Stadt

Yeah they were working on parts of it.

Can’t remember if I mentioned it on here but I went to the botanical gardens recently. Very serene and a rare free of charge attraction.

Cricket World Cup final was astonishing. I’d always been a casual cricket fan but that had me hooked. The accidental 6, drawing in 50 overs, the super over - nuts

That is true and pretty much the only foible with EBG

For all of our whining about FFP we never engaged in shitty swap deals, it’s not as if we didn’t know how it worked - we had one forced on us!

Agreed, I think we’re such bad negotiators though which is why our wage bill in particular ballooned. Faes might not have even been on £10k at Reims, probably arrived here on £50k. A stringent club probably lands him on £35k with the right bonuses - figures may be out but principally that seems about right. We’re just a soft touch in the market - the Kristiansen deal in particular was a huge overpay for a teenage left back and it took weeks to do it.

Football attendances have exploded pretty much across all the leagues. Essentially there's no such thing as a stadium too big, only tickets that aren't cheap enough. If Sunderland with a 275k urban area can average 38k in the championship and Derby (250k ish) can average 29k most clubs can add another 10k fairly easily. This is where the zealous safetyism in Britain has completely hampered safe standing. Clubs could quite easily expand the capacity through rail seating but the Government/SSAG shat the bed at even a 1:1.4 ratio

He was good in France and it's not just us who makes dumb deals. We have this sort of exceptionalism on here that nobody would ever buy our bad players, plenty would we're just bad at hawking them out. We managed to flog Musa to Saudi ahead of the curve and then just never proceed to... never use that avenue again. We don't ever ride and ride our winners which is another example of zero strategy.

Junction cafe iirc is a Bochum pub in Berlin but never been myself Also can’t go wrong the goat https://theeuropeanbarguide.com/germany/

I hate playing out at all costs but there's not a single consistently good team in world football that go primarily long from the back.

I think it's about 50% likely we keep RVN which is horrifying (although our squad is good enough to be in the top 6 anyway so can't see him being as poor next season). If we do sack him, it'll be familiar names out of work. In order of the club's thinking... Martin Gary O'Neil Dyche 5-10% chance of a wildcard a la Maresca. So damnng that we can pretty easily predict what they'll do. Of all the repeated failures I think the managerial recruitment across KP's tenure has been the worst, they've been so lucky.

Needed that holiday like he needed a hole in the head

We can turn our nose up at Dyche like we're a midtable PL club when we're transmogrifying into Norwich

They don't have a low budget, they almost spent £100m net in Italy which even the top sides rarely do. He's still doing a fantastic job and is destined for better than us

Without dobbing them in, can you elaborate on that?

Spending on agent fees is good if we're recruiting the right sort of player and it makes the difference in landing them. Instead we're spending on the money on shit players and their agents are pulling the wool over Rudkin's eyes. Rudkin is like a 5x bad value multiplier. Inflated fees > inflated wages > pay half their wage whilst on loan > new deal > leave on a free

Barnes, KDH, Choudhury - coached by him (aged 12, completely formative I’m sure) at the so-called level Alves, Braybrooke, Nelson who he’s had far less time with, questionable level-reachers

We’ve got to remember who we are so we should just lose anybody good to a paltry tribunal free. The ‘this is us’ argument followed to its logical conclusion means we should basically fold - the crux of it is we’ll never develop beyond our historical mean despite completing most inspirational footballing fairytale ever ourselves

If I was a parent of an academy player I’d be mortified listening to that. Essentially a former youth coach pretty much admitting young players shouldn’t play for the first team - it’s astonishing. They’re never ready, mentally, tactically, physically if you think age is such a big barrier. If you can’t tell it’s properly pissed me off.

It was very self aggrandising. He was big and physical and every player that might not make it isn’t physical. Archaic thinking. Probably boring that I keep saying it but if we had Lamal on our books we’d loan him to Peterborough at 18.

Simultaneously we can't compete with Man City but we are where we are? What if they thought like that? They would have given up years ago.

Not even finished listening to it all but I'm fuming. I can't even articulate all my thoughts properly. It's really no wonder we’re in such a mess when we employ(ed) people like that. Retrograde tosser that seems to be more of a retardant to youth prospects' success. Hard to compete at PL level? What about when we were in it for 10 years? You can't have it both ways that it's hard to stay up as a newly promoted team when we went down as an incumbent PL side so easily. Experience vs youth, 300 apps vs 1. Nobody is saying play 15 year olds as they're the answer but give the 18, 19, 20 year olds an opportunity. They're not at the level - you have to give them the opportunity first. It's not as if Alves could have really performed worse than Ayew and Reid, then there's the value judgement of who will be the better player in 1, 2, 3 years time as Alves gets better and the others decline. Young players an investment, not just an instant return but even then - sometimes they're better than the current players too. There's too much money. We spend more than about half the league! We spend too much if anything. Having too small a training ground is the only thing we did wrong. Which conveniently was rectified anyway, nothing else to see? Rudkin gets the right people around him. He ascribes a lot of the success to Rudkin and then disperses the blame on nameless departments and other people. Rudkin is the line manager for these people, yet he isn't accountable. Nyoni was good business. We never sold him, we're still waiting on the tribunal? Nelson's attitude on/off the pitch wasn't there. His loans have all been fine, feedback from the fans of those clubs was good. Young players aren't at the right physical level. But what about technically? Is Yamal not ready? Is Dibling not ready? Are we not preparing them correctly physically? They develop with minutes and experience, how are they supposed to get to the level? I could go on and on , "well I've been in the game, what do you know" is basically his approach and we keep getting things wrong in direct comparison to similar clubs. Club mouthpiece and it's troubling that his essentially anti-development view is widespread. Branston owes too much professionally to Rudkin to even mildly criticise him. He'll always have him as a failsafe so he'll just rim him instead and explain every negative aspect. How can people even question Rudkin? Is the most tone deaf and embarrassing retort, ooh ooh love me Jon.

Ridiculous we’re top when Kent have won twice

Algeria? Normally a pain in the arse but a friend of mine used a tour company that sorted flights and entry. Oran looks incredible.