Chindie

Either I'm really bad at explaining things, or you're willfully misunderstanding. Squad = bad. Sherwood = make squad worse - Tactically stupid, unhinged. Take a look at the now famous gif of him flinging his arms around nonsensically apparently trying to give instructions to the squad. He didn't have the faintest idea what he was doing, admittedly so, as he just flailed around with the teamsheet desperately. He had no plan. Squad = Still bad Garde = Hamstrung by poor squad, but clearly has some tactical nous (yet still makes mistakes) and has a game plan, which has seen improvement in the standards of play but results are still bad. It's easier to support and have confidence in the bloke who looks like he in at least some way knows what he's doing, than the bloke who clearly, and admittedly, hadn't got a clue.

Your prerogative. I disagree though. We look marginally worse going forward, I think, the back is better but undermined by never ending idiotic errors that I don't think you can tactically do much about (that get exacerbated whenever they happen by having the confidence go, every time), and the midfield looks better, a fair bit more composed and, well, professional. The forward play was bad anyway but Garde being less 'kitchen sink' in his approach makes look a little poorer than it already is. Saying that, we do make the odd decent chance, and then fluff it. We should have had about 3 yesterday, and thats with a team that is crap at creating chances. We're even worse at taking them.

No, he was a fool as well. The squad is bad, undeniably. I think Sherwood helped make it worse. Don't think that the squad excuses him. Anyway, this is a Garde thread...

Results wise, it's hard to disagree. I maintain we look a better side than we ever did under Sherwood in basic play. That doesn't change the fact we still aren't winning games, and we don't score and we concede silly goals. But I think the team now actually looks a bit more professional and bit more well drilled in other respects. I think that shows he has something about him. He has an idea of how to play, and he manages to get some of it out of the squad, but they simply can't do all of it. The few games, for me, where we had a bit of a run he managed to get closer to that plan and we did better. Then it fell apart and there's no recovery. He's the opposite to Sherwood, imo, who admitted he didn't really what he was doing and you could see it in the team, especially as the wheels fell off. His success seemed to be based on pure adrenaline, which works for a while but then putters out. I think the players liked him as a bit of a lad but it was never going to last, and his leaving combined with a different (in my view, long term better) personality and the team just being quite weak in many ways has lead to a malaise in the squad that's made the hole we can't get out of. A vicious circle.

On the face of it, is. But then you consider the squad. And the criticism has to become more nuanced. Because otherwise it's like asking someone to cut down a tree with a spoon, and criticising him when he's still stood there next week, with the tree stood next to him still. You've given him a tool, and it's got similarities to the tool you need to do the job, and it will do the job, eventually, but not very well. It'd be churlish to throw him under the bus for failing in that circumstance. With Aston Villa, you can actually extrapolate the strained metaphor, by saying the man with the spoon is stood in a bog, with a firing squad behind him, the tree keeps moving and someone keeps stealing the spoon.

At various times all of those, with the exception of Ayew as the performance you note was yesterday, have been dropped. Some more than once. Gabby was basically cast out for a few months almost immediately once Garde arrived. Just because the managers demeanour isn't showy doesn't mean he's unmoved by the situation. Whenever I've seen him talk, he often seems like he's seething but aware he needs to keep his cool, and also careful with his words. We already know he's a stern bloke, he showed that with Grealish. What do you expect a manager to do about getting a player in? We tried to sign players. They didn't happen - one was blocked by the authorities, one fell through at the last minute, another we wouldn't pay for. Garde was evidently livid about it in a couple of interviews immediately after January and there was a lot of paper talk about him basically walking in the immediate aftermath. I get that people don't like the man, and I can understand it to an extent, but I don't think we need to start stretching the truth, or simply making things up.

I don't think you can criticise someone for a scenario that a manager may do once or twice in their career. You can criticise Garde for many things, but lets at least be sensible.

It's a spectacularly interesting period that is under discussed and acknowledged in the UK (largely because it's in the shadow of WW1 and a convoluted mess of a situation). All of the Irish independence struggle is fascinating, even down to the nitty gritty of day to day life in parts of Ulster (bits of land being owned by London guilds and employing their own enforcers to fight against their neighbours is just a bizarre thought these days, for instance). The Easter Uprising is more relevant as a turning point of thought and action in Ireland than it is a success itself - the Uprising was crushed, ruthlessly. British forces outnumbered the Irish rebels to an obscene degree, the rebels didn't have popular support unanimously and they were outgunned in every way. The British were not prepared to have a rebellion on 'home' soil whilst the Germans were trying to bleed them dry so stamped the rebellion out. The Uprising's successes largely came about because they hit without warning and moved quickly - the moment their intention and actions were clear it was only a matter of time.

So close to a Darwin award. A damn shame.

I've never read the book, but I understand it's a little different. The meat of the plot, which revolves around a resistance movement, is apparently not in the novel at all. That doesn't really seem to matter though because as much as the plot is about the resistance, that really doesn't seem to be the point of the show.

Agree wholeheartedly. The appointments to the board are exceptionally unlikely to have anything to do with the protest. At all. And the protest isn't really anything approaching a movement with any force or power in relation to the club. I would argue it's very unlikely to ever be, but again I don't really support it do I have a bias, but either way it's absolutely not something of the size or power for the club to change any policy or approach as things stand. Which all the more makes 'pausing' even more baffling and will lead people to question the purpose of the protest, and also question why this pause has been made.

I finally watched Man in the High Castle over the last week. Enjoyed it. It's more of a study of an idea than it is a real storyline, but that doesn't seem to matter really. Looks great, some good performances, particularly Rufus Sewell, and doesn't outstay its welcome. Good stuff.

He used to be Citeh's chairman when they were really in trouble, and has been given credit for turning that around, and was also formally the FA chairman. He knows football but also knows business and finance. He's a sharp appointment for us.

High Rise is one of my most anticipated films of the year. Everything salt it looks absolutely bang on. I'll be shocked if it's not good. Very good director. A Field in England is a miss for me, but Sightseers makes up for any miss for the rest of his career.

Have to agree that postponing the protest will only serve to kill momentum, which already was at risk given the gap between games, amongst other things. I don't really see why you would postpone. Yes the appointments today are positive, particularly Bernstein, but at the end of the day the protest wants rid of Lerner. An appointment to the board doesn't change that, whether it potentially improves the club long term (perhaps making a sale easier) or not. It seems that you would want to use every opportunity to protest until you meet your ultimate aim. But again, I'm not involved in the protest and don't back it as much as others may so my perspective is skewed.

Sony hold the movie rights to Spiderman, the reboot with Garfield in 2012 was partly done to maintain their holding the rights as they were about to expire (as Daredevil did - Fox didn't use the licence, Marvel got it back and made the successful Netflix show. A bunch of licences are out there for Marvel proprieties and they're quite keen to have them back, unfortunately they did some very stupid deals years ago when they went bankrupt where they make next to no money off a lot of their characters movies). Both Amazing Spiderman movies didn't perform as well as Sony wanted, commercially and critically, and that seemed to shoot down plans they had for a 'Spiderman Universe' of movies. So Sony struck a deal with Marvel whereby Sony maintain holding the rights officially and hold final sign off on any creative decisions, but Marvel can use the character pretty much as they like. So this is a reboot, but really it's more a hard 'Spidey exists in this world' shift rather than a whole origin story again. So far anyway. There's a new solo movie planned for 2018 which could be an origin I guess. Doubt it though.

He's rattled that one off a few times, first started a couple of months back, on a call to a news show I think. It's not an original idea, the Israelis have done similar, unofficially, punishing the families of terrorists. Trump is just the mouth piece of the idiot on the street. Stupid 'policies' like this will play well to his audience. They'll play well to a few here as well, undoubtedly. That's Trump's strategy, just spouting any old right on nonsense that plays to the crowd.

Little is the fabled 'football man' on the board I suppose. Bernstein is a sharp appointment though.

It's been delayed a couple of times, currently sits on May 10th.

I've said for a while that this is the kind of decision a referendum is really, really bad for. It's too complicated, and can't easily be parsed down to sound bites and slogans without being ludicrously inaccurate. It's also bloody boring for 99% of the public so nobody is going to bother doing any research. It's going to turn into two camps lying to voters to push one way or another.

I'm not sure it is the Ultimate version of the character, is it? I'm not that familiar with the Ultimate line, but even if it was it wouldn't make that much difference really in reality would it? I know the Ultimate line did shift a few things with different characters having different plots and origins to the 616 equivalent, but didn't Bendis stay very faithful to the Peter Parker plot? Of course ultimately things take a drastic turn, hence Miles Morales, but otherwise this is just the usual Spiderman everyone knows. I can agree to an extent with the suit. I like it as a bit of a throwback to the 60s, 70s style (just missing the web wings!), but I dislike the black additions which remind me of the modern Ben Reilly suit and also the Superior suit and don't look like a classic Spidey suit. I think the ASM2 suit will be the high water mark. That was basically bang on for the look of Spidey in the modern era.

Spiderman 3 is bad. Raimi didn't want to make it, and didn't want to make the movie Sony wanted. So it turns into the mess we have today, which used the be one of the highest grossing movies of all time. Sony wanted to do the Symbiote story and have Venom in it, Raimi doesn't like that character at all and had it forced on him, and shoved into the movie as it stood. The Symbiote story is a full movie in its own right, combine that with the Sandman story they were planning and it's all huddled and mashed in there, and Raimi seemingly not knowing how to tell that story (and moreover not really caring) lead to all the worst parts of it. Emo Peter just doesn't work with his style for the Spiderman movies and comes off stupid. But even with all that considered, Spiderman is a 50 year old character, one really shit movie shouldn't taint the fact that he's Marvel's poster boy and an enduringly popular character. He's so popular even the weird spin-off characters are popular. Edit - Ginko got there first seemingly!

Johnson is a bit of a running joke. He's very good, but nobody cares. He has absolutely no audience draw whatsoever.

I don't particularly like either man but Cormier is the lesser of 2 evils so I sincerely hope he embarrasses Jones. Unfortunately I expect Jones to use his freakish reach to nullify Cormier and it'll turn into a shit show.

You should enjoy Civil War - a fair amount of it is Stark being hit in the face ;). I do like Stark as a character though and RDJ has basically become the character at this point so I can't quite understand the hate Spiderman is fairly integral to the original Civil War plotline so he does belong in this, although it's pretty unlikely they'll be able to do the full Spiderman arc. I'd wager they do do the 'big thing' Peter Parker does in that story though. If they don't do that it really is just a case of establishing him as a thing in the MCU and add a bit of an afterthought in the movie and will be very disappointing.