Jump to content

HanoiVillan

Established Member
  • Posts

    28,882
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    48

Everything posted by HanoiVillan

  1. The England away is kind of meh (I don't care about the colour not being 'traditional', it just looks quite boring), but the home . . . the home is beautiful.
  2. Don't know where you've heard that, but it isn't right, or if it is right it would be announced *right after* the season ended (I don't think this is likely). The reason I can say this with confidence is the Premier League hold their big meeting to ratify the next season's membership very shortly after the end of the season (I think it's the week following the playoff final). If you recall the urgent rush to get Chelsea sold, this was the deadline they were working to, and it still exists. EDIT: I should check more carefully, and it seems like you are mostly right: 'They can now appeal against the punishment with a backstop date for a decision five days after the end of the season. A further appeal (in “exceptional circumstances”) could take the whole process up to 8 June, with a final call on who actually gets relegated potentially delayed to that point.' from: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/18/supporters-should-blame-club-owners-not-the-rules-for-points-deductions I assume 'backstop date' means 'that's the date it must be decided, but it could be decided before' which would be better for everyone. Would be a terrible look for the league if the final round of games still has this hanging over it. The Championship playoff final is May 27th, so I assume if June 8th is the backstop-to-the-backstop date the Premier League meeting must be right after that, but I don't understand what 'exceptional circumstances' could possibly mean.
  3. A man who should not be tempted to retrain as a defence barrister after he retires.
  4. But then it wouldn't include the previous summer. You have to put the start point somewhere, and it shouldn't include two summer windows in one year.
  5. They were £34.5m over the threshold of £61m.
  6. Nobody should ever play Monopoly with anyone, it's a terrible board game (Monopoly Deal, on the other hand, is good fun).
  7. Undoubtedly, the most baffling selection decision of the season is every game Trafford played instead of him.
  8. Taylor Swift and Beyonce might not be coming to VP, but last summer we had 3 (I think?) big concerts that sold the ground out and helped as money-spinners. The limiting factor is more the consequences for the playing surface than the wattage of the stars that are getting booked.
  9. Another game, another day of being dreadful at defending set pieces. Are things going off the boil a bit here? We're not exactly pulling up trees with the attacking ones either now, but it's concerning how bad we are at defending corners and free kicks. We can't just be thinking 'they'll get better when Mings is back', we need an answer now.
  10. I understand why his game time went way down when Ramsey came back, but it seems unwise to me to be starting someone as callow at this level as Rogers over him, Zaniolo offers much more. Is the problem that if he plays too much we have to sign him or pay a huge fee and we don't want to? Because I don't really get it, and haven't understood it for a few weeks now.
  11. This was a tough fixture and a draw is not a bad result, made better by Spurs' surprise loss yesterday. The team in the first half never looked right, we never play with two up top and it's not clear why Emery thought it would be effective here. Duran was completely out of the game, and Rogers not much more involved. Obviously, he got the substitutions right, and I think in the end we were probably the more deserving winners. I don't know if we would need to buy Zaniolo or pay a large sum to whichever team owns him and that's why he's not starting, but he offers so much more than Rogers does at this stage and he should IMO be starting every game Ramsey is out. Diaby's assist was brilliant, and he seems to be playing his way back into form, so these seem like two obvious switches going forward. You can see all sides of the 'Moyes debate', in that they have good players and they are always going to get results, but on the other hand they are very defensive, content to pack their own half of the field, it felt like we were trying to play past 15 defenders in much of the second half. Champagne football it isn't, but it's a tribute to us as well. It's still all to play for.
  12. How many **** defenders do they have? Seems like they've got about 15 men behind the ball.
  13. 18 months ago we were in 16th, so I think we have in fact seen improvement.
  14. Need to get Diaby on, probably for Duran who looks completely outmatched. Probably also Digne for Moreno. We have to be able to try something different in the final third other than just stroking it around.
  15. Maybe he's not getting offers because he's now gone 5 games without scoring and isn't offering much.
  16. It's still a weird thing to say. The whole world knows he wants to leave, he doesn't need to keep mentioning it in every interview.
  17. Have to confess they've exceeded even my worst expectations, they look rank. Will probably have Mbeumo back for the next game which should help, but they've been atrocious for months now, and the Toney stalled faster than I expected.
  18. Did he by any chance talk repeatedly about how much he hates the Vile? Seems to be the normal way to win over their affections.
  19. I get that for 'normal' jobs. I'm a teacher, and some of my colleagues love going to conferences, reading about teaching in their downtime etc, whereas I don't give it a single second thought once the work is done. But on the other hand that doesn't require maintaining performances at an absurdly high standard under an intense public microscope or not getting to eat or drink what I want.
  20. One other thing about pessimists, is that because their pessimism is not logically-driven, it doesn't even cohere internally. On a weekend like last weekend, where we lose and Man Utd win, you see some posters saying confidently that means they are definitely going to overtake us and we are going to finish 6th or even worse. Then those same people will be stressing about the UEFA coefficients in midweek. But if you're *convinced* Utd are going to finish ahead of us, you should *want* England to fail to get the 5th spot. After all, it would be pretty funny if Utd win 8 or 9 of their remaining ten games and do everything they need to, and then don't get CL because Liverpool and City get knocked out early. Obviously our demise would still be very disappointing, but that schadenfreude would compensate for at least some of the pain.
  21. This, and unironically, not humorously. It's very concerning to be this down about, honestly, nothing at all. Not to be too dramatic about this but there's people dying in airstrikes every night on the news and it's quite tiresome to be this worked up over football. If we don't qualify for the Champions League, we'll all still wake up the next day, the sun will rise, life will go on. Really crucial to keep a sense of perspective, it's just sport.
  22. Probably not one for this thread, but I always find it fascinating when a guy gets to a really elite level and has no identifiable interest in the sport at all. Have no idea how you manage to get this far really.
  23. I didn't listen tonight, but did listen in the car on the way to the game on Thursday, and it was just a parade of the thickest noses I've ever heard (which is saying something, obviously). The one guy was incredible, whatever Richard Wilford asked him - formations, tactics, subsititutions, transfers, whatever - he just responded with the same repeated platitudes about rolling their sleeves up and standing up and being counted, not hiding in the dressing room or whatever. The man literally spoke in nothing but cliches. Where do they dig them up?
  24. I normally don't mind Keown and I think in some way he was trying to be helpful but it really did come across dreadfully. The thing is, if he'd watched interviews with Bailey before, he'd have known that Bailey probably gives longer and franker answers than about 95% of players and really doesn't need helping.
×
×
  • Create New...
Â