Dr_Pangloss

Pep will not deliver a serious trophy this season, for a club of that size that is falling short of par.

3 minutes ago, Villan4Life said:

 

Players need time! He is a very talented youngster that only could have improved if Villa had bought him in! He's very young but as @Dr_Pangloss said it's a punt! On loan to see how hew did we had nothing to lose.

I don't know why i have to explain myself to you both.. surely my credentials stand out and talent identifying?

I like the post saying he has a  bad 'track record' but when you actually look at it you see that he did pretty well at Leipzig (who are a top side and have a lot of quality) and has absolutely excelled at International youth level. We ought to be taking a punt on talented young players, especially when our exposure in terms of fees is low.

1 minute ago, Okonokos said:

Yes he was. He didn't score a single goal for them. Wasn't very good at Leipzig either. I don't see how he'd have been the answer for us.

He was pretty good in 2017/2018 to be honest.

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

 

Is this one of those hyped-up youngsters?  His track record suggests nothing special at all.  Leipzig were happy for him to go on loan to Monaco, where he barely played and didn't score.  Is he really amazing?

 

(Also, I love that these sort of players are generally viewed as "oh ****, we missed out" whereas if there's a link to a random, unknown player in, say, Romania who has a 1 in 2 scoring record over 200 games, we're all "this guy is so shit, what's the point")

He's a very talented player, who can play across the front three, would have been well worth a punt, IMO would be an immediate improvement on Trezeguet if deployed in that position.

Smart from Leeds, whilst we've missed a trick as per usual.

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

I see from the Wikipedia article on Brawl for All that Bob Holly claimed the fight with Butterbean was punishment for beating the fighter the company wanted to win, which if true would be absolutely scandalous. 

I know more about wrestling than I should but it was supposed to be a big push for 'Dr Death' Steve Williams (who incidentally died over ten years ago). Dr Death had a reputation for being a tough guy and was apparently a 'legit' 'shoot' fighter. Bart Gunn won the tournament and sparked out Dr Death on route. 

Bart Gunn was clearly a guy who could punch but Butterbean was a pro boxer with over 50 fights at the time, competing in the 'super heavyweight division'. Not a top boxer but a pro and could really, really punch. Here's the 'fight' below, very dangerous. Scandalous that it wasn't stopped after the first knockdown.

6 minutes ago, hogso said:

I can highly recommend Vice's Dark Side of the Ring series for more on the 'inside' story on professional wrestling. They cover a bunch of different topics, the new series which starts soon covers topics such as Benoit and Fall Brawl. 

To a lesser extent there's also their series The Wrestlers, which has a life after wrestling episode - as well as episodes focusing on DDT (wacky Japanese promotion), Joshi (women's professional wrestling in Japan) and Death Match wrestling (Kas-ay-ee! Kas-ay-ee!) 

What was wrong with Fall Brawl, or do you mean the Brawl for All tournament, which was absolutely an insane idea, especially when they threw the winner in with Butterbean?

It's an utterly appalling level of disrespect to the cup to be honest, there ought to be a pretty hefty fine for them or some other serious punishment. 

They really didn't 'have' to enter the World Club Cup, which is a tournament which has zero prestige and no one **** cares about. I'm sure the majority of Liverpool fans would care more about the FA Cup.

Even now it's an exhausting and punishing lifestyle and very clearly steroids and HGH are still being used, both will shave years off your life even if used 'safely', and then there's drugs, especially prescription drugs such a painkillers which will be used and abused.

One thing which seems to have changed is the culture of drinking and recreational drug abuse. Whilst not gone it used to be the case in the 80s and early to mid 90s that even a lot of the top guys were abusing cocaine and pills, drinking heavily, whilst taking steroids and painkillers. It's not that bad anymore.

8 minutes ago, KHV said:

I’ve said this before, I have been on helicopters twice and I will never go on them again. I didn’t feel safe at all

There is **** all you can do if something goes wrong 

I feel sorry for his family, awful news

I'm sure the stats will show they're pretty 'safe' compared to other modes of transport however I've always seen them as death traps. They basically drop like a stone whenever the engine **** up. I get the sense that any idiot can become a pilot for these things (like a light or private aircraft, as opposed to commercial) and I do not trust that they're maintained properly (again as opposed to commercial aircraft in general). I'd never go in one.

1 minute ago, Stevo985 said:

He had a massive, massive addiction to pain killers when he was wrestling. Like thousands of pills a month.

The WWE let him go because they didn't want an olympic gold medallist to die while employed by them, so that's how bad it had gotten.
I imagine that's all catching up on him.

Plus he's had loads of neck and back injuries and surgeries. Makes him look and walk very very strangely compared to how he used to be.

 

A shame because he was an unbelievable athlete.

Yep aware of all this. People with the sort of physical and mental issues he has had die early. Hopefully he doesn't. Shocking how many wrestlers kick the bucket 'early'. Kurt was one of my favourites growing up.

This is awful, gutted.

1 hour ago, alreadyexists said:

That Jimmy McCann football agent bloke has also tweeted that us and Newcastle are in for Paco Alcacer... I’ve no idea is McCann knows anything or is just bangwagon hopping?

People like him are genuinely mentally ill.

This is why you don't sign 20-something-year-olds who have had one good season at Championship level. Abysmal signing, one of the very worst in the club's history.

8 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Gregg Evan's mentioned the release fee and made a good point. 

Why didn't we activate it January 1st and why have no other clubs activated a fairly low amount?

I think he is going to be better than what we've had and will play his part but I think he will still struggle and expectations should be realistic. He isn't going to take the league by storm but I've said numerous times, he doesn't need to in order to help save us.

This is why I met the signing largely with indifference. Great to have a forward but nothing on paper or in his highlight reels makes me excited. Just going to have to wait and see. My gut tells me that he's not going to pull up any trees but I hope to be massively surprised.

7 hours ago, Bugzy1991 said:

When exactly did this happen? People really like making things up in this thread. I've only mentioned xg in this thread and it wasn't even me who started the topic and I said it's heavily flawed. Don't think I've ever replied to you about xg here.

 

From 2015.  Sure things have only got better in modeling since then also. 

 

https://cartilagefreecatain.sbnation.com/2015/10/19/9295905/premier-league-projections-and-new-expected-goals

I find the backlash against stats just strange. Nobody states its close to 100% efficiency and people act as as if it should be close to it. We all know parts of it is flawed. We all know football is very complicated to exactly model. But There's a reason why teams,especially top teams, are investing pretty heavily into it and a lot of the models is still closed off to the general public but it's slowly getting released. Teams definitely use xg and the like, but I'm sure they've got models a little bit more advanced.

 

 

I wasn't referring to you, relax.

55 minutes ago, sir_gary_cahill said:

Would anyone take Ivan Toney from Peterborough? From what I’ve seen of him on  Football on Quest, he’s punching above his weight in league 1, he’d be perfect for us I think 

Nah his xG isn't high enough when you apply a discount rate for league 1, I'm out.

4 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

The lad who was talking it up in here the other day said he was going to provide some evidence to back up that claim, but he hasn't returned with it.

Oh right yeah him, he replied to me with "google.com" rather than pointing me to the rigorous regression analysis I was expecting.

3 hours ago, Xann said:

Spitalfields has a record label market a couple of times a year. Very civilised and a proper little beer zone bonus.

That's when to do the Brick Lane run from Liverpool St.

Picked up a couple of nice things there.  A brilliant test pressing from Mr Bongo's random bin of an album they didn't get to release was £5. 

There's signed bits and special editions.

You might want a trolley, or a camel or something?

 

Oh, I Bought 5 albums from Fopp for a tenner, what can I say?

The KPM 1000 series on Spotify is the best reason for Spotify.

 

I've got quite a few Bruton and KPM vinyls. Visual Impact (KPM) is probably my favourite in terms of what I own.

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

Absolutely a win-win for the Tories. They could either a] declare their outrage at the review, and then come with a 'better' settlement that still keeps the basic dynamics, and then lap up the press praise, or b] just go along with the review anyway, and let the angry voters take it out on their Labour councils.

Great work by Labour to let this to happen.

There really is some excellent stuff in the Bruton and KPM libraries.

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

Any Answers, on BBC R4.

I’ll set the scene, they’re discussing funding of the NHS, a professor is talking about bed ratios and and how much we spend per capita compared with other similar nations and the cost of other health funding models...

BBC radio host person:’yes, yes thanks I’ve got to stop you there we’ve got lots to get through. We’ve had a tweet from Melonhead 911 and they say...’

I shit you not, stop the professor talking we need to share this tweet from melonhead.

Well, fingers crossed that melonhead tweets something favourable about funding of the BBC.

 

In trying to justify it's worth the BBC try to get the thoughts of the great unwashed at every point. Whether it's vox pops on the news or allowing the morons in the audience talk more than ever on Question Time... It really ruins it. I'd rather hear what 'experts' or at least people who are paid to think about the problem on hand have to say over what some average thoughtless clearing in the woods has to say.

4 hours ago, villan-scott said:

Touati did alright...

21 goals in 27 games for me this season too. 

However, I’ve noticed a couple of my new gens, including Touati have had their attributes decrease a bit. Anyone got any experience of this and preventing it?

This happens all the time to me, attributes seem to bounce up and down. Sometimes they seem to be down for ages. E.g. Boadu went up to 17 for pace for a while and then down to 16 for several months. Made no practical difference on the pitch though, I don't think it's much to worry about if the player is still performing well.

15 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

The business is set up wrong and at risk. They need to fix that.

Or, you’ve fallen in to the classic trap of obsessing that someone else’s business is the centre of your world.

We've all probably done this, deluding oneself into thinking that things won't happen without you. Guess what, they most likely will. 

On 23/01/2020 at 15:28, HanoiVillan said:

Is xG backward-looking (ie, telling me how the table *should* look now), forward-looking (ie, predicting that Liverpool and Newcastle will begin a period of poorer form) or both? I'm not sure I fully understand what it's doing/what its aim is. 

It's quite simply a load of bollocks and it's use as a predictor of anything is absolutely not established.