Chindie

****, man. ****.

The only way this ends without a red is if the referee trips and hits his head at half time or someone steals his cards.

This ref is a disgrace.

Hadn't realised he won the Football League trophy earlier this month with Peterborough.

2 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

There is an important exception to this. 

Spending more on the expensive brand can be worth it if that brand will last longer or be more effective than the cheaper one would.

If a £50 pair of shoes will last one year before falling apart, but a £100 pair of shoes will last 3 years then in the long run it's better to get a more expensive brand.

Difficult one to quantify when purchasing but important to consider.

Aka Vimes' Boots Theory of Economic Unfairness. 

Quote

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

Pratchett

Sorely missed.

I'm concerned the next time I open a tin of beans Andy Street will organise a press conference to congratulate himself for solving hunger.

Bayer Leverkusen winning the Bundesliga has brought an end to one of the best bits of football trivia - Kingsley Coman can no longer claim to have won the league every year since turning professional. His record ends with a streak of 11 seasons where he won the league, including one season where he made appearances for 2 title winning teams in the same season, meaning technically he played for 12 title winning teams in 11 seasons.

In a thousand years they'll still be extending Mudryk's contract, because that is what they've always done. 

Eventually accountants will refer to some obscure, convoluted paper trick where you shift money around that doesn't really exist for the tax benefit in a strictly legal if unethical way as 'doing a Mudryk', named after the long forgotten Ukrainian forward who scored 5 goals in a thousand years after signing for Chelsea whilst their ownership was off it's face and high on mysterious fund money.

3 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

someone else owns the pitch dont they? like a local charity or something 

Yes, looking it up the pitch, freehold of the stadium, the stadium infrastructure and the name of the club is owned by Chelsea Pitch Owners plc, a nonprofit which while part of club is it's own entity with shareholders who act independently of the club (although obviously the point is to protect the stadium and by extension the club, so they're unlikely to ever do anything the club doesn't like, they also haven't agreed to let the club get the stadium back when it's been proposed...). Therefore Chelsea can't technically sell the stadium to themselves as they don't own it anyway.

1 hour ago, Czarnikjak said:

This year's hole is estimated to be about £100m. Not sure if they have any other property to sell, or they'll need to rely on player sales.

I guess they could sell the stadium, I know it was outlawed in championship, but I *think* it's still allowed in Premier League.

Iirc Chelsea can't do the stadium sale trick as they don't own it. Stamford Bridge is owned by a separate supporters trust entity, which came about when they got into trouble in the 90s and Bates did some deals to save the stadium that ended with the stadium being owned by a separate trust that allows the club to use the stadium at no cost, but the club has never got enough support from the trust itself to dissolve itself and give the stadium back proper when they got success under Abramovich.

Or something.

You could see he had a game like that in him, he's obviously got ability he's just not been able to build a performance until his last couple of games and today was the culmination of it. He was superb today, they couldn't cope with him.

Watching the Palace highlights...

Hughes is unfortunate as someone with that bright white hair that makes him stand out like he's got a highlighter on him, but it does make it very funny watching him have the game completely pass him by. He's just running around like a toddler watching the ball go past him and nobody passing to him. One of the only times he actually touched the ball he made a crap tackle that actually turned into a perfect through ball to Diaz.

Citeh are probably the healthiest club in the league as far as PSR is concerned. 

The problem is, that has come from what they've been charged with, fiddling the books on a grand scale for an extended period, hiding and obscuring spending and obfusticating income. And then not cooperating in the investigation.

This is why they need to be destroyed. The organisation is made of cheating. It's in its very being. Everything it is, is tainted and ill-gotten.

YES

1 minute ago, Hev said:

Why does the Commentator have to shreik their names when they take a shot?

Arsenal are part of the product. At the moment we're done of the base material the product is built out of.

Coote is a feeble ref, he'll give Arsenal anything they ask for.

Eze is just waiting for someone good enough to be prepared to spend the money on him. 

Given he's supposedly staunchly set on staying in London, he's waiting for Spurs, Arsenal or Chelsea.

Team with L1 resources and L1 players in key positions managed by a L1 manager, make it to L1.

I'm completely unmoved by this today. We're weakened, we're not playing that well, Arsenal are in a title fight. I hope we don't disgrace ourselves but even then I'm not expecting anything so if it comes to pass, oh well. 

It does feel like we're coming across the finishing line this season skidding arse backwards and on fire.

Riley's always been a nasty piece of work.

2 minutes ago, Nicho said:

I don’t really understand Israel’s position in terms of saying they will retaliate, surely someone like Iran could just flatten them if they really wanted to. are Iran not in a real position to do so? Or do nukes just trump everything.

 

Netanyahu wants a war with Iran. The only thing that will prevent him retaliating is Washington pulling the leash.

Israel is a comparatively powerful nation militarily, they have weapons that are better than anything any of their enemies have and they have a lot of them, and they also have nuclear capability. Iran has nothing that can compare with Israel like for like, in advancement or ability, but they do have a lot of decent stuff - similar to Russia really. They don't have a lot in the shape of an air force though, and instead focused on missile development, which are fairly good and they have loads of. Israel, however, has the most advanced missile defence in the world, and Iran would need to overwhelm it to hurt them, which would require a huge massed attack which invariably would also include Hezbollah and other proxies also coordinating attacks to assist. Even so it would be a big ask to significantly harm Israel and the attempt even in doing so would essentially guarantee the end of the Iranian regime - such an attack would force the US and other Israeli allies to retaliate as well which would quickly turn into 'solving the Iranian problem' that's been rumbling since 1980, which would quickly become a debacle bigger than Iraq has ever been because it would it chuck the balance of the Middle East in the bin and you'd have a very large and still influential even when hobbled nation turned into a huge vacuum. And it would cause issues with existing relationships as an Iran brought in from the cold is a very different prospect to now. But it would draw a line under Iranian provocation directly and greatly harm a long term Israeli threat.

Beat Toronto at home, just. Worth a watch for some comical moments - Toronto's first goal is basically the image they'd use to illustrate what offside from a cross looks like, and Toronto's red card is completely brainless, last man pulls down the striker in the last second of a match that's already lost, what on earth are you doing.

30 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

With nothing really being reported in terms of damage or casualties, you'd have to say that (so far) it's an incredible demonstration of the potency of modern air defence systems.

There's that but there's also the fact this isn't Iran going '**** it, war', they've chosen to attack quite carefully with a sharp hit everyone knew was coming without going all out. If they wanted to go for it seriously you'd have seen every Iran aligned proxy actor firing everything alongside the direct Iran based attack, attempting to overwhelm the defence system with numbers. They've not done that, and their comment about the attack essentially proves that - they've said they have retaliated for the consulate attack, and they consider the matter done. So the defence system might not stand up quite so well if Iran fancied really escalating.

Predictable response after Israel struck the consulate last week.

The owners aren't going to build a stadium. The money doesn't make sense. They're in this to eventually sell an asset that's markedly increased in value, and the amount of money they'd need to invest to build a new stadium would be so large it would jeopardise the return they'd get when they sell. We binned off rebuilding a single stand, we aren't moving to a far, far, far larger investment instead. 

The stadium is going to get small tinkering updates and maybe some cosmetics done, the biggest thing being stuff like updating corporate and hospitality offerings and making low cost easy updates to mass offering like the warehouse idea. Cheap, fast, relatively high impact for low input stuff.