Straggler

A rather searing indictment of football punditry and probably a fair one. I do get rather wound up just how low the standard is within football. Pundits are there for their playing career, or perceived "personality", but the ability to actually add value to our understanding of the game is totally absent. I compare football pundits with Osi and Jason from the NFL show. Osi and Jason are live wires, they are funny, they are entertaining, they are overflowing with energy, but it is all underpinned with an in depth understanding or the game they are watching and they are such solid professionals that they clearly watch ALL the games. On a live show they can draw upon that wealth of knowledge to add real context to the plays as they happen. Knowing that this level of entertainment with professional and insightful pundits is possible, puts the efforts of Shearer, Murphy, Richards etc to shame. It allows the myth that Gerrard and Uni are somehow both managers and do roughly the same job. We keep hearing about Uni doing lots of classroom stuff. How many of them have bothered to understand what that actually means? How does that information get translated into a training regimen and then onto the pitch? Actually take a damn look at how different coaching styles with the same group of players can have such wildly different results. It should be a fascinating story how this was done, but all the average pundit does is parrot the same meaningless soundbites they have heard elsewhere. No professional curiosity or standards. Most of them don't deserve to be doing stadium tours, never mind high profile punditry.

Person man woman camera TV.

OMG! this is HILARIOUS!

The schadenfreude is glorious tonight.

Robbie Savage "We are not going to second guess. It looks offside" Man is an idiot.

Comedy goal, enjoyed that one. Atmosphere is awesome in Seville too.

I'm still pissed off at the journalist. As a sales guy if I'm after a big account I've done all my research before I reach out to them. There is no freaking way that I would be caught off guard if they called me right after recieving one of my emails. I'd be ready. I don't get why anyone would ask for an interview with someone they have shown no interest in before sending the emai. I'd hang my head in shame if I handled an introductory conversation as badly as this. The lack of time to prepare would not wash with me at all. Don't send the email if you are not ready to go

Not sure I buy it. Even I know that classified documents in the states contain information that when printed would identify who printed them and from which printer. Taking a photo of them won't prevent that identification taking place. I'd imagine a person who has the classification to receive the documents would know this too (although I would not have levelled that accusation at the previous administration). So it is either fake, or a deliberate leak IMO. With the information contained being almost exactly what loads of people want to hear I'm going with fake. if it's too good to be true it's probably not true.

No, I think I got it I just think you need to be one of them to wear the shirt.

I think it's been really well thought through, just in a subversive way. Let's face it, if you are buying a t-shirt for £5 in the UK it sure as hell has been made some place else, probably with cheap material that will only survive a couple of washes. May a well draw a CND symbol on a missile.

These days evangelical is just long hand for word removed.

NWA - Fuk da police Sam Cooke - A change is gonna come.

Exposure via a Netflix doucuseries. It's really simple.

Happy to add my voice to those that would stop supporting my club with owners like Newcastle have. It would not even be a close call. The crest would become a literal badge of shame.

My twitter feed has become boring to me. I follow 243 people, but my feed only shows me the same 20/30 people. I'm not getting any of the hard right nonsense, it just seems to be a loop of the same tweets as I scroll down. It has become boring to me. It used to be the second site I would visit after VT. Now I will maybe look once a day. I did use Twitter as my up to the minute news source from people I trust. It was quite carefully curated. Now all I see are villa tweets and interesting engineering. Can't be arsed with it like this and I'm not going to try and curate it again.

That is a nice theory but it's not in practice what happens at all. Players renegotiate mid contact as their value to the club increases in almost all cases (when the player is doing well). It's madness for Chelsea to think otherwise. If they have a player that Madrid would pay 250k a week, on 80k a week, the player will force a move or renegotiate regardless of the contract terms they are on. Chelsea will either have to renegotiate , sell or watch the player refuse to train or plummet in value as form drops away. What Chelsea have done is set a high minimum they will be paying going forwards. Again the opposite of this is a player who does not do well and will never be worth the 80k / week, will continue to drag that money out of the club regardless of form or value.

The thing is why do the players like Mudryk move on? There is almost no way they will get a contract as lucrative as the ones they are on ever again. None of this new intake will ever have to work again, they will need to be really motivated to play to take the financial hit it will almost certainly be to move on. A decent proportion won't make it and won't leave. On the flip side, I can't see many clubs offering to match the wages these guys are on. The only way this model works is if Chelsea have got their player selection spot on. I mean with a higher success rate than pretty much any club has managed to do ever. I think they will become the ultimate dead wood club.

I think they already are. I think the wheel is still moving but the hamster is dead. It may take a couple of years to stop spinning completely, but imo the last 12 months for Chelsea will do for them. The financial model they have chosen has mortgaged their future for a success today that has already failed. The only way I see out for them now is somehow getting CL qualification this season, which they look far from capable of doing. It might explain the somewhat desperate decision making at the moment

Yeah, the local knowledge, the access to the target, the planning to get everything in place in advance. There is nothing opportunistic here, and then there is the old favourite, who does this benefit. FSB have to be high on the list.

They really need to find a subject that they are not directly responsible for making worse themselves. You don't need much of a memory to remember that they had 136 children go missing from a hotel run by the home office. 66 of them are still missing and the government have done the square route of FA to try and find them. They are currently passing a bill though that will allow them to hold children in detention until they turn 18 and then deport them. It's a policy designed to send children into the arms of abusers. I know it is tough to find a subject where they have the high ground (Ukraine is the only one I can think of), but they really need to do better than this.

Then to catch you up, we are two up with sjm having just scored the second.

They still have Notts County left to play (at the racecourse), which will be a massive game. Wrexham lost to them in the reverse fixture. From what I have seen over the last 2 seasons Wrexham have struggled a bit in the high pressure moments. If Notts can beat them, Wrexham could crumble. It's a big ask as it asks Notts to pretty much be perfect for the remainder of the season, but it is an exciting run in. That said, if Wrexham win, you can wrap it up in a bow for them.

Seems to me to be a pretty straight forward way of fleecing some more money out of the war. Loads of backhanders available in the construction and the quality will never be tested. I'd imagine most of these structures will crumble to dust in a year, may as well get paid to make sandcastles all along the coast.

Have we even discussed the difference in motivation between the owners of man city and Wrexham? They really could not be more different. Sports washing blood money or the other guys who were not in Deadpool.