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I'd stop supporting the club if they took over us. Their government's human rights record is disgusting and I have absolutely no respect for their twisted interpretation of their religion that justifies it in their minds. Most likely they don't bother to justify it to themselves anyway, it's just a means to avoid being critisised and widely condemned in how they exert control over their population and keep themselves in positions of extreme wealth and power. People always tip toe around it worried that they'll be accused of being at best culturally insensitive or at worst a racist, but for me there's no moral equivalence between insulting a powerful institutions interpretation of their religion and executing LGBT+ people or being complicit in the slaughter of migrant workers alongside all the other cr4p they get away with, let them get away with evil because you don't want to offend them...not even slightly comparable. Appeasement gets you nowhere. I used to quite like Newcastle but the way they've embraced Saudi money has really tainted my opinion of them.

That's interesting, as I've never heard anything like that at Twickenham. Admittedly I've only been three times, but they were all very enjoyable experiences. I find rugby crowds much friendlier and safer places to be than football crowds. Mrs Wolf and I are off to France in a couple of weeks to watch games in Toulouse, Lyon and Lille – absolutely cannot wait. In my experience, anyone who starts acting up in a rugby crowd is immediately put in their place by the people around them.

The irony is that they vilified Steve Bruce for having committed the heinous crime of previously managing Sunderland, yet danced in the street when taken over by people that bombed babies in Yemen and butchered a journalist.

What a strange team. Why not play Bellingham and Rice deep with Foden, Maddison and Saka in front of them. Henderson starting makes absolutely no sense at all.

With 13 players away on international duty of some kind we were always likely to pick up an injury. I'm far from convinced by Nunez anyway in this league; nice little cameos here and there but never commands like Sara does. On a positive front we're closer to having Sainz and Hernandez available, which frees up and creates options. Hwang may prove useful, we shall see.

You have to draw a line somewhere, and Saudi Arabia crosses that line ….

You have to remember Hoggy, these people are well meaning amateurs running a football club like a dolls house. After quarter of a century doing it, there are fans and shareholders (do these people have shares?) that have a FAR better concept of what represents value for money than the people who have vastly more money at stake and the folk that they’ve invested valuable resources in. Apparently, this “power couple” have manipulated THE “power couple” into paying them more than they are worth. Nobody else is or was consulted, Stuart brought a decent Chablis round for a roasted poussin and basically wrote his and hers contracts for the family. Made up titles and overlooking Old Catton under 10s or something do not qualify you to run a football club or be some sort of all-seeing advisory capacity. Smacks of self-importance and jealousy. You generally pay for what you get. We want best in class (that we are in), are there any obvious alternatives that would be cheaper and more successful? (GO GO GOOGLE FINGERS) And how much more was McNally on by the way? He was a bloke though…

HOUSE!!!!

Although of course, they've made us much more money back and according to Attannassio been vital in attracting his interest and retaining it. Oh and it appears Webber, despite all the stupid accusations thrown about him over the past few months, hasn't been ignoring us and helping Leeds but instead has made another set of very good recruitment decisions to reinforce the Sara transfer last season.

And then Italy fail to beat the North Macedonians. I thought the most likely hurdle would be repeat coupon busters Holland but both England and Italy prove what a minefield international football is. I knew it was a big ask picking 5 aways but in some ways, 2 going down is better than one, especially for Gareth Southgate as I’ve now abandoned my home-made burning effigy project. We go again next week; keep it up with your suggestions, you gave me a wealth to choose from this week and perhaps I got a bit greedy, but a horse lost at 1/25 this week in a two runner affair and I thought how livid I’d be if I chucked in a load of real shorties and still got done. This community is a credit to the board and I’m proud to be a part of it even when my picks are ****. Thanks again everyone.

Well that challenge is much worse than the England one

Glentoran won in the end.

The comment comes up that England look a bit scared to attack. Problem was, they faced a Ukraine side at "home" who are excellent counter-attackers and indeed got a goal off one. On top of that, England have very little top-drawer quality in defence - a lot of solid Premier League pros but not much genuinely better than that. Same with defensive midfield (Bellingham isn't a defensive midfielder for me, he should be a bit further forward), and in goal. In fact, I'd even argue there's not much depth up top beyond Kane and to a lesser extent Rashford at the moment. There's plenty of firepower in theory as England have a veritable gaggle of very good attacking midfielders, but the foundations behind it aren't quite strong enough so England can't go gung-ho. Prime example of when Southgate got this right was the 2-0 win against Germany in the Euros. Germans were excellent on the counter, so England hogged the ball after initial problems, then managed to work it accurately enough into the gaps to get the chances, converted one and then posed Germany the question of "can you get on the front foot against us now?" You don't attack teams set up to counter. You try to draw them out. England lacked that yard of precision and pace in their passing to consistently put a well-organised Ukrainian defence under steady pressure. When that happens, too many players start coming forward trying to force the issue, and then the counter is on when the ball is lost. We suffered that enough even with Farke's best teams.

Typical Southgate performance, never has a manager had it so lucky to get as far as he has in tournaments, just a dreadful dreadful manager.

Indeed they have but also two truly awful and immediate relegations. For context should not they be mentioned?

If you mean everybody can see through you then yes.

Here we go can't have a decent conversation on here without the old chestnut of its because it's a woman. Grow up Iam a woman last time I looked. I run my own company, it's still obscene the money she's earning.Ncfc is supposed to be in a financial hardship. Yet borrows against future earnings. Say no more.

What a brilliant thread this is.

I can't work out what you have against Zoe personally, it's either jealousy of her pay, or because she's a woman? Maybe a bit of both perhaps. Either way it's very sad. And certainly boring.

For context, Scott Duxbury at Watford who perfoms the same/very similar role for a comparative team earns £1m pa. I don't think the salary is a big shock for a business with turnover over 100m a year, particularly when you consider the added stress of it being so publicly facing and for someone as highly respected in the game.

Forshaw is a CDM and not the obvious replacement for Nunez. That would surely be Gibbs, who came on as sub against Rotherham and looked very good.

It's because viaplay own the rights to the games so C4 have bought some of the games from them. Think England will win this one comfortably 3-0. Harry Maguire hat trick 😅

All other clubs are TV funded to an extent nutty, but clubs that sit below the EPL don’t make a huge amount from TV money. If they don’t have TV riches or parachute payments, they either have to cut to the bone, sell their better players, or get cash injections from their owners. How have we benefited from TV money so much compared to most other clubs in the football league? We’ve been relatively successful, achieving promotions of not silverware, but jumping up to the top flight for a short stay brings in so much TV money that we can settle the debts and when we go down, hopefully not sell our best players and give it a decent go at getting back up, with parachute payments helping too. But Nutty, as has been pointed out time and time again, it isn’t practical because the moment you slip up, you are just fighting the tide. Farke’s first promotion, we went up and immediately were told there was no money, we had to “pay for the sins of the past”, settling debts and getting high earners off the wage bill. So we spent nothing, went down. Then we managed to get back up but had to sell Emi, he wanted more wages etc than we could provide and probably guessed it would be another relegation battle as we lacked the money to really strengthen. We squandered the money we did make, didn’t strengthen the spine of the side and went down just as pathetically as before. Last season we banked on continuing the yo-yo but it all fell apart and lo and behold where are we this summer? “Reduce the wage bill”, too many players on big contracts being let go and our exciting young talents (Aaron’s, Omo) shipped out for the first decent offer that appears. And we’re back to square one, hunting for pennies because we lack pounds. the current ownership runs this club on a shoestring, not because they want to suck money out but because they can’t put any money IN. And with football finances the way they are, that’s just going to put us further and further behind the curve until it’s too late. They’re selling to the Attanasios out of necessity, not because they want to. We’ve been very good at running the club on zero investment. Amazingly good, and Webber etc are to be applauded, but we’ve always been struggling against the tide and one bad season could see us swept away.

Irs a terrible sport to watch....and an even worse one to play The opposite of 'the beautiful game'

As usual Ricardo is spot on. My first game was more or less exactly 76 years ago. 13th Sept 1947 - lost 5-1 against - you've guessed it Ipswich Town !!! Recent pic with a winger who was about twice as fast as we see on a pitch these days.

I can’t believe how gullible you are believing these nut cases. Does he believe like you the earth is flat and the story of Jack and the beanstalk was factual.

I believe there are one or two still about. I think Vos is one and also Myra Hawtree.There maybe others. Its interesting that people remember their first game. In all honesty I can't remember who mine was against or even the exact date. I am sure it was 1953 because my grandfather had just passed away and I was in my grandmothers garden in King Street one Saturday afternoon. I heard the sound of cheering and wandered off down King Street to Carrow Rd. Russell Allison was just opening those big green gates so it must have been mid way through the second half. Along with several other curious souls and a few that couldn't afford the entry, I just wandered in to see what it was all about And the rest is history.

Looks like that game has ended up postponed dude

According to the book "Canary Citizens" the Texaco Cup opponents in 1973 were :St. Johnstone, Motherwell and Burnley which consisted of 1st and 2nd Legs. The following year: Peterborough, WBA and Birmingham. Single Legs all away.

OK then proper rugby fans, how is an accidental clash of heads a sending off?

Yep. I’m devoting half of this loss to Gareth Southgate and his insistence on picking Jordan Bloody Henderson.

Thing is the relegations from the top tier aren't as big a failure as the promotions are successes. For our budget, instant relegation from the top tier is a simple expectation. For our budget, promotion from the championship isn't guaranteed with 95% of the championship having had much richer owners than us. But some seem to think that the 2 promotions are wiped out because of relegation. For a club our size that's simply not true. In our entire history how many second tier titles had we won? In the 20 years before Stuart how many championship titles had we won? That's what would be fair measurement 🙃

I see my pick, Morocco v Liberia has been postponed due to the terrible earthquake Is it too late to change it to England to beat Ukraine?

He was caught by an Ultra Low Escapee's Zone camera.

4-0 FT One in the bag.

Yeah I’ve read a lot of phd theses citing Wikipedia as well.

Reasonable remark about this debate last April, and my response is that Stu certainly deserves to be questioned on his performance over the last two seasons and for me I’d have got rid this year not given him this gardening leave! But he’s overseen another summer of sales and brought in a lot of older heads, time will tell if this was the right thing to do, but he’ll be out of here soon enough! Zoe on the other hand is a big part of the process ongoing with the club progression to MA and in reality is doing the job she’s paid to do! If she’s falling short then I’m sure she’d be gone! Given the clubs going to be owned by a very astute businessman who’s used to running a pretty successful sports club run on a lowe end budget! To do that you need the best people in key positions!

What is sports washing? I like to categorise the clothes when hanging them out to dry but it's really more of a personal game to me rather than a sport.

Supporters eh? Who needs them. The quicker we can get anAI/CGI crowd the better.

I agree entirely, but it was hard to find a centre back who joined for free, and when he was at his prime he was a good player, just not when he played for us.

Agreed. I love Rugby and much more than football internationals. Not sure about group B being group of death - certainly the toughest, but not sure it's that extreme? Ireland clear favourites, South Africa second, Scotland just third favorurites, Romania and Tonga both trying not to be bottom? You're wrong. I played it for a few years (I wasn't very good) and still don't entirely understand the rules.

So you should. Real lightweight against my 56 ( wink )

Webber's detractors always point to the 2021 window which is fair. However Sara is 2022. And we've had 2023. His record since 2017 isn't too shabby is it? Much of the angst towards Webber is personal dislike. I guess he's not likeable but does that matter?

Let's hope the translator has a degree in psychology and has convinced him that anyone outside of the county are evil and not to be trusted, no matter how much money they offer.

I got a cheapy TP-Link AC1200 from Amazon to get to the summer house and it's worked great, so same thing as what you're looking at pretty much. Thing is, with a third party extender you'll be on a different SSID (Wifi Name) to connect to it, even though it's still sharing your internet connection. It doesn't sound much of a problem, but if you set devices to auto connect, sometimes you can find yourself in the house connected to the extender and thus getting a worse connection - so something to be mindful of. I just don't set anything to auto connect to it, unless it's fixed out there. As an alternative you can buy mesh extenders, but they have to be part of the same eco-system (Brand) and will extend your wifi network with the same name so it's more like a single, wider range that you end up with. But mesh devices are more expensive. BT call their Mesh products 'Discs' I believe? That's about the only issue to be aware of, really.

It's not rational. No coincidence it's the same attention seeking characters posting excessive negativity for a reaction. It seems some are literally desperate for something to have a moan amount - I didn't see too many people saying how great it was to have a "squad for the future" last season when we were playing terribly in the here and now.

We have brought in several young players to our academy/ U-23 set up in this window. Against Bristol in the cup we played one of our youngest ever teams. The idea that our management hasn't been attending to the long term future of the club is absolute nonsense.