leeham_69

Highly recommend "Soccer Guy" on Facebook (and probably other places). Very funny. Summary of recent events: "Mac Birdie pays tribute to Brandi Chastain after his overtime goalshot sends the Hullcinatti Bengals to the EPL League after handing the L to the Middles Burgers at Wembley Arena. The Burgers weren’t even supposed to be soccering in this game after they got their asses handed back to them with fries on the side by the Southside Saints in their two-game series. It later transpirized that the Saints had sinned by sending some guy to their soccer practise to go hide in the locker rooms and take pictures of their guys’ butts to blackmail them into losing at soccer or something and everyone got kinda mad about it so they got kicked out of it. Anyway, the sheets in this one went unstained until after the overtime verdict tablet, when the goaltender messed up when he muffled a cross pass inside his danger box zone. It fell at the cleats of Mac Birdie, who inserted real good. Taking off his Bengals jersey, he could be seen mouthing the words ‘for you, Brandi,’ as he pointed to the sky, which is kinda weird as she’s not even dead. The striped cat franchise will now look forward to being EPL Freshmen next semester and, even though they’ll probably go get their butts kicked a bunch of times, their players will hope that playing soccer there will give them a shot at earning a move to MLS in the future."

There's actually 7 stages - shock first, and hope last. Not sure what stage i'm at but I'm a long way from hope. Anyway, isn't depression the de facto for us?

probably more enjoyable than the last week

Well, we can't even cheat properly so I don't know why I expected us to be competent in defending and appealing the charges. The biggest shame for me as it appeared for the first time in a long time we had a really good spine of a team for a few seasons to come. Our players will want to get as far away from this mess as quickly as they can, and who would blame them? Embarrassing at every level.

it was just a gag eggy

i think it would be funny to ignore the niceties around the evidence gathering process when the hearing is about breaching the niceties around our on field evidence gathering process 😆

Think Dragan’s net worth is about 100 times higher too, you’d think he can afford to keep the whinging prick bogged down in legal administration for the next 100 years.

this is honestly a hall-of-famer for me. so good.

what if you're standing somewhat behind but mostly next to a tree in middlesbrough waving your willy about and the club photographer snaps you from across the other side of the training pitch, then leaks it to the press? This is important - next time, if our Salty spy spies in the nude do we have a stronger defence?

Surely this is all Eric Black’s fault

Thanks for the leg work. This is great. These simple shots and video really undermine the outrage of our Boro friends. You would think a video taken from that spot, at full zoom on an iPhone takes a fair bit of the sting out of the "surveillance equipment" claims. PS email this to the club, they might pay you to be their next spy

Definitely would have had Manning in early, he takes and scores free kicks from a lot further out than the penalty spot

Brilliant. Post this on the Boro forum, you’ll get death threats 😆

any chance they could just make us replay the boro fixture? For all the outrage, I personally can't see it being anything other than financial. Makes the EFL look like an absolute joke if they allow 2 games to be played when they are seriously entertaining kicking one out. Also undermines the whole credibility of the competition if a side who finished 5th then drew at home and lost away go through. Millwall could argue it should be them based on merit across the season as they finished above both us and boro. A 6 point deduction for sending someone to look at a training session would be the same punishment as received Leicester for cheating over a period of 3 years. If they did apply a sporting sanction, you'd think it would be worth it for Saints to throw many millions of pounds in legal quagmire towards the EFL a la Man City, and I doubt the EFL would really want that as they'll know they've made a decision without precedent. I felt the dot points gave me a bit of clout there, agree?

Both were Matsuki - a handball where his arms were raised above his head, which the ref comically said hit his shoulder (it didn't). Definitely seen them given but not totally clear cut. The other one was early on, when Matsuki wound up for a huge clearance on the edge of our box, then someone nipped the ball away and he laced a Boro player's ankles. Honestly wouldn't have been surprised if either of them had been given, but both fall into the "definitely an outfield free kick but not a penalty for some reason" category.

agreed, and unlike peak Russball, Peretz is willing to blast it into the next postcode if things get too hairy.

I think we should have a competition to find the most outrageously over the top hurt comment from that thread, it is so hard to choose

I thought that said Salobrena Dogging for a moment, good day to be in the bushes with a long lens!

what about a bit of Hank Williams? Our cheating scout will make you weep you'll cry and cry and beg for sleep

Adam and Jo went with Ryan Manning which I thought was interesting for a guy who (fairly) copped a lot of flak at the start of the season. 43 appearances and 8 goals. For me it's Jander - the team just plays better when he is in it in my opinion.

i hate seeing players get matey with a ref. i don't believe any player has anything other than contempt for refs and they're just sucking because they think they have a chance to sway him.

not sure about the colour but i thought his hair was looking a little more fulsome this evening. maybe that's why he was on the bench, sore from new implants?

Good goal.

An unexpected place to share for sure, but one of those passages that was etched in my brain from years of study. Another one was the opener from the Merchant of Venice: “in sooth, I know not why I am so sad” …though over the last few years pre-Tonda it’s been pretty bloody obvious why I’ve been so sad, o good Sirrah!

from Macbeth (Act 1, scene 3): "But ’tis strange. And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s In deepest consequence.—"