Rodders

Great to see Tim get some minutes. Pretty much the perfect game. Assuming both Konsa and Luiz aren't injured

Such a nice place to be. Get pissed and relax watching the game. They are so shit

Wonderful stuff. Going to be a subdued easy second half after this  and we've earned that but another goal or two would be delightful just to ram it home, make some subs and avoid injury etc

For top 4 it would need to be 8 minimum. I've gone with some kind of optimism and 6-9 but that assumes we win today. Fail to win today and the pressure is going to compound itself and we could up with barely 4

Digne, Olsen, maybe Cash very likely to leave. Zaniolo goes back. 

Archer to be bought back, maybe A Ramsey too. 

Hopefully Tim I will have shown something in some appearances to be part of the squad. 

Good luck to him. Was actually fine under SG when he first came in and was a solid squad option then, but just nowhere near the style needed for Unais approach. Feel in a different PL side he'd do OK  so top end championship he'll do well

Hard to see how we win as we show no ability to adapt or respond to changing circumstances. We've been found out and unless subsequent performances show some evidence of positive responding, we're going in a tailspin. I have no confidence this side will show the capacity to respond to their tactics. Without the strokes of luck we had before Christmas,we're currently quite anemic. 

Can hope for better, but been too long since we've shown serious spark to be able to expect it. Another loss.

Stick a fork in it. We're done. We have no form or momentum. Spurs will fly past us. Can we hold onto 5th and  hope that's enough? I don't know.

Severely lacking in inspiration. Until we put in a good.performsnce again it's hard to have confidence we'll be up there in May. Keeping more of an eye on West ham and Brighton results.

Absolute **** disgrace. We're appalling and utterly ****. All in on the conference to salvage something then.

**** shitty villa ruining everything again

5 minutes ago, smg said:

Sorry but that last comment is a disgrace. 

Nah, they couldn't give a slightest shit about the lives of women, guys, trans, anyone who isn't a wahabist, all those people who get shot tortured arrested just so their word removed club can do well... **** the lot of them. 

We're toast and fill finish 6th or 7th. Can't score, can't defend and losing to these evil rocket polishers is the pits. God I despise every single person associated with Newcastle. Hope all their fans die in agony

Typical. **** toothless, fuckung useless against the most disgraceful club in the league. Watch us free fall now.

potential home draw if we can beat Chelsea. Got to be pleased with that.

Elsewhere in draw feel a bit sorry for Maidstone, get to the 5th round and still miss a PL side!

Good grief what an extraordinary result. One of the best away wins I can remember in a long time, given the nature of the game, I can't recall a come from behind game like that. In reverse Windies doing it to us at Headingly a few years ago comes to mind, but, and I could have blanked some really obvious ones, can't think of a game like that for a while.

Full credit to the team, Stokes, Hartley, Pope, and Foakes and Ahmed with crucial contributions with the bat too.

Series on!

Wow, what an effort from England. Pope with his best century ever there. And Hartley with three already. Got a decent chance of winning now. Would still back India  but full credit...

... but does make you think, what if they'd had a couple of warm up matches beforehand, get some of Hartleys nerves out of the way there, get some of our batters more middle time

More centre left than left as I go on. But partly i think I say that as a retort to elements of the left who seem militantly obsessed with special interest issues. But I would emphasise the word 'seem' and do realise the RW media fan the culture war bollocks quite alot. 

Economically i don't view myself as ideological but do simply think that there are so many valid criticisms of the status quo, of rigged systems that widen inequalities that it can seem that way. But if the evidence genuinely shows that market options will solve a problem then I hope I'd acknowledge that. Obviously small business' need support, but not if you need to pay slave labour wages for them to thrive.

I loathe the default response of 'human nature' to justify self interested selfishness. I'd much rather have functioning public services than a few rich words removed getting richer. There's no justification for tax breaks for anyone whilst we have food banks. 

I'm a believer in investing in people, saving money with long term approaches. Support people now, you then don't have exhausted under trained police having to deal with people abandoned by broken systems.

Patriotism, I am fine with people wanting to feel pride or a sense of community in where they come from and ideas of traditions. I'm not fine when people want to put their fingers in their ears and treat criticisms of empire or British history as self-hating etc. I prefer a grown up complex engagement with our past rather than an infantilising desire to say England good, others bad.  People who feel threatened by any change irritate the hell out of me, I.e. when they think radicals have taken over the National  Trust for talking about slavery and stuff like that. It happened you **** piss ignorant rocket polisher. We don't get anywhere by closing our eyes and trying to dismiss it as something that was in the past. So I'm quite militant on stuff like that, no patience at all for people who are essentially saying 'why can't everything be like it was when I grew up'.

If there's one game I want us to win this season it's this one. Revenge for the opening day horrorshow and they remain as ever, a despicable club. Hoping for 5 -0 is optimistic and will take a scrawny late winner in necessary but please just beat these revolting pricks

should have gone to penalties.

No injuries this time though I guess

On 25/01/2024 at 19:28, Captain_Townsend said:

It's always our key players and always at the worst time. Honestly believe he has been a massive loss these past few weeks.

Hard to say this is the worst time when we've barely played any games! If it happens in March then it will be shite.

2 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

It's interesting in a way that it's actually quite difficult for us to field a significantly weakened team - beyond the first team group that regularly play, we don't actually have very many players.

 

The subs rule skews ideas of squad strength a bit though. When it was 5 subs for ages and even 7 subs, we'd never have had any of this discussions, or ot wouldn't have come up so often. We have a core squad and first team with some alternatives. A few injuries hurts most teams really. I guess there are fewer young players at the stage of being trusted with the bench  they're either in the side or out on loan so it's the rawer Younger kids but imagine the squad with 16 or 18 instead of 20 and it looks more normal

It'll be 5-0 India. Save your sleep. Their spinners are so much better than ours. We also had no warm up matches at all.

Shame to see Draper and Raducanu both out. Think, another month or so and maybe both win their games, Emma at least. Physically nearly there but was hanging on and in pure fight mode at the end. But pretty encouraging in other respects. 

Meanwhile Blinkova knocks out Rybakina with a 22-20 tie break decider   God that would be incredibly tense. 

Saltburn - WTF was that about. Some seriously gross scenes and god just a house where you want everyone to be blown to smithereens. Different, but not a film I have inclination to watch again. 2 hours in the company of that **** psycho and the others was quite enough

7 hours ago, sidcow said:

They're STILL banging on about their plan to reduce inflation.  Will no one challenge any of the **** wits about what their "plan" is? 

Should have kept it secret

Nah, I'm pretty sure he'll quit this year, I think the disillusionment is seeping in re his performances. He was so flat in his defeat. He won't tolerate much more of that. If he doesn't have a significant improvement in results, I can see him calling it a day at Wimbledon this year.

If Jack Draper avoids all those injury, cramp issues that plagued him last year, he's going to shoot up the rankings, be a top 20 player come the end of the year I'd have thought.