Ten days is a long time in football...the new era is dawning

The last couple of weeks has been quite a period in Bristol City’s long history. It’s been chaotic, troublesome and concerning. There’s been anger and abuse (more on that later), antipathy and arguments. And, as is the way with football, things tend to move very quickly. There is now more than a murmur of excitement (not quite full-blown, mind) and significant nodding of approval at the choice made by the club this week.

In between all of this City won a game of football, albeit against a team bottom of the league playing with ten men for most of the match. But they won, and got three points and moved back into the top half of the table. Underperforming and not where the club wants to be…? Margins are fine, that’s for certain.

So, what has been learned, with the announcement of Liam Manning as Head Coach on Tuesday and what myths do need to be busted?

Firstly, the club communications are like Jekyll & Hyde. The engagement pieces, insight videos and some of the fun nonsense that adorns Twitter, TikTok etc is, even if it’s not your cup of tea, highly productive in terms of numbers. The content this week has been excellent, with a real feeling that fans have been involved in the whole event. And the more followers and interactions achieved, the higher the profile, the more tickets sold and the better sponsorship deals achieved and so on.

However, when the news isn’t post-win or fluffy bunny type content, the club have been poor at best for some time and this was brought into sharp focus for almost a week, from the shock announcement of Nigel Pearson’s sacking. Someone at the club is scared of saying anything at all in these instances, and the result is clunky, emotionless communications that don’t hit the mark or don’t understand the questions fans will be asking. Twice in the last year – on price of Man City tickets and the new digital season cards, they’ve not addressed the obvious concerns fans would have. The very first replies on the posts are the obvious questions, thought about and scripted within two seconds by the fanbase. To their credit I’ve spoken to someone at the club on both occasions and got reasonable, understandable answers, but they should be anticipating better – they never want to address the negative and accept some won’t like the decisions made.

The comms last weekend around the decision to sack the increasingly-popular Pearson were just awful. It’s hard to blame Jon Lansdown directly, despite his two-minute ditty being the centre of the fan’s anger. He’s a Chairman, not a Comms/PR expert. He would have some say on what goes out, but will also be being advised on structure and what to say and not say. The advice was miles off the mark on this occasion. He’s not a great interviewee and rarely looks comfortable but that’s just his personality and confidence. Someone should have recognised how bad that video was in every way and canned it, not approved it.

And where there’s a vacuum, a maelstrom is created. Things improved during the week, but the fact that both Jon and group CEO Gavin Marshall publicly admitted they hadn’t done well spoke volumes.

Personally, I was disappointed by the decision to sack Nigel Pearson. I felt he’d garnered more than enough team spirit, togetherness and – as Saturday’s win showed – wasn’t that far away from where most fans expect to be.

The impact of his illness potentially shouldn’t be underestimated. A football club’s manager is its main figurehead. Pearson had that gravitas in spades, but not being around the training ground for weeks and being ‘the man’ must have created concerns on his ability to do the role in even his ardent supporters at the club. And if that was indeed a part of the reason, it is understandable the club didn’t wish to dwell on this.

However, if you were going to explain an unpopular dismissal to a dismayed fanbase, then talking about home struggles, the lack of goals and ability to break a team down, plus the desire to move to a strategically planned style of football that wasn’t quite happening would have been far more credible and acceptable. 

Instead there were murmurs about league position that didn’t stand up to scrutiny, Dave Rennie was sacked at the same time to give a huge nudge towards a fitness excuse and then throwaway mentions of the nine days break players were given after the Leeds game.

Whilst most of Lansdown’s second interview, with Joe Sims, was more than reasonable, considering he said he wouldn’t talk about the football side as there are people better placed than him, he seemed overly keen to talk about the fitness and (un)conditioning of the players – an area he is presumably even less qualified to talk about than football tactics. There’s an air of a convenient excuse to all that rationale, especially when Curtis Fleming then explained the breaks were just the same as what they’ve done for two years – and then even Manning made a point of saying a key attribute of the squad he’s inheriting is their fitness and desire to run.

Ultimately, it has become clear that Nige wasn’t going to be give an extension to his contract in the summer, and again that adds a touch more rationale to the decision. If, as now seems likely, the club’s strategy was to use his three years to rebuild, lay a platform, build a younger, hungrier, lower cost squad then they’ve ticked every box. If they now want to move on from that then it’s on their heads, but there is some sense in doing so before a January transfer window where loans, if not permanent signings, are likely to be brought in.

Another big learning from the episode is that Steve Lansdown has clearly taken a back seat on all things football and Jon is back in charge, potentially to an extent that he’s never been before. Steve wasn’t involved in this decision other than to rubberstamp it, despite some feeling his character clashed with Pearson’s. And he wasn’t involved in the new appointment either. That has fallen squarely to Jon, Brian Tinnion and the two Execs on the Board. This probably isn’t a huge surprise, but maybe has a feel of “we’ll give it one last shot before selling”? If an eye-opening bid came in tomorrow he’d surely be off like a shot – and has made no secret of the fact he would ideally like to sell up – but Jon’s sudden increased involvement suggests there’s a couple of years at least left to try and deliver the full Lansdown legacy.

On which point, the abuse and some of the comments that have accompanied every post on OTIB and on social media to the Lansdowns has been frankly outrageous. By all means question their decisions, try to hold them account of course. Constructively. Managerial decisions and appointments have often been underwhelming in the past 20 years, but to question their value to the club when you’re sitting in a stadium that’s the envy of many at this level, when you’re seeing interviews from the (OK, slightly ironically named) High Performance Centre – or training ground as Pearson was always keen to call it – is just not on. To call them c***s, to level that abuse at a family that has invested £200m in this part of the city and the club is unacceptable.

And no, they don’t “spend it all on the rugby” (rugby costs are 15-20% of the football club costs) and no, they haven’t done things on the cheap. City are only six months out of a potentially risky FFP position having lost £500,000 a WEEK every week for two years. That is a fact and ridicules any sentiment that they haven’t gone for it. They really went for it under Lee Johnson and Mark Ashton, it just didn’t happen for a number of reasons. They are still going for it now to a degree, compared with half the Championship, just a little less excessively than a couple of years ago. Steve has openly admitted he’d like additional financial support. Quite honestly, who can blame him? He’s shouldered the lot for 25 years.

And yes, by the way, they still want promotion. The nonsense about planning for relegation or being happy with midtable is just that – nonsense. The SINGLE, only way that Lansdown will ever get anything like a return on his money would be if we were in the Premier League. The numbers behind that are fact. And yes, it might mean more would have to be spent then, but the eye-watering levels of income would equally mean they could offset the majority and not lose £20-£30m per season as per recently. They are bare facts. You might argue with the approach and how they expect to get there, but chucking money around isn’t the only way.

Chucking money can get you there (even Bournemouth did that and had a FFP fine) but quite simply it doesn’t offer guarantees. For every Bournemouth, Brentford, Brighton and Luton that fans all understandably point to, there’s a Cardiff, Derby, Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich (until this season) and Bolton that’s gone the other way and got themselves in dire straits. A 50/50 success rate at very best and only 3 teams get to go up. 21 don’t.

Next on the list of things we’ve learned is that Brian Tinnion now wields a significant amount of power on the football side. He wouldn’t have made the decision to sack Pearson, but he’d have been heavily involved. He will have decided the strategic approach to style we’ve heard much about and have pinpointed Manning as the man to take us forward.

Whether or not he was the ‘person in the hierarchy’ questioning Andy King’s position in the team we’ll probably never know, but given the other role titles involved in that hierarchy, it seems more likely than not. That is a worry to me but equally I suspect conversations like that happen all the time behind-the-scenes and perhaps it was just that, and an issue blown up by a throwaway line in an interview.

And so onto the new gaffer. The new Head Coach. One criticism easily levelled at the Board in the past has been we don’t appear to have succession planning, we kneejerk and never seem to know what we want. We flick from coach to manager, from old to young, from experience to plain rookie.

To give the club every credit, this appears to be the opposite of that, even if you disagree and think we should have had a ‘bigger name’. I’m still to find a bigger name that more than a handful of fans would agree on, which suggests maybe a list of names that have failed elsewhere isn’t the best starting point.

We’ve gone and found exactly the type of coach we want. We were never interested in Nathan Jones, Gary Rowett or Neil Warnock. Both Jon and Gavin Marshall were keen to point out their surprise at who was on ‘the list’, albeit most of that list is from SkyBet’s ‘let’s pluck a recent Championship manager’s name out the air’ approach. One or two may have been of interest, possibly Luke Williams, maybe John Eustace at a push.

But in Manning they’ve got a grass on his boots coach, a graduate of modern football who talks analytics, stats and xG and has already brought his performance analyst on board. They’ve gone and got someone who does, to be fair, align with the style of football they said they wanted. 

And that’s great. What business appoints a CEO who goes against their plan and values? A CEO who’ll argue with everyone else – and yet the fans that instantly bemoan and shout an uneducated “yes man” seem to think that’s a good plan.

Judgement on him can naturally wait. One nuance that amused was the general positivity with which his initial interviews were received, yet there is more than a touch of Sean O’Driscoll about him, a figure many still point to as a highly unpopular previous incumbent of the hotseat. Focus on process, not results and outcomes. Make sure the players know what’s needed but they’ve got to take the right decisions. There was a touch more pragmatism too – “we’ve got to go out and get three points on Saturday” but to suggest this is an entirely new approach is probably not wholly true.

The minor warnings that have been mentioned amongst the teeth-gnashing from Oxfordshire have centered around being patient. There will be lots of sideways and backwards passing until the right opportunities open up. Does this mean fans are being fed a yarn about front-foot attacking football? No, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be gung-ho or keep knocking it long either. Ironically, I strongly suspect many of the fans who bemoan ‘long ball’ football, knocking it into the channels too often are likely to be the same ones who are first to complain when we play keep ball at the back. If you’re not playing like Brazil 1970, it simply isn’t good enough for some.

Saturday will be the first view of the new era. It’s unlikely too much will have changed although there were signs even against Sheffield Wednesday under Fleming that we were passing the ball shorter, keeping possession more easily and not hitting the channels quite so early.

Manning and his coaching team will have given some ideas to the players about style but it won’t change radically overnight.

What should we expect of him? It’s quite unusual coming in new to a settled squad that is not especially underperforming, despite the protestations of the ‘hierarchy’ who seem to think we’re top six equipped, even though few fans would agree entirely. This should give him an advantage, although it also sets expectations high instantly.

He’s not going be judged on the next few months, unless form somehow takes a drastic, unexpected downturn. But it’s clear that the Board are set on becoming promotion contenders. The hint in the extended interviews has been that the Alex Scott money has been ‘banked’ and some will be made available if we find the targets we want and aren’t held to ransom. But let’s not kid anyone, there won’t be huge money signings and a return to £30,000 per week wages, in the short-term at least. I’d expect Manning and Tinnion to be working closely over the next two months to confirm the type of player and the gaps there might be in the squad.

It will be interesting to see how the role of Andy King is now taken on. I fear he might be a victim of this situation come May, with some surely seeing him as ‘a Pearson man’. It would be a shame for a fan of the club and someone the young players all seemingly look up to if that was how it was ended for him. Matty James too, is out of contract and despite the fact he finally appears to be winning over the majority of the fanbase by demonstrating the clear value he can offer, the odds on him being a City player next season surely lengthened last Sunday.

But the club moves on. Fans will support anyone if they show they’re committed and ultimately the club is bigger than any fan, player or manager. Liam Manning’s Cider Army will undoubtedly be bouncing of the low roofs of Loftus Road this weekend and whilst it will never be a case of Nigel Who?, it’s impossible not to get a little bit excited about what may lay ahead in this new era. COYR!