Finnegan

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I'll forgive him for everything

I got you, man. Merry Christmas x

I find this pretty funny given you're happy to put the boot in on the guy with practically no recognition (until prompted) for that he's a head coach, not a manager, and isn't conducting their transfer business. Also, that you're following up by falling in to the obvious trap of holding him accountable for their league position vs. their financial outlay is is funny for the same reasons. Look, I don't love him, he's not some favourite of mine I'm being touchy or defensive about. But clearly calling him "one of the best coaches in English football" is pretty accurate. He's one of the best coaches in the top tier of the English game and, given his lack of experience, is the one with some of the most upwards mobility to boot. There's a reason Man City are closely monitoring his progress and have been for for pretty much his whole short career to date.

Maresca isn't spending that money, in fact he's actively told them multiple times he wants a smaller squad. He obviously isn't particularly getting what he requests there because Boehly is an insane bastard just hoarding attacking midfielders. For the money spent, their collective squad isn't brilliant, it's got some glaring holes. He's an excellent coach and is doing pretty well given the circumstances, people just want to be salty about him because he left and because they couldn't understand every team in the league parking the bus against us wasn't his fault.

This is actually more true of us than a lot of other clubs because we are SO reliant on a manager to make positive change off the pitch. But frankly, the performances are just shocking even for the squad we have. You can cry all you want about the team not being brilliant on paper but has anyone seen Hull's or Preston's or Millwall's? Not exactly a league full of world class teams. There's no an excuse to be shipping 4 to QPR, 3 to Sheff Utd, 3 to Southampton, absolutely crumbling in games like we're completely fragile.

How is he still employed

??? I'm not defending the club. I'm just saying it isn't necessarily an indication of financial disaster.

"I'm sorry Jon, you've overspent us to our last points deduction. It's time to hire a Sporting Director with a solid track record sticking to financial constraints. Hey, this guy looks good..."

Let me live in my happy world

????? They're getting paid. They're just getting paid on their regular pay date instead of getting their pay early for Christmas like a lot of UK businesses do. My employer does it, I'll get paid on the 22nd this month instead of the last working day. Yours possibly does too. As far as I'm aware there's no law that stipulates it's compulsory, it's just a nice practice to help people out over Christmas. Then leaves you with that nasty long old slog through January to the next pay Seriously. People are sensationalising this but other than it being a shitty thing to do and a crap way to treat your staff, there's not much of a story.

It's a shit way to treat your staff and it's alarming from a human decency perspective but people panicking that it's a sign of financial instability seems a bit weird.

The English press expect England to challenge for the top prizes in all of their traditional sports. In fairness, it's not exactly unrealistic in cricket, is it? Sure India and Australia have more participants and probably invest more in to their development but you still measure your success against those, don't you? What do you want to do, pat yourself on the back for beating up the Windies or Bangladesh?

That's Carranza

Money will buy you owt in boxing. That said, if Paul couldn't buy a win off Tommy Fury, there's no way AJ and Hearn are agreeing to sell out whatever is left of AJ's legacy. Hearn has already laid the groundwork for the fight going a few rounds, suggesting AJ will be patient, suss him out a bit and if Jake plays defensive then it might not start explosive. That's pretty much all Paul needs isn't it? If he can make it to halfway through a fight with AJ that'll be a fairly big boast for him. AJ at the age Paul is now would have killed him in the first two punches.

Cardiff's squad is far stronger relative to the league it's in than ours is. I have no interest arguing who is better out of Cifuentes and Murphy but our situations are very obviously not direct parallels and make for poor comparison.

Decent music?

Top work. I'm tempted but there's **** all else there I'm interested in and it's not cheap

50% pens?

Posts I never thought I'd see on foxestalk... They're doing gigs for it next year I think for its anniversary, as is vogue, but the only UK date is an otherwise poor festival lineup.

Ugh. More Control. Sam Lake is to writing games what Joey Barton was to writing tweets ten years ago. Or Russell Brand. Oh he's so deep, he's so philosophical, oh he's so clever. Yeah, he copied and pasted a first year philosophy textbook. Great.

I'm not ready for the realisation Certain Trigger is 20 years old

I think you both know why