icouldtelltheworld

Yep, I've felt very flat last night and this morning. There will be a human cost to this - football is such a big part of so many peoppes lives, many of them will have their mental health seriously affected if/when this goes through. I hope the PL send a strong message and kick out the clubs involved, but I'm not massively optimistic.

Personally I think the PL should just **** them off out the league and leave the rest of us to get on with it. Would be the best thing to happen football for decades IMO

Survived the 27 club last year and now hurtling full speed towards my 30s... Will have been 20/21 when I first started reading VT, don't think I made an account straight away

Just be happy you don't live among them mate!

I'm in south brum too. Same rumours that went round when he had his kidney injury and the first shin splints problem. Basically, he's not injured but has an ongoing cocaine problem which he keeps periodically getting caught out for, hence the 'suspicious' hushed up injuries with no set end date. Implication being each injury is cover for him serving a drugs ban. The whole FA are in on it to protect their poster boy. I suffer with shin splints myself, they flare up randomly, sometimes lasts a week, sometimes much longer. It's bitter blue nose bollocks, basically.

Chuffed for him getting the assist after his mistake, you could tell he was gutted. Has been immense for us not just this season but ever since he signed. There's a very small and select list of people who have dragged this club back into the big time and Tyrone is right at the top of it - deserves much more respect than he gets and I personally hope he's here for the rest of his top level career

Played well today IMO, full of running

Important squad player for us

About 5% of the world's population live in the area shaded red - roughly the same number of people who live in all the areas shaded blue combined

One of the many linked with us under Lambert as the creative player to solve all our problems, only to be too expensive and go elsewhere (if my memory serves me correctly). Can also remember him having a few months at Baggies where he was on fire, then seemingly just dropped off the face of the earth

Have just seen that Wes Hoolahan scored for Cambridge United at the weekend - people thought he was too old when we tried to sign him under Lambert!

This is a statement I would largely agree with - perhaps I should try to take a more optimistic of things!

Well yeah, they could. But unpaid internships are just one of the more egregious examples of the job market under neoliberalism, which is the larger issue here really. The constraints of globalisation mean that any state is limited in what they can do, and so IMO there is greater capacity for a rethinking of welfare policy than there is any chance of a country unilaterally changing much of any substance with regards employment rights

The very idea of unpaid internships makes me uncomfortable, as do lots of other features of the modern labour market. All of which is unlikely to change any time soon, what can change is the nature of state intervention to support people in navigating the system

Absolutely - there's lots that I agree with here, and as I stated in my earlier post I'm not sold on UBI and am open to persuasion one way or the other. However, we do draw some different conclusions here. It's no suprise to anyone that people like the idea of free money (who wouldn't?) But that's a very simplistic statement which doesn't tell anything like the whole story behind the rise in public approval for UBI-type policies. Another article in the Economist last year stated that public support for UBI in America has grown from 25% to 66% in a very short period of time. Now, bearing in mind the imperfect nature of opinion polls, that's clearly a statistically significant rise. Are we to believe that 75% of people didn't like the idea of free money, but have now changed their minds, or is something else going on? In my view, as with so many of aspects of life, covid has shone a light on the social security safety net in this country and others, and there are clearly aspects of it that are unfit for the realities of the 21st century. The welfare state was created in the 1940s by a government committed to Keynesian economics and the pursuit of full employment. That world no longer exists, it hasn't done for over 50 years now, and yet the only real changes to the welfare system have been to make it more punitive for those who end up needing to rely on it. I think we all agree that more should be done to collect tax from the super-rich, and that those funds would be best used investing in public services. Improvements to healthcare, transport and facilities would do lots of good in attacking the multidimensional impacts of a life lived in relative poverty, not least the stark gulf in life expectancy between rich and poor. However, what it wouldn't address is the fundametal inequlity between those who own/inherit capital and those who don't, and their respective abilities to weather the more insidious aspects of modern capitalism. We live in a world where the labour market is increasingly flexible, but the benefits of that have been entirely felt by the bosses at the expense of workers, and whilst those who can rely on the bank of mom and dad can play the game, those without that option have an almost insurmountable hill to climb. People become trapped in low-skill, low-pay work as the welfare system would punish them for making themselves intentionally unemployed if they left their jobs to better themselves. As a milennial, this is the reality for many of my friends - they could do much better for themselves and ultimately be of more use to society, but are trapped in minimum wage jobs and private rented accomodation. There would be no support for them if they decided to re-train, and they'd be homeless within three months either way. It's stories like the one from the story I originally quoted that make me think there's merit in some form of guaranteed income policy, where the participant was able to take on an unpaid internship which ultimately led to a better paid job (and presumably a boost in wellbeing too). Can we deal with all the complexities of the modern world, and address the gaping power dyanmics at play within the labour market by making small tweaks to a system put in place the best part of a century ago? I'm very sceptical if I'm honest, which is why I made the statement that I wouldn't be surpised to see some form of guaranteed income scheme (universal or otherwise) come to pass over the next few decades. Even something like a time-limited guaranteed income scheme for those looking to re-train or set up their own business would IMO be a very popular and sensible policy option for any government - and is exactly the type of thing Labour should explore, allowing for a reforming of the welfare state in order to better reflect the reality of the modern world and to better support people's aspirations.

Lots of UBI-related articles in the Economist in the moment, it does seem to have moved from being a fairly utopian idea to something which is increasingly mainstream, with a massive growth in public approval. I'm agnostic on the idea - I think it could definitely have benefits, but obviously not if it was used as a means to remove tradtional state provided social policies (in areas such as health, education etc.). One of the things that's really interesting is that UBI means very different things to those from the left and right, but across the political spectrum it seems there's a growing consensus that 20th century welfare states aren't sufficient for the modern world, so I really wouldn't be surprised if some form of universal payment was introduced over the next few decades - as with other things, the past year has accelerated trends and changes that were already under way and forced us to reconsider the way society is structured. Some interesting results from a UBI-type trial in Stockton, California: Article here: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/03/11/a-californian-experiment-in-the-provision-of-guaranteed-income-returns-its-first-results

I like Guilbert and think he's more than capable as back up for Cash, but get the impression he would've wanted to leave for first team football either way. You can make cases for and against both Elmo and Guilbert really, they both have their weaknesses. I can fully understand why Elmo was seen as the better option as back up, not least because of his seniority in the squad - I felt last year that if we'd had a few more senior pros like him in the squad we'd never have needed to stay up on the last day. There's his versatility too, elmo can fill in at CB, RW and could probably be chucked up front too if we had a serious injury crisis. Gilbert seems a committed professional and I'm sure he'll have a great career, but I'd be very surprised if he ever ends up first choice for a top half prem team

Two midtable teams slogging out a pretty poor game. Draw probably the fair result on balance. We're at 40 points with 12 games left, so I find it hard to be too frustrated tbh. I do wonder if some of these players have been run into the ground a bit with the end of last season and everything that's happened this year

Really don't understand why people don't just set him to ignore. If people didn't respond he'd soon disappear elsewhere

I've seen some nonsense posted on here over the years, but this takes the piss

I like Trez, works hard and makes a nuisance of himself. But he really is way off the standard required for the Premier league

0-0 written all over this one IMO. We'll probably lose 4-3 now I've said that...

Not at his best last night but was comfortably our best midfielder IMO. Not sure if it's because he's set such high standards previously, but he does seem to be judged more harshly than others

**** shit

Agree that SJM hasn't been up to his usual best, but felt he was much better last time out. Starting to look like we have depth in midfield which is brilliant