect
knew that the job was too much for any man alone to contemplate, so
he used a portion of the gold to acquire the services of a young man
of the town as his assistant. And between them the First Architect
and his assistant designed a palace which outstripped anything the
First Architect had dreamt of creating. It had walls of stone, a
flat roof of slate and cement, and four small minarets, one at each
corner, which presented a beautiful aspect of the town. The First
Architect presented this plan to the merchant, who saw that it was
good, and handed the Architect all the gold he needed for the
materials.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But, said the First
Architect, I cannot turn this shack into this palace. It is not
possible to build a palace like this by adding to the shack,
piecemeal. I must first destroy the shack and clear the site before
the palace can be built.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Of course, said the
merchant, I understand; and he bought a tent, and slept in the tent
for two whole years, while the Architect prepared him a great palace.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The merchant was most
involved with the design of the palace, and he and the Architect
spoke regularly; and often the Architect asked the merchant if he
might have the honour of offering him hospitality, so as to relieve
the merchant of the drudgery of sleeping beneath canvas. And the
merchant was so humble as to accept. And so they became close
friends.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Eventually, the palace
was prepared, and the merchant was installed. He was pleased that
the palace had been built, and built so quickly; and he held a great
feast that night, and suffered the Architect and his assistant to
attend, and to sit at table with the other merchants and wealthy folk
of the town.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The merchant, all
swollen with pride, asked the Architect if he had not truly built a
palace equal even to that of the Caliph himself. It is true, said
the Architect, that the palace I have built for you is very
beautiful; but the Caliph lives in the finest palace in the nation,
and sleeps in a bedroom whose curtains keep out all light but the
light of the moon, that he may always dream the most beautiful
dreams.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The merchant was
covetous that he might dream like the Caliph himself, and demanded of
the Architect that he order such curtains to be woven for him. Of
course, said the Architect, I can have these curtains woven; but I
will need the finest spun gossamer for this, and it will cost you ten
thousand pieces of gold.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Although the merchant
was uneasy that he should spend so great a sum on curtains for his
bedroom, his desire to have the finest palace overtook him, and he
ordered his slave that the Architect be given ten thousand pieces of
gold, and ten thousand more to hire the finest weaver in the kingdom;
and the Architect arranged for the curtains to be woven, and hung
them himself later that month.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When the curtains had
been placed across his window, the merchant saw that they did not
keep lights other than that of the moon from his room; the lamps of
the city could still plainly be seen. But he was desperate to
believe that he lived in a state as fine as the Caliph, and he said
nothing of this, rather asking the Architect whether now his palace
was equal even unto that of the Caliph himself.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It is true, said the
Architect, that your palace is fine; but of course the Caliph has no
metalwork about his palace but gold, that he is not connected to the
baser things of life; even the pipes and cisterns of the Caliph's
palace are made of finest gold.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The merchant was
covetous that he might be no less base than the Caliph himself, and
demanded of the Architect that he order such plumbing to be installed
for him. Of course, said the Architect, I can have this plumbing
installed; but I will need freshly mined gold ingots for this, and it
will cost you twenty thousand pieces of your own gold supply.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Although the merchant
was uneasy that he should spend so great a sum on plumbing for his
home, his desire to have the finest palace overtook him, and he
ordered his slave that the Architect be given twenty thousand pieces
of gold, and twenty thousand more to hire the finest plumber in the
kingdom; and the Architect arranged for the pipes to be built, and
oversaw their installation later that month.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When the plumbing had
been laid beneath the boards of his floor, the merchant saw that they
did not hold water as well as lead had; beneath his feet, and above
his head, the paintwork darkened and began to spoil. But he was
desperate to believe that he lived in a state as fine as the Caliph,
and he said nothing of this, rather asking the Architect whether now
his palace was equal even unto that of the Caliph himself.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It is true, said the
Architect, that your palace is fine; but of course the Caliph has a
fine harem, with a beautiful young slave girl for each day, that he
may lie with another one every night for a whole year.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The merchant was
covetous that he might be as well satisfied as the Caliph himself,
and demanded of the Architect that he arrange for such an array of
slave girls to live with him. Of course, said the Architect, I can
have these slave girls brought to you; but I will need to barter with
the chief slave-owner of the city, and it will cost you thirty
thousand pieces of gold.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Although the merchant
was uneasy that he should spend so great a sum on his own urges, his
desire to have the finest palace overtook him, and he ordered his
slave that the Architect be given thirty thousand pieces of gold, and
thirty thousand more for diverse activities the Architect convinced
him were essential; and the Architect arranged for the slave girls to
be purchased, and brought them to the palace later that month.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When the slave girls
had been brought into his harem, the merchant saw that not all of
them were equally fair; and that they required bedding, and food, and
entertainment, in order that they were minded to fulfil his desires.
And he saw that the golden pipes were releasing such water that his
ceilings were crumbling; and he knew that he could not sleep; and he
understood that the more money the Architect had spent, the worse the
results had been, and he brought the Architect to him and with great
demonstrations of grief (for they were still close friends) he
released the Architect.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I shall no longer give
such sums of money to an architect who has never built such a palace
before, vowed the merchant. I will entice an architect of great
repute, who has built many fine palaces, and who I know can deliver
me a home to rival that of the Caliph himself.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So the merchant went
into the kingdom and saw the finest palaces in other cities. And he
asked who had built them and, on being told, took a purse of gold and
jewels from his treasury, and offered it to this architect that he
might build him a palace of equal grandeur. And this was the Second
Architect.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Second Architect
came to the merchant's home, and saw the harem that cost so much, and
the golden pipes that leaked, and the curtains that did not allow the
merchant to sleep, and he said, yes, I can make this palace more
beautiful, but there is much work to do. I will need the First
Architect's assistant and I will need time.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Of course, said the
merchant. You may have his assistant and you may have time. But the
first task I have for you is to make this palace beautiful. And he
had a cart arrive from the jeweller's; and the cart contained
sapphires, and diamonds, and garnets, and rubies, and a statue of the
merchant himself made from finest gold, and told the Architect that
his first task was to make the palace shine as the Caliph's did.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But, my lord, said the
Architect, there is much to do before that in order that your palace
is sound; for it drains your purse and it may collapse.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
No, said the merchant;
it must be beautiful, and it must shine like a million stars. I have
purchased another home, away from the brigands and the Caliph's tax
collectors, where I will live; this palace will be my second home and
it must be decorated in the opulent fashion that I demand. This is
what I pay you for; and if you do not fulfil the task then it is
within my power to have you arrested and put to death.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Saying this, the
merchant took the now unloaded cart and made for his new home.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The terrified
Architect, with the help of his assistant, set to work. He was a
fine Architect and knew that a palace which caused its master's money
to be spent on a redundant harem, while water dripped down the walls,
needed more than jewels; but in fear of his life he installed the
statue, and began to emblazon the walls with jewels. Yet as he
worked he felt the walls buckle under the weight of the fine jewels
they had never been designed to bear; and he knew that the statue
would spoil in the damp; and he became sure that he would be put to
death whatever he did. So, in that first night, he fled the town and
was never seen again.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
His assistant awoke
that morning to find that the palace was beginning to collapse upon
itself. Having not personally been commissioned to install the
jewellery, he went into the town and bought wood, and stone, and a
mixture for cement, and began to set struts inside to prevent the
collapse; and while these struts were not pleasing to the eye, they
did keep the palace from collapsing. And so he became the Third
Architect.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Third Architect
continued to repair the building for some time, but he had never
designed a building alone but rather been a stalwart assistant, and
without the merchant to guide him the palace became ugly, and less
like the Caliph's palace than ever; together with which, he had no
mind for figures, and the repairs he made to the ceiling were
expensive, and he threw out the gossamer curtains for no financial
return, and he allowed the harem to drain the treasury of the
merchant.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And when the merchant
returned from his other home to spend time in the city, he saw that
his palace was less beautiful than ever, and that parts of it
continued to decay, and that the statue of himself had become
tarnished and spoilt. He did not credit the Third Architect for
keeping the building standing, but cast him out of the city. And
understanding that the greatest architects came from the Northern
kingdoms, he made a pilgrimage North to find the next Architect, who
could repair the damage and make his palace fit for entertaining rich
and powerful men.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Arriving in the North,
he asked the people who would be the finest architect for him. And
each of them said, it should be this man, who is young, but already
has a great reputation and will one day build the finest palace in
the kingdom; you should see that he builds it for you. And the
merchant met this man, and brought him back to the city, and made him
the Fourth Architect.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He charged the Fourth
Architect with repairing the damage his predecessors had made to the
palace, and making it finer than ever; but he also told the Architect
that the palace had become a drain on his treasury, and asked that
the new palace be made so that it cost only one-twentieth as much to
maintain. And with that he returned to his new home.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Fourth Architect
saw the damage that had been done by the ugly constructions of the
Third Architect, and the unfinished follies of the Second Architect,
and the expensive installations of the First Architect, and he
quaked; but he was young, and he believed he could do as the merchant
had instructed. So first he sent the slave women forth and disbanded
the harem, to save the money spent every day on their upkeep. And he
took the spoilt statue and he removed it to a far part of the town
where none knew of the merchant, that it no longer be a centre-piece
of the palace. And he removed the jewels from the unfinished walls.
And he began to replace the golden pipes with iron pipes better
suited to the transport of water.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But to remove the
statue, and the pipes, and the jewels, meant tearing away the bricks
and plaster of the palace. And the palace became cold, and let in
rain, and insects began to make their homes in the exposed walls.
The Fourth Architect knew that this need not be how the palace was
forever. But when the merchant next returned from his other home to
spend time in the city, he did not know that. He saw that his palace
was less beautiful than ever; that there were no slave girls to pass
the time with; that the walls had been stripped of jewels, and that
gaping holes appeared in the walls. And he raged, and he sent the
Fourth Architect back to the North, where he was welcomed by the
people and began to build beautiful palaces once more.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The merchant decided
that he would no longer employ young architects, as he blamed the
Fourth Architect entirely for the state into which his palace had
entered. And he took on the services of a more experienced
architect, who looked at the crumbling palace and said, yes, this can
be made good, and yes, you will never again have to give so much of
your treasury away; I have done this before and I know how it must be
done. But it will take time. Of course, said the merchant, I
understand; and he returned to his new home, and this architect
became the Fifth Architect.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
At first, the Fifth
Architect felt that by cementing the walls together, and turning the
room which had held the harem to a new purpose, and plastering over
the cracks in the foundations, the palace could be restored. But as
he worked, it continued to collapse; and he would no sooner support
one wall than another would sag to the ground; and he knew that it
could not be done. He was too experienced to waste his time on this
endeavour, and it was clear that the only palace this site could
support would be a new one, built on fresh foundations with a single
guiding intelligence behind it. So he employed local men to demolish
the palace, and made a new plan for a beautiful palace that at last
truly would rival that of the Caliph; and found that he could do it
without depleting the treasury; and set to work upon the foundations.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And at this time the
merchant returned to the city, and he was struck with horror to see
what had become of the palace; and he called the Fifth Architect to
him in a passion. You told me that you would build me another great
palace, he raged, and yet I return to find that I am further from a
palace than ever I was! You have failed more grievously than any
other Architect, who at least built a home for me – now I must
return to the tent which I felt sure I would never sleep in again. I
dismiss you from my service, never return to this city.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And the Fifth Architect
rolled up his plans and left the city.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And while the merchant
began to put up his tent as though he were a beggar, he was
approached by a cunning man from a nearby town; a man who had built
homes for men of moderate income before, although he had never
constructed a palace. I understand, said the cunning man, that you
require a home upon that site? I have built homes before; and
although, perhaps, that site could never support a palace, I am moved
almost to tears to see a man like you, accustomed to finery, sleeping
upon the earth because you have paid so many fraudulent architects.
They have claimed that palaces can be built, but I say the home you
have here must be limited by what is possible.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And, angry, tired and
weary of spending money on the palace, the merchant employed this man
as the Sixth Architect. And the Sixth Architect, who had not built a
home for some years, constructed a shack – and it had rotten walls,
and it had unglazed windows, and it had an insubstantial roof that
let in the rain. And he said, my lord, move in here; for am I not
the first to give you walls, and windows, and a roof. And the
merchant accepted that the pragmatic Sixth Architect had at least
provided him with a home in which he could live whilst in the city.
And he moved in to the same shack that once had thought he had left
behind; although he was older, and poorer, and apparently little the
wiser for the experience.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And so we leave the
merchant and his Sixth Architect. And as we move away we hear the
Architect assuring the merchant that he can build him a palace on the
site, if only he is given time – and ten thousand gold pieces for
his expenses...</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-28298803970969329392014-01-27T22:15:00.001+00:002014-01-27T22:15:18.861+00:00Plans<b>17 January 2014 - Bristol City 2 Milton Keynes Dons 2</b><br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
City fans are a
naturally divided bunch. Whether that's truer of us than the fans of
any other given club, I couldn't tell you, but from Lee Johnson to
Sean O'Driscoll the fanbase has never been short of subjects to
disagree vehemently about.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Chief amongst those
this season might well be the '<a href="http://www.bcfc.co.uk/news/article/20130206-lansdownfivepillars-641677.aspx?pageView=full#anchored">Five
Pillars</a>'.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Five Pillars were
announced towards the end of last season and represented the
distillation of City's strategy; the five key principles which would
be adhered to in order to build a sustainable club with a sound base.
By prioritising Community Engagement, Academy and Youth Development,
Player Recruitment & Talent Identification, Financial Prudence &
Control, and Facilities, City would begin to take a genuinely
long-term view. No more quick fixes, no more sticking plasters.
Decisions made today would now be on the basis of the effect
tomorrow. In turn, these Pillars ought to guarantee that there would
be City fans in the future, that they would have home-grown players
to support, that their club would no longer offer long contracts to
declining players, that the club would not be vulnerable to
administration or predatory owners, and that there would be a
fit-for-purpose stadium together with good quality training
facilities.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Personally (while I had
a slight concern over <a href="http://www.bcfc.co.uk/news/article/20130206-lansdownfivepillars-641677.aspx">nicking
the way a major world religion expresses its tenets</a> to talk about
the strategy of a football club) I welcomed the articulation of a
clear strategy. Some fans argued that this is simply codifying what
all football clubs do as a matter of course, but I didn't buy that
argument; while all football clubs presumably have some sort of
community programme, academy, scouting network etc, there are also a
number of other things football teams do: maximising commercial
appeal, say, developing their profile away from their home city, and
looking after long-term and older fans. City probably do all of
these things too, but the point of the Five Pillars is that they
comprise the things that can't be messed around with, that the club
will stick to when choices have to be made and when push comes to
shove.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
For my sins, I spend a
fair bit of my professional time analysing strategies, and the
Pillars don';t feel too bad. They're relatively forward thinking and
mark out the type of club we aspire to be – a Swansea or a
Southampton rather than a Cardiff or a Hull. The very fact that I
can say “these are clubs that seem to do this sort of thing, these
are ones that don't” I think proves the point that the pillars
aren't just best practice – they're a more important statement of
intent. They're clear enough to be comprehensible and thorough
enough that everything we do should contribute to them.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Thing is, though, it
seems that they're also transient. There's been a lot of talk about
this recently, and there's no doubt for me that the spirit and letter
of our “Player Recruitment and Talent Identification” pillar has
been moved away from, for the time being at least. The wording of
this pillar, in part, is:</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 0.56cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1b1b1b;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i>Revealed
by the club’s majority shareholder Steve Lansdown in January, the
club has taken a major change in direction with regards to its policy
on recruitment.</i></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 0.56cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="line-height: 0.56cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1b1b1b;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i>The
club aims to sign players aged 24 and under more often than not, with
older recruits becoming an exception, rather than the norm.”</i></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In Steve Cotterill's
first transfer window we've signed two players permanently –
Karleigh Osbourne, 25, and Adam El-Abd, 29. Both are defenders. We
signed two defenders in the summer, too – Aden Flint, 24, and
Derrick Williams, 20. This is a pretty clear shift. All are most
comfortable at centre-back so with the best will in the world they
can't all play regularly. And entirely reasonably the new boss is
likely to prefer his own players.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A lot of people have
been prepared to accept this on the basis that we've not been doing
very well of late, and the long-term plan has to be put on hold while
we sort out the short-term. I can understand this argument, but it
speaks to some fairly terrible strategic thinking at Board level if
we do indeed have a strategy that we can only adhere to when we're
winning games.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The point of a strategy
is that your short-term tactics, whatever they may be, need to
measure up to it. If a strategy is so poorly defined that under
certain circumstances it's impossible to stay with, then frankly it's
pretty ill-thought-through. Anybody developing a strategy needs to
know what the risks, short-, medium- and long-term are, and they need
to know how those risks are mitigated in line with the strategic
aims, the pillars.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Having a bad start to
the season was always a possibility given the level of turnover in
the summer. It's ridiculous to say it wasn't; so many new players in
a division that's infamously tricky always made that a chance. And
as well as being reasonably likely, such an eventuality would have a
significant impact on the club. For that reason it should have been
one of the main risks the club foresaw, and they should have had a
decent plan available for dealing with it. Clearly they didn't –
the action we got was divergent from the strategy, which means one of
two things. Either the response was wrong, or the strategy was.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don't think the
strategy was wrong, at least not that part of it. I think that
bringing in predominantly younger players is a very, very sensible
policy, and one has to accept that losing games due to to mistakes,
or not being able to control matches as we might prefer, is the only
way a club like ours can thrive in the long term. Doing the opposite
is what got us here. I can understand the word “exception”, but
if there was latitude to make exceptions in January then there ought
to have been latitude to permanently sign an exceptional, experienced
centre-back in August (O'Driscoll's loan market activity makes it
quite clear to me that he knew the squad was missing one). A change
of policy here makes the entire thing meaningless. If your
strategy's right, you don't change it in response to events; you
respond to events in line with the strategy.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Cotterill and the board
have obviously agreed to change it. The problem is that the only
guarantee here is that young players don't develop if they don't get
played. And while we've seen a fair bit of Williams I'd be surprised
if he keeps his place – even more surprised if he and Flint both
play when we're at full strength. There's no guarantee, however,
that Adam El-Abd is the man who'll keep us up. Clearly having an
experienced Championship level centre-back improves your chances.
But it doesn't, can't, guarantee anything.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Cotterill's brief seems
to be different to O'Driscoll's – he's been told to keep us up then
worry about improving the team, rather than doing the two at once.
But focusing on the short-term hasn't yet paid dividends – his
first seven games in charge have produced precisely as many points as
O'Driscoll's final seven, with the only difference between two
surprisingly similar records being that we've conceded one goal more
under Cotterill. This isn't to have a go at the new boss, who's done
much right since arriving. It's to point out that there are no
guarantees in this business – our form, which had been steadily
improving until O'Driscoll was removed, has plateau'd. Given the
counteracting effects of a new manager bounce (positive) and a lack
of continuity (negative), you might have expected something roughly
along these lines. But plateauing won't do if we're to stay up. We
need to get our form improving again, just as it did in November and
December.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Cotterill's lack of
strategic restrictions mean, perhaps, that he has more cards to play
when it comes to keeping us up. But if we do go down now, we go down
in worse shape than if we'd done so after a season of bringing
through young players and developing a style. Given that we can't
know what would have happened had we kept O'Driscoll it seems an odd
gamble to take. We've not learned the lessons of the past, we risk
reaping the consequences of abandoning the strategy because, frankly,
we don't seem to have realised why one was a good idea in the first
place.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Funnily enough I think
Steve Cotterill just might be good enough to keep us up. And he'll
have done well if he does. But if so, we need the board to recognise
that long-term planning isn't only for times of plenty. Football is
a constant gamble, with too many factors in play to guarantee
anything over a game, a month, or half a season even. Like any
gambler a good football club needs always to minimise its losses.
And in my view City have been guilty of failing to do that.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-81438193987861767992014-01-07T21:53:00.002+00:002014-01-08T19:31:08.962+00:00Entertain me<b>29 December 2013 - Bristol City 4 Stevenage 1</b><br />
<b>4 January 2014 - Bristol City 1 Watford 1</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What a strange feeling
I had leaving Ashton Gate on Saturday. A new and unusual one: fun.
Pure, uncomplicated pleasure. Not something I'm used to feeling
washing over me after a day spent in the cold and the rain in BS3.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mad, really, isn't it?
I spend £400 every summer on a season ticket. I spend £30-£50 on
rail fares for every game I go to; half that again on overpriced
First Great Western food and drink; and perhaps most costly I give up
20 or so of my precious Saturdays every year. And I do it for
something that I rarely enjoy. What was striking was the genuine
sense of novelty provoked in my by feeling that I'd enjoyed my day's
leisure.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Everyone knows how
painful it's been to go to Ashton Gate for the last couple of years,
but this isn't really about that. Because I've also come away from
the stadium feeling triumph, elation, or even out-and-out joy.
(Honest I have, albeit not much in recent years.) And each of those
moments has been worth the financial outlay above times several,
which is good as it's the only basis on which I can justify it –
that what I'm paying is the mean value of a fervour which may hit me
only once in ten visits, but when it does is worth ten times what
that particular trip cost.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It's unusual therefore
to simply feel that I've paid the right amount for a good afternoon's
entertainment. But that was Saturday. With the pressure already
released by value of a) no league points being up for grabs, and b)
being the underdogs by a division-and-a-bit, this didn't ever feel
like a day that was likely to be upsetting. For that matter, we took
the opportunity of the FA Cup to sit in different seats, breaking
another unconscious link between this game and the numbing routine of
League One.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
For all these reasons
it didn't <u>matter</u> that we didn't win. Sure, it would have been
nice to do so, but what we did was just fine. We matched a side who
aren't just in a higher division, but who made a habit of finishing
above us even when we were in the same division. We equalised 60
seconds after going behind, which was lovely. We played good
football, produced a fair few portents of continued league success,
and yeah – we entertained a crowd who were there to be entertained,
to support their team and to enjoy the day. It was terrific, and the
fact that it set up a replay a short train journey from Euston (and
therefore another game I can go to) was an extra bonus.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It was actually a lot
more fun than the previous weekend's game. Then, we'd beaten a
relegation rival 4-1, our greatest margin of victory for well over a
year, we'd pulled closer to safety and we'd completed the taking of
six points from two games about which everyone said we damn well
needed to take six points. That was great – winning important
games is a terrific feeling, winning them well best of all. But for
pure entertainment? The Watford game beats it hands down.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Partly that's because
matching Watford blow for blow is a hell of a lot more satisfying
than matching Stevenage; we were made to play better football in
order to compete, and we did. Partly it's because 4-1 was, perhaps,
a flattering scoreline, two quick goals followed by both sides
conceding possession startlingly cheaply, a lot of rocky defensive
moments so that the bottom side's consolation goal came as no
surprise, but all of this hidden by the decisive, matchwinning,
potentially season-saving finishing of our front two. But I think
that a key factor is the lack of tension. Every time you arrive for
a game (particularly if you support Bristol City, I concede) you're
thinking about what a win will do for you, and where a defeat will
leave you. The crowd follow goals going in elsewhere and get swept
away with rumour, speculation and bullshit.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And goals are the
release of all that tension. They're not just something we applaud
because we like to see them, they're something we can't help but
wildly cheer because that's when the levy breaks. That's the moment
of “thank Christ, maybe not today after all”. They're a
mini-death row pardon in a spectator experience that really is
normally execution by a thousand defensive errors.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
OK, it's fair to say
that by 3-0 most of the tension had drained from our crowd, but I'd
say not before – the third goal was great because at that point I
wasn't convinced that Stevenage weren't about to score. And nobody
wants a 2-0 lead to start slipping. We've seen what happens then too
often. So it wasn't until the end that we could really relax and
enjoy ourselves, and inevitably at that point our very poor opponents
helped themselves to a goal. City can't, it seems, stop being City.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It's obviously terrific
fun having tension released like that (cheeky) – indeed there are,
tragically, one or two tension-releasing goals which I can remember
as clearly and with as much joy as nearly anything else in my life –
but I'm not convinced it's entirely good for you. I've never
pretended to be a cardiac specialist, but something tells me that
voluntarily placing oneself in a situation of slightly scared
anticipation interspersed with random adrenalin shots isn't how those
recovering from heart attacks are advised to recuperate. That said,
crushing despair week after week obviously isn't ideal either. So,
short of not watching football at all (plainly not on the agenda), or
just watching football in which one is neutral (perhaps worse) having
a game that you can treat as entertainment, a valid option like the
theatre or a gig, once in a while is – in the original sense of the
term – a tonic.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And I'd like more of
this tonic, please. I'm fed up of every game <u>mattering</u> so
much. Since the mid-table seasons, the ones that eventually did for
Gary Johnson when he looked treasonably more like finishing 15<sup>th</sup>
than 9<sup>th</sup>, it's been relegation battle after relegation
battle. Before that it was two promotion fights immediately
following a relegation fight. Frankly it's too much. You don't want
football to lose all meaning, but surely, surely, at some point
you're supposed to enjoy yourself?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The season after
Johnson left, Steve Coppell came in, destablised the club, left after
two games and asked Keith Millen to pick up the pieces, which Keith
did admirably. He kept us up with a few games to spare, and I vividly
remember going to the final game of the season. We beat somebody
(memory says Preston?) 3-0. I remember Jamal Campbell-Ryce grabbing
the last one. It was meaningless, and after all that heartache it
was great.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Steve Cotterill may
after all have been dealt a decent hand. The squad's a transfer
window or two away from being perfect, but he has an opportunity that
managers who take over sides in the relegation zone rarely have. He
doesn't have a lost, despondent, directionless group of players.
He's got a well-drilled one with some rough diamonds and a little
quality. A side who have been improving all season, particularly
since November – momentum which, to his credit, he's maintained and
developed. He's been able to skip that standard attritional thing
new managers do. We were already getting harder to beat. This is
not a lost cause at all. All the work done to this squad could yet
pay off, and that good second half of the season I predicted way back
in July may well transpire.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There's a chance –
just a chance – that we might enjoy more matches than just this
one. And who knows? Next season, if we're really lucky, we might do
so well that we don't enjoy any at all.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-70525869534973468052013-11-25T21:57:00.004+00:002013-11-25T21:57:45.791+00:00When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed<b>23 November 2013 - Bristol City 0 Sheffield United 1</b><br />
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I understand –
really, I do. I was there. It wasn't a great deal of fun. Sheffield
United are a bad side, we couldn't break them down, we ran out of
ideas and we gave them the goal that beat us. I've had better
Saturdays at Ashton Gate, although I couldn't name too many of them
in recent history.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But still. Aren't we
better than this? Can't we do something better, as ten thousand
souls who (after all) want the damn team to win, than purse our lips
and come out with that all-pervasive, awful</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“BOOOOOOO”?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I'm trying not to be
unreasonable or holier-than-thou. I don't think that it's wrong or
inappropriate in every context; at the end of our defeat to Leicester
in January, for instance, it felt like the only reasonable response.
But like so much in football these days, the more people do it and
hear it, the more they want to do it at other times, when it's not
just inappropriate but harmful.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I didn't see any lack
of application on Saturday. I saw a lack of technique, a lack of
ability, and most of all a lack of composure. But the team worked
hard, were perhaps unlucky not to claim a clean sheet, were almost
certainly unlucky to be denied a late equaliser, and were absolutely
not second-best on the balance of play. While I'm not arguing that
being no worse than a team like this Sheffield United is particularly
laudable, it's not a dreadful disgrace either.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Nevertheless,
particularly at 0-1, I heard a lot of booing. I heard players booed
for miscontrolling the ball and conceding possession. This makes
little sense; effectively, players are abused for not being any
better than they are. We're in League One, we have a team of players
who aren't highly valued at levels above us. Are our players likely
to have the immaculate, consistent touch of Ajax's 1973 midfield? Or
are they going to be a mixture of the inconsistent (Scott Wagstaff,
Nicky Shorey) and those who make up what they inherently lack in
technique in other areas (Marvin Elliott, Aden Flint)? Yelling at
players for failing to be Andres Iniesta isn't even self-defeating;
it's just <i>weird</i>. It's not as
though we're an ex-Premier League side fallen on hard times and
struggling to come to terms with our new surroundings. When wasn't
watching City like this?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And
then there's the booing for not doing what the crowd want you to. I
got very angry when Derrick Williams, presented with few options in
terms of midfield movement and decent passes, moved the ball back to
the goalkeeper and was barracked and booed for doing so. I got angry
to the point of shouting “can we not fucking boo 21-year-olds?”
at nobody in particular.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You
could make the case that the crowd wasn't booing Williams for his
perceived failure to “get it FORWARD!”, but the entire team for
not providing him with options. That'd be much more reasonable, but
would suffer from the microscopic flaw of being bollocks. The boos
didn't come while Williams considered his options and the other 10
players stood still and stared at him. They came when he made a
reasonable decision and executed it competently. Even if the boos
had been aimed at the whole team (though they definitely weren't)
it's a blunt instrument, you can't differentiate. There's no room
for special pleading on the grounds of lost nuance in the arena of
the boo.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This
kind of thing is bad news for all sorts of reasons. Many of us will
have sat in uncomfortable seats behind the goal in unfamiliar
stadiums listening to a home crowd booing their players and thought,
“good”. Thought “we're winning”. When the crowd turn on
their players you know you've got them. And if you feel that as a
fan, it must be all the clearer when you're one of those being booed.
It must sap your spirit, just as it raises the spirits of the man in
the different coloured shirt who's trying to beat you. 0-1 down at
home on a cold day in November, with 10 minutes to go – not the
moment to experience a shift in confidence away from you and toward
your opponent. But I'm sure the crowd made that happen.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It
also can't encourage the players to do the right thing. O'Driscoll
talks about getting them to think about their decisions, do what's
right not what's easy, and he's absolutely correct to do so. But the
more pressure one feels to make a decision, the more one can hurry
it, and the more one is tempted either to do the easy thing or to
pass the buck entirely. To play the five-yard pass you know you can
make, not the twelve-yard one you may not be able to, even though the
first won't advance play and the second might. Or to give someone
else the ball and make it their problem, even if they're double
marked or in a worse position. (The perfect storm here comes when a
player is moaned and groaned at for being unable to control, under
pressure, a ball fired at them by a team-mate who is refusing to be
the one who tries to solve the problem.) And in games like this
weekend's, when we're suffering from a lack of composure, extra
pressure from the stands will exacerbate, rather than solve, one of
our most pressing issues.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What
frustrates me is how obvious all of this sounds to me, sitting here
writing it. Of course booing during a match, booing players who are
learning, working hard and giving all their ability will allow them,
is a destructive thing. It's self-evident. But that just brings me
round to the question “so why do people do it”? As I said at the
beginning, I understand how frustrating that game was. I hated those
last 20 minutes. But surely we're not animals bound to
stimulus-response behaviour? Is it impossible for the football fan
to experience an emotion and not act immediately, without their
higher brain functions getting involved? What's it for?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I
don't have an answer. I suppose that, as is so often when the
question “why act in that stupid, counter-productive way?” is
posed, alcohol may have something to do with it. I wonder whether we
regress a bit at football, whether the adrenalin and the shouting and
the men, the omnipresent men, push us into some atavistic, combative
mode where rational thought would be a disadvantage. But I've been
bored at enough football games to suspect that this isn't, in fact,
the case.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Ultimately
it's a selfish act. It's saying “it's more important that you hear
what I personally think than that our chances of winning are
improved”. It's irrational, it's lunatic, and it's frustratingly
stupid. Perhaps it comes from a sense of disenfranchisement, of not
being listened to in everyday life, of taking the only possible
opportunity to express yourself to people whose actions matter to
you.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Large
groups of people acting collectively against their best interests
appears to happen on only two occasions – football matches, and
whenever Conservatives win elections. It's the disenfranchisement
that does it on the latter occasion as well. So maybe there is
something in it.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But
it still makes me want to dash my brains out in disbelief when it
happens. I'd quite like City to win whenever they play. For that to
happen, the environment needs to be as favourable as possible. And
for that to happen they need positive reinforcement not negativity.
Like Alan Partridge, they need <i>two</i>
positives.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We've
got another home game tomorrow. So please, if we give the ball away
trying to do the right thing, if our young players make callow
errors, if we go a goal or two down against a good side, and if you
really can't bring yourself to offer encouragement when it's most
needed, then take the advice you'd give fans of the other team.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sit
down. And shut up.</div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-50588812237773681932013-11-11T20:27:00.004+00:002013-11-11T20:27:43.060+00:00Cognitive dissonance and the football fan<b>2 November 2013 - Bristol City 1 Oldham Athletic 1</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Are you a football hipster?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The odds have to be pretty good here. You’re voluntarily using your spare time to
read a tiny blog about the experience of being a fan of a third-tier Football
League side. It’s quite niche. It’s cultish.
It’s a long way from arguing about whether Van Persie ought to
celebrate. Just being here means you
must be a bit of a hipster.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, or you’re not sure
whether you are or not, you can (sort of) scientifically find out here, by using
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/quiz/2013/oct/29/are-you-a-football-hipster">this excellent Guardian quiz</a>. (I am, by
the way, A Bit of a Hipster, but I think I’d have done better if it weren’t for
the fact that I already <i>own</i> that
Dortmund shirt). It’s a fun quiz –
witty, clever and interesting, I liked it a lot. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But one of the things I found most interesting about it was
question three, the one about what you watch on TV. The first two possible answers are “Manchester
United v Milan on ITV1” and “Athletic Bilbao v Shakhtar Donetsk on Sky Sports
Red Button”. It’s clear what the
implication is – yer true connoisseur of off-the-beaten-track football is far keener
to watch the encounter between the men from San Mam<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">é</span>s and the team of Dario Srna, Eduardo and Bernard
than the game between boring old United and the dwindling power that is AC
Milan.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I found most noteworthy, though, is the identity of the
TV Channels in particular. The ITV of
butt of a thousand jokes Adrian “Toby jug of warm piss” Chiles, the deranged
Keane and the appalling Townsend. And
the Sky Sports of the great Gary Neville, the affable Stelling and the “legend”
that is Chris Kamara.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or the free-to-air ITV and millionaire behemoth Rupert
Murdoch’s Sky Sports, depending on how you look at it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You see, I think there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance
happening here. Because one often finds
that the people most knowledgeable about obscure football, most in love with
the game beyond the endless United/Chelsea/Barcelona/Real Madrid axis, are the
ones who are most vocally Against Modern Football. While accepting that all-seater stadia have
done a lot to make the game more accessible, they bemoan the demise of the
relatively egalitarian football world of the past, where the game belonged to
the local community, Anderlecht could reach the European Cup final, and the
world’s greatest players were unknown geniuses appearing out of the mist once
every four years for a World Cup. They
are often, in short, Against Modern Football.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As far as I can see, to be Against Modern Football means to
be against the extreme haves-and-have-nots-based market economy that football has
become. Nobody denies that some clubs
have always been wealthier and more successful than others. It didn’t take the establishment of the
Champions League to ensure that Arsenal’s roll of honour dwarfs Shrewsbury’s. But it’s undeniable that the last 20 years or
so have seen the vastly expanded sums of money in football roll
disproportionately towards the “establishment” (or at least the version of it
which happened to exist in the early ‘90s and was then set in aspic) and away
from the smaller clubs. The TV deals,
the sponsorships – you know the stuff.
But it starts with the TV deals.
It starts, effectively, with Sky Sports.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sky Sports created modern football. Indeed, they didn’t just
create it – they sustain it. And with
every subscription taken out they become more powerful. Yet there’s rarely any sense that they
themselves are a bad thing. Cause and effect aren’t always linked, sure, but it’s
odd for cause to be <u>celebrated</u> whilst effect is bemoaned. Listen to the Guardian’s podcast – you’ll
hear forty minutes of complaints about the state of things followed by an
enthusiastic list of games available that weekend on Sky or BT.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ah, BT – the channel that hired Baker and Kelly, Richardson
and Honigstein, dressed itself brilliantly in the clothes of the savvy,
intelligent fan and then, just as it was established, threw more money than
ever at the big clubs of UEFA, whilst taking away from the fan who can’t afford
to pay for more TV at home, or whose parents can ‘t be persuaded, the
guaranteed Tuesday night Champions League treat. You have to admire their business acumen,
even if you can’t admire the result. The
attempt to stop Sky having a monopoly has just increased the cost to the fan
who does want to watch everything, and therefore the cash tipping into the
pockets of the biggest clubs. Who saw
that coming, eh?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You win this round, capitalism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This stuff matters not just because intellectual dishonesty
is a bad thing. I’m not really mad at
the football hipsters. Shock reveal: I
am one. And I watch the Champions League
like everyone else. I’ll go to the pub
if Dortmund v Real isn’t on free-to-air, but I’ll watch it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It matters because I support Bristol City. And there’s a good chance you support Bristol
City. If you don’t, I’d like to think
you support one of the 85 or so English league sides who missed out on the
golden tickets, although statistically you probably don’t, you probably do
support one of the lucky few.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are enough closed shops in British life. Very little social mobility. The rich get richer, the poor get shat
on. You die in the class you were born. When John sodding Major makes the point that
this is a problem, you know it’s a hell of a problem.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s depressing seeing football, still ultimately two
villages kicking a pig’s bladder at one another, come to this. And while it’s
perhaps inevitable (why should football be unlike basically any other aspect of
modern times) that doesn’t mean just taking it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ultimately, while I’d love to sit at home and watch that
Bilbao – Shakhtar game (it does sound very good) I’m not going to consciously
prop up the edifice that sustains those at the top by feeding on those at the
bottom. That’s no exaggeration – read about
the way clubs get remunerated for losing their best kids nowadays.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And while I’m not naïve enough to think that anything I do
or say, ever, can particularly change the status quo, I do wonder whether we
have enough football hipsters, and enough Bristol City fans, to at least knock
a few bits of masonry off kilter.
Otherwise, ultimately, we accept that we’re sacrificing the spirit of the
game purely because we want to watch more of it, in comfort and convenience.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hipsters. Bristol
City fans. Shall we start with not
subscribing to BT Sport <i>and</i> to Sky?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then shall we work from there?<o:p></o:p></div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-71998978239418508632013-09-25T22:43:00.001+01:002013-09-25T22:43:19.511+01:00Reflections on Soccernomics <b>Saturday September 21
– Swindon Town 3 Bristol City 2</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<i>“To pass, or to stop the other team from passing, you also need to know
exactly where to be. The average player
only has the ball for two minutes every game, so his main job is to occupy the
right positions for the other 88 minutes.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
(Kuper, Simon and Stefan
Szymanski, <u>Soccernomics</u>, p403 if it bothers you)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> </i>Yep – I’ve been a-reading. I’ve finally got around to picking up <i>Soccernomics</i> and reading the whole damn
thing, largely on the journey from London to Swindon, and then back from
Bristol the following day after an evening’s pleasant Pro Evo.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And quite simply: if you’re reading this, you should read <i>Soccernomics</i>, too.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you’ve at
least a passing interest both in football, and in the Sean O’Driscoll model
currently sputtering into life at Bristol City.
This feels like a good time to be writing this, actually – after two
away performances, including what’s currently last night’s dignified
elimination from the League Cup at the hands of Southampton, which have seen
City play well without taking anything, it’s worth looking at what doing the
right things long-term actually means for a team.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s precisely what <i>Soccernomics</i>
does. Written by a football writer and a
statistician, it looks not at isolated incidents but at long-term trends (and
therefore I was predisposed to enjoy it, given my little rant about sample
sizes last time out). There’s a section
on penalty kicks, for instance, which doesn’t promise to turn the lay reader
into an expert taker or scorer of penalties, but crunches the numbers to
demonstrate what method gives you the best chance of scoring a penalty – and
therefore, over time, what might help the professional score 85% rather than
80% of those penalty kicks. Small
margins, but if the penalty that sways those stats is in the 90<sup>th</sup>
minute of a playoff final, highly relevant ones.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What stood out was that every long-term trend associated
with failure reminded me of what City used to do, of the club that we were
before Derek McInnes came in (yep, sorry – using that name with positive
connotations – if I’ve not lost you now, I’m delighted). And every long-term success reminded me of
what we’re doing now. The section on how
best to get value out of the transfer market is a great example. From Kuper and Szymanski’s 12 main secrets of
the market I found the following interesting:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1 – A new manager wastes money on transfers – don’t let him <i>(compare Steve Coppell’s transfer market
splurge, on players he would only work with for two games, on O’Driscoll’s “if
this vision outlasts me then so be it” approach to working with Keith Burt’s
signings)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2 – Use the wisdom of crowds <i>(Gary Johnson the benign dictator, whose chief scout was his brother,
vs the clear Burt/O’Driscoll/Lansdown/Pemberton? committee)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3 – Stars of recent World Cups or European Championships are
overvalued; ignore them <i>(or Slovakian players
who’ve played well against Aston Villa on ITV recently?)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
9 – Sell any player when another club offers more than he is
worth <i>(the difference between cashing in
on Steven Davies and hanging on to Marvin Elliott after his one great season)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
11 – Buy players with personal problems, then help them deal
with their problems <i>(worked for McInnes
when signing Jody Morris at St Johnstone, didn’t work when he brought him here.
These aren’t guarantees – it’s about chance and value, not copper-bottomed sure
things. The principle is nevertheless
right.)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But most of all:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5 – Older players are overvalued / 8 The best time to buy a
player is when he is in his early twenties<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That one does rather put the tin lid on it for me. How different our transfer policy feels to
the days when we put out David Clarkson, Peter Styvar and Patrick Agyemang and
considered it an acceptable attack. Isn’t
it great to see us playing a team as young as the one we’ve been playing
recently – yes, we’ve got Marv, as well as Nicky Shorey and Marlon Harewood,
but they’re players Sean was lumbered with, or free transfers, or loans, to
help the likes of Aden Flint, Marlon Pack, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas and co perform
to their full potential.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that will take time, of course. You learn the game by playing it – those 10,000
hours of practice everyone talks about are vital for technical development, but
young players will learn how to spend those 88 minutes when they aren’t in
possession by finding out for themselves what works and what doesn’t. By definition, if you have to master a skill,
you aren’t consistently able to demonstrate it yet. We’re seeing errors, we’re seeing them lead
to goals and yep, it’s frustrating. We’re
seeing players like Bobby Reid and Emmanuel-Thomas, blessed for skill at this
level, spending large amounts of time in the wrong position and only coming to
life when they get the ball. It’s the
City paradox at the moment – their individual moments are getting us into
games, but the collective lack of experience is probably losing them. Several times at the County Ground this
weekend I saw Emmanuel-Thomas beg for the ball whilst clearly looking along the
line in an offside position. That’s what
we need to get right to win games – get him thinking properly, whilst not
losing the side of his game that means scoring wonderful goals is second nature
to him, and we’ll kick on.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t believe we’re far off that kicking-on moment now, by
the way. Other than the Peterborough
game, our league defeats have been by a single goal. Games that turn on single goals could
normally have been drawn, or even gone the other way, quite easily. Even the 3-0 loss to Peterborough turned on
an Emmanuel-Thomas miss at 1-0, followed moments later by Britt Assombalonga’s
fantastic strike. It’s also a reason to
stick with O’Driscoll – our good results coming in the Cup feels like a
statistical fluke more than anything. We’ll
revert to the mean soon with or without him, I’d say, and we’re far more likely
to keep doing those scientifically sensible things with the rational Black
Country man in charge.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Please do read <i>Soccernomics</i>
– it really helped me rationalise why a lot of things that City are doing which
<i>feel</i> right actually <i>are</i> right. It’ll challenge you, no matter what you think
about football – its conclusions about the lack of excitement in an
unpredictable league, and the fickleness of large swathes of football crowds,
cut against what I believed, and were the sections I read most closely for all
that. It’s also got an excellent section
on the Ashton Gate 8 – and how many other Waterstones bestsellers have one of
those?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s stay rationa, as much as we can at least, and
genuinely give ourselves a chance.<u><o:p></o:p></u></div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-63053622521130188732013-09-15T21:15:00.003+01:002013-09-15T21:15:25.293+01:00Six<b>14 September 2013 - Bristol City 0 Peterborough United 3</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Six games into the league season we met Peterborough. Mid-September had us at different ends of the
league, but hey; early days. At any
rate, three goals were scored, two by the in-form big money signing up
top. The away team left happy – nice to
win again after two winless matches, it put them back on track – and even the
events around Lee Tomlin’s penalty were forgotten. A meaningless incident in the grand scheme of
things.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That was a year ago, by the way, when Sam Baldock scored two
at London Road to give us our third league win of the season. Game six, that was. A few days later we went to Watford and got
a really impressive 2-2 draw. We were
set fair for a very decent season indeed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Remember last season?
You probably still can; you might try to forget it, but I bet you
can. Like me, last season probably makes
you think of defensive errors, dreadful capitulations and a horrible, cold,
empty feeling at 4.45 every Saturday.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But six games in it wasn’t feeling like that at all. A month or so earlier, we’d scored eight
goals in four days to win two matches against teams who are now playing Premier
League football. Our new <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
striker had hit four in as many games. OK, we were doing as badly as we always had
done in the Cups (knocked out by Gillingham in the League Cup’s first round)
but otherwise there was a hell of a lot to be positive about. Ross stayed with me in London after the
Watford game; I distinctly remember him saying, later that evening “we’d have
to go on a terrible run now to be in trouble again”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I assume you know the rest.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The point is – a year ago we had what felt like a strong
start, which was all the more encouraging on the back of the escape we’d pulled
off the previous spring in order to stay in the division. It turned out to be deceptive and we got
relegated dead last after a season which contrived to throw low point after low
point at us. (For me the lowest point
was angrily eating Baklava at a souk-themed wedding the day we lost 2-1 at
Wolves – I mixed up port and red wine and things got a bit unpleasant. No doubt you have your own mildly embarrassing
memory. I hope it demonstrates that you,
too, can lose perspective entirely.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This season’s start hasn’t been very good (in the league anyway
– in another odd little reversal of last season, we’re doing well in the Cups,
having started with a positive result against Gillingham). It’s made more difficult because the fanbase
is so disaffected due to relegation. And
it’s been crystallised by receiving our first sound beating of the season, our
early defeats having been a freak 5-4 and a 2-1 against a side still receiving
parachute payments. 3-0 against is
always nasty, even if the performance wasn’t so much awful as flat, against a
team well equipped to punish us for not being on our game.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wonder whether anybody is, or should be, surprised by this
happening. We were expecting this young
team to get the odd bad result, particularly early on. We were expecting Peterborough to be a strong
side (weren’t we? I certainly was). Yet
here we are, with the fanbase up in arms about a defeat. It was unpleasant to be at, but come on. Back to the lack of perspective. Two months ago we all said that, as a club,
we’d need to be patient. An odd sort of
patience, this; “yes, I’ll be patient, as long as I get what I want within no
more than six weeks”. I do sometimes
wonder what my fellow fans were like on Christmas Eve.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And of course we’re only six league games in (with our form
over the nine games we have in fact played rather more encouraging – you can’t
pick and choose whether your better results come in league or Cup). It’s dangerous to extrapolate anything from
six games. The sample size, in a season
where most sides will play 50 at least, is pretty unscientific. Waiting for 46 league games to be played
would be a good start; if that’s genuinely not possible, 15 games is a third of
the season and that starts to make sense as a benchmark. But 6?
That’s what we call patience now?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I suppose it’s better than 1. There’ve been a lot of debuts this weekend,
and a lot of rushes to judgement based upon 90 minutes of playing time. Christian Eriksen “can have a team built
around him”. Gareth Bale “can play
alongside Ronaldo”. Mesut Özil “has made a difference”. Perhaps all of these things will be
true. But it’s ludicrously early to
claim that they already are. Football
culture appears to be about immediate rushes to judgement based upon a tiny
sample size. That’s why Aaron Ramsey is
now, for a reasonable swathe of Arsenal fans, definitely better than Jack
Wilshere. That’s why Roy Hodgson (whose
England team have more goals per game than any England side since Walter
Winterbottom) is under heavy criticism for being dull after producing a single
flawed performance against Ukraine.
Getting a better result there than Capello did seems unimportant; a
selective memory is a corollary of this cherry-picking.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s at the level of the national team that this sort of
thing stands out most, I think.
Performance over time will always be a better indicator of future
performance than performance in individual games. Over time, England have reached a single
major final – the same number as Sweden, Denmark, Greece or Hungary, and fewer
than Uruguay, the Czechs and Russia. Yet
because we managed to win the single one-off final game we played, it’s a rare
fan who will acknowledge that these teams are our international peers, rather
than multiple finalists like France, Italy and the Netherlands.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
City fans and England fans are both disappointed at the
moment. Failure to meet expectations
feels like a common thread. But you do
wonder how often fans test their expectations with any rigour. I know football is a passionate thing – this is
what I wrote about last time. I know
losing is horrible, losing a couple of times worse. But let’s wait until we’ve got something
worth being upset about. We know from
recent experience what that’s like. A
bit of patience, a bit of perspective, and maybe a bit of sangfroid wouldn’t
hurt anybody, right now.<o:p></o:p></div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-827418304112359522013-09-11T21:43:00.001+01:002013-09-11T21:45:06.942+01:00Summer leaves fall from summer trees<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The start of the 2013/14 season, including 3 August 2013 - Bristol City 2 Bradford City 2</b><br />
<br />
Outside, it’s like the final lines of Pulp’s wonderful
“David’s Last Summer”: <i>And as we walked
home we could hear the leaves curling and turning brown on the trees / And the
birds deciding where to go for winter / And the whole sound / The whole sound
of summer packing its bags and preparing to leave town</i>. Summer’s finished, I think; this year I’d
have said that Saturday 7 September was the final day, and Sunday 8 the first
of autumn.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a beautiful time of year. Brown leaves in gutters doubling in number
every three days. Each day shorter than
the last, not enough to notice day by day but certainly enough to notice week
by week. The smell of smoke on the air;
sap, too, and that tang you get in the nostrils when they search for heat that
isn’t there any more – apart from fleetingly on the back of the hand in the
right light on one of your final evenings outside a pub, shivering and
pretending you aren’t.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s also utterly, utterly perfect football weather. Long shadows at quarter to five, the floodlights
starting to come on in the second half, that first time you see your breath in
front of you while you’re standing in the away end. I can’t eat a pie during a summertime
football match. They’re revolting. But give me a cold autumn day when I’ve underdressed
slightly and that whitehot combination of steaming balti and stodgy crust
becomes utterly essential. Particularly
at Vicarage Road, I find, not that I’ll be able to partake there for another
year at least.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve managed to miss almost all of the summer football this
year. Since the first game of the season
I’ve not seen City kick a ball live, not even on Sky – pre-booked tickets for
The Book of Mormon meant I even missed the derby, and my various August travels
to Norway, Denmark, End of the Road festival and so on had the effect both of
leaving me stony broke, and of cutting me off from football behind a kind of
strange, semi-permeable membrane.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s odd. Everyone’s
got the internet on their phones these days, everyone’s got a device small enough
to carry around with them, everywhere’s got Wi-Fi (and everywhere in
Scandinavia doubly so). So I’ve always
been able to find out the scores pretty close to full time (12 hours afterwards
at End of the Road being the longest gap – waiting half a day only to find out
that we’ve drawn 1-1 at Gillingham whilst in a festival Portaloo isn’t a bad
definition of pathos), watch the goals, all of that. But it doesn’t feel <i>real</i>. Over the last month or
so I’ve felt entirely disconnected from football, and that at an interesting,
formative stage of the season (because it’ll turn into a hell of a slog from
here on in). And that’s because I’ve
been experiencing it in something approaching isolation. It hasn’t been fulfilling the usual role for
me of something which creates a common ground.
People I speak to either know a great deal less about City than I do, or
a great deal more about what’s going on.
Watching Match of the Day on returning to England was a strange
experience, like watching one of those Simon Pegg movies where the same actors
he usually works with all turn up in different outfits. “Ah, so Stewart Downing’s in this one too, is
he, as The Hammer! They didn’t mention
that in the reviews. Nice touch.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Missing out on all but one of City’s opening to the season –
which thanks to international postponements now has a self-contained feel, a
prelude with three blank pages to turn before beginning Chapter One – has been
odd as I’ve had so little visceral feel for it.
Every goal since Rory McArdle’s in front of the East End has been
experienced post-facto, the confirmation of something I found out second-hand,
through statistics, rather than first-hand.
Which has left me nonplussed about the very odd start we’ve had.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So we’ve played eight games so far. Won three.
Drawn three. Lost two. That doesn’t sound so bad, fairly steady
start for a newly relegated side.
Unbeaten in four at the moment.
That’s good. Those four games
included a first victory in 19 years against top-flight opposition, and a win
in the Bristol derby? Well then that’s
excellent.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet we’re 20<sup>th</sup> in the division, the only positive
about which is that I’d thought we’d be lower by now after the weekend’s
postponement of glamour Shrewsbury tie.
We haven’t won a league game. We’ve
got Peterborough, having a mini-slump but amongst the strongest teams in the
division, this weekend. I’m there; I may
well fail once again to see us win.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But it’s disappointingly hard to get that worked up about it
when you don’t watch. I’m reminded of my
University days, cut off not only from the live games but from the Bristolian
matchday buzz. The appetite fades as the
body learns to survive on what it’s getting – the occasional Match of the Day
Cup appearance, odd game over Christmas and Auto Windscreens Final in
Cardiff. They weren’t immensely exciting
days to be a fan, in all honesty, as we followed relegation by bobbing corklike
around the top half of the division, but I certainly lost a lot of mojo for the
club then and it’s disconcerting to realise how easy it is for that to happen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m unbothered that we’re 20<sup>th</sup>, and I can’t work
out whether that’s a perfectly levelheaded stance to take given that we’ve
played five matches in the league, have a young squad, and have had three games
against teams who have either just won 4-0 or would immediately go on to win
4-0, or it’s an apathy which has taken hold terrifyingly quickly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Either way I don’t like it.
I want the buzz back. I want to
go to the game this weekend and really love it. I barely know what the view from this season’s
new, improved mid-Dolman seat is like, I’ve only experienced it for 90
minutes. I’m already analysing City the
way I analyse other football teams I don’t watch live. See the outbreak of my inner Statto in the
paragraph above. Yes, it’s <i>true</i>, but it’s not really the point, and
it’s certainly not how I’d have summed those games up if I’d been to more of
them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Going cold turkey has made me realise that, for all that I <i>like</i> football, I bloody <i>love</i> City. I’m a geeky, analytical guy as it is, and I’ll
never turn that off. But augmenting it
with something that makes me shout, cry, kick things, hug strangers, take
absurdly long train journeys and sing along to songs that, on any musicological
level, aren’t really very good – that’s the stuff of life. That’s why we go, isn’t it? That’s why I go. Because you can read anything through stats. But you can prove anything that way,
too. And I want things in my life that
can’t be quantified. That can’t be
explained. That just are.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nobody’s ever succeeded in quantifying this passion, this thing that draws us back. I hope they never do. I want my unprovable, unendurable, unimprovable City.<o:p></o:p></div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-87664612055120889802013-04-12T08:27:00.001+01:002013-04-13T09:46:46.962+01:00A fate worse than...<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">There’s
almost no question about it – we’re down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s all over bar the shouting, the fireworks, and the fat lady
singing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least we know now, we don’t
have to live out the slow dawning of the facts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Each individual fan can take what he or she can from the final round of
Championship games for at least a year, and then we’ve a summer off football to
recuperate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We already know that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">And yes
it’s our first relegation in a long time, and yes it’s horrible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This hasn’t been an enjoyable season in any
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So much hope, dashed so quickly, so
cruelly, and so bloody regularly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">But.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While what’s happening is both nasty and
brutish, we should bear in mind that it’s short.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next season we’ll still be City, still down
the Gate, maybe winning a few more games at home – but basically life will
carry on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll be playing football in a
different league, sure; but we’ll be playing football, same as ever, hopefully
towards the top of the third tier (one of our natural homes) as opposed to the
bottom of the second tier (the other one).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I’m
reconciled to this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I won’t say I don’t
care but it could be worse. It really could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We’re playing in the lower tier, but there are some teams in a dreadful
state compared with us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t get to
choose in football – but if you did I’d rather be City than any of them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I’d rather
be City than Portsmouth, crashing down through the leagues like a fat elephant
in a condemned building, victims of the mad dream-chasing that’s been football
since 1992.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d rather be City than Leeds,
swinging madly from one unfit and improper owner to another, a shadow of their
former selves and a feeder club for Norwich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’d rather be City than Blackburn – of course – the worst of the worst
in the boardroom as well as a disgrace on the pitch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Halfway down the balance sheet of
thoughtless, ponytailed millionaire trash whose antics have turned the club on
itself, fans tearing their beloved side apart as they incoherently scream in
anger for what’s gone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I’d rather
be City than QPR – throwing money away on overpaid, average players, changing
manager when you could still smell summer in the air, blowing their relegation
rivals out of the water financially in January, and look at them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still likely to go down, playing badly, with
a time bomb of a wage bill and a struggle on their hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A manager not known for his appetite for a
fight and the opprobrium of a division upon them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone hates teams who spend too much
money, but often<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>those teams win
things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Becoming one of those sides but
failing to achieve any success whatsoever must be the worst of all possible
worlds.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I’d rather
be City than Sunderland, staring relegation in the face and managed by a
far-right nutjob whose appointment revealed just how morally bankrupt – and
strategically inept – your club is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d
rather go down with O’Driscoll than stay up with Di Canio, even.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want my club to mean something more than
three points at the weekend and a replica shirt with a nickname.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want to believe in it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Thing is,
these clubs are all easy – they’re disgracefully run and they’re going
down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is about belief, meaning,
and value more than it’s about success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So you know what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d rather be
City than Cardiff. I’d rather be the 24<sup>th</sup> out of 24 than 1<sup>st</sup>
out of 24, if the price of being 1<sup>st</sup> is *every* *single* *thing*
that’s important to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cardiff are like
Theseus' ship – every part replaced until a new ship stands where the old
one did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The perfect crime, sneaking a
new football club in where the old one used to stand without anybody noticing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until the shell’s cracked and falls away, and
everyone realises that they’ve been conned – that an entirely new club has been
installed in the Premier League with the trappings of the old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sporting heist of the century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A vast, bastard cuckoo baby, mindlessly fed
by its tiny parents, donning red scarves and whooping for the visit of Man
United while the interloper grows fat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Cardiff mean nothing now, once our rivals, now a meaningless invention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Making MK Dons look like Blackburn Olympic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No heritage, no history, no value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Club X, top of the Championship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’d rather be a real club dropping out of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Never doubt it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The only
club I’m jealous of in the league is Swansea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The only club I’m jealous of anywhere, actually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are other clubs I respect, admire, or
appreciate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it wouldn’t make sense
for a Bristol City fan to be jealous of Borussia Dortmund, Ajax or Athletic
Bilbao.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They exist in a different world,
they’re not a club we can look at and say “that could be us”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Swansea are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Swansea used to be below us, then we were contemporaries, then they shot
on – not by spending unfathomable sums, but through nous, strategy and
level-headedness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s no reason why
the team who won the Carling Cup, who’ll be showcasing some of the best
football in Europe <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i> Europe, who are
managed by a (very likeable) legend of the game – no reason that team couldn’t
have been us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For that matter it could
have been Huddersfield, Doncaster, Tranmere, or any of our old League One playmates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Swansea showed the entire Football League
that there’s a way, a really good way, to do it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">And clubs
have taken notice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brighton, for my
money, look the most like Swansea II in the division.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Watford do a bit, too; although they’ve taken
a different route, the emphasis on youth, flair, sustainability and realism is
similar to what’s happening in South Wales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Swansea’s rivals, Cardiff, have ignored the Swansea lesson and gone the
good old unsustainable dream-chasing way with extra contempt for the paying
public thrown in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The South Wales derby
next season will be the most slavishly covered in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>generations, but I wonder how many media
outlets will focus on the real story – the almost total clash of ideals the
game represents.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Is this
naive, outdated, empty sentimentalism?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Is thinking that football can <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mean</i>
something as relevant to 21<sup>st</sup> century football as an old Roy of the
Rovers back-up strip, Hot Shot Hamish and Mighty Mouse vs Cristiano Ronaldo and
Mesut Ozil?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is modern football’s victory
as comprehensive as you’d back the Bernabeu pairing’s to be in my imaginary
match-up?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Surely
not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because what is football, when
all’s said and done?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A group of people
playing a game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A kickabout.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A final score.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s empty, it’s inherently pointless – a bit
of athletic activity and then two numbers at the end.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">What’s
important is everything else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything
that’s connected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The stadium within the
city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The walk there, the pint, the pie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The company; this blog is “to the left of
Ross” not “quite a long way away from Cole Skuse”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The group memory, unbroken since the 19<sup>th</sup>
century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The nostalgia, the joy, the
despair, the narrative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything that
isn’t about kicking a football.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">This isn’t
a Hovis advert; Sky Sports get this more than anyone else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why else do they invest so much in
paraphernalia, in flash and bang, in narrative, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shouting</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Football only has
a meaning in context; we only understand it by the shape it creates in our
lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When all your life's scoreboards are counted, the left-hand column and the right-hand column probably add up to
about the same thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The results
themselves, an exercise in futility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
meaning you’ve taken from it, that’s what you’ll take to your grave.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">So
yeah.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The division doesn’t matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The result doesn’t matter. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being City matters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being plugged into the indefinable essence of
Bristol City, being part of that group and not having it taken away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Relegation is just a kink in the fabric.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the pattern that’s important.</span></div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-604661788480389878.post-28230649341298098012013-03-13T22:43:00.000+00:002013-03-13T22:43:36.755+00:00Jogging on shale<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> <b>9 March 2013 - Bristol City 2 Middlesbrough 0</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Something a
bit different this week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was going to
write a standard blog, but like many City fans at present, my mind is filled
with permutations, with considerations of other teams’ results and with the vexed
question of when we can stop running to stand still and start running to move
somewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, I’ve just watched the
finale of Dexter series 4 and frankly haven’t much of my mind left for
creativity just now.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Everyone
watch Dexter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s bloody amazing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This week, a bit of maths to give me a sense –
just a sense – of how the final Championship table might look.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a few specious conclusions drawn from it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Basically,
I wondered how far our current form might take us. It’s vaguely encouraging –
we’re closing the points gap between ourselves and the thin dotted line above
us slowly but steadily – but my concern is that time will run out before we can
turn it from the present -2 points to 2 or 3 points, and safety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the teams around us are giving a solid
impression of being on equivalent form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The teams above, Wolves aside, seem to just about resist being dragged
in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we keep jogging on shale, unable
to make a purchase.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">So what I’ve
done, purely as an experiment, is see where the teams from 11<sup>th</sup> down
– ie those 9 points and below ahead of us, who one might reasonably consider to
be in some danger of relegation – can expect to finish if they perform as well over
their remaining 9 (say) games as they did over the 9 before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve taken the current points total, added to
it the points gained over the last x amount of games (where x is the number of
games remaining for that team) and worked out how a league table on that basis
might look.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">So we have:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">BURNLEY <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">48</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 9</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">6</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">54</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">CHARLTON<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">47</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last</i> 9 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">8</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">55</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">BLACKPOOL<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">46</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 9</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">12</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">58</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">BIRMINGHAM<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">46</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 9</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">15</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">61</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">DERBY<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">45</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 9</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">7</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">52</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">BLACKBURN<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">45</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 10</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">54</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">MILLWALL<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">44</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">11</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 11</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">7</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">51</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">HUDDERSFIELD<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">44</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 9</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">11</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">55</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">SHEFF WED<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">43</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 10</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">18</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">61</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">IPSWICH<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">43</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 9</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">11</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">54</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">BARNSLEY<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">41</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 10</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">20</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">61</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">PETERBORO’<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">39</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 9</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">13</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">52</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">WOLVES<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">39</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 9</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">6</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">45</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">BRISTOL
CITY<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Points</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">39</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Games remaining</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pts from last 9</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">14</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total</i>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">53</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Final
table:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">11=
Birmingham<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>61 points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">11=
Sheffield Wednesday<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>61 points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">11=
Barnsley <span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>61
points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">14.
Blackpool<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>58
points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">15=
Charlton Athletic<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> 5</span>5
points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">15=
Huddersfield Town<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>55
points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">17= Burnley<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>54
points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">17=
Blackburn Rovers<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>54
points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">17= Ipswich
Town<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>54 points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">20. Bristol
City<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>53
points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">21= Derby
County<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>52
points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">21=
Peterborough United<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>52 points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">23.
Millwall<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>51
points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">24.
Wolverhampton W<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>45 points</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">So.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What have we learnt?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">A few
things, I reckon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bear in mind that this
isn’t science, despite using counting and adding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not saying that these are the final
places.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Form will change – Kenny Jackett’s
a good manager who may well use Millwall’s Wembley boost to improve their form,
whereas conversely Blackpool might not get that many points as the Bloomfield
Road surface deteriorates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There's not a "joint 21st", but frankly I thought that including goal difference would be a shade tenuous even for me. And I’ve not
run this through the BBC Predictor to check whether it’s possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But chances are, the final table will look a
little like this.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">If it is,
it would mean that the record high number of points for survival may well need
to be equalled, but it won’t be an absurdly large figure that teams are aiming
for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s good news for City – our last
nine games contained 5 home and 4 away, with those figures being reversed for
the run-in, so 53 points (pretty narrow anyway) might be pushing it a
little.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be nice to think we’re
not aiming for 56 or 57.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">It’s quite
possible that anyone from Blackpool, at 14<sup>th</sup>, down could be within 3
points of the drop on the final day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Since that includes Burnley, currently 11<sup>th</sup> in the real
world, and given that my top 3 may well not in fact hit the heights of their
recent form between now and May, I think that it’s “case proven” in terms of
including all those teams in the relegation fight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I hadn’t realised how awful the run some
of them are on is – Derby will want to pull this round pretty quicky, for
instance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their young players were
excellent at Ashton Gate earlier in the season.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But as Aston Villa are finding, a relegation battle (and Derby might
soon be in one) is a tough place for an inexperienced squad.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Maybe Derby
will be fine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if they do win some
games, who will the wins come against?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ipswich?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Blackburn?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Barnsley?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Peterborough?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Us?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s becoming the sort of scramble where it
will only be possible to escape by pushing somebody else back down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s not bad news for us, already down at
the bottom.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">But I’m
clutching at straws a little.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even our
fine form, extrapolated until May, only saw us survive by a point in this
experiment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One rogue result could
change that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A significantly worse run
would surely relegate us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And given the
closeness of the race, we’re unlikely to have pressure-free opposition late
on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hull will presumably be going for a
top-two spot when we play them a fortnight from the end of the season.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s hard to see Huddersfield already being
more than six points clear when we meet a week later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the Valley will be a tough place to go on
final day if Powell’s Addicks still need something from the game.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">It’s not
science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That won’t be the final
table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It mightn’t be a million miles
away though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s going to be
tough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For everything O’Driscoll’s done,
it might be unsuccessful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But blimey,
look at City above the line there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s
something to cling on to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re bottom
of the table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might very well get
worse at the weekend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But surely the
likelihood that this one will go all the way is something positive to take at
this stage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Surely?</span></div>
willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02147131096600731560noreply@blogger.com1