His Name Is Death

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/62989801 Rest in peace. What a legend and a gentleman.

I don't think playing week in week out for us will do that for him.

If, by 'better player', Southgate means 'everything that made him exciting has been browbeaten out of him', then sure.

Quelle surprise.

Feeling left out, I see.

The attack must partly be a message to Saudi Arabia. With the pictures of flattened Gazan apartment blocks coming out, Bin Salman won't be able to normalise relations with Israel without it being a huge PR catastrophe across the whole Arab world. He's got his balls caught in a vice now.

Can’t even pick Ollie without giving him a backhanded compliment.

These are lovely, especially the one on the right. I've always been a fan of claret lion on blue background and would love to see the gold border come back. Though, as designers will be thinking of how it looks on Google, could the gold be a touch darker(?) to make it stand out more on a white background? Don't care if it supposedly looks like a 'police badge', it's fantastic! (I know full well this won't be the final design, now that it's appeared on here already.)

The shield idea is fine, and I don't fault the attempt, but it's too much like West Ham's for my taste (which is easily the worst badge in the league). I really hope we don't make our badge look like something out of PES or a primary school.

Guardiola forced into concocting a reason for Kalvin Phillips being at the club that isn't 'so other clubs couldn't have him'.

I wonder what's worth more, one of the best players in the team or some TikTok views? Oh wait, I'm not thinking like a social media specialist, am I?

Apparently, there's another one: They're both incredibly bizarre. The way they're trying to humiliate him (despite being one of the best strikers in the world and making a huge contribution to their league title) must ultimately come down to him being black.

Considering all he's done for them, this is appalling behaviour by whoever's running Napoli's TikTok account: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66933115

I remember they picked up some Man Utd fans too lol.

There might be a bit of that. Konsa had to challenge Ramsey when he was puzzled about why fans were celebrating our qualification for the ECL, didn’t he?

Exactly, especially people who own/breed 'XXL' bullys like this. Might as well have a lion at that point. A lion would probably be safer.

via https://twitter.com/keewa/status/1701499330840957397

The perfect 'beady eyes, pursed lips & sour, pissed off expression' that voters instinctively warm to.

Didn't recognise the name but immediately recognised her face when I looked up her obituary. She was breathtaking as Irene Adler (in the Granada/Jeremy Brett 'Sherlock Holmes' series).

But can it really be said that he's fallen below expectations when this was a well-known weakness of his before we bought him? He wasn't intended to fulfill a physically-dominant role in the system and now injuries to Mings, Moreno and Carlos mean we have to find ways to compensate for this, even if it means asking him to play in a style he's not comfortable with. (I do think football fans often underestimate just how specific players' roles are and how dependent they are on the system ticking along nicely. I doubt there are very many players who can override this and immediately compensate for the loss of a player who fulfills a different role. Perhaps this was less true in the past, and perhaps that's why people have this expectation of players taking charge when things go pear-shaped?)

He does seem like a player who benefits from a formidable presence like Mings or Carlos, but this was already known when we bought him. I doubt it makes him an exception among modern centre-backs, who are fast and possess a wide passing range but whose lack of physical dominance makes them easy to play off. Not his fault that injuries seem to be scuppering our system at the moment.

It's one thing to have a concern, though I think it's far too early to tell (especially against a team of 'asthmatics'), but it's overboard to say he's definitively 'out of his depth' at this level or worry that he may become Emery's downfall.

This is exactly the sort of crap I mean. Do you realise how fickle this makes us look? Then, when his peformances pick up, like McGinn and Konsa's did, he'll be a top-class 'Rolls Royce' defender once again and the fact that he was being slated as Emery's potential 'downfall' will suddenly be forgotten.

What a load of rubbish. Emery wouldn't go to such lengths to convince Torres to join us only to lose faith in him in less than 10 games (and limit him to ECL games). That ought to be blatant.