pas5898

11 hours ago, sidcow said:

What do you propose? Boots on the ground? Air attacks? 

End game is mutual destruction of NATO push too hard. 

NATO make it extremely clear worldwide and via information to the Russian people they will return ukraines borders back to that of early 2022. They will not set foot in Russia or crimea.

Give Russia 2 weeks notice. 

Russia will threaten, but in the end they will do nothing because it’s complete and utter suicide for them. As with the 4,000,000 other times they’ve threatened to use nukes. 
 

due to it being an oligarchs playground, crimea may be a different story and that’s potentially up the to Ukrainians to retake. 

Just to further comment on the absolute insanity of this war.

My wife is Lithuanian and has family spread across Russia and other former soviet states including Ukraine.

She has close cousins in Kyiv who we have been trying to support and all the older men are enlisted in the UA

We found out yesterday a relative originating from the same great nan, died fighting FOR Russia as they remained in Russia back in the 80s. 

Absolute insanity.

No Italian club is going to give him >100k a week or whatever he is on at Chelsea.

41 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

I don't see Tielemans as a replacement for anyone in particular but as Villa can look a bit light-weight in the centre of the park, I see him as a possible solution, against more "robust" teams.

Horses for courses.

Teams are starting to show us more respect and just "sit in" at Villa park in particular. We struggled a bit against Bournemouth and Fulham at home towards the end of the season to break them down. He will be an idea player at those type of "front foot" games.

When digging in away from home at Liverpool, Chelsea etc then i doubt we will see him play, unless of course he proves himself and shows himself to be the player of a couple of years ago.

10 hours ago, Zatman said:

They are giving De Gea a new deal

Absolute Insanity. Isn't he on like 375k a week? 

Russia and China done something similar in the last 10 years. 

It will last 2/3 years max once the king / princes get bored of their new toy and had selfies with their favourite players.

2 minutes ago, david-avfc said:

The wage bill has been confirmed as 7th highest in 2021,  at £192m, closely followed by Everton at £185m. 

Big part of that is Nostalgia and not "selling" at the right time.

They gave vardy north of 150k a week, when he was past 30. Now they have a league 1 level player on that money. Because he was so highly paid, better players like Barnes, Tielemans, Maddison demand such money and so on.

In the next 2/3 years we will need to make similar decisions on the likes of Mcginn, Mings, Diego even Watkins. Do we pay them 100k a week plus well into their 30s as they will all want 3/4 year contracts or move them on. The good clubs move them on. Poorly run clubs end up with a load of 33/35 year olds on 100k+ a week (Everton) who they cant resell.

Our fan base had a melt down over not offering a 38 year old a contract only last week. 

2 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

It’s a hedge fund that gambles on companies/organisations in states of distressed credit.

I honestly wouldn’t be overly worried about this, it’s not a fan willing to pump in their own riches to make them successful, it’s a speculative situation whereby they will be hoping to turn a quick profit at best.

Sisu were a hedge fund, made Coventry homeless and nearly bankrupted them. Hedge funds make money, that's what they do, the club and the fans are irrelevant.

Plan A: Promote them, which will be very hard with FFP + Parachute payments from PL teams. 

If that doesn't work they will quickly cut their losses / asset strip.

We are closer to 2050 than 1996. That made me feel old. 

16 hours ago, sidcow said:

Out of interest what is his take on all this?  Is he in agreement that Russia was forced into it by The west or that Russia is out of order?

To begin with he was 100 percent fully on board with the Russian doctrine. He watches Russian TV, Zelenski is a clown / USA puppet, America caused this and now Russia will show them who's boss, they are helping liberate Russians in Ukraine etc. Last 6 months or so he's changed as the reality of what's happening is beginning to come to light.

My wife who is Russian / Lithuanian but born and raised in post soviet Lithuania absolutely detests everything Russian. When the war started they didn't speak for 2 months as the arguments got so heated.

To highlight the absurdity, a few days before the invasion we was at a funeral in Lithuania with our Russian side of the family including 6 family members who are Ukrainian and live near Kyiv.

If we get to the knockout stages in Europe then I think 8/7 is quite good.

Man City, Arsenal and United are too far ahead of us.

Chelsea, Spurs and Liverpool will be better.

Newcastle might struggle with the CL so we could leapfrog them.

West Ham are not a bad team, with some really good players and look at where they finished after playing thurs / sun

There's no jeopardy or ability to make tactical decisions anymore anymore. We all know from testing who's going to win the championship.

- Allow 2 DRS "power play" windows of 10 laps each, no need to be within 1s of the car in front, just have 20 laps per race when you can use DRS on the straights. This will stop processions at the end of races as you'll have some cars with DRS quickly catching whoever is in front.

 -Bring back in refueling with no min or max limits.

Would make a huge different to the races in my opinion.  

1 hour ago, ferguson1 said:

I can honestly see Gerrard being interested. Corberán, Bowyer, Parker perhaps? 

Corberán makes the most sense to me. He is a Bielsa "disciple" and was at Leeds for a few years with him.

Leeds are a basket case but with parachute payments they will be a lot more appealing than the crumbling, bankrupt West Brom.

16 hours ago, Wainy316 said:

Kane won't go abroad.  He wants that Premier League scoring record.

Do a year or 2 in Madrid until Haaland goes, then come back for the PL record. If he stays good with injuries he'll easily smash it even if he takes a 2 year sabbatical in Spain

3 hours ago, ender4 said:

I don't know if its better than Spurs lose Kane and his goals but get a big wedge of cash, or if it's better that they keep Kane and lose him for nothing next summer?

Problem they have is, only Man U are commercially stupid enough to pay 100million for a 30 year old with 1 year left on his contract. Man U are seen as a top 4 / best of the rest rival.

If Benzema was tempted by a huge Saudi offer, then things could be interesting with Madrid wanting a new striker. 

10 minutes ago, Jono62 said:

The Mohammed bin Salman arena. 

Ludicrous - The Saudi Government has nothing to do with Newcastle United according to the PL

If they are found guilty, it would be interesting to see if other clubs try to challenge Man City in court.

For example, Leeds. Man City used an unfair financial advantage to take their captain and best player to literally sit on the bench. If they get relegated by 1/2 points then surely having Phillips on the team would have been the difference between them staying up or not.

7 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

He wouldn't have gone anywhere if City weren't breaking the FFP rules.

Noone else could afford his release fee, and City shouldn't have been able to either. That's the level of their corruption. 

This exactly. They took our best player for 100million.

Then took Leeds best player, just for the fun of it as they don't even play him! 

1 minute ago, Pinebro said:

What we do remember and talk about is when we won the league and the european cup the year after.

Elite sport is about winning.

Correct.

Would you rather qualify for the Champions League for 10 seasons in a row and win nothing.

Or win the Europa League once and not qualify for the CL the other 9 years?

I know which im choosing.

40 minutes ago, bickster said:

Wow, thats some ballsy move if true.

The Legion Of Russia is only about 2 battalions strong, I think the Belarussians also have three battalions, maybe they are going too?

Wonder if they might have some new American made shiny weapons just to further destabilise the area and create a headache for Russia.

Looks like something interesting might be happening in Belgorod. Might be false flag or rebels. 

Appears to be tanks crossing + fighting