shen

One could've easily said the same about McLaren and Piastri last year. Look how that turned out. Extremely premature to make such a call after 1 race.

Replace middle letter with L

Impressed you got the purple first! Edit: in fact we did it in reverse

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I can understand the lower knowledge is appealing as it makes it harder to cheese from the get go. I've considered doing a fake players save once I complete this Belgian adventure as I won't be able to automatically fall back on known names. However, I imagine building reputation in Chile, Peru et al is probably easier as even the biggest SA clubs will not be near the reputation of the major clubs in Europe, making it easier to compete for top tier players in SA, no? Has anyone tried playing in the US or Canada yet?

Everyone moans. I think out of the current bunch, Leclerc and Piastri probably moan the least about the competition and tend to be more introspective and fire shots at their own teams (with good reason).

What's especially appealing about the SA leagues? Anything they offer which the European leagues don't?

Ended up getting comfortably promoted with Diegem, although I couldn't stay unbeaten. Probably stuck with the same tactics without tweaking for too long, but still won all but three of the remaining games. Sporting Hasselt kept it interesting up until 3 games to go by having a 12-game winning streak, but the gap never went below 6 points. Immediately after securing the title, the club announced it turned professional with a wage budget of £42k. Intensive pre-season coming up as I have to decide whether or not to keep on any of the amateur players or if I need an entirely new team. It means I have no clue how next season will go at this point. Have focused on getting new staff, specifically new fitness coach, ass.man., physio and head of youth. The rest are probably not worth the outlay at this point. I will blame the new layout and hopeless nested infos however as I just now found out Club Brugge is a senior affiliate club hope to secure a loan or two for next season.

At least he's not a William/Wilhelm 👀

Imagine saying Iran's team are "welcome" only to continue the sentence saying they're risking their lives and safety. The mind boggles at the stupidity of that sentence.

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It's a 'profit' in PSR terms, but a loss in absolute terms. Pretty poor considering we expected to sell him on for profit and lost his services for a season.

I respect your opinion, and no, Monga hasn't pulled up any trees. But he's had significantly fewer chances than either of the others. We've loaned in Aribo on massive wages presumably, yet he barely features for 10-15 minutes a game. At some point you have to switch it up and give someone else a chance, especially when performances like Fatawu's against Ipswich and Mavididi for a long period now, have been substandard. Why does an off-form BDCR who recently let the side down badly walk straight back in when Mukasa is in form and fit? How awful must Aribo and Page be to keep getting overlooked?

Monga has played in bigger games and he's had very limited opportunities of late despite Fatawu and Mav being poor at best. Mukasa has been our standout performer in all but one game he's featured in. In this case, age is just a number and, in my opinion, a bad excuse. In fact, I'd argue the fearlessness of some young players can make them feel less pressure than more experienced heads in such situations.

We were never going to look confident after our run of form. But we needed a bit of luck, which we got against Ipswich and yesterday, to break the habit. He alluded to this prior to the game, but my issue was not benching Winks, Ricardo and Daka, rather Hamza and Ayew being their replacements. You could absolutely have made a case for Fatawu, Mavididi and BDCR needing to be dropped/rested too, especially if Monga, Mukasa and Aribo were fit enough to play. But it was good enough for the win yesterday, so can't complain too much.

Always knew it - brave Selection from Rowett, never in doubt!!

Splitting hairs really. Thomas has actually performed OK under Rowett if anything. Reid has probably more useful performances than Ayew this season, but if we get 2 OK performances out of ten for either of them, I'm being generous...

It's an X-rated lineup alright!

I can stretch as far as accepting Daka, Ricardo and Winks needing a rest, but that doesn't excuse Fatawu, Hamza and Okoli starting while Monga, Aluko, Aribo, Lascelles, Richards, Mukasa and Page are all available.

Jawdropping lineup. These coaches of ours lack the cojones to boot out these so-called senior pros entirely. The only silver lining is that this XI can only surprise positively... A tepid capitulation is all I expect at this point.

Connections Puzzle #1003 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪 Felt stumped after the first, but finally got there

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To be fair, they never got a chance to catch their breaths. Fatawu was frequently running back into our own box and then asked to push up and press again. And it was relentless because we barely had the ball for more than 5 seconds from minute 45-70.

I only got to see until minute 70, but we just had no answer at all. They kept finding players in acres of space and we were just chasing constantly and dropping so deep with two banks of five, that we never stood a chance at getting first to clearances or second balls. The rare occasion that we did, we instantly lumped it upfield or our players tried to dribble on their own. I can't imagine Rowett told them to do this. We're not helping ourselves by inviting this much pressure from the start of halves. He HAS to tweak the formation or do something to address this as it was a miracle we didn't lose today.

He performed well enough in both games, i.e. "decent".