Basingstoke Fox

Had a supermarket job during my younger years which was for the most part great fun with mates I still have now. But I was absolutely fuming to finish one evening & see that a colleague went through with his threat to spray silly string all over my beloved first car. Handily I was in the perfect place to buy a few ingredients during lunch break the following day. So I went straight to his newly purchased, chavved up Beamer & baked a cake on it. Firstly with a few eggs, then milk all over (perfect for a boiling hot day) and flour to stick to the milk. Finally bananas up the twin exhaust. The lad was raging & started chasing after my car with a tyre iron before I got away & hid it nearby. When I returned, I saw him speeding away across the car park in a rage. He probably thought he looked cool with the loud exhaust (debatable ofc), but the noise was actually choking & spluttering because it was stuffed full of banana (which still makes me laugh now). Although I'd covered up my uniform someone recognised me & grassed me into customer services. Was sent straight to the managers office when returning from the lunch break & suspended with pay. Part of me thought that was a result, but it was all sorted within a few hours anyway. We made up & had to clean up the car park floor that same afternoon. I can't imagine how ridiculous it looked. This was out of character for me even back then, but I bloody loved that Fiesta & had to put it right.

Most of the classics have already been mentioned, so some favourite goals / performances from the early years:

Only just read through this thread having completely switched off from the forum and frankly LCFC for a few weeks until going last night. This post at the end absolutely killed me.

But how could this be possible? They're in such capable hands.

Prime Lloyd Dyer starts for us now easily.

Completely agree. Especially considering the uproar by sections of the fanbase when they were both included in that opening day first 11. It set the perfect tone for one of our best ever seasons when I was concerned our fortunes would go the other way. Allardyce's glowing praise around how we were comfortably the best team he'd faced that season always sticks in the mind when thinking of how we'd regularly shoot ourselves in the foot after this.

It'd only be utterly wasted when any other selection would be made by the f***wits upstairs at this club. How long until we have to pay the next ill fitting manager for the club? We cannot keep hemorrhaging money in this way. Just endure the rest of the painful season and then we must reset, properly. Players, coaching, recruitment, even the academy level. Nobody should feel safe at this stage. Appoint a competent DoF with an clear idea on this as a minimum. Only then can we think about any further managerial changes having any positive impact on the medium/long term future of the club and signing players to be a part of that. I honestly don't care much about the next 6-18 months. Build the foundations to prepare us for success beyond that, just as we did in the not so distant past.

Manchester. Which is better than when I was heading up from Basingstoke. Wish the train was a more efficient & affordable option for matches.

As someone who attends matches, I couldn't agree more with everything in the article. Clearly everything impacting the "on the field" issues will be what most focus on. Though I still have a perhaps idealistic view that a "club" should be a representation of and with a connection to the local area and community. If done well then this can still be a source of joy and pride even when results on the pitch aren't going your way. Pricing out large sections of the fanbase for tickets and charging kids to meet players during school holidays or obscene fees to be a mascot hardly encourages this. Not to mention the mundane experience of attending matches. Everything about the pre-match routine for example (minus the PHG) is painfully generic & bland.

Was noticeably easier getting out of the city last night compared to recent matches.

How would a generic boo at the end of a performance like that (which would likely be drowned out by some terrible song selection) successfully get this specific message across about the clubs persistence with Danny Ward?

If anything, he got off far too lightly with the crowd today. Yes the defence and team ahead of him were extremely poor. Yes we all knew this season would be a slog and there will be disappointing afternoons. Yes we’ve been very fortunate in past matches to concede as few goals as we have thanks to the great work of Mads. But we’ve all seen this before. He’s arguably single handedly cost us relegation 2 seasons ago. He’s a handicap for this club. He’s been a handicap for his country. Yet he remains at the club and getting picked and there can’t be any tolerance for what we’ve witnessed again today, especially in the context of everything else. We cannot afford to let this clown have another minute. If this reaction has any chance whatsoever of ensuring that can be the case, then it’s our duty as fans to make our feelings clear.

His name lends itself perfectly to this. But haven’t been able to think of a decent closing line for it.

Surely West Brom away must be a key shout for 3-2.

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Middlesbrough game with 8K, though Schmeichel saved his blushes that night.

Thick as mince

Cannon had a decent one but never beating many of the shouts in here.

My partner wanted to buy a football shirt as a present for visiting her young overseas nephew who doesn't follow any team in particular, certainly not an English one. I found out she was looking at Man City shirts for him (which arguably makes some sense with them being our local team). Of course I complained & convinced her that if she was getting any football shirt, it had to be for us. Then we checked the site & ours was £40+ - for a kid! While the latest MCFC shirt was available for around £17 at the time. When the obvious question "why would I spend over £40 for this second division team when I can get the latest Man City one for less than half the price?" arose, I had no answer to that. For a reasonable price, I would've just bought the LCFC one myself. So that business was lost, who knows perhaps along with any possible affiliation to the club. Just one example where squeezing fans above everything else doesn't even make sense from a revenue perspective, let alone a moral one. Another is the approach to memberships & match tickets.

Had the Kop on strings with his celebration against us a few months before he signed. Still one of my favourite LCFC players. A key part of a genuinely likeable & quality team.

Emailed the club this morning to give positive feedback on the goal music. I've complained about plenty from them (justifiably) over the years, so it's only fair to acknowledge when things move towards a positive step in the right direction. Nice to not have it sour a potentially big moment for the season. Thought Wonderwall at FT was enjoyable, primarily because it was KDH who scored the goals to win an important match. Though I'd like to think they decided to play it in that context and haven't just taken a decision to play it continuously in future because they see it works at Man City, like they did with Sweet Caroline after the Euro's.

Nothing interesting apart from meeting O'Neil & Muzzy in a Madrid restaurant after Atletico away. Really sound people. Coming back from Thessaloniki airport on Monday I did a double take in the passport queue seeing Nuge standing right in front of me with his family. He was also at the other end in Manchester stood about a metre away from the baggage belts & had to do some weird manoeuvre to avoid being hit in the bollocks by an old guy collecting his suitcase right in front of him.

This would be the best. Problem is not many English words fit well with Ciao to make it work.

The fact that these clowns remain in charge with zero scrutiny following an avoidable, abject and pathetic fall from our clubs strongest ever position made this ST renewal the most difficult one for quite some time. How bad does it need to get in the coming years before they either walk or are hounded out?