JB

Oh my word, what an ending. Can’t believe he dropped that. Wales extremely lucky with the ref’s extreme lenience. 

How the hell have Wales only had one yellow card?! Absolutely insane. I’ve never seen so many offences on a team’s own try line go unpunished. Could easily be down to twelve. 

Only just switched on when I caught a new low from Ben Earl in terms of penalty celebration. Vigorously applauding and screaming in the Argentina player’s face. Wasn’t even one that we ‘won’. This team is so, so hard to like. 

Can only imagine Luiz is being rested. He’s been our only good player today. 

Just now, foreveryoung said:

Do you think? I think they look at 50%, nothing special.

I meant that Liverpool deserve credit for how poor we’ve looked. I don’t think they’re a pretty side but I don’t recall seeing a team strangle us as much as this. They’ve been everywhere and they’ve been relentless. 

Liverpool obviously been really strong but this is by far the worst I can remember seeing us play under Emery. 

Liverpool aren’t pretty but they’re relentlessly energetic. Suffocating us in every area of the pitch. We need more composure.  

Man, this Liverpool side. It’s not pretty and  there’s nothing that makes me think ‘wow’ in terms of the football they play but they’re just a nightmare to play against. Just **** relentless, eating up all the space and not giving us a inch. Strangling us to death. 

I doubt any replays are going to go back far enough to do justice to the second goal. Masterpiece. 

That is a wonderful, wonderful goal. The earlier touches/turns from Diaby and Kamara - wow. Goal of the season contender, surely. City score that and media jizz themselves to death. 

Mike Dean agrees with the ref that Usyk’s balls are in his stomach. 

Borthwick seems really awkward in his interviews. Often sounds like he’s reading a press release or stumbles and stutters his way through what he’s saying. The nerves actually make me root for him a bit more as he seems like a decent guy but I don’t think it’s going to happen. 

Mate of mine has just messaged our group saying that he was at a party and met the Leicester general manager. Apparently he said that the mood in the camp is terrible - even lower than it seems - and the coaches are finding it really tough. There are a few more injuries that haven’t been disclosed and that Sinkler is definitely out of the World Cup. 

At this point it would be a big surprise if we made it out of the group. 

There’s an excellent article on the Guardian website today that sums up pretty much exactly how I feel.

Essentially, Borthwick’s been thrown a hospital pass by the RFU in having to sort out the absolute chaos left by Jones with a World Cup on the horizon.

He’s resorted to ‘English rugby 1.0’ and playing to our perceived strengths to try and keep things as respectable as possible. This is obviously failing miserably as most other nations do our perceived strengths better than us, and he might have been better building things around Smith, but I can kind of understand the reasoning.

He’s inherited a squad with a fair number of guys whose priorities seem to be to try and prove how big and tough they are, and celebrate turnovers by whooping and jumping around like utter gimps rather than play heads-up, smart rugby. When the opposition not only have more nous and skill but are also at least as big and strong, then they’re ****. 

There are pretty unique, systemic issues with English rugby that mean that, barring another golden generation, we won’t be seriously competitive on the world stage.

The nerve of him to shake his head as if he’d been hard done by! Clearest red you’ll ever see. 

What a moron Vunipola is. Nasty, nasty hit. Clearly doesn’t fancy the World Cup. 

Yep, awful. Again. Players are bell ends, too - real lack of effort and application.

Yep it’s undoubtedly a complete shambles, to say the very least.

However, I’d be inclined to give Borthwick a bit more time after World Cup because of the absolute shitshow left to him by Jones. I really don’t think we should underestimate the mess Eddie made and I’m willing to give Borthwick the benefit of the doubt that he’s having to come up with as best a ‘quick fix’ for the World Cup as possible - even if that means an extremely simple, limited game plan. We don’t have good enough players to trouble the latter stages so I guess the aim is to try to keep things respectable and hopefully qualify from the group. Admittedly, that’s not looking likely at the moment.

My quarter final ticket certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to feature England - although that might be a blessing as at least I might be entertained!

I see that Jones is carrying on from where he left us with Australia - losing, ranting at the media and forcing his assistants to quit just before a tournament because he’s such an utter word removed to work with. 

52 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Success from an ownership where Amnesty international and the widow of a murdered journalist pleaded for the takeover not to happen. 

Hope they enjoy it  

This gets mentioned a fair bit but I don’t think it’s talked about anywhere near enough. 

It should preface literally any discussion of Newcastle United. 

It’s fundamentally depressing that an entire fan base can ignore/doesn’t care about the extent of the moral issues around their ownership. I know for a fact that I’d be done with Villa if it were public knowledge that our ultimate owner ordered the murder and dismemberment of a journalist, without even mentioning all the other ‘stuff’. I mean, this isn’t just the slightly shady business that all billionaires get up to and that we all pretty much have to accept (sadly) - it’s literal killing, human rights abuses etc etc etc.

The same goes for any players and football staff that choose to work for them and media outlets that lick their arses. 

It’s incredibly sad that a lot of their fan base seem to revel in it. Really do seem to be the most unpleasant and vicious group of fans in the league. There is no line that can’t be crossed for the sake of winning a bit more at a **** game. 

Well I didn’t expect that. 

Given the pre-season optimism and the opposition, that’s the worst and most disappointing result I can remember for a good while. 

We didn’t seem to have the personnel to play the way we wanted to and there were a handful of catastrophic performances (Cash, Bailey and, shockingly, Kamara).

That said, we missed at least two absolute sitters and those Newcastle players looked suspiciously energetic.

Given the pre-season optimism, expectation and the opposition, this is the most disappointing result I can remember in recent times.

Same old Villa - build you up just to knock you down. 

Appalling from Cash. He’s been terrible today. 

Referee pings us for doing exactly what Newcastle did on their free kick. Yet they’re the ones getting a raw deal, apparently. Not a level playing field. 

I don’t get too emotionally invested in football these days but I hate every single one of these Geordie blood money, soul-selling, murderous regime-supporting scumbags on the pitch and in the stands. words removed.

On 14/07/2023 at 22:15, hogso said:

Who has seen the latest episodes available in the UK of Bluey? 

Drop everything and watch Granny Mobile. Chef's kiss. 

Just watched this very episode. Absolutely hilarious! Not sure who was laughing the most - me or my 5 year-old!