The Doctor

Tidy finish but yea, definitely offside.

Supposedly big disagreement over transfer strategy. So, still the new DoF is a bit of a bell.

she's sitting far too far forward in that case whenever I've noticed her.

Yea, they've got good quality training facilities and tbf are bringing through some good players through the academy (contrary to the days when we lost academy players like Earps as there was no real route to then professional football. It just needs a settled plan with coaching and recruitment, a DoF who isn't a ***** and some actual investment. Weirdly, that sounds familiar.

Honestly, just don't get battered. The club have not taken things seriously at all, bombed out a manager to recruit the DoFs mate (who's not available til like November) and lost their best players while not bothering to recruit with any plan

Much as Ale is decent, she's a fullback imo, and playing full backs as wingers is kinda indicative of how much of a shitshow the summer recruitment has been.

groundskeeper for a stately home

nah. he looks like a maths teacher

I mean, you can make the case that that's Dave Bassett as much as anything. Losing premier league money when moving into the new stadium was a massive blow, and Taylor massively contributed to that with his abysmal transfer policy, but he left with 27 games of the season left and plenty of time to stay up.

any man who looks like he has a secondary job as a geography supply teacher shouldn't be a football manager tbh

bringing it back to the man in question, he's been in court this last two days on charges of harassment of a minor and has come out with some truly disturbing things Like, these are not the actions of a mentally well man. Much as it's easy to say he deserves condemnation for allegedly harassing a legal child (17 at the time of the incident), standing up in court and declaring how familiar you are with different genres of porn as part of your defence is the behaviour of a man in desperate need of an intervention and rehab.

honestly the compassion bit gets a bit dubious even with people who aren't claiming to just have "legitimate concerns". Like honestly, sexual harassment is common and ignored or treated as just normal questions. What do your genitals look like and are your boobs real are frankly insane questions to ask someone when you first meet them and frankly, I think most people would consider that pretty perverted if asked of a cis woman, and yet they're basically the first couple of questions trans women get asked by a lot of people (first one obviously rephrased as "so have you had the surgery"). a) So there's two linked but technically separate diagnoses. Gender Dysphoria falls under the DSM-5 and so is classed as a mental health condition, but technically speaking it is the distress experienced as a result of Gender Incongruence, which is under ICD-11 as a sexual health condition, so overall, being trans is a sexual health condition, with a frequent concurrent mental health condition. b) Honestly the issue with third spaces is less "is it invalidating" and more "is it safe". There are multiple reasons why the concept of 'going stealth' (completing transition and never mentioning that you're trans again, just living fully as your acquired sex) exists but one of them is a safety thing. It is dependant on where you live and the general vibe of the place but it can be unsafe to be visibly trans in the UK, and a not insignificant number of people who will get violent about it - so having designated trans toilets can also function as a big "attack these lot" beacon to those people. c) this is my main objection. Technically I could argue having a disability (IBS) but it's not severe (hence why I don't consider myself to be disabled) and I don't need any adjustments in toilet facilities like hoists, handles etc, just somewhere to sit down long enough to let my bowels finish their impromptu battle of the somme recreation. It does not seem reasonable for me to then use facilities with those adjustments, depriving people who do genuinely need them. Twas ever thus. What's shocking is how much the mood has changed over the last decade. After Theresa May took power, she proposed a very dry update to the GRA - not a priority to most trans people I know, certainly not compared to the relative inaccessibility of healthcare (a typical timeline at this point to get from referral to receiving a prescription is 6-7 years, you can chuck on another 5 easily for any surgery, and that's assuming that your GP will actually fill the prescription - even though the NHS specialist gives the prescription and tells the GP exactly what tests to administer, with instructions to send it back to the specialist -so a GPs total involvement is write a prescription and request blood tests- many GPs will plead a lack of training on this and refuse to administer the specialists treatment plan. This is what needs radical reform, but we won't get it because people think it's handed out too easily, rather than being like a decades worth of fighting with the medical system). It's a piece of legislation in dire need of an update and with some ridiculous functions (as a result, my tax records are inaccessible to regular HMRC staff, I have to go through a special branch like a secret agent ), but legislation with minimal impact, and so wholly uncontroversial that it had support from basically all major parties. But, a handful of rabble rousers started making up things that the legislation doesn't do (it doesn't administer spaces, it doesn't impact anything other than your birth certificate, marriage certificate and death certificate) and have through attrition basically eradicated a lot of basic rights (the entire legislation came about because Blairs government were dragged into it by ECHR, because not having gender recognition violates article 8 rights to a private life, which is then rendered essentially null and void through being forced to out yourself as part of participation in society).

i mean the swamp draining stuff refers to players on big wedges contributing nothing to the team. Him being a consummate professional doesn't really counteract that he is drawing a lot of money from us while not impressing on the pitch and broadly just being an obstacle to youth teamers getting their breaks

when half a million is in the top 10 largest fees in the world, it wouldn't even have taken significant amounts of money, literally a fraction of the amount they've set on fire with the mens team. Like, if that rumoured wage for Ryan Bertrand is real, we spent 12.48m on wages for him to play 4 times. that could assemble a champions league level team with money to spare in the women's game

that latter part is why doing a serious rebuild this season makes sense if you need one. We just seem to have done the "smash the foundations apart" bit and forgot to do the actual rebuilding part

I'd say the financial gap in the men's is far larger to try and bridge though. That huge money is often just the same as mid table sides but without the existing foundation. Also not a huge issue for LCL if they don't gel this season. Finishing bottom is unlikely while we're around, and even if you do finish bottom, you'll just need to beat someone like Durham or Charlton to stay up anyway

better be if we spent 35m on him

or option c) single occupancy fully enclosed washrooms with toilet and sink, as are common in new builds. Might not necessarily entirely practical in say sports stadiums but for businesses, cafes, restaurants, shops and the vast majority of places, entirely suitable.

as for Linehans arrest: if you believe that incitement to violence should be an offence, obviously he should have been arrested. You can argue the toss over whether words matter or whether police intervention should be reserved for likely action but you have to be consistent (see also Lucy Connolly last summer). that said, nothing better in this situation than his substack about it, complaining his one bail condition is to stay off Twitter. Like, yer das been banned fae Twitter by the polis.

And this is part of the problem with the fallout of all this - like I wouldn't expect him to be comfortable using those spaces, or for the women using those spaces to be comfortable either (and this is a judgment call trans people consistently have to make - how consistently am I read as my gender, what space is safer for me to use: like I stopped using men's spaces after multiple occurrences of blokes walking in while I was washing my hands, turning round, walking out to check the sign, then coming back and getting aggy with me). The proposed code of conduct would ban him from using the men's loos, but him having a huge beard and being visibly a man would also bar him from the women's. So, then the question is where the hell he goes. People will say third spaces but a) those spaces don't exist yet, is he supposed to spend 6 months+ housebound waiting, and b) are those spaces ever going to exist, who the hell is paying for the entire country to be remodeled to provide extra space for 0.5% of the population. You can argue the accessible loos are third spaces, and I know several trans people who've considered getting radar keys for this purpose, but then is that also discrimination against disabled people if the accomodations in accessible loos aren't needed. It is a serious problem with historical precedence (was termed the urinary leash back in the Victorian age when women were starting to have more entry into the public sphere), but rather than questioning that and how we're going to be able to participate fully in society, instead it's constantly about a writer from the 90s who's given up their actual career in favour of staring at random women's crotches looking for a penis like a demented game of wheres wally, and that that description doesn't actually narrow it down to a single person is insane.

no it wouldn't. The EHRC code of conduct hasn't been updated following the supreme court verdict, as currently segregation is not mandated by UK law, and indeed the supreme court case did not say it should be either, just that where sex is referred to in relation to the equality act, it should be read as (poorly defined but assumed to be assigned at birth) 'biological sex'. Frankly the verdict was a mess which raised questions of the legitimacy of single sex services generally, creates a rather interesting legal issue raised in the commons today (acquiring a GRC requires making a statutory declaration that you will live as your acquired sex for life. if you state that you cannot live as a sex other than that assigned at birth, every single GRC holder is pushed into a state of committing perjury), and everyone is waiting for the EHRC code to avoid being the first place sued into oblivion over this mess.

slurs aside (trans women, not "trans identified males"), what he posted is incitement to violence against random women, while pending trial (due to start tomorrow) on charges of harassing and assaulting a teenage girl. You talk about violent men - Linehan is right there. but that doesn't count, that violence is just a joke, the real violence is that a woman might go for a piss.

"if you're good enough you're old enough, time to show what you can do", I shout, as the nurse cuts the umbilical cord.

Dragovic and Silva. Possibly 2014/15 - pretty sure we got Lawrence and Powell the same deadline day, can't remember if Simpson was in a couple of days earlier

can't wait for a year or more of people near me talking about "that James Jordan lad"