Bristol City (A) 19.45 Tuesday, January 16th, or 14.45 USA (East Coast)

MrsGrey

😂

EXETERHAMMER

Nothing positive to say unfortunately.
Injuries galore.
Lack of squad depth.
Benhrama and Mavropanos mistakes.
Bristol wanted it more, but 2 or 3 very dirty players. Williams and the other one would have been off the pitch with VAR.
And the ref..... What was the point of him being there. Actually, I think he was awful.

thornburyiron

You’re lucky Buffy. I’ve just managed to get off the phone from my son in law and grandson (Chelsea fan). My phone rang the moment the whistle went.
City looked far more a PL team than we did although the physicality would surely have been punished if there’d been VAR.
Can’t get away from the fact though that we’ve been outplayed for 75% of the two matches which is embarrassing. Notwithstanding we had 5 first teamers missing our replacements should be better than they are and Mubama shows each time he comes on he’s not up to senior football yet by a long way.

MrsGrey

(ref, thornbury's post)

Not sure why you are engaging with fans of a totally unrelated team. But, that's your choice. My reactions aren't affected by that.

City didn't look like a PL team imo.

It's one of those things. Not all that embarrassing. We gave them a goal from a disaster, then went down to 10 men from another. It would have been more desirable (and respectable) to get to the next round - this stage knock out is a disappointment.

But, we deal with the reality of our situation. No cloud-cuckoo land, please!


Also, anyone who previously argued for kids to play (how could it be worse / get a goalscorer on etc ) will you admit that perhaps the managerial team sees these guys in training and in youth matches and knows that they are not yet ready for PL starts or even Pl 30 mins.

thornburyiron

Mrs G my son in law is a massive City fan and my grandson supports Chelsea as his PL team but both were, until this season, City season ticket holders. From the moment the draw was made they’ve been on at me as to how they’d be too strong for us and fully expected City to win.
It doesn’t help that I live just north of Bristol and have heard nothing but how City would beat us since the draw was made.
I agree City don’t look like a PL team and probably won’t become one for the foreseeable but tonight they looked more like one than we did. They usually managed more passes before giving the ball away than we did and created better chances than we did.
I’ve said many times before when people have clamoured for kids to be given a chance that development and PL levels are light years apart. In fact the championship and PL are quite a distance apart as most teams coming up find out. We send academy players out on loan to L1 and L2 teams but few of them end up playing regularly and few of those who move onto championship teams end up being moved on again.
I’m disappointed we went out at the 3rd round, more so because of who it was against, but in reality didn’t expect us to go on and win it but thought we may have a bit of a run as generally success breeds success.
Not winning the first game screwed up our “winter break” and as it’s likely to be a similar side on Sunday confidence may be lower than it otherwise may have been. To have to start with a front three tonight who haven’t scored a goal between them didn’t encourage optimism but I think what we saw should show people that the staff see these players in training and make a judgement as to what they offer and based on tonight the answer is not a lot

Bazshuayi

Can we not just sack Ings under the trades description act?
Pension off Cornet or show him off in a medical oddities section of the ground
Sell Benrahma and hope we get 15M for him (as in really hope)
Fornals for 10M
Johnson 10M. Ok 5M

Or just get rid in some fancy way(s) so we can bring in some of the players we've been linked with.

LW, Striker - Huga at PSG, Gnonto at the dirty Lids. Kilman at Wolves. Sort of anyone..

MrsGrey

Thornbury 👍

Let the Bristol City fans enjoy their few minutes of glory.

Champions of Europe - they'll never sing that 😆

Champions of the Second Division... and League 1. We'll never sing that, either.

MrsGrey

I like that Moyes said to him it looked like a red card.

No faffing with ' didn't see' or ' haven't watched it back '.
Cos, you know , we all saw it. It was a red.

claretandbluesky

I have just watched the match on iplayer as was busy this evening. I am not too concerned about going out as I think we don't have the squad to compete on too many fronts as we found in the caraboo. We now have the Europa knockout stages and the pursuit of a Euro place in the League as two targets and we will benefit from not having to concern about Forest or Blackpool in the next round of the FA Cup now.

As for the match we seemed to lack any creativity without our four best players so far this season,and the team fielded was probably of a championship standard. It's the second time Mavropanos has made a huge unpressed error which has led to a goal and I fear he will not be good enough ultimately. As for Benni, no professional footballer should be getting sent of for retaliation nowadays, lacks a brain that lad.

I didn't like Bristol City and they were always looking to leave something on the players and I think that demonstrates how VAR has improved the game regardless of decision making, just having it restrains teams like Bristol City as they would lose two or three players each week. They will not be anywhere near the Premier League anytime soon I fear and I didn't see any of their players I thought would be good for us.

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

Not going to defend our back-up players, they truely were woeful and shouod be emabressed as professionals

But do think you have a situation that they themselves know they aren't going to play, even for 15 minutes when our usual starters are running on fumes. Moyes doesn't care, he only trusts the guys he trusts.

Now these back-up players have been sitting on the bench for the last 18-24 months, many on a good wage. It's not completely surprising they aren't really up to it when thrown in

Think we are in a really tricky situation whereby we need a huge clear-out of basically anyone not in the First XI but also don't have the funds to do so. Also if you're a player coming in, you must be a bit concerned that you won't get the Moyes bench treatment

Not upset going out, the cups lost a lot of magic for me and clearly this was a terrible team

But the performance of Ings, Cornet, Benrahma etc. Was woeful

thornburyiron

Don’t really accept they aren’t up to it when thrown in. These are so called professional footballers who do this as a career and have done it all their lives. They train everyday with all the other players but seem unable to make a pass or a tackle or know where the goal is when it comes to a game.
All the time you see players say all they want to do is play football so when they get the chance why don’t they do just that.
You can partially excuse the young players as they are quite frankly out of their depth in the PL and need to be playing regular lower league football to get used to playing against men because at the moment it looks like under 14s playing under 16s or above.

Slacker

I’m upset at going out, I love the cup and every January I think and hope that this could be our year.Last night’s performance by some of the squad players was awful. They should be ready, they train and work every day and has been said they’re professionals. You can only play 11 players plus subs in a game and they should be busting a gut to prove that they should be in the starting 11.

alderz

It's a bit of a vicious cycle. I personally agree that the players who haven't played much aren't going to be at their best when they come in, because there is a lot to said for playing regularly and getting into the groove. But performances like it sounds like they gave last night, and tbh a lot of their other cameos, aren't going to convince the manager to change his mind on them and give them more time.

That all said, I think it's one thing to be rusty and a bit off the pace, it's another to show a complete and utter ineptitude, which is what we're regularly seen from Ings, Benrahma, Cornet and others.

alderz

I just watched the highlights and I have some thoughts:
1. For the goal, yes it was a bad ball from Mavropanos, but it was also VERY obvious that he was going to try to play that pass. The striker anticipated it, but Fabianski was really slow to come out, and Zouma was ball watching. Even when the striker looked like he might get to the ball, Zouma was jogging back. It wasn't until the guy got around Fab that he sprinted. For me, the mistake by Mavropanos was obviously bad, but there were a slew of errors there - not even talking about the awful pass from Cornet when either Ings or Benrahma could have been played in.
2. The red card from Benrahma is absolutely ridiculous. I can only think that he thought he'd get away with it because of no VAR. That said, the ref 100% should have blown up for a foul by Emerson, which would have meant it never happened. Also, the incident with the guy basically starting on Cresswell shows why VAR is important. If VAR was in place he definitely gets sent off for swinging an arm at him.

buffybegood

alderz said:

I just watched the highlights and I have some thoughts:
1. For the goal, yes it was a bad ball from Mavropanos, but it was also VERY obvious that he was going to try to play that pass. The striker anticipated it, but Fabianski was really slow to come out, and Zouma was ball watching. Even when the striker looked like he might get to the ball, Zouma was jogging back. It wasn't until the guy got around Fab that he sprinted. For me, the mistake by Mavropanos was obviously bad, but there were a slew of errors there -

That's pretty much my take on it as I said at the time. Poor by Mavropanos, but Fabianski and Zouma both shoulda done better imo.

Lukerz

I don’t get the squad depth issue. Of course the squad depth isn’t great, but when you are missing Aguerd, Alvarez, Fornals, Antonio, Bowen, Kudus, Paqueta…of course that is going to put pressure on the squad.

Bringing in one or two players is fine, missing 6/7 will put pressure on any side, including Manchester City.

buffybegood

Lukerz said:

I don’t get the squad depth issue. Of course the squad depth isn’t great, but when you are missing Aguerd, Alvarez, Fornals, Antonio, Bowen, Kudus, Paqueta…of course that is going to put pressure on the squad.

Bringing in one or two players is fine, missing 6/7 will put pressure on any side, including Manchester City.

The issue for me is that the back up players have gone backwards so much, whether through deterioration due to age, injury or squad mis-management.

It's not just that the standard of the starting eleven has improved (which would in itself exaggerate the drop off in quality), but players have either been kept too long and age is taking its toll (Cresswell, Fabianski, Antonio, Ogbonna) or they genuinely appear to be playing worse than they were a year or two ago for non-age related reasons (Fornals, Benrahma). Add in the poor purchase of Ings who is just unsuitable for how we play, and the long term injury issues to Cornet and the back up players are a lot worse than they should be.

Bazshuayi

I still have some affection for both Benni and Fornals. The former however has always flattered to deceive but Pablo was until recently a solid player who plenty of the time deserved more mnutes thn he got.