David Guiza II

I had my first and final trip to corporate as part of a work thing, and I saw that he was in attendance today - he had the unfortunate honour of using the cubicle after I'd done a quite bad dump in corporate; in what I can only term as protest at the club.

Mildly off-topic, but as part of my fundraising efforts for the London Marathon I put on a quiz and raffle and contacted a few celebrities who I knew were supporters of the charity to ask if they would be kind enough to offer prizes. I expected nothing, but received some wonderful donations - and a cash donation of £19.93 from Swindon Town supporting comedian Ivo Graham under the reference 'Glenn Hoddle' - which amused me. Anyway, I also contacted the club to ask if they could donate anything at all; given that I have been a season ticket holder since the late 90s I thought this would be a reasonable request. I have however received a response - circa 4 weeks after the event and 3 months since my first contact - to say that it's a no. On the flipside, Coventry City (I live near Leamington, so the prize made sense - even if it killed me inside) gave me a voucher for two tickets to any category B or lower match and were really responsive and supportive about everything. As I say, I didn't expect anything - but you'd think over a quarter of a century of support and dedication may warrant some sort of gesture of goodwill. Alas, no.

Absolutely! Feels double-edged to me, in that it opens it up to more runners (hopefully) but I guess it also takes a bit of the glamour away from the one big day. Wonder if the other majors will follow suit too!

Interesting news today on the London Marathon - Revealed: secret plans for two-day London Marathon with 100,000 runners | London Marathon | The Guardian

Nothing in particular, but I suspect West Brom fans were saying similar a couple of weeks ago after zero wins in 2026 - and they were a few seconds away from 9/9 points from the past three games. I'm naturally pessimistic and remain convinced that we'll go down, but form can change overnight in this division. I was speaking to a Derby fan yesterday who was telling me that they went from being winless between Boxing Day and early/mid-March to winning 6 and drawing 3 of their final 11 games last season. I think Eustace came in from mid-Feb and lost his first 3 games before turning it around.

Keely is clearly the standout star, but I've really enjoyed Georgia's rise too. Going from parkruns to world medals in the space of a few years is incredible. Moreso given that she's in her early 30s. Delighted to see Kerr grab gold too - particularly at the expense of Hocker, who winds me up for no particular reason.

Somewhat crazy how much any kind of points deduction reprieve could have. One or two points could be the difference between staying up and going down. Conversely, an additional 1 or 2 points could spell the end. With the possible exception of WBA, I don't think I'd want to swap our remaining fixtures with any of our rivals. Though, I'd happily swap a few players. Easter weekend is going to be huge with how the fixtures fall. We could easily be resurrected, à la Jesus, or dead in a tomb, à la Jesus, come Bright Monday evening.

Fans of the wonderful podcast Football Cliches will already be aware of this - but it's another daily game to pass the time at work. The aim of the game is to name a player who has scored an away goal at a particular ground in question with increasing levels of difficulty on each round. I would say that the online version is more difficult than the pod version. Level 1 on the pod tends to be United at The Emirates or similar, whereas recent ones on the online version include Blackburn at St James' Park! Great for fans of Premier League Years, in particular! Enjoy - Football Cliches - Daily Games

I did the Sportsshoes Podium event at Leicester Cycle Track (Glenfield/New Parks area) on Saturday for the first time. Really enjoyable and an eye opener as to how many insanely quick runners there are, even outside of the elites. I came out with a huge 5k PB of 17:49 (17:22 on Strava/Garmin - if only). Real confidence boost going into London in a few weeks! 5k has tended to be the distance that I've struggled the most with, I think there's something about short-term intense struggle that I'm just not on board with. I prefer the long drawn out struggle of a 10k or Half - which is perhaps why I follow our wonderful club.

Somewhat off topic - I'm not a betting man, but was having a look at the odds after Pompey's defeat last night to see if those outside of our miserable club have changed their minds at all and noticed that Betfred are offering 66/1 for us to be relegated. I assume that's some sort of unusual offer/glitch? The other bookies tend to be around 11/8 (which still feels somewhat off).

As above, there were definitely sufficient signs of life from Rowett's first two games to give at least a glimmer of hope, plus the return of James and Lascelles (though, the latter hasn't had the required impact as of yet). However, the limp effort on Saturday is clearly a huge concern. Plus the continuous foot shooting and general lack of effort/ability from key players. Who West Brom appoint and whether Blackburn/Oxford can keep picking up points is going to be vital too. All the bottom clubs, including Pompey and Charlton, are equally capable of imploding, as well as climbing out the drop. There's still a long long way to go.

I heard a quote from Matt Forde about Brian Clough and Nottingham Forest, comparing their journey with one another as being akin to The Showman. His reasoning was that it was an amazing, magical, experience that ultimately ended with the boy being left exactly where he started. There are definitely parallels with King Power, except instead of being back where we started the King Power Snowman has let go of the boy whilst flying over the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Would it be more or less troubling if Matt Goodwin, who seemed to see the Handmaid's Tale as guidebook were to have won the election? Where I live is dominated by posh, white, Tories and the local MP makes no effort whatsoever to appeal to anybody but that demographic. Is that OK?

I quite agree with the majority that it's bleaker than it's perhaps ever been, but 13 games is a long old stretch in football. For context here's the table after 33 games and 46 games the last time we were in this division. Some big swings both ways, as often tends to happen.

He was somewhat unlucky at Birmingham, the second time around, in that we lost to Blackburn on the final day (eek) so send them down in a game we would ordinarily have won.

He's a decent marathon runner - that'll do for me, for now.

I would preface this by saying that I cannot see a world in which we're not relegated. The club is rotten from Top to bottom and the players are a heady mixture of talentless, lazy, unfit and or weak. I did however look at our previous 3 up 4 down catastrophe against Wolves out of interest and it transpires that we followed that result with 3 wins and 2 draws. Culminating in the Hignett equaliser against the Invincibles. One can hope that we do similar this time around - but I can't see any flying pigs just yet. Unless Ayew has grown wings. It was also obvious during that 03/04 season that, Ferdinand and Izzet (perhaps a couple more) aside that we simply were not good enough in terms of personnel. This season feels different. I think I'd prefer to be gone before the final day then head to Blackburn needing a result to stay up because it would just prolong the inevitable.

I've had achilles problems for years - I'd suggest seeing a sports physio as they were far better than my GP/NHS in terms diagnosing a sports injury. My turned out to be insertional achilles tendinopathy, which is slowly getting better with strength exercises (when I remember to do them)

Managed to pull a 1:24 out of the bag for the Warwick Half Marathon yesterday - a PB by a couple of minutes. For anybody who's interested, as a somewhat seasoned runner of a few years now, I would definitely say that the Sunday long run is the most important of all the runs if you want to get quicker/improve endurance. It doesn't need to be especially quick, but doing that regularly and incorporating the odd pickup along the way seems to be working thus far. I'd also highly recommend joining a club for anyone who's thought about it but not taken the plunge. I only go once a week on average to a club run, but that healthy competition with friends definitely improves you over the longer term.

Good morrow chaps! Long time no post (and a new account after forgetting my details), but I always keep an eye on this thread and the anxiety-inducing football topics. I'm still running and decided to take the plunge with a charity place for London after receiving my 10th consecutive rejection last year. I work in the property sector and also volunteer at a soup kitchen through work every couple of months and thus decided that Shelter would be a great charity to run for. Hoping for a sub-3 hour time - but we'll see how confident I am come mid-March! Quite looking forward to the training in a sadistic way. It's long and boring, but it does help provide a little bit of structure to an otherwise chaotic world. Sorry to join the fundraising pileon of the past couple of pages - but if anybody does have a spare bob or two then I'd be eternally grateful, though I appreciate it's not an ideal time of year to be throwing cash around (so Top and Rudkin say). Shelter: Mark's page