BigJim

i don't think he's anything like Westwood. Gana's a great ball winner but pretty poor passer. So yes, a lot in common with NRC, whoever said that. Westwood, on the other hand is like, er, nobody else i can think of.

It's self-evidently obvious that no-one suggested it was. I was responding to a comment that we should examine "everything that has happened and all that can be found out " before reacting. Sorry if it has hit a nerve with you..

Your post implied that people should wait until all the facts are discovered before reacting to such things. I maintain that it is important to condemn quickly, but without making wild accusations. And the condemnation needs to come from every quarter. Don't worry - it's a simple concept: Evil will triumph if good men remain silent, etc.

Quite so, but at the same time it is important to move swiftly to condemn atrocities wherever and by whoever they are committed. We don't need to know the who or why to proclaim the foulness of the deed, without pointing fingers, and it needs to be proclaimed by all quarters of society to ensure that everybody knows the perpetrators have no sympathisers.

True, quite a few games for the reserves on the cards before they risk him in the first team. Cissokho did surprisingly well against Nantes though, so perhaps we shouldn't fret too much, plus we've also got newly found dead ball specialist Joe B. to fall back on.

Agreed, plus anyone who saw the Nantes game will surely have noticed how most of our approach play, in the first half anyway, was down the right involving Hutton. I suspect he's in the plan for the season.

Striker yesterday, striker tomorrow ...

Try telling that to the kids today...

Winning is clearly not the MAIN aim in pre-season. But I wouldn't say the result is of no importance. Winning always builds confidence.

Either way it's going to be RDM's toughest call so far, unless Stan himself decides he can't make it.

Right footed when he missed that penalty in the CL final. Be understandable if he'd switched feet since then though :)

Coz we got Tish.

Fiona Meredith is wildly off the mark anyway if she thinks this phenomenon is something new to today's "younger generation." I clearly remember a faction of students at Birmingham University going into revolt to ban Enoch Powell from speaking there around 1970.

Excellent article, makes you wonder at Koeman a bit, moving away from what sounds like as good a set up as he would find anywhere.

I think Gueye's a terrific player and all other things being equal would love to keep him. However, iirc he hasn't shown a particular interest in playing for the club, on the contrary seems keen to get away. If that is the case I certainly hope he goes.

But would the EU be obliged or inclined to make exactly the same concessions to other leavers that they make to us?

Indeed, it looks very straightforward, but is it really? Tariffs work both ways: German manufacturers won't want to see their exports penalised, or so the argument goes. And Britain may be in a much better bargaining position in this respect than other potential deserters, so the point about setting precedents doesn't necessarily apply.

I think you might find that some of the smaller nations may tend to vote the same way as one or two of the bigger nations. They would never agree on anything otherwise.

Can't really agree, I'm afraid. But, as usual, we're straying from the point which was that the action of voting Leave absolutely did not legitimise, condone, enable or otherwise provoke racist action, and to suggest that it did is both wrong and dangerous. The Leave voters (of which I was not one, fwiw) are not actually to blame for this, much as some would like to make it appear so.

No doubt the campaign had many extremely distasteful elements. But the VOTE did not legitimise anything, except possibly withdrawing from the EU. I'm sure you can see the difference between the campaign and the vote.

Not just pathetic. Or course it is everyone’s responsibility to speak out against all manifestations of racism everywhere, especially of the vile type that have been reported following the result of the referendum. But it is wrong and dangerous to state that the Leave vote has legitimized and enabled racist actions.

Should have sold him there and then.

I think your well thumbed books may need updating. Do you remember Giscard D'Estaing? Or perhaps he was before your time. When he was involved in drawing up the first constitution, he disguised his intentions: "I knew the word 'federal' was ill-perceived by the British and a few others. I thought that it wasn't worth creating a negative commotion, which could prevent them supporting something that otherwise they would have supported," he told the Wall Street Journal. "So I rewrote my text, replacing intentionally the word 'federal' with the word communautaire, which means exactly the same thing." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1435550/Giscards-federal-ruse-to-protect-Blair.html No, no federalist pretensions there. I don't know why I'm bothering. I never once said the EU was a federation, I said it was increasingly federalist compared with what we joined in the 70's. Why you saw fit to launch into a lengthy denial is beyond me.

Sorry Mike, what problem do you have with Dan's comment? Wasn't Leave's position that we should limit the free movement of Europeans to the UK, not halt immigration?

Hey, I'm with you about monsters everywhere. House of Lords - yes, but at least it is a venerable institution which does its job as second chamber. Would you rather have a US style elected senate? I don't see many more signs of real democracy at work in their system. FIFA, there's one to make the blood boil in all our veins. I used to get far more worked up about them than any political body. I just think the Euro bureaucracy is absurdly top heavy and will just keep growing (well, maybe not now). They churn out mountains of regulations and have to keep doing so to justify their existence. Everything you see around you is probably regulated in some way. And don't ever research the bureaucrats' compensation packages if you want to sleep at night, they are obscene.