saint1977

That’s shocking, straight at him, no real deviations on the ball, would expect National League upwards to turn that around the post. Straight back into the middle of the goal. Salish’s header wasn’t strong enough but that is on McCarthy and Ralph. Forster for BHA surely?

I agree with you in principle but it’s a horrible position for NHS frontline staff to be in. If they start choosing on the basis of social decisions patients make, it opens a can of worms and unpicks the core fabric of their organisation and what it was founded on. Nigel Lawson (Nigella’s father and former Chancellor in the 80s for the forum’s under 40s) described the NHS as the nearest thing to a true national faith and he is/was right in that observation. What we can do to help is by making the 90% view clear and tackling misinformation and populism so that anti vax and the other weirdos out there feel like pariahs. I think employers will find ways of moving the unvaccinated on and new jobs advertised will increasingly pick it up via the recruitment and selection processes. In the end, only the very hard core will resist because the others will need to make a living and get jabbed.

Yep, that’s circa £7-8m down the toilet over 2 years. Not saying that would have bought a GK but could have used that money on loaning a better keeper in that pays for themselves in an increased league position. Relegated Forster to U23s with no first team pathway, he might actually have finally moved on for his good as much as the club’s and that would have saved a little bit. Or not sign Theo at all. I like Theo and he did well in the early part of last season but has looked totally spent this term. Hope he comes off the bench and sticks two fingers at me by scoring a 90th minute winner tomorrow night now! PS - realise Crocker’s decision as well but managers need to insist on decent GKs whatever the budget, especially when the Theo and Long extensions would have bought one combined.

I think it is the rapid spread and infections it causes. No sign of serious illness yet but it will take a couple of weeks for that to filter through into data. This CNN article is quite well balanced and gives a good overview. A short period of waiting and seeing but I’m supportive of governments and international agencies being proactive. Especially when all variants spread more in indoor environments at this time of year https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/26/health/omicron-variant-what-we-know/index.html Edit - it seems unlikely that the vaccines will be hugely reduced in efficacy and the more vaccine you have the less the risk of serious illness on top of the NHS’s normal intense winter pressures. So that’s why the push to get boosters, holder whilst we know more about new variant in next 2-3 weeks.

This is too easy, like Jota sauntering through the Saints back 4 on Saturday, but needs doing anyway https://www.ft.com/content/8075e68c-7857-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c475

If it gets messy eg Leicester or OT it could be the highway for the whole lot.

I find it hard to blame players here, the set up looked kamikaze at 2.30 and if it looks and walks like a duck… What the hell are the coaching team up to? If none of them feel able to challenge Ralph when he has these harebrained ideas and games, resign because it’s a waste of wages. We could all take home a six figure wage with bibs, cones and ‘being a link between the players and the dressing room’. They need to justify their roles after this, especially if it ends up as another 9-0. Although that’s RH gone if it is. Pity as a lot of progress made this term but he’s lost the plot again today and nobody seems to be able to reign him in.

Helps if you don’t try to go man for man for them in formation. Had been making good progress in being solid this season but today an exercise in very risky strategy from the manager, like the crazy stuff from second half of last season. Even BBC saying it will be a cricket score if if he doesn’t change it. What the heck are the coaching team doing? If the manager is messing it up, take control and get back into 4-5-1 and get to HT only 1-0.

Why does Boris even need to send that letter? All it has done is provoke Macron further. Apparently the initial bilateral talks with Patel went well so why hasn’t he trusted his own Home Secretary to continue those with an informal briefing on key objectives? I’d be spewing if I was in her position. He’s an inept twat, and worst ever PM, that’s why he is getting hammered. Was worst Foreign Secretary on record and more evidence as to why. So is Macron, two talentless egos who could support their counterparts efforts in coming up with a strategy to reduce future tragedies but instead we have Brexit and NI border replayed again in a different arena because they have their balls in a wheelbarrow. He will probably give this to Frost to mess up as well. He couldn’t be a Sherpa for a walk on Butser Hill. France, UK, EU, migrants all deserve better than this.

Anglo French antics over the cross border migrant talks pathetic from both Macron and Johnson especially in . Neither are fit to be in government frankly. Patel doesn’t understand irony - criticising the press for using the term ‘migrant’ when her party has spent 11 years creating a ‘hostile’ environment which they are so proud of.

It’s not just one player though is it, even if some of his alleged and actual conduct is less than ideal itself. Naved and Rashid also heard some of it and they hardly need the money being elite players and having played franchise cricket for large sums! There’s also the allegations at Essex and there’s no mitigation at present for that, but further photographic evidence condemned at the time of a young Muslim batsman soaked batsman in beer by his team mates during their title win at Lords. I don’t mind a public complainants own conduct being scrutinised but this is far bigger than that. And yes, evidence of say antisemitism needs picking up and dealing with equally, but it doesn’t make the 1960s language directed at the players any less unacceptable. The Robinson mess in the summer should have been a warning bell to get the Yorkshire situation resolved earlier and so the conversations happened but without the spectacle in the HoC and political football, with more of a focus on education which is how we tackle it.

He’s proven that; - He’s as gullible and thick as the output from the biggest, fattest pig in Hampshire. Probably David Icke under a different username, he’s about as coherent - Too much social media rots the brain cells which people of limited intelligence do have - Facebook, Instagram, Trump and the Republicans, Putin’s bots and Piers Corbyn have a huge amount to answer for to the rest of humanity - Another user for the mods to ban, who will no doubt pop up again just like various others like unwanted knotweed

AZ is fine, it’s more a strategy of the best immune response coming from a mix across the 3 doses as opposed to just 2 of the same vaccine whether AZ or Pfizer you had before https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02853-4

Good article. It’s got the thumbprint of Trump’s and the Republicans far right idiots all over it. Sooner the centre right in America dump the Republicans fascist husk and form their own party the better. Of course, all of Trump’s 64 million zealots are in turn having their strings royally pulled by Putin - who has stayed out of COP - and big oil/fossil fuel companies. The lack of basic education to critically assess online material is painful. It’s why it’s imperative the current government isn’t allowed to get away with waging culture wars and trying to frame a binary choice between investment in higher vs technical education. It HAS to be both if there’s any prospect of a post Brexit UK making its mark in the world for innovation, new green start ups/spin outs and countering the growth of public stupidity using online platforms seen in that article.

Your comparison has not worked I’m afraid because the latter groups aren’t taking up most of ICU space like the unvaccinated are. If you don’t believe me, here’s someone at the coalface dealing with it first hand https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/21/icu-is-full-of-the-unvaccinated-my-patience-with-them-is-wearing-thin Also because there isn’t a vaccine available for those other issues free of charge and access, although severe and persistent speeders are bloody dangerous, and smokers stupid to start. Alcohol addiction is a different thing, complex and socio-psychological to resolve, although the person has to want to stop as well. Same with smoking once people are hooked on nicotine. If you are unvaccinated, simple message from society - go to vaccine centre and get it done today. Very easy. No valid excuses not to, and no whataboutery on a football forum necessary. There’s a good chap.

Getting back on topic Boris has been badly damaged over the last 2 weeks. The sleaze has been at Major government levels for a while but it has taken time to cut through on the scale of it. The inept response to it though has resounded. There are huge cracks in the 2019 onwards party in terms of how the country moves forward - they all agreed on Brexit after removing Remainers from the party at all levels and embedding what was left of UKIP fully into the Conservative party - but HS2 Eastern leg underlined the north-south, Red vs blue wall divide. For the red wall MPs and voters to get the vision they want, to build back better, means the blue wall has to pay for it. A blue wall that was less supportive and strident on Brexit as a whole. The roof hasn’t caved in on Boris yet, not whilst the booster programme is going on, but he is on thin ice and he has appointed a very poor and incapable cabinet for the most part around him in comparison with previous Tory governments. Again, too reliant on what people thought about Brexit whilst experienced people like Jeremy Hunt fill their time with select committees.

It’s an example of where I favour a pragmatic approach to who runs key services and infrastructure regardless of ideology. In the 1970s probably too much was run by government but not sure that’s the case today. Some utilities simply do not work as private entities long term, water is a case in point, gas and electricity work a bit better but there are still limitations with market systems. Railways ditto, NE Mainline has had multiple failed privatisations, whereas the line makes c£15m pa in public hands so there’s an obvious answer. If it works better in private ownership for consumers, who are the same thing as taxpayers, keep it private, if it doesn’t bring it back in. A lot of Tory Councils are bringing core services back in house as they are more efficient than large private-public agencies trying to scrap small margins from post-austerity contracts.

Remember Egil scoring a couple in a 2-2 draw up there and lost 1-2 at the Dell. Posted on here recently that Souness tried allegedly to resign afterwards. Marsden played very well for them in the replay, Paul Jones the keeper, Alun Armstrong up front, the signing that never arrived. Less said about the left back though… Dowie’s header OG a beauty in an earlier round when they knocked out W Ham. Quigley 2-3, cracking first half. Kept Barrow up last season in a higher division. Well worth watching this game.

Peter Hartley but nearly 40 when he joined so unlikely. The Morris brothers early 2000s, and Alex played for Barnsley CC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Morris Zac got into a bit of bother involving the sauce in his time at Hants (allegedly quite a few of the squad liked a drop at the time). Don’t know if he played for Barnsley but he says he is living there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zac_Morris https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/hampshire-suspend-zac-morris-following-drinking-incident-101651

Lloyd Isgrove playing at RB for Bolton in a FA Cup replay on BBC2. Stockport gave Bolton a good game in the original tie but conceding 2 in the first 5 minutes, one of them a comical own goal. These two were playing in the Champ in the 1990s, with Stockport’s financial backing they will be back in the FL before long. Edit - gives away a penalty which Paddy Madden converts. 1-2, it’s a good game and sounds a good atmosphere. Worse things to watch midweek. Now 1-3 with another stupid goal.

This season I agree, I think the team is looking a lot more solid. However, it is asking a lot of the manager to keep selling the best player every summer and get the recruitment to replace and strengthen spot on. This summer they did by the looks of it but sell to buy means you come a cropper eventually as a club will come up and spend as Wolves did. Agree that last night’s England game a waste. Have long argued that San Marino and co should have a similar system to cricket, associate members and pre tournament to win the right to play the more substantial nations as we saw with the T20 WC. Roo - silence from the club doesn’t mean no talks or interest. Markus didn’t appear in the headlines until late on in 2009 and that was in a dire situation for the club. Interested parties will be sounding out what Gao will take, KL’s share, stadium improvements and overhaul, look at the overhead model and assess where the club could be taken with a bit more investment in terms of its PL niche. Then if there’s further interest there might be a period of exclusivity to really home in on the books although those are less common now. What I do think is that the summer just gone will help the process as a lot of the appalling arrears and deadwood Les and Ross left is gone and more gone by next summer eg Forster’s extension. The MSD loan has to be factored in from the other side.

My prediction is March 2022 or thereabouts. Maybe February but you can see a big drive for the 40-49 age group with the message of saving Xmas from restrictions. I’ll be due mine just before that and will get it done. They probably want the over 40s done in the first instance to try and keep a lid on NHS winter pressures if they can get 65-70% covered as well as the older age groups. There’s a hardcore of people who won’t/don’t get around to having it in the first place so I guess the strategy is to get as many of the existing people with 2 jabs done and reduce the circulation of the strains which cause serious illness in the coldest months. Then the hardcore can be tackled in the spring as long as that’s not unseasonably cold.

In a hyper competitive league like the PL, if you can’t freshen the squad regularly, you go down and Gao can’t fund the club in any way in the Champ. The best we could hope for is Norwich: bobbing between the two divisions not competing in the PL until they have one bad season and the parachute payments run out and the PL infrastructure and overheads are there minus the income.

£7.5m a season is the figure I recall. Some speculation at the time as to whether the first year’s full payment was received. Whole thing stank and very dodgy.

Not true - do you think Che could have been bought without selling Matt Targett for £17m first? Do you really think JWP won’t be sold next summer to fund any more squad bolstering? Les and Ross left a dreadful mess - Rupert, Wilde and Branfoot combined - and the owner probably couldn’t fund Netley Central let alone a PL club. Any increase in debt and/or relegation is an existential threat. The hard work Semmens, Crocker and RH have done with the squad means we should be in reasonable shape to get a buyer in the Champ in administration, if Gabbiadini didn’t stick his foot out at Swansea the club probably folds in 18 months with the pile of IOUs Les and Ross had built up.