Jenko#4

11 minutes ago, Xela said:

So, online dating. Sites to avoid and sites to recommend?

Might as well give it one last go before I chop it off and throw it away. 

 

Match worked for me. 18 months into a relationship after meeting a girl who lives 5 minutes walk from my house. My best mate married a girl who he met on there as well, and they've been together 6/7 years.

*Disclaimer* I did have to go on some dates with crazies/weirdos/women who lied about their age/stalkers, before I met the above mentioned young lady though...... so persevere and never give out your full address until you are sure

Kate McCann leading a choir of other parents of missing children on Britains Got Talent. Its not my place to speculate on what happened to that little girl, but surely her mothers time is better spent looking for her daughter than potentially going through 12 weeks of live TV to win a meaningless competition.

Also, it is another guaranteed cash-cow for Simon Cowell, so is doubly annoying......

4 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

It was a slow day at work and we resorted to debating this statement: 

All competitive sports that involve a ball are based upon the competitors trying to place the ball(s) somewhere whilst the opposition tries to prevent them OR the competitors try to place the ball in a location before their opponents. 

We only came up with one "sport" that doesn't fit.  That was skittles/bowling. 

Shotput was hotly debated as the weight of the object is the main factor. The fact it happens to be spherical is irrelevant. 

Can anyone think of any more?

There must be thousands of ball games but seemingly only 2 basic rules.  

What about the ball routine in rhythmic gymnastics? It is in the olympics so is technically a sport, and is competitive as you try to score the highest marks. The only reason I can see why not is whether it is technically a sport in its own right, or a subset of gymnastics in general.

Both Sky and BT are full of 'yes' men now. I think it is because they are afraid to hire someone with an opinion since the Keys/Gray episode. The closest we have to someone with an opnion is G Neville, and that is the reason he is head and shoulders above everyone else at the moment. They will never take a risk on a Collymore for example.

On 1/19/2017 at 09:53, philgetaway said:

If we're 0-0 V Preston, and in the 90th minute we're presented with a clear 1 on 1 opportunity, Villa Player V Preston GK, who would you choose between:

1) Our Striker - Gabby

2) Our Centre Back - James Chester

3) Our under-performing, confidence stricken midfielder - Westwood

The best chance we've got of scoring in that situation is a GK own goal........

11 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

So within 5 minutes of the game ending BT sport had a compilation of Rooney's goals and within 5 minutes of his goal BBC had a full article on him. Bit strange for someone who still hasn't BROKE the record.

Am I wrong here? This is madness.

Although it isn't outright, he is still technically Man Utds top goal scorer ever, so is a record holder. Fair play to the guy, top scorer for Man Utd and England, not a bad career. If only he could have done it on the biggest stages though.....

I'm going to put a couple of quid on the home nation I think. They've probably got the best African striker in the world at the moment in Aubameyang, a relatively easy group, and home support

My old man is a Small Heath fan (and I said B.Y.A.C........ * ) and I was talking to him about it earlier. He reckons they could go down this season! The sum of their team is so much greater than the parts, and Rowett was the glue that held that together. He genuinely doesn't think one nose player is good enough for a top ten club in the championship on their own, but together he thought they were. He had the same look about him that I had when McLeish took over/ we loaned Dawkins/Delph abandoned us. I felt sorry for him for a short while, but that soon passed  Zola will spunk the 12m on middle-of-the-road Italians who won't have the stomach for the fight.

* I didn't really say this, despite his obvious faults I could never say it to his face, and he'd kick my a**e!!

5 hours ago, Designer1 said:

Any suggestions for a nice Dark Rum? I usually have a bottle for over Xmas and i'm always open to ideas about what type to get.

Kraken is a great shout, however another one to look at is Brugal 1888.....awesome!

I've just had a real kick in the balls!! Second season as Villa, first back in the Premier League, and I finish 4th- 1 point behind 3rd placed Arsenal. Unfortunately the English teams were so rubbish in Europe in the first season, there are only 3 Champions League places for 2018/19........

Second season with Villa. Won promotion at the first time of asking, and now sat 6th in the Premier League after 11 games. I'm doing well against the smaller clubs, but then getting hammered by the top 4. United are already 10 points clear after 11 wins from 11.

My PL signings are-

Joe Gomez, Nathan Chalobah, Jose Sa (keeper from Porto), Jordan Lukaku, Lewis Baker, Mateo Cassierra (potentially awesome young striker from Ajax).

I've also had two potential starting 11 players come through as regens, Looking forward to seeing how they develop.

I swore i'd never get into another game of FM, but I'm hooked again..........

http://imgur.com/gVyGwqL

The game is broken...... Gabby planning to become a Director of Football......

I'm at January in my first season on the game with Villa. Currently top by 5 points from QPR. Kodjia has 23 league goals already.

Have sold Grealish, Kozak, Westwood, Gestede, Hutton, Cissokho, and Adomah (i'm not playing with wingers), and I've bought in Clough and Dozzell. I'm a bit threadbare squad wise, but I don't want to waste the money i've bought in on players who won't do a job in the Prem later. 

I'm playing a narrow 433 (Gollini, De Laet, Chester, Elphick, Amavi, Gardner, Jedinak, Tshibola, McCormack, Kodjia, Ayew)

6 minutes ago, Xela said:

What will replace Facebook as the next big social network 

I don't think anything will. The level of investment that people have put into it means that they will not look at alternatives.. If I cancelled my facebook account now, I'd lose photos and memories from nearly a decade ago that other people have posted/tagged me in. Also, you would need a massive change in mindshare to do it. Even if you did discover the next greatest social media network, would 90% of the people that you know choose to swap over as well?

I only really use facebook now because some of my friends are in the dark ages and still communicate via facebook messenger. If they all swapped to whatsapp i'd quite happily not log in for weeks on end, but I could never cancel my account because of the above.

Carlos Alberto has died.....scorer of arguably the most famous goal ever

50 minutes ago, Meath_Villan said:

Yer Man serena williams   been a word removed at the f1

It was Venus, but yep definitely a word removed. 

Burton were in the Conference as recently as 2009, and were playing at level 6 of the pyramid in the early 00's. Now they sit above us......

Teams have got into the playoffs over the last few years after losing 13/14 games in a season. We've lost 3 so far, and even though we haven't won away yet we've picked up points against teams that we expected would be around us (Derby/Ipswich), as well as been unbeaten at home. Okay, it's not quite 'Fortress Villa Park', but surely visiting Villa Park 6 times in a row and not seeing us lose is a bonus after the last few seasons!!

Are the playoffs a stretch for us- yes. Are they impossible- absolutely not. It is very obvious that we are not firing on all cylinders, but there are definitely positives to take. I still think we can do it, however knowing Villa my money is on us losing out on the last day of the season on goal difference........

Maybe there is already a replacement lined up........Nigel Spink was at Small Heath, Wigan and Sunderland with Bruce as GK coach. 

57 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

A bloke at work who doesn't believe we landed on the moon has shared a 'leaked' video on facebook showing that man has already walked on mars.

I had a colleague who was convinced  'The Martian' was based on a true story......

28 minutes ago, AvfcTheObsession said:

What about Ralf Rangnick, 58 and currently a Sporting Director after doing several successful jobs in Germany, including a double promotion and vast Bundesliga experience. Speaks English well as he studied at Sussex University. Surely if Dr Xia is as ambitious as he says, these type of candidates should be looked at, not just Bruce et al who we could have got under Lerner.

He is joint second favourite for the England job at the moment. I think he would probably bide his time and see what happens there first.

On 10/5/2016 at 20:50, Midfielder said:

A couple of lads, in the FIFA thread, have posted some kinda sciencey explanation for how the game inner workings go, that it uses scripting etc to change the behaviour of the AI. Anyway, my point is, does anyone know the answer to my question (about the inner workings of FM)... Before I ask it, I have had nearly all FMs (and its predecessor CMs) I have always wondered something.

In watching the 3d highlights, is all the action that you see, completely and utterly original with each generated "clip?"

You know so, are they recycled highlights that you see every say thousand rotations, or is it literally the game engine creating motions of all the players from their stats and likelihood of what they would do, where they would stand, run, the pass they would make, the shot they would attempt etcetcetc? I have always wondered that. Does anyone know that sciencey answer? I hope that the highlights are all generated naturally and borderline unique every time, especially as when I play it I cannot go without watching the highlights on mode. I have it just one notch sped up, but always highlights on.

I don't know the answer 100%, but my view is that there are a limited number of 'scripts' (as with watching the game in text mode- content gets repeated). The player attributes determine which script gets used at which time. If it was unscripted, then there would be an infinite number of possibilities that could be shown (positions a player stands in, direction of pass, height of pass, type of finish etc....) I don't think a standard laptop would be powerful enough to calculate all the different outcomes.

The simple fact is that we bought a 22 year old League 1 player for peanuts..........we got exactly what we paid for.

It is not Westwoods fault that a succession of managers have decided to play him over 100 times at a level where he is out of his depth. If there ever was any Premier League potential in there, he would have been snapped up from League 1 at 18/19, much like Alli, Delph, Shelvey etc....

25 minutes ago, Xela said:

I always rated Fowler more than Owen. Fowler was a sublime finisher. 

England had some options back then... Shearer, Sheringham, Fowler, Wright, Cole, Ferdinand, Sutton, Collymore and probably others I've missed. 

Yep, Fowler is the best English  finisher I've seen. 

You could add Big Dion and Kevin Phillips to that list as well. They'd all walk into the current England squad. It's a travesty that Ferdinand, Cole, Collymore and Phillips have less caps combined than players like Heskey and Crouch. They were just unfortunate that they played in era when we probably had the best group of strikers England has ever seen.

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

I share mine with Bear Grylls, Mick Foley, and Tom Jones. What a dinner party that'd be.

I thought we had a winner here until I checked my own..........The Notorious B.I.G., Noel Fielding, and Mr. T!!

What happens to the salt and vinegar on fish and chips? I've just been to the chippy and stood there and watched the lovely lady behind the counter pour about a pint of vinegar on, as well as an oceans worth of salt. I get home, plate up, and can't taste a drop, so had to add more......