Bristol City Press Conference

Humpty said:
"Is anyone arguing that?" > proceeds to argue that
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I literally just said that at the start of the season if we did well and other teams did badly, we had a chance at 2nd. We were clearly trying to put ourselves in the best possible place to make that challenge happen. We have failed.

Beginning of the season, I thought 4th would be a par for the course result, 2nd-3rd would be over-achieving and 5th-6th ok. Right now, unless things turn around, we're looking at 8th-10th which would be very poor.
 
Andythetouch said:
he dropped his guard a few times in there. you could see he was hurting a bit with some of questions. The comment about seeing his family once a week to prove how committed he is was very unlike him in a press conference.

Sounds like everyone at club has agreed our best chance is to focus on attacking as that is what we are good under Carrick, we tried to be more solid at the weekend and it didn't work. He said we need to double down at what we are good at about 5 times.
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No problem with that for me. Let's give it a go and if it doesn't work, what do we have to lose? If we cut out the individual errors we will be half way there.
 
Burnley, Sheffield United, Luton all substantially kept their Premier League squads.

Remember 3 of our squad have not played all season thats higher than what is considered normal.
 
Back in August:
- Burnley seemed to be in 'turmoil' with the amount of incomings/outgoings and with a new manager.
- Sheff Utd hit with a deduction and had financial issues to deal with.
- Leeds lost 3 of their best players
- Sunderland finished the previous season in relegation level form and were about to lose their best player with a new manager at the helm after many managers had rejected them
- Luton were a mess

I never thought we'd run away with the league, no chance. But I thought looking at the field and the competition, I thought this season was probably the weakest The Championship has ever been, at the top end of the league. So on that basis, I thought the fact we kept Rav, Hackney, ELL and signed Morris, Doak, Conway & Hamilton and finished the previous season strongly that we should/could have a good chance of staying with the pack at the top of the league and hope that with some luck on the way we could've been able to pinch an auto spot. Instead, Burnley sorted themselves out, Leeds never looked back, Sheff Utd made a couple of decent signings and then Sunderland's new manager got to grips with the league. Whereas we have never kicked on with a better squad that finished the previous season strong.

No way was our aim to 'hopefully finish in the PO's'

Our aim was to go for the top 2, with a spot in the PO being the bare minimum.

We are currently 11th, 4pts off 6th and much closer to relegation than the auto's.

This season, currently, has been a huge failure.
 
Redwurzel said:
Burnley, Sheffield United, Luton all substantially kept their Premier League squads.

Remember 3 of our squad have not played all season thats higher than what is considered normal.
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Both Burnley and Sheff United's squads were substantially rebuilt.
 
B_G said:
Well there it is from the horse's mouth.

"We wanted to challenge for something towards the top, but if it's play-offs we're talking about then there's 4 play-off spots and we are right in touch"

That's an admission that there was a belief that we could challenge for top 2 this season so hopefully that puts to bed all this rubbish talk that we were never realistically aiming for top 2.
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There's no way the players in the squad have ever been good enough for top two, simple as that. Regardless of his comment.
 
Bottom line for me is that we get beat at Ashton Gate and Carrick will be gone. I think we all know now the little lad from Scotland bailed him out.
 
Humpty said:
At the end of the summer transfer window, i thought there was only Leeds that had a substantially better squad than us. Sunderland certainly didn't and we were on a par with Burnley and Sheff United.
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Riley McGree being out?
Micah Hamilton not being Morgan Rogers?
Jonny Howson dropping off?
Aiden Morris getting injured?


Hackney, Burgzorg & Azaz with 30 appearances.. solid (also Latte Lath)

Ayling 26, Borges 26, Barlaser 24, Edmundson 24, Morris 23, Conway 23, Dijksteel 22.. less so (Jones on 23)

RVDB 19, Dieng 17, McGree 17, Hamilton 16.. starting to see our issues
(Clarke on 17)

THE BIG PROBLEM
Engel 12, Fry 12, Howson 11, Forss 11, Gilbert 10

Dieng replaced with Travers
Jones replaced with Whittaker
Hamilton replaced with Iling
Engel replaced with Giles
Gilbert replaced with Iheannacho

Not so sure about the gamble on Howson..obviously we tried bringing in Glen Kamara on loan.. Woolston has been on the bench? (Beka Beka)
 
Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
There's no way the players in the squad have ever been good enough for top two, simple as that. Regardless of his comment.
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100% agree. I seem to recall Humpty arguing until blue in the egg that we had a squad capable of challenging top 2 though so he wont relent. No way has this squad ever been capable of making top 2.
 
Cardiffdaffs said:
100% agree. I seem to recall Humpty arguing until blue in the egg that we had a squad capable of challenging top 2 though so he wont relent. No way has this squad ever been capable of making top 2.
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If we had Dieng, RVDB, Fry & Howson fit on on 30 games.. maybe
 
Just about to watch the press conference, I always like to guess how many times he will say "for sure"
normally reliable to say it about 5 times at each presser
Im predicting 6 this week, Ill report back with the result 👍
 
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Cardiffdaffs said:
Possibly but then again its a squad game and the depth isn't there.
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We gambled on Howson, Clarke was treading water for Fry.. we didn’t expect the double whammy with Dieng & Brynn..

I think the overall impact have been through the amount of injuries.. every team has them.. but top two teams don’t have half the squad missing.
 
Bruce said:
Is anyone arguing that?
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Posters argue it all the time on this board when making excuses for how poor this season has been. Posters often post, top 2 was never a realistic aim.

I agree with what you've posted about us having a side that finished on 69 points, we held the core together and spent on strengthening key areas. There was a feeling that we should be challenging at the top. That doesn't mean there's an expectation to finish top 2. It means we should at least be in the mix and challenging. We've never been able to compete.

The way he says it implies that play-offs were a secondary target and they still fancy their chances.

Abel Tasman said:
Of course he will say that though won't he. No Manager at the start of the season is going to say my team is nowhere near the strength of Top 2 and therefore our ambitions are limited to 3rd to 6th.
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Nobody asked him about top 2. He brought it up himself that they hoped to be challenging at the top.

Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
There's no way the players in the squad have ever been good enough for top two, simple as that. Regardless of his comment.
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The squad is capable of doing far better than it has and we are underachieving with it.
If we sat on 55-60 points I'd say we were achieving par with the set of players we've got.


But what is important is that there was a genuine belief that we could be closer to the top and we aren't. The reasons why are up for debate. Recruitment/squad strength or performance of the Manager, or a combination of both.
 
RavsFan said:
Today at 2pm, Seems a little early, wonder if the Journo’s will ask any deep and searching questions today? I appreciate we won’t get much in the way of answers mind. Just thought I’d alert the nation with it being on a Wednesday.

As you were.

Press Conference - Great!
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Oh I forgot - of course 2 days before the game as it is on Friday.
Bad mistake by me.
 
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