YouUnastanFren

This is an interesting hypothesis and on first glance I agree with it, Bruce must've been on his way out for a lot longer than I realised though

Arteta is a failure but steady on there! Timothy Sherwood, ladies and gentlemen:

Looking at the home and away tables, I don't think playing at home is an advantage at all this season. Only Liverpool have better home form than away really. As fans start to be let back in this will change slightly though I'd imagine

Haha small world. Maybe 'accidentally' email him a link to a Ben Mee worst fouls compilation video just to be sure

Who is the ref for this one? If it's anyone half decent your prediction likely won't be far off.

There's secure underground parking for all the flats round there. The electric gates are very temperamental in his defence but they don't prevent you from getting a lift to training

Alonso's thousand yard stare afterwards was comedy gold but I did feel a bit sorry for Webber, even more so with hindsight

No optimum chip strategy immediately jumps out for that period. Not sure if that's a good thing or not

Just spotted your team based on based on your score and initials, we've got 9 of the same 11 (an identical front 7) but you've got Robertson and Walker instead of James and Matip, ye bloody rich bastard ye.

He had a small purple patch right at the end of last season when he scored 3 vital goals but before that he had worse output than El Ghazi (3G 1A vs 4G 4A) from similar minutes. This season he's got the highest xG in the entire league out of players who haven't scored a single goal. I agree that I'd prefer Trez to be fit and starting this game to help Traore ease in but I don't think we can really expect many goals to come from Trez based on everything other than our incredible 4 game run at the end of last season.

Yeah the additional rate is 45% atm so it would be 100 basic I think. It's not implausible that his guaranteed salary is 100k/wk flat I guess.

Where is this quote from out of interest? Percy reported his new deal was worth £140k/wk in the summer.

It's difficult because I don't have a clear idea on what a club rivalry is. Clubs who aren't really our rivals anymore but I laugh when I'm told that they have lost (every week): Blues, WBA, Coventry Clubs who think we're their rivals because of various perceived slights but we don't give anywhere near as much of a shit about them: Norwich, Leeds, Newcastle, Chris Wilder Clubs who I'd like to think are our rivals this/next season: Wolves, Leicester, Everton, West Ham, Arsenal Eventually obviously I'd like rivalries with the top 5 but one step at a time. And then with Bayern, Real and Barca if possible, please and thank you NSWE.

Even taking into consideration the fewer games played, we've kept as many clean sheets as anyone and we have the 3rd best xGA/game, we really haven't been easy to break down. Actually looking at it we've also got the 3rd best xG/game. Basically, we're **** mint.

I agree with these but I would add the caveat that the **** shitty media has contributed largely to this subconscious negative perception that a lot of people appear to have of him. He's often questioned on non-football-specific topics and often gives erudite, measured, sensible answers and yet the meeja cherry pick and misquote him, especially for their headlines, to wilfully misconstrue his point and fuel their own narrative.

The most annoying thing about the Abu Dhabi track is that there is absolutely no need for it to be as shit as it is. They had a completely blank, flat canvas when they made it along with a near infinite budget. IIRC they originally had a planned layout that a lot of the F1 press and insiders said looked like it would've produced exciting races but after they constructed the grandstands the FIA said there wasn't enough runoff area in some sections so they were forced to bodge in some corners and those annoying narrow chicanes as well as squaring off other corners to reduce exit speeds. Every year after it's boring I see articles with suggestions of how to improve the layout to make it exciting like this: While I agree that it would work I think these are probably the exact differences the FIA forced them into on safety grounds so to do that they'd need to demolish half the buildings and move them back. I wouldn't put it past them though, the entire point of hosting the GP is PR to increase tourism there and it's always so **** tedious the PR is generally negative and the first thing I think when I hear Abu Dhabi is "boring".

Although I agree that he was quite frustrating to watch most of the time, he did have 3 or 4 properly decent performances out of his 20 odd appearances from what I can remember. Not what you want from a record signing but enough glimpses of potential to retain hope that he'll come good for me.

I'm actually quite pleased that we've got those games in hand because without them we'd be in that title race group and the amount of interest and pressure would be far higher. We're 2nd for win percentage, 1st for clean sheets per game and 2nd for goals scored per game. Stunning start for a team with half a new first XI, a year on from a complete squad overhaul after a surprise promotion.

His confusion over why Leeds fans are absolutely obsessed with him was hilarious. "It's just Blues fans, West Brom, Wolves and then Leeds for some reason. I'm not sure why Leeds fans"

Indeed, if the criteria you claim to be judging by is not consistent and appears to change in order to allow you to reach your pre-determined conclusion then it's hard to give any credibility to those opinions.

He's a great coach, you'd think the side he came up with would do well to finish in the top half of the Championship. They'd be best served by keeping him and putting in an entire recruitment and scouting setup above him but I think he might be too arrogant to let that happen.

Yeah, I probably should have made it more clear that's what I meant. The only Sheffield United targets that other teams went for were the Championship POTY and Nottingham Forest's POTY, the fact SHU were after them would've made me think they were worse than they are if anything. Funny nobody tried to poach Ramsdale isn't it? Only it isn't because he was shite last season. If they actually had recruitment worth copying they would have decent players in their squad already but they don't because they have the worst squad in the league and also the worst recruitment.

It was also very inaccurate. Sheffield United's recruitment has been abysmal and nobody would want to poach players from them. They paid more for that chubby faced flapper in goal than we paid for Martinez. That's without even mentioning the record fee they paid for a kid with about 6 months of Championship football. I honestly don't think they have a single player that would make our squad. Berge is the best of a bad bunch but I'd rather Ramsey as a back up. Compare that to Fulham who have 4 or 5 very good players.

I agree on their work rates but that is mainly because Trez has improved massively on this front. He was blowing out his arse after 10 minutes every game pre lockdown. Traore was mismanaged and played out of position at Lyon last year, with limited minutes. On top of that Ligue 1 cancelled the second half of their season so he has had a massive amount of time without any football to build his fitness. Trez has been managed well by a good set of coaches and has progressed markedly, the same will be true for BT but imho his ceiling is way way higher. I agree that currently I'd rather Trez play the first 60 but then when he's tired them out I want Traore on to hurt them. Disagree here, his highlight reel is ludicrous, that wasn't a 1 in 100 for him, he's got this kind of stuff in his locker. He's already had a few moments like this and his willingness to try difficult things will earn us points this season I'm sure.