TWar

Palace, I think. It will be Brighton eventually as people won't notice they are funding their spending by selling their only two good players other than Dunk (Lampety maybe but he's always injured)

There was two years between Puel leaving and Semmens coming in. I feel you are missing a step where we really cratered. I personally think we have done a great job of bouncing back from the mess three years back to back of poor buys put us in. But it is a long game, if we keep signing players of the quality of KWP, Ings, Adams and keep Ralph who can massively improve players like JWP, Armstrong, Vestergaard, and Romeu we will continue to grow. Rome wasn't built in a day though. I also think Adams would look out of place in the championship, and did, he just played a championship side and made them look like school children. We also showed how we do against championship opposition, we absolutely battered them, Bournemouth last season too. People who we don't rate like Redmond, Obafemi, Djenepo ect. absolutely tore them a new one. I think when people say "championship quality" or "wouldn't look out of place in the championship" they need to reassess quite how big the gap is to that league.

Anyone know if there is a way to watch Saints vs Swansea tomorrow?

I don't think he has been great there but he is still young, maybe he can be converted. Tbh I think it's very unlikely we don't sign atleast one back up fullback though and hopefully they can cover both sides.

I think people are somewhat looking at Tadic with the benefit of hindsight through rose tinted glasses. He was absolutely incredible in the 15/16 season and has been absolutely incredible for Ajax but his last couple of seasons with us he was very poor and a lot of people were calling for him to go. He got 8 and 9 goal contributions in his last two seasons with us, exactly the same as Armstrong has in his previous two seasons, but Tadic played significantly more minutes. Armstrong is atleast equal to Tadic when he left us but if he can stay fit a full season then I think he represents an upgrade. As for other comparisons under Semmens tenure Salisu > Hoedt KWP > Cedric Adams >>> Carrillo Djenepo > Boufal (imo, it is close though) Diallo < Hojbjerg (for now, but I think he has a very high ceiling) Ings >>> Austin (since he was still signed under Semmens tenure technically) Seems to me on the most part in the Semmens era we have upgraded almost entirely with almost no downgrades. The big downgrades came in 2017-19 like VvD to Hoedt, Mane to Redmond, Pelle to Austin et al.

A number of great points made here. People like to be all doom and gloom but we have definitely improved with the return of Romeu from injury, Bertrand to Perraud, and Tella developing more and becoming more crucial. We will spend more too, other sides are also struggling and unlike the likes of Burnley we have been told more are coming, they are relying on loans at best from what I hear. The only big spenders around us are Villa, palace and Brighton and all are losing major players in Grealish, White, Bissouma, if rumours are to be believed and palace having half their team out of contract.

I think it's a reference to the Cardiff scoreline. They both hold up 4 fingers with one hand and a 0 shape with the other as we won 4-0. Not sure tbh but that was my interpretation.

Just get the jab then, its a sore arm for a couple of hours and I had a mild headache which went away when I slept. It really isn't a big deal.

Not as yet, spurs have been rejected by a couple of targets now in Kounde and Romero. Could easily fail to get this guy and turn to Ings after paying over the odds to get someone.

Quite different stylewise to Ings, plays primarily as a lone forward, quite a big lad, good at holding the ball up, from what I've seen he is pretty strong but not very quick and quite one footed. He's actually a bit more like Che Adams than Ings. I think Adam Armstrong seems more like Ings than he does. I will say I've only seen him play about 5 times though so if any Celtic fans want to correct me that's fine. Also, he scored 13 non-pen goals (18 over all) last season in the league so I think I probably would have Armstrong who got 22 (28). You could argue the championship is easier than the Scottish league but outside of Celtic and Rangers I'm not sure I'd agree. I would take either, but I can see why Edouard might not top our list with Armstrong potentially available.

I think he's joking. Serious response regarding Perraud. He was alright, looked pacy going forward but most of his crosses were blocked, looked competent defensively but wasn't threatened much. One miscontrol which almost let them through but could have been miscommunication with Salisu tbh.

I think it is a quality over quantity issue personally. I do agree with a lot of what you are saying, especially regarding Che having a good season, but in my opinion we need 1 great player and 1 good player for every position. In central midfield we have two great players in JWP and Romeu and one good player in Diallo. Ideally we'd get another good player to be backup but we have Armstrong who can play there and Smallbone coming through so I'm ok with that. In attacking midfield we have one great player in Armstrong, a couple of good players in Tella and Walcott, and a few patchy players in Redmond, Ely, and Djenepo. We have a lot of depth but I worry for quality to be honest as we only have one really quality attacking mid. With regards to Armstrong vs Delaney. I think we'd be more improved by having a starting front four of A. Armstrong, Adams, Ings, and S. Armstrong (assuming A. Armstrong can play as a 10 as Tom Leach suggested, if not I'd rather us sign a 10) than benching Romeu for Delaney or having Delaney sat on our bench. First 11 is number one priority for me, depth comes second.

In what world do we need a 6 more than an attacker. We don't create enough! Mental.

Newcastle booed off after drawing 1-1 with league one Rotherham. Pretty embarrassing, apparently a late equaliser for them spared their blushes too.

There will probably be an illegal stream, not that I'd condone such things 😉

Needed: Attacking mid regardless, fullback cover regardless, striker if Ings goes. Wanted: Gk, first choice CB if Vestergaard goes, third fullback for the summer (4th overall), striker to compete with Adams, 4th CM maybe

I 100% guarantee you the vaccine has had all the necessary checks. It's been quicker as science moves based on funding and it is probably the most well funded short term scientific project of all time. Also regarding things like fertility and long term effects, there are ways to test those things outside of giving them to people and seeing what happens. We have computational models to simulate these things, analogous vaccines (for which the mRNA vaccine was based and had been developed for decades), and gene profiling technology. If the science wasn't up to the grade you can bet your life the scientific community wouldn't almost unanimously endorse it. I personally know people who work on the vaccine, some are proper anti government types, but they work as part of a team which it's works as part of a big set of teams. Thousands upon thousands of scientists who make virus and vaccine research their life work plus thousands of peer reviewers and no concerted case against them. I just don't buy that if there is actually any issues or potential issues.

This'll be what Leach was on about with the older CB at brighton thing. Leach might be our best info source now with regards to reliability and being the first to say things.

Some excellent points. Anyone who thinks a conservative government would purposefully harm the economy by locking down unnecessarily or would hoard jabs for the UK when they know them to be dangerous needs to give their head a wobble. It's like flat earth or any other conspiracy, the first question has to be "but what's in it for them?"

Wakefield should be in prison. What he did was tantamount to child abuse, the experiments he did on autistic children. At the very least he should be in public exile for deliberately lying about science that killed potentially thousands of innocent children with impressionable parents. Also the mainstream media has blood on it's hands with its deliberate decision not to fact check an otherwise sensational story. For those who don't know, Andrew Wakefield patented individual jabs for measles, mumps and rubella, and then wrote a deeply fraudulent paper discrediting the combined jab by linking it to autism to push people towards his product. In science he is sort of like a horror story they tell all new scientists in your first "ethics in research" mandatory seminar (probably mandatory because of that prick). If you ever hear someone mention autism with reference to vaccines it's because of this fuck and his "autistic enterocolitis" bullshit. The paper was retracted by half the authors after letting the world know about Wakefields fraud and he's not a doctor anymore but that's not far enough for me for his fraud. There is a great book on it by Brian Deer called "The doctor who fooled the world" and a great video about the whole thing here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc. It's quite long and a bit silly at times, but it's pretty amusing and well made.

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/05/06/putting-risks-into-context-covid-19-vaccines-and-blood-clots/

I presume they will be replaced by a new crop of young players.

Yep! Good shout, I'm working off a slightly out of date list.

I don't care what the government thinks. The vaccine is a good idea, that's why basically the entire scientific community is behind it. The scientific community often disagrees with government on a lot of things, like climate change, and I come down with science in that case. The government happen to be on the right side of this one as solving the problem will also make a lot more money, but they are not the reason I'm in favour of it.