DJ Barry Hammond

Yeah - best return was 9 in 23 (plus 17 sub appearances) over 5 years ago for Montpellier. I also believe that his use as a striker tended to be in a pair at that time - mixed in with time on the left flank when the formation switched to a single striker setup. There’s a reason why a coach like Enzo utilised him solely on the left flank to great effect - that is his best spot on the pitch to utilise his skill set.

Mavididi is not a forward - and in a 3-4-3 like you posted, you need a link forward in the middle that brings the wide men into the game, who can then go and be a presence in the box afterward. Mav is neither of these things.

A significant change in structure like that needs coaching time to get it working correctly - especially with an already leaky defence. There really isn’t the time to do that; and I’m not convinced we have the personnel at centre half to pull off a three; you don’t really want any of Okoli, Vestagaard or Nelson being dragged out wide and asked to defend against skillfull and pacey wingers. Equally - I’m far from convinced that Mavididi has the skill set to play as the pivotal centre forward in that formation - and would be the perfect example of square peg in round hole you’re complaining about.

You what? What’s happening with Mavididi and Fatawu if we’re going 3-5-2? And when are you applying this shape change? At halftime, where up to that point we had looked really good in our original shape? I think changing formation to one we haven’t played or trained for, that also takes two of our most threatening attacking players out of their natural positions would be a very bizarre move for a manager to make.

And Shrewsbury at Wolves 😂

You make it sound so easy - but it wasn’t then and still isn’t now. To extend you analogy, if you win the lottery, but buy things your underlying income cannot support (big house, fast car etc)… you will still find yourself in a hole very, very quickly. And that’s the underlying thing this club has struggled with… even before King Power - it’s income streams are not strong enough to support a top 10 top flight position. This is not to absolve King Power and those in charge of the mistakes made… but equally I think some fans massive overstate the opportunity there was to become an “established big club”. Note when we won the league Newcastle and Villa were just re-emerging from their fall from grace and began to become major players for the league positions we wanted to occupy. Look at West Ham, who are going through similar to us - and even Stoke, who punched above their status for years before dropping off. Wigan and Blackburn are further examples to show that beating the odds against the monopoly clubs is very rarely sustainable. Perhaps the only club that has managed to survive above their original station in recent years is Manchester City - and that in itself says a lot.

4 points off the playoffs mind. Given the comments on here about the players at Marti’s disposal (including lack of a proper striker)… is he actually doing ok?

Apparently not

We’re going to shithouse this aren’t we?

There should probably be two schools of thought after todays insipid performance… 1.) We’re awful, is Marti the man to get us at least 25 points to get us through this horrible season (that would take us to 56 - so the magic 50 minus 6)? 2.) But also rather bizarrely, has he actually done quite well to get us to 31 points at this stage of the season with this horrible, totally unbalanced squad - given it feels like our next 10 point haul will be a long haul affair. I can’t see Marti staying in post much longer if performances like today continue, but equally I’m not convinced we have the right personnel to significantly alter the direction of our season.

Are we allowed to loan Brighton players now - have they forgiven us for messing around with Facundo? That said, we’ve had reported interest in Evan before, so if he is available I imagine we’d have another look.

Well - the away end as it is now (Ateyo Stand) used to house home supporters prior to the redevelopment of the South and Lansdown stands. There’s changing rooms underneath the stand and the teams used to enter the field from that very stand. Away fans used to sit at the opposite end, which at that time was little more than a shed - but boy could you make some noise in that end! Ateyo’s not too bad for acoustics either from memory.

Club Captain and lack of other viable options. If it was a dire emergency he’d play… but your not going to risk him, it’s been that way all season so far.

He ain’t playing twice in a week now. He may have been on the bench, but he wasn’t going to be used.

JJ was clearly shattered and with no Winks or Soumare the options were either Page or Aluko at right back and moving Hamza. The later eventually happened… but perhaps there was evidence of why Marti was reluctant to go with that change initially given I found Aluko to be a little too passive in his defending.

The weirdest thing about this camera ‘height’ is I don’t recall Ashton Gate having a stand as high as the picture suggests?

This forum wouldn’t have had this midfield 20 games ago either mind. I remember “Winks has to start” posts!

What I like most about that goal is Skipp going across to Fatawu afterwards and saying something along the lines of “that was ****ing brilliant!”

No way! There’ll be a Marti in thread at this rate 😂

That’s a tricky one to get during the January window, despite how obviously important this glaring missing piece of the puzzle is. We’d probably have to go for a loan deal of a young forward from a Premier League club (Jaden Heskey for example), but of course there’s no guarantees that it work out as we all hope.

One key area your comments miss on the finances side is the wage to turnover % - which has been 90%+ even before the title winning contracts were granted. I therefore think the idea we had a chance to become an established top half Premier League club is vastly overstated - we just didn’t have the revenue base. Additionally, our watermark days were before Newcastle and Villa started to become serious players for those top 6/8 spots; clubs that have much better revenue bases to sustain that sort of charge… and yet even they are having to do PSR juggles and have not seen a smooth trajectory in terms of league performance year on year. For us - a club that gain’s a significant portion of it’s turnover outside of TV revenue from gate receipts - the Covid period and that lost income will have hit hard and the fact this period coincided with a move away from selling a significant player asset each season with a view to competing at the top level heightens the impact of that lost revenue. With building costs also spiralling at that time and the owners underlying business suffering from the pandemic too - it should perhaps be understandable that plans for stadium redevelopment that would require serious additional financial underwriting have effectively been shelved. That covid period and the differences between finishing 5th rather than 4th all then contribute to the PSR spiral the club still finds itself in; which gives you a clear reason why investment in the squad has been limited - there is no room in the calculations to do more, therefore a new owner can’t do much more on this front without first finding significant and instant revenue streams. This is not to say mistakes haven’t been made since that FA Cup win - but the navigable course to becoming an established top level club was nowhere near as easy as many on here seem to believe and was never a likely outcome in the long run given the significant structural deficiencies that were there at the time (i.e we simply don’t make enough income as a club to be at that level). Now for me, the saddest thing about this period is how I the whole situation became much more of a problem through Rodgers downing tools; had we done what Celtic recently did maybe things would have been different, but our call on whether to sack Brendan or not was a lot harder than there’s. It’s also frustrating that we lost Enzo when we did, because with one more season (or even half of one) I can’t imagine we’d be in the Championship now.

What if Jakub’s got a serious groin tear and is out for 3 months?

As would most of the forum, but there’s no reality of a manager actually being able to do that in the real world. You can possibly get away with banishing one player, maybe two at a stretch - but there’s no chance a manager would be allowed to do such a thing to all 5 mentioned… especially given the wages they’re on / the combined potential re-sale value of those players that would tank if you publicly ostracise them to a youth team. You know, Marti might not really want all five mentioned long term… but want he will recognise is getting £25-£30+ million in sales from those players is likely to give him funds to reinvest in the squad, so it’s in his interests to try and maintain some sort of market value for these players. There are of course other internal factors at play too, such as squad harmony and these players individual standings within the squad. Marti had to come in an offer a clean slate to all and try and build a togetherness within the squad. Isolating five senior players from the off - that’s unlikely to get you very far especially if some of those players are quite popular within the squad - I can’t imagine the Wink’s saga did Ruud any favours. And of course whilst the window is closed players are going nowhere, so with 8 weeks of football still left until the next transfer window and a busy festive fixture list soon upon us, it doesn’t make sense for Marti to completely cast aside anyone in the squad just yet. Fans on here have the luxury of naming a preferred starting 11 with no consequence to their selections and based on very limited factors (i.e. their view on that players recent performances or lack of).

The other glaringly obvious thing with this lineup - it’s not one you’d want to repeat, even if we get a win tonight!

Swap with Ayew though… that shape is a possibility isn’t it?