Mark Albrighton

Glorious.

Bright side, City will have been preparing to deal with Jack and now that’s gone out the window? Straws being clutched there... Edit I will say we should be looking to win this, but I’m not as confident as I had been.

One draw against a play off rival when missing two of our best players, following a run of seven wins would be ok by me.

Our loss rate without Jack isn’t that bad, it was mainly draws.

The referee mistakenly identified Mings as someone who deserved to be booked.

Oh god, no.

The word “electrocute” is a portmanteau of electric and execute and was coined in the late 19th century for when referring to death by the electric chair as opposed to receiving an accidental electric shock.

RV posts an update in 2049 -

Sorry, pedantic itch that needs scratching. It’s 48.3% - 14 wins from 29 league games. Or 1.79 points per game for sne if he’s reading this. As is now typical when discussing his win rate - for games in which Jack plays it’s now 75% or about 2.4 points per game.

I think it would be El Ghazi in the advanced role, if we were to try it. Edit - though Hourihane did have his best game in a while in that more forward role. Hmmm.

Yes, a large part of my thinking has been that Bristol is a “must win”, but because of other results, along with ours, it’s not quite as necessary to win that now. I’ve fallen into a mindset where I’m looking at how we secure 5th spot rather than 6th. Hypothetically speaking, two legs against potentially Sheff Utd/Leeds is harder than Baggies, but I’d fancy our chances against most at the moment. However it’s still a big game, one we can’t lose, another win on Saturday would be huge and I think it would leave us with one foot firmly in the play off door. I reckon there will be a few supporters of Derby, Boro, Hull etc who will be hoping we win too.

There’s no typos in that so I assume you’re not referring to Dem. (Sorry, cheap shot Dem )

Strangely, Bruce’s record (win percentage) was higher in games without Jack. I looked that up when the Smith without Grealish stat was first doing the rounds. I believe Bruce’s win rate with Jack was about 40% (over about 60 league games) without Jack it was over 56% (over league 32 games). That could mean Bruce’s set up wasn’t really dependent on Jack and as such the team weren’t playing to one of it’s biggest strengths. It could mean Smith’s style is heavily reliant on Jack, maybe too much. Or it could mean stats while interesting up to a point, don’t always paint the complete picture.

Add to his nice manipulation of facts in a recent interview here - Link Clever there Steve, “look we were only competing financially with those three relegation candidates! Ignore wages and any transfers from the previous year. They don’t count.” I’ve seen elsewhere him go on about bringing in money for players. It’s like he can take the credit for selling Veretout or Amavi for £X amount but it’s the board’s fault for pissing millions away on Hogan. If he doesn’t get the blame for the money spent, he can’t take the credit for money brought in (IMO). And I know the previous 18 months had been terrible, but the “hadn’t won at home for 18 months” stat, yes of course Steve. It was the away record and it was 14 months without a win. Does it matter? Not really, it was still a terrible record, but at least it’s a correct and not some inaccurate bollocks he’s said to defend himself. I know there are positives to say about his tenure but when he comes out with some of this crap, what positive thoughts I have diminish slightly.

On the flip side of this, before tonight Boro lost 6 matches in a row, they win one tonight and now they’re occupying 7th position, ahead of Derby (albeit having played one more). Crazy league.

Highly unlikely, Derby would have to score 11 in the last 20 minutes.

If only for the sake of who may finish third, Leeds are 1-0 up.

It’s not inconceivable Baggies could miss out (or at least not finish 4th). Just lost to Millwall, seemingly out of this game. Next it’s Preston and Hull, two teams that have been in reasonable form over the past two months and possibly still harbouring small hopes of 6th spot. After that two sides battling relegation in Reading and Rotherham. Finally they play Derby. If they haven’t sewn it up by then, then that will likely be the game to watch on the final day of the season. They’ll probably scrape by, but if there’s a chance they could miss out I could live with that

As the Bruce and Sherwood threads are riding high, thought it’s only fair to bump O’Neill’s thread. It’s been a fairly mixed bag so far at Forest. Won 5 Drawn 3 Lost 5 - it sounds like some discontent is already creeping in among a few Forest fans. I’m not sure what the remit was, play offs I assume. Forest were 9th before he took over, they’re currently still 9th. The owners don’t tend to hang around if they’re not happy, especially if there’s the likes of Jokanovic and Wagner available. I wonder if there’s any possibility of MON retiring on his own terms rather than ending his career being given the boot by the club where he enjoyed his most successful playing days (I am admittedly making the assumption that this would be his final job).

Fantastic goal from Hazard.

The “non vegan one” then it tastes similar to the vegan alternative.

How about ticket prices, football or concerts?

Peter Crouch bringing a classic Doug-ism to life in this anecdote about when he signed for us and met Ellis for the first time -

My guess is he was caught in two minds about whether to nick the goal for himself or just let it go in and the indecision resulted in that.