Just to come back to the loan market. I understand you don't want to dilute what we have but in the past players like Tammy Abraham have had a really big impact at the club. Could one or two of the right players for six months in January be that extra percentage to take us to where we want?
RG: Yes, if they can provide enough value but you can pay an awful lot of money for them and then they disappear six or 12 months later. You've put no value into your own squad and all you've done is pump up the value of someone else.
Someone like a Tammy (Abraham) who was an incredible loan signing. Andy Cole was another one. It's not something we don't look at, we genuinely look at it. When we're putting the shortlist together we will have a combination of people who are available to purchase, people who are available on free transfers and people who are available on loan.
We compare them against the best options and see where we're going to get the best value from.
NP: And the market's changed. I've taken players like Tom Cleverley, Jesse Lingard - I sent him back to Manchester United because he was a disgrace and he got a b******ing, I'm serious.
Harry Kane, didn't play him. Or I played him but the players weren't having him. What you have to remember with things like this is their careers may have gone like this (up) afterwards or like that (down) but they need the experience. So sometimes the experience is a clip around the ear hole and send them back.
Back in those days of course, we're only talking 10 years ago. When you took players from Premier League sides, the first six months will be free and after that, you might be a nominal loan fee. Now if these players came into our club, they would be our top earners by 2x what our top earners are earning and they might not be a success.
It's a different... honestly, it changes so quickly and I think... I don't want to slag agents off per se because that would be unfair but the game has changed hugely in the last five years in terms of what people want out of it and there aren't enough managers who have control still over the decisions of where players go.
I've spoke to managers at one or two big clubs in the Premier League and enquired about their players and they say 'It's nothing to do with me, you'll have to enquire with our loan manager' and it just becomes a numbers game. At that point, I go, 'we're not doing it.'
RG: Just to expand on that. There are 419 players in the Premier League and the average salary is £55,000 a week so when you're looking at bringing youngsters in, they're on a lot of money.
Also, the problem with the loan managers, and I will be very nice when I talk about them because we may need their favours but they run a business and within a Premier League club the loan manager is expected to turn a profit. So, yes they are trying to get experience into their players but they also want to make money out of it.
NP: I think it's a good question that you ask and a very worthwhile question but what we need to do is at least be as transparent as possible for our reasons for it. I try and do that but hopefully, the press will ask me some better questions - joking apart - the decisions we make on players coming in or not coming in are based on what's right for us and I don't think maybe at times you get the full story and we could give you more information on that but the thing about it is, you talk about other people's players and I don't like to speculate on talking about other people's players. I think it's disrespectful some of the time to do that.
I think the process we can be as open as possible but in terms of the numbers and the names, I don't think it's ethical to go down that route but it's changed massively in a short period of time.
When you do interviews do you ever look at the reporter and think 'why are you asking me that question'?
NP: I don't think I'm good at hiding it. I suppose I wear my heart on my sleeve in that sense. I don't like it and Richard's in the room and I like to think I try and help out, he won't think so at times, but I think lazy questioning is something that irritates me.
Because if journalists ask intelligent questions and questions which actually test you, then I'm happy to talk all day. But if they just give you a statement, they don't ask a question just give a statement and then expect you to expand on it. I'll just leave them hanging.
Because their job is to ask me a difficult question. Their job is to... they're working on your behalf so they should be asking the questions that you can't ask after a game and I think that is the role of journalists is to do that. They'll be some journalists where you'll see a very critical report on one thing and probably next thing doing a different angle and it's about giving balance. It's about representing the public's opinions and asking the questions the public can't necessarily ask.
You can vote with your feet by not coming. You can vote with your vocal cords by either booing or not being happy or letting us know that. The only thing I'd say about that is, try and stay behind your team. I don't mind taking the flak but the team needs your support.
For me journalism... I feel there's a lot of lazy journalists out there and I'm not suggesting Richard is that at all because over the last year I'd like to think there is a bit more two-way questioning and I think that is very, very healthy. It has to be their job to get us to open up and my job is to protect our interests and sometimes the players. Not to protect myself it's to protect the club.
When you've got those dynamics, it stands to reason it's their job to open that and unlock that by asking intelligent and searching questions and ones which make me move about a bit and it doesn't happen often enough.
And you know I've got some history.
Hi Tinns, talk about psychology in the game and the mental toughness of some of the young players coming through. So it's great you have Ryley Towler coming through and he has a bit of a rick and gives away a pen or Belly has a bit of a nightmare 45 minutes at right-back/ right wing-back. How do you work with them to make sure they're ready to go again and if they go out on loan what does that do with their heads to think have I done it? Have I not? What do you do to get them ready mentally?
BT: I think the biggest thing to get you mentally ready is to play the game. I think the experience of being there on a Saturday and playing and having the ups and downs and having the good performances and getting three points.
I think when we do send these young players out, it's to get them experience. In the U21s you don't pick a 21s team to win a game because it's not the be-all and end-all. It's about developing the best players. So you'll play a 16-year-old in there or two and think we might lose the game but they are going to be further along in their development.
So the same as Ryley, he wouldn't get anything playing with the 21s because he's beyond that. He's not quite in Nige's plans so let's get him in League Two playing 30/40 games and then in pre-season he'll be back I'm sure in Nigel's squad and we go 'right, where is he now after 40 games in League Two?' With the ups and downs of winning, losing having to get back up to play again on Tuesday. So that's the reason - Ryley's point is to get that experience and get those games under his belt and come back.
He's been playing centre midfield a bit for Wimbledon as well. Protecting that back four and been really, really good. A saw a comment the other day saying he's one of the best loan signings they've ever had so I'm sure Ryley will come back really positive and ready to show Nige and his staff that he's gained massive experience from that loan.
NP: And he might go again for us. You've got to give him the chance. And talking about loans, which is why I don't like loaning our youngsters out early because I want to look at them in pre-season and with a small squad, we have to make sure some players don't get too much pitch time. I don't like too many games in pre-season. It's about condition.
So the youngsters, every time we start that pre-season it's an opportunity to see just how far they've come on. Some of them, even from the end of a season to the start of pre-season... some of our youngsters have made massive progress.
That's player by player?
BT: Alex Scott didn't need one. Last season Belly and Tommy were touch and go are they going to go out? Are they going to stay here? They've done so well he (Nige) said they're not going anywhere.
NP: We saw him train once and said 'he'll play for England'
BT: Scotty, yea. But then Tommy comes in pre-season and does really well and great, he's not going anywhere. It's a constant conversation.
Hello Nigel, question for you. I remember not long after you joined us and I don't buy this newspaper but there was a picture in the Daily Mail of you sat in the office of the HPC. There was a bonsai tree there. I hope that's correct or else I'm barking up the wrong bonsai tree here... anyway I was just wondering what you do outside of the club apart from fending off packs of wolves? You don't strike me as a 24 hour a day, watching videos, analysing...
NP: You've got me to a tee there, lad.
I read somewhere you like a walk so I was wondering whether you've been up on the Mendips, talking about football is boring let's find out about you.
NP: This is the rambling association now. I try and get a bit of balance in my life. I like to be alone if I'm honest. I don't mind being with people but I enjoy my own company too but I like being outside and doing all sorts of stuff. I'll have a go at anything really... within reason.
Sheering sheep I did one year but not very well. A few sheep ticks but I just like being outside and I like to get away from football as well so where I live outside of Nailsea is good for me. It's a bit more solitary out there so I like to be outside basically, doing all sorts of stuff.
How am I going to follow that question? I suppose how do you, Curtis (Fleming) and I suppose Jason (Euell) feel when there are certain comments from supporters saying or point out the fact that all three of you are former defenders and therefore say the players should have defended better because they are coached by former defenders?
NP: People are entitled to their opinions but I think we work with our players and I think it's important that we work to improve. Let's put it like this, if you're going to be blaming somebody, you're going to be blaming somebody at the top. What I would say is it's always about trying to improve players and players will make mistakes.
Unfortunately for us, we still make too many mistakes that cost us goals. That's our biggest problem. I think Kal Naismith came in for some criticism but he plays in such a positive way and the mistakes that he made that cost us goals hurts him. Of course it does.
But what he brings to the side far outweighs that as well. He's so conscious of wanting to put those situations right. We've made mistakes with goalkeeping situations, defensive situations 1v1s, mistakes that come out of nowhere. It's very, very frustrating for all of us. But I'm not a believer in just hanging people out to dry necessarily unless they need it. I might do then.
But they're my players, our players and we'll work together to improve all of them and that's what we'll do. I know people will sometimes get irritated when I say 'yea they're the players that we've got' but they are until we can change it.
So what we have to do is work with those players to make the team more efficient, because if the team is efficient then individual mistakes aren't as costly. Criticism always hurts people.
People who say it doesn't hurt, I don't think that is... you can have Rhino skin but somewhere it hits you and I think when it does hit you the response should be, let's do something about it and for me, it's all about working in the right sort of environment and I think for the most part we have that but I think we have a really honest forum for at least most people to have an opinion.
Whether that's shared by other people is a different thing of course but it's important to have the opportunity to at least say it, like you have tonight.
You say we lose points due to silly mistakes but we keep playing a three at the back. I just wanted to know why we keep playing a three at the back with defensive mistakes?
NP: Because that's the system that suits the players that we've got. We don't have full-backs we have wing-backs. Mark Sykes I think has been excellent this season. I think it suits Jay Dasilva, he's also a wing-back although Jay could play as a full-back.
Three defenders means that it suits the players we have. It means we can play a three in midfield and two up top. I like to play with two up top. We did play 4-3-3 but I think all of our strikers are better when playing in a partnership and we have players who like to play in behind the two strikers.
We are talking about errors at the back again but actually the strength of us is actually how we go forward. We're not at the moment a clean sheet side. Although we've probably kept more clean sheets this season than last, we're still shipping in too many goals and losing too many games. But the system that we're playing is there because it suits the players we have.
So we've had a conversation today as staff about what the benefits are of changing it. Of course, we keep going back to the same thing and that is our forwards are better off as a two and one behind who is a real pest and that will suit us when we play against Swansea and we've got good midfielders so it's about trying to get your best players on the pitch. Always.
I'm not a massive fan of playing three at the back, it's about what we've got and what the players... I enjoy seeing us play the way we do at times because we have a group of attacking players who can cause problems for absolutely anybody in this league and they're in a good place mentally as well. We have to try and harness the side that are functioning as well as possible and sometimes when parts of the team aren't functioning as well as you want them to, you've got to give them that added extra player around them so that's where we are.
Is anyone from the academy caught your eye in signing a professional contract and how many players are close to signing a professional contract?
NP: I think Brian will answer the second part which is loads of them to be honest with you. I said to Brian last year for instance, 'we can't expect every year to be the same.' And he went 'wait until you see next year's crop'.
And the point is this. In youth football one of the best things to do is fast-track them so if they're doing well at their age group it's to push them up. Because what that then does it creates the space for the younger ones to push up. It's a fast-tracking system and you'll get some late developers as well.
The academy system actually makes allowances for. We have for lots of reasons, geographical, the facility we have, the big selling point for us is opportunity to and I think we have an academy which I think we should be very, very proud of.
BT: The boys I was talking about earlier, the 16-year-olds, you can't give them professional contracts until their 17th birthday so we shouldn't be playing them in the 21s really because somebody could nick them but we have to be ready and know when their 17th birthday hits. If they continue to be going the rate they're going we have to get them wrapped up. You always have to be on top.
The bigger clubs try and pinch the younger players and try and get them cheap and because of Brexit now they can't go into Europe. We had a game the other day, the 15s against Arsenal at the HPC and there were like 14 scouts from the Premier League so we have to be on top of it and one step ahead all the time.
You can give 15-year-olds early scholars and there's about 14 of them in there that people are watching it's tough. But the good thing is the pathway that we can show them, we don't talk about it anymore we can show them. We just signed a lad from Weston Super Mare, 16-years-old, Brandon Bak - scored in their first-team the other week.
Took him up the HPC, walked around the first-team changing room and they've all got their name stickers everywhere. I went academy, academy, academy (pointing) there were 11. His jaw dropped, his brother fell over and he signed the next day.
He had different clubs, he had Wolves but he's from Weston Super Mare and I said 'why would you want to go anywhere else?' He scored two in a practice match today. But we have to be on top of our game because at 14 they can pinch them and pinch them cheap so we have to be on the ball.
RG: The only thing I can count on that is any players thinking of joining the academy of a Premier League team, I wouldn't recommend it. The reason for that is I look at the England Under-19 team that won the European Cup and how many senior appearances did they have under their belt compared to our own Alex Scott. And that's it. If you want to play men's football and drive through the best way is to stay at Bristol City. That's my sales pitch.
BT: That's a good point, Richard and a few years ago we had two 14-year-olds. We had Herbie Kane who we tried to persuade him to stay and he wanted to go and we had Jacob Maddox in the same age group who went to Chelsea. We got quite a lot of money but Lloyd Kelly was in the same age group, he's now captain of Bournemouth in the Premier League, Jacob Maddox is at Walsall in League Two and Herbie Kane is at Oxford.
They went early chasing that big dream, Lloyd Kelly stayed and... I'd rather have Lloyd Kelly's money.
Because of how inconsistent referees are, do you think the Championship is ready for VAR?
NP: Absolutely. Time to make them accountable. I know there are a lot of differing points of view in regards to technology. Technology is there to help get things right. Yes, I am a critic of some of the decisions. I don't like the fact that it's just so... there's no leadership at the moment in terms of how the officials are managed.
I think that's going to change with Howard Webb taking over. Hopefully he will have an impact but it's important that they get the support they deserve to get things right. Long gone are the days where you as fans got to go to a game, watch it with your own eyes and see what you see and go home. Now we can watch things again on social media, TV shows. It's very easy to pick the bones out of mistakes that are made by officials.
What I don't like is the inconsistency and lack of accountability. We all have to have accountability in what we do. I want the officials to be successful. the first time I came across VAR was when I worked in Belgium and then I came back and worked at Watford and people said to me *inaudible* but what it should do is diffuse situations in stadiums where everybody can see exactly what happens.
Unfortunately what's happened is it's gone back to the VAR referee and they've got it wrong. And so there clearly needs to be more direction within the organisation of officials. The PGMOL I think needs to tighten up their own standards and be a little bit more transparent themselves. It's for the good of the game.
We've got the Bears and when you look at the different sports react to officiating, the cultures are very. very different. I don't think it's particularly good... I have to say some of the things I've said after games I'm not particularly proud of but it's an emotional game and it can cost people their jobs. I think the standard of officiating is sub-standard given the experience out there. There's some really, really good refs out there.
We need to be supportive of them and technology whether we like it or not has to be the way forward because everybody else has the opportunity to see things from every angle and they need to have that to and that's my view on it.
Why is it that Bristol City's average minutes per penalty awarded is about 8,000 and the average in the EFL is about 300 minutes per penalty?
RG: You may not be aware but there's this amazing graph that shows the average amount of minutes that goes by before someone else gets a penalty. You've got all the EFL clubs and it's on the 300 minute mark/3000 minute, whichever one it is and then there's an outlier which is one about 6,000.
And then there's Mars up here and that's us. It is a statistical anomaly which is incredible. I don't get why it is but I love the statistic.
BT: I think I took the last one.
Given the number of goals we have conceded at corners and given the lack of success we have at perhaps attacking corners, do you have a set-piece specialist or is that something on the radar?
NP: No, because there was a point last year when I was asked in a press conference about a member of staff and if they're responsible for it and I just thought 'yea, you're just trying to hang somebody out to dry here., I won't go down that route.'
We were awful last year and for the last six games of the season we changed to zonal marking and it was very successful and generally speaking, whether people like it or not, because we still have unreliable markers. It's the best system for us.
It pains me to say how many goals we do concede from it but unfortunately, still it comes down to people doing their jobs. Unfortunately, it's the lesser of two evils. I do believe it suits the players we have. Do I enjoy having to change the system? It's more to do whether it's going to be beneficial for the players and generally speaking it's been better. It's still not what I want it to be. If we had more reliable markers I would like it to be a mixture of both.
That would be zonal marking in areas and then our best headers picking up their most dangerous players. What we've had recently is teams trying to offset what we've done from set-plays. The goal we conceded against Reading, it's another one from a corner and if I'm honest, it's a fantastic ball in and even if we had... you chose your best centre-half who you've watched and they wouldn't stop that one.
The ones we conceded the week before and the week before that, it's very irritating. But it's not something... please don't go away and think it's not something that's discussed. We've had many a discussion on it and practiced it and practiced it but it remains one of our weaknesses and I have to admit that too.
We will continue to do what we can to board our goal up.
What plans are there for players during the World Cup break?
NP: They'll have a bit of time off they'll then have programmes to do which they will do in their own time. They'll have a week off and have some training programmes to do off-site which they would do in the close season and then we'll have a mini pre-season.
We'll have a practice game before the season resumes so that's the plan.
With the small margins in the Championship, have we looked at a psychologist coming into the club? I think under Danny Wilson we had a guy called Brian Jones and with some of the fragility as fans that we think we see in the players, is it something you've considered?
NP: A lot of players have their own these days. It's something that we've had, experimented with, are supporting some players with that at the moment. I'm not a big fan of group sessions I think those days are history. I know in certain sports that's a way of doing it but it doesn't fit the culture of football players.
Players tend to now get more benefit from one-to-one sessions. It happens.
Given your individual roles, given the costs and logistics to moving to a Cat 1 academy, what would all three of you in your individual roles think about moving to Cat 1. If you could do it would it benefit us?
RG: I think there are 31 Cat 1 academies and I can answer that really easily because in Brian's annual appraisal, it says he needs to deliver Cat 1 performance at a Cat 2 budget. So that's it - thank you.
BT: I don;t think it would benefit us. The 16-year-olds that we talked about before, probably Owura Edwards, Ryley Towler, Sam Pearson, they wouldn't be able to go out on loan because we'd have to be as strong as we possibly could to play all the Cat 1s. So I think we're in a position where we've got the best of both worlds.
We can loan them out, play our best 16-year-olds at U21 level and still compete and win games and it costs a lot more money. The pressure would come on the appraisal even more so I think we'll just leave it how it is. We're having success with it so I don't think we need to change.
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