tajjuk

Top 6 quality is a bit a misnomer anyway, there is very clearly a top 2 and then some other sides that are only a bit better than the chasing top 6-8 teams. City and Liverpool are head and shoulders clear of anyone in the league, have been for a while and will be for the next couple of seasons at least IMO. I can't see any of Spurs, Arsenal or Utd getting close to them, Chelsea maybe but it's all up in their air with their takeover and what their funds look like going forward. But IMO JWP could easily get into, if not be a key first teamer for the likes of Spurs, Utd and Arsenal, whereas he probably would be a very good squad option for City or Liverpool, though there is also the better manager/better players thing that might see him raise his game, he seems to get better each year IMO. But really looking at the table we are going to be 1/2 wins away from basically Brighton, Palace, Brentford, Villa in that 9-14th sort of area. (Newcastle and Leicester are a bit outliers, the former with their finances and the latter massively underperforming). So that is the level of our squad, it's usually pretty close here so like I said 1-2 wins which can come down to a bit of luck really, I don't think you could definitively say one squad is better than the other. So really to improve to a Wolves or even West Ham level we are going to need some key improvements to turn 4-5 of those draws into wins (we've lost as many this year as West Ham and less than Wolves, so its too many draws really). Failure to improve with maybe some bad injuries or loss of a key player (like JWP) could very clearly see us dragged into the relegation scrappers. This summer will be the key, probably the first summer window we have had for 5 years with a decent amount of financial backing (enough to say push the boat out a little for a key signing) and not being hamstrung by previous transfer mistakes. Keep the main squad together, the key players and improve in areas we need to improve (which will of course require some gambling, we are not going to get ready made proven PL players) which IMO is GK, CB, no.10 and Striker, if we could get players for these positions at least Stu Armstrong levels of performance I think we could be in that 5-8 mix.

The Tories don't like their lack of morals being called out, plus they know that whilst they pander to the 'red wall' and loony xenophobic base (which this barmy policy is directed at, like parody Boris account says it gets the racists well riled up) the more traditionalist conservatives (who are likely to be christians) are less likely to be onboard with this stuff (and you can't really scapegoat middle class and upper middle class issues on immigrants) and probably have more of a moral compass, so the Archbishop calling them out for their heartlessness is going to hurt in more traditional areas. It also seems that most of the Tory MPs out defending this policy have little to no knowledge how our asylum systems works. You can chose to seek asylum in any country, passing through other 'safe' countries is irrelevant to an asylum application, I mean how do Tories think asylum seekers from Hong Kong or Ukraine get here? They will pass through other countries they could have sought Asylum in, but it seems some refugees are more preferable to others, odd that the ones who are non-white seem to get more concern when its not apparently about race. Also there is no legal way to enter the UK to apply for asylum, that is why they use the boats, IF the UK government (and the EU and most other countries) were actually bothered about the dangerous journeys then they would allow people seeking asylum to use the normal transport routes, i.e. planes, trains and ferries, but those carriers get fined and are generally liable for the cost of return journeys for people entering a state without visas etc. except genuine refugees fleeing war, persecution etc. cannot get those visas and official permissions. Anyone with a working brain would realise that someone who pays thousands to people smugglers to cross the channel on a dinghy, would obviously be able and willing to pay £100 or less for a short flight, ferry or train into the UK, they are just not allowed to. But then anyone with a working brain would realise that 10-20k asylum seekers a year is going to make very little difference to the services of a country of near 70 million and that maybe, just maybe the incompetent government that doesn't spend enough, doesn't spend what it does spend in the right places, wastes huge amounts of what it does spend is the cause of issues with the NHS, schools etc. not the nasty immigrants. Yet again this story is just immigration being used in its traditional scaremongering role to distract the ignorant and the xenophobes from the real problems, the current one being the partygate scandal and the literal fact that our PM is now a convicted criminal and yet still constantly lies about it.

If Burnley go down we could do a lot worse than Pope, they'd probably be already relegated without him.

Pep, Klopp, Conte, Tuchel are the only clear cut ones. They are proven world class managers. Potter is by far the most over rated manager in the league IMO, Brighton spend more than we do, arguably have recruited better than us in recent years and sit in the exact same position basically. Rodgers is having a horrible season with a much better squad than we have. They have also twice faded away from promising positions to lose out on champs league squads and he has made some odd signings, like Bertrand and Vestergaard as examples. Moyes is doing great with West Ham, but does that erase his previous poor performances? I don't believe so and again much more spend and resources than we have. Not sure how you can speak about the likes of Veira, Marsch, Lange etc. when none of them have completed a full season, loads of managers have had good one season but then been bang average or even bad, for example Pardew had a great season with Newcastle but was generally rubbish. We'll see in 2-3 years whether they are good managers or not. I mean really a good manager makes a team over perform above its resources, IMO Ralph generally has done that, we have been financially crippled for years by poor signings on high wages and poor contract renewals that have hamstrung us in the transfer market. Could some of those managers done better with our squad? Maybe, but its a big maybe, most of those people started with better squads and got more to spend, so just as likely could have done a lot worse.

Overall its a rather odd situation, giving McCarthy the contract based on largely mediocre performances. But I can't see see them renewing Forster now despite his obvious uptick in form because that is two 'older' keepers on first team contracts and if Forster reverts to his form that saw he dropped and sent out on loan we are lumbered with two keepers who are not good enough. You'd think they would have said to them both that basically they had this season to earn a new contract and whoever performed best would have got it.

Yeh 7 non-pen goals from 27 games, and of those 7, 4 were against Villa, Newcastle (when they were really bad), Norwich and Burnley, so basically most of his open play goals have come against some of the worst defences in the league. Quite a lot of strikers that are in that too good for the Championship but not good enough for the PL sort of level, but to be fair suppose as well they go from teams dominating the league and creating chances to usually teams bottom half and often struggling against relegation.

Doubt he would considering they paid £30 million for him with on year left. Plus he's probably on more wages than we can offer. It is a 'grass is not always greener' moment though, aside he's likely getting paid a little more. They are basically no better off in the league than us, he's struggled to get games and find form, and now it looks like they are off loading him. He had a good thing here, a coach who played to his strengths, could have been our highest paid player, was in good form, fans loved him. I wonder how valuable the extra £20k a week or extra is to him.

LOL this conversation reminds me of the Moneyball film where all the old baseball scouts rail against the statistics because of their supposed superior 'knowledge and experience'. XG is not a nonsense, hence why its literally being used by professional football clubs, amongst thousands of over statistics and used by high quality football journalists as well. What is nonsense is some of the arguments in here. The amount of ignorance on display is astounding, and the 'armchair expert' comments are hilarious. No one cares how many games you have been to or how many years of football you have watched, you are a biased, emotional, non-objective human being, you are by nature unreliable whereas statistics are the complete opposite of that and are reliable.

Rumours that Villa are looking to offload Ings, story in the Mirror that he might be offered to Brighton in a swap deal.

I think all the reports around that are massively exaggerated, they were talking in the summer window about Madrid offering £170 plus million for a player with 1 year on his contract, which seems absurd Real would offer that much for a player they could get on a free and absurd PSG would reject that much. Now all this talk about wages, a lot I think is done to drive prices up and get him a higher wage. More worryingly I see Newcastle linked with Jarod Bowen, now I don't think they will get him but it shows Newcastle will be a complete pain for pretty much every PL bar the like top 2-3, Europe challenging West Ham and Newcastle still going to be flashing their cash at them.

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov We live in a world now where unless something is categorically and unequivocally certain and proven true (and even sometimes that is not enough) then that tiny shred of an alternative or different possibility, is treated as being equal to the wealth of evidence, common sense, logic and expert opinion. Any attempt to criticise or dismiss that absurd opinion or extremely unlikely possibility is then treated as an attack on free speech and a cover up. We saw this all over with Covid where the lies and conspiracies spread like wildfire despite 99.9% of them being completely baseless and many of them being factually dangerous to people's health, but we had a whole host of conspiracy theorists spreading harmful misinformation acting as if they were whistle blowers in a global conspiracy, and sadly too many ignorant people followed them, with several cases of people literally dying to covid because of these false claims. Sadly we just don't seem to live in the world of truth, facts, experts, we live in the world of who can shout their mouths off loudest and a certain section of society will just follow and believe like brainless sheep. Trump, Brexit, Covid etc. has shown how a huge slice of society can be very easily manipulated into believing at times the absurd.

Yep free speech does not mean free from consequences, something that people seem to forget with this whole 'cancel culture' BS, which is basically people demanding they get to say any old brain fart they like and there should be zero consequences for it. Also as far as I can see he still has his twitter account (though twitter as a private company with a terms of service can ban you all they like anyway) he has just been rightly criticised for what he said, or basically what he highlighted. IIRC the only people banned or censored on twitter are people who repeatedly put dangerous or misleading or hateful content up time and time again, stuff like covid conspiracies that have been widely debunked and are dangerous to spread. And to those saying it is possible this was not done by Russia, whilst that is technically true, all logic and evidence available so far suggest the events are true, and considering the extremely sensitive nature of the subject area you'd think anyone with a working brain would at least wait for something, anything, evidence wise that might support their theory that it is a lie, instead of just jumping out there and declaring to the world that you think a war crime, despite all evidence to the contrary has been made up or staged. The irony as well of people spouting or believing conspiracy theories who are then telling people to check their sources because it comes from mainstream media, when that is literally what they should be doing instead of believing some random nonsense posted on twitter or facebook. Nah cos the BBC and every news outlet out there across multiple countries is lying, but that random twitter account is in the know.....I mean its so dense on every level and that is clearly what Le Tiss is, very dense for believing these things and even more dense for expressing these thoughts publicly as well known public figure.

Has he had some sort of breakdown or something? His absurd views and the bonkers conspiracies he has been peddling don't seem to be particularly in character for the rest of his life, unless he has been hiding this and its all flooded out after he's had little else to do since getting sacked by Sky? I've also thought that character wise he seemed pretty normal, pretty down to earth and whilst not the most intelligent, not this dumb to believe this utter crap he is spouting/re-tweeting. No real surprise he's left the ambassador role, sad but pretty inevitable after all these whacky opinions he has been sharing. Still a legend of a player but yes very clearly an embarrassment now to the club and to himself really. I do though seriously wonder if something has triggered this but any benefit of the doubt or goodwill he had about the covid stuff has now gone.

He's not considered for selection because he is never fit and barely bothers when he does play. Ancelloti has tried to play him several times and been told that Bale is 'not feeling right' or 'not 100%', he was supposedly injured for Real then suddenly turns up fine for Wales and plays 90 minutes, something he has done several times. He can't be arsed and would be a giant waste of space for any club that signs him considering how much he would want to be paid and how little effort he has put in. The reason he doesn't play for Madrid is down to him, not Madrid, he's had plenty of opportunities, he just can't be bothered.

Messi has taken a lot more, he has scored more but he has taken something like over 200 over the last 5 years, whereas JWP has taken ~ 80 iirc, so whilst Messi has scored more, his conversion rate is lower, just obviously playing for Barcelona, a possession based dominant team that camps opposition boxes, with excellent dribblers like Messi himself they would obviously get a lot more fouls round the edge of the box than we would (especially as we have been relegation level bad for several periods in the last 5 years as well). Others have better conversion rates from much smaller samples, like Coutinho for example I think has scored 5 from about 15 attempts or something like that. But in terms of those who have taken a lot of free kicks over the last 5 years across Europes top 5 leagues, no one converts as well as he does or comes close, I think he has more than double the average conversion rate (which is around 6%). He also has something like a near 50% hitting the target rate, which is also phenomenal, which is again basically unmatched. So in terms of Europes big 5 leagues, over the last 5 years, he is basically the best free kick taker. So pretty much the best free kick taker in the world right now and has been for a while. Whether he is up there with Beckham yet, not sure, but he is definitely getting better. His all round ball striking technique is superb, not just dead ball, you can see it with his passes and his long range shots, I expect him to start scoring a few more long range goals as well.

They have issues, the whole selling/Abrammovich thing I think has caused instability, then there is several of their players being out of contract as well, add in a those games against Real Madrid, I think we certainly have a chance as we can beat anyone on our day and even more so if a good team like this has an off day.

The guy basically wants to play golf and turn up for the odd game for Wales, which if they don't qualify for the World Cup even that effort will go and by 2023 will become go anyway once they are inevitably knocked out early, so at best IF Wales make the World Cup you might get a decent 3 months out of him, after that he'll be a giant waste of space. He clearly hasn't been interested in being a professional footballer for a good few years, phoning it in a lot and getting every niggle under the sun.

One of them makes another good point about JWP though, one of two regular penalty takers for their clubs amongst the possible players, along with obviously Kane. I mean honestly in terms of what you would want from a squad player for a tournament he ticks a lot of boxes - - Is almost always fit and has excellent work rate. - Is versatile having played multiple midfield roles, right back and right mid. - Takes penalties - Offers something different to others in the squad with wold class set pieces. - Is a leader, being our captain. Plus looking at him as a pure midfielder, does anyone really think his levels of passing, defensive contribution, interceptions, work rate, goal threat etc. are really any real level below what Rice, Phillips, Henderson offer? Not imo, he has an excellent range of passing, and his work rate, interceptions, ground covered etc. have consistently been up there amongst the best in the league. And none other than Pep Guardiola reckons he is the best free kick take in the world (and the stats over the last 5 years back this up, no one who has taken a decent amount of free kicks scores or hits the target anywhere near as often as he does).

Whilst I agree that it probably favours the big clubs more than the mid table and lower teams, probably for us and the way we play it will be helpful. Especially if we can keep improving the squad and get some more good youngsters in. We can have a good boost of 2-3 subs around 60-70 mins mark so we don't get knackered without having to worry about having sub left for injuries, plus can do some time wasting ones when we are winning to stop those late dropped points. Plus a double/triple sub at that period allows us to do the whole rest/get energy gel thing without people having to go down injured.

If we have 'won the race', and considering I doubt we can offer more money than the likes of Everton, West Ham or Leicester, plus surely teams like Ajax and Milan have more pull, then I can only presume 1. he really wants to play in the Premier League, and 2. We have offered him some sort of stepping stone promise that those other clubs likely are unwilling to.

Yeh they should definitely at least do the friendlies on rotation, I've been to a few England friendlies and its always been a bit flat, in part because it's a 90k seater stadium. but you only get about 60-70k for those sort of games so huge areas are empty and they seem to still put people right at the top so the acoustics sound odd with lots of echoes. Take them round the country to smaller grounds, cheaper prices and get a good atmosphere for the team. If you have to do Wembley, then give some tickets away or reduce the price a lot so it might sell out. Booing Maguire seems odd to me, yeh hes been crap for Utd but can't remember him doing anything wrong for England and plenty of players have performed well for country over club and vice versa, Pickford seems one for example, plays much better for England than he seems to do for Everton. Whereas a player like Gerrard was way below for England compared to his Liverpool form.

Yes but we know Henderson will be there so I think it's between JWP, Phillips and Gallagher maybe for that other midfield spot. Mount for me is out of form by the way, not seen a lot from him for Chelsea or England. I would take JWP because he is getting better and better, his set pieces offer something genuinely world class and his fitness/work rate is pretty much unrivalled. Whereas Henderson and Phillips seem to have injury issues, taking an unfit Henderson to the Euros was a big mistake IMO, he was basically a waste of a squad spot. I also think you'd have to say on form Bellingham should start. He was very good last night and has been class for Dortmund as well. But on current form I think I'd also have JWP ahead of Mount as well, and England in the vast majority of games don't need 2 DMs, I don't know why Southgate does it, plus Bellingham and JWP are both competent enough defensively anyway. On current form I'd have Rice and then JWP/Bellingham playing in front of him.

How when we have a country full of right backs are we playing a centre-back there?

This has to be the single dumbest thread I have ever seen.

Liverpool and Man Utd mainly, it's mainly a fans thing to be honest, the vast majority of Man Utd or Liverpool fans I have met are either glory hunters or just arrogant tw*ts. Don't like Villa for the same reason, seem rather full of themselves despite doing very little, staying up because of goal line technology, spending millions to get to the same level as us. I mean those idiots were singing about Danny Ings leaving us because we are sh*t even though we sit above them in the table. The rest is usually based on players, if a club has some players I like then I am generally ok with them, but if they have lots of hateful players then I'll dislike them.