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With massive apologies to William Shakespeare: Shall I compare Zoe to an Executive Director She art more expensive yet less successful: High wages do shake the budget of Norwich City And the Premier League’s lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of Stuart shines, And often is 100% of his attention dimm'd; And every signing from abroad sometime declines, By being completely unsuitable for the way we play; But thy eternal salary shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that job despite thy husband leaving; Nor shall Ipswich brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in promotion thy bonus grow’st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, I’ll still be posting on the Pink Un complaining about her

Going against the grain here perhaps, but after careful reconsideration, I feel that the £25 season ticket cancellation charge is quite a reasonable proposition should it ever be needed.

Got sent this today. What a cracker! Don't think I've ever started a thread before. Cherry popped.

Managed to put together the xG game graphs for all our league fixtures so far, if anyone has any ideas on what could be added let me know! The data is from fbref.com who I think get their data from opta now. Just want to add that although the graphs are a good visualisation they aren't perfect explainers either. Take the Rotherham game for example, yes we created much more xG than they did but the majority of it was after we were already down at least a goal. Hull on the opening day was similar, if you look it's clear that most of our chances that day came as we ramped up the pressure before Rowe's equaliser. Also the Huddersfield graph is maybe the best reason as to why xG is a better metric than simple shot totals, Huddersfield outshot us but the quality of their shots to ours was night and day.

This. I've always said the Gerrard/Lampard hype was the worst thing about that England era. They tried to shoehorn those two in the team at the expense of others. Play one each half and play Scholes in his proper place and it would've been a much more balanced team. Or certainly one I could've got more enthusiastic about. That 'golden generation' **** was just embarrassing media hype.

I think it is done to highlight the cultural damage that brexit has done to the music industry in particular. Music lovers know that musicians are suffering because of new restrictions placed on them by the brexit government. The fact it winds up the more gammonry types is nothing but a bonus.

One of the lessons here is that anything that the Tories set up with a title containing 'research group' is going to be sh!t.

Found this on Facebook… Anyone want to own up?

Just wanted to say that this is a great analysis of some of the pluses and minuses of xG for anyone struggling to understand it or suspicious of its value. Like all stats, xG stats need to be analysed and put into context if you're going to get full value out of them. But yes, xG is so much more useful than the simple shots/shots on target stats you get on the BBC site, for instance.

You can have an opinion but when there's facts that make your opinion wrong, it'll still get called out...

Yeah, Deutschland über alles suffered from the same sort of problem. The N/azis commandeered it but it was written in the early 1840s, so a good thirty years before Bismarck actually got Germany together as we know it and the song meant that all the myriad constituent German states of the time, so Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, etc. with all its constituent German-speaking peoples should get together to form a Germany that is there to safeguard them all. (Incidentally, the borders mentioned in the first verse would make it problematic even without the Na-zi matter, as none of the borders mentioned are within modern-day Germany now, one being in Denmark, one in the Netherlands, one in Lithuania and the last one in northern Italy). However, a certain Hit-ler and his cohorts, 90 years after the song was originally written, took it as meaning that Germany should rule over everyone else and polluted the song to that effect. Reinterpretation of old songs for more toxically jingoistic purposes is not just a British thing.

Cash for Secrets has a ring to it.

Today’s headlines suggest England’s rugby team have sworn off booze for the rest of the competition. Innovative stuff, for professional athletes in their most prestigious international contest, to avoid taking a mildly poisonous performance reducing substance

I don't think Idah will ever be prolific like he was underage. But I also don't understand why people get on his back & give him a hard time. You can be critical without being a **. I think he could be an effective player at Championship level working in tandem with a partner up top if he can stay fit and do enough to earn a run of 10/12 games or more. Learning the dark arts from the likes of Barnes this season with Sargent out will hopefully stand to him in the years ahead. He's been unlucky with injuries when chances have arrived & hasn't clocked up the minutes he should have at this stage of his career given his trajectory. I haven't given up on him yet & I think he'll carve out a decent & respectable (if unspectacular!) career for himself over the next ten years.

Am I right in saying that the On The Ball pod cast has finished.This will be the 4 week off air.Micheal said it would be back on the Monday after Rotherham defeat.Shame as really enjoyed its content.Some clarity would be handy.

Bunch of flag sh@ggers, longing for the days of the EU Empire!

I’m missing something, as don’t see a huge issue here. The refund is for the full amount less cost of matches to-date and a £25 charge - so an adult s/t will still get over £400 back. These fees aren’t hidden so it feels a bit daft to complain about them however high they might be.

Oi! I'm not a fact hunt! I've seen more meat on a butcher's pencil...

I think your problem may be that others are using facts whereas you are relying on opinion. Facts can be a bit annoying sometimes.

Hey me & you have probably had more disagreements than agreement over the years but I have the good grace to apologise or realign my opinions in the past when being wrong and pointed out! Just good manners. I don’t have any issue with people wanting more from the club we all want premier league football and trophies, but we’re not all going to be Man City lucky!

I don't think that is the case at all, although I'm not suggesting that it will make them change their stance imminently either. But it is a very visible demonstration, of which there have been several recently, of just how far behind the curve of public opinion on Brexit our 'front line politicians' are, and eventually those politicians are going to have to address that or risk being removed from the 'front line' altogether.

He did, but he also said lots of other stuff. Like his aim is always investing in players for the future, not buying players who were in the last throes of their career. Isn't it just a tad ironic he has rescued his reputation a little this summer by going against that particular statement. We all live and learn I suppose ...

Hopefully Hwang will figure for S Korea tomorrow. Not the same I know but at least it will be minutes on the pitch. Assuming he had a full pre season with Forest he should be further forward than Sainz in that regard. Hopefully he can get up to speed pretty quickly.

If I tried writing a sonnet I'd have to apologise to William McGonagall, let alone William Shakespeare. Well played.

Not as stupid as you it would appear!

I have a load of photos. Ill dig them out when I get a chance.

The Guardian minute-by-minute report suggests he started the game well: the penalty, some good hassling of Van Dijk (suggesting that Wagner's high-energy style is rubbing off on him?) and a good pass to create a chance for someone else. There's no mention of him after the first 30 minutes, so either he faded, or Ireland did, or both. But it must have been a very good experience for him being up against van Dijk. Think it's perfectly reasonable for people to have doubts about whether he can replace Sargent. But given that Hwang is going to take a while to get up to speed (with the game in England, with his own match fitness and with how the team plays) it looks likely that Idah is going to get what he's been missing in his stop-start City career so far - a run of starts. He's in a decent run of goalscoring form, so hopefully he can grab that chance.

Camping. Is it loitering within tent?

As a paid up member of the Trust, have you considered assisting them in their mission to achieve as significant holding as possible by donating your shares to the common cause; greater good and all that?

"His team played with real endeavour, Idah giving Van Dijk a torrid examination in perhaps his best senior international display, but they were painfully exposed defensively by genuine quality for both goals and ultimately could not find the cutting edge." https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/sep/10/kenny-under-fire-after-irelands-euro-hopes-all-but-finished-by-dutch-defeat

I would be extremely hesitant to lay the blame here on shareholders, not least because this was launched, with a bundle of ten lengthy documents (via the website only, the posted out documents are just the waiver and proxy form) and have been asked to vote on something without any meaningful analysis or explanation.

I can't speak for others, but I've finally given up on the lad as being the answer to our current needs. This is not a scapegoating, picking on our own or destroying his confidence stance or anything other than the fact that I am unable to have confidence in him being other than a 'reserve' player for the bench as it is populated nowadays. I have always tempered criticism with mitigating factors such as age, confidence levels, game time, injuries and promise but this has to end sometime. He seems to have contributed insufficient when last representing his club and country to the extent that he was pulled off early both times. This boy seems miles off of the standards set by some of the great strikers the club has had in the past. It's a long list too. I also think that it was greatly remiss of the club not to have brought in that extra striker during the long Summer break as I and many on here advocated. Predictably enough the Sarge needs a long lay-off. We now have to rely upon an ageing Korean footballer who nobody had heard of to come good. The signs seem reasonable, but we should never have been in this position in the first place. Back to Idah, it does seem possible that, once a seasoned player, he could well become more than useful at City ... there is most certainly something there. That time seems sometime off though.

It's often difficult for young strikers who rely on their physicality to make the transition to first team football and takes them longer than for example a Michael Owen type because they are used to being able to dominate age group defenders in a way they can't do against seasoned centre backs without experience of the dark arts and how to use that physicality. Their key differentiator - the thing that makes them a weapon in Parma-speak - is no longer that different. I suspect that we've offered the long contract to him for precisely this reason, to give him a chance to develop, because if the intangibles suddenly click the upside is significant. That said, as I and many others have pointed out, Idah is a classic case of somebody who would have benefited from a long loan somewhere lower to learn his trade and gain that experience. In a way it is a shame that we have chosen to rely on him as a third choice striker as we have done for a number of years now rather than get him some games at a lower level. Similarly being a first (ish) choice striker in a struggling international team probably isn't enormously helpful with all of the attention that entails. I agree that he'll possibly end up eventually having a decent career somewhere - he has many of the raw attributes needed. Just not sure that we can afford to give him the game time that would give him the chance to get himself to the next level as it doesn't look like it is going to happen particularly quickly.

Notched a nice early penalty but otherwise just ploughed a fairly lonely furrow, plodding around. Some decent touches/plays & did his bit defensively - probably a 6/10. Up against Virgil van Dijk tonight & mainly Rabiot & Hernandez against the French a few days ago so it doesn't get much harder than that I suppose. Ogbene did more offensively in both games from play. Shane Duffy could have the finger pointed at him for his positioning for both the Dutch goals, particularly the winner, but generally played well enough over the two games. He certainly won't be coming back fresh, that's for sure. I think tonight's result is curtains for the Irish manager Stephen Kenny. There's lots of sympathy for him as Lady Luck has $hát on him from a height since his tenure began. But there's not even one result he can hang his hat on against decent opposition. Even when they play well, they find a way to lose. Ireland have been out of the mix at the halfway stage in the last three group campaigns & were arguably even worse in the Nations League competition. Damaging results losing to Finland twice, Armenia, Luxembourg & Greece back in June have done for him. The pick of players for Ireland are probably mid to lower Champo standard but you still need to nick a couple of wins and grind out a few draws.

It is a recognition of the reality that we are not at the top of the football food chain, even if we are in the Premier League, so really talented players, which Rowe might turn out to be, will sooner of later want to move on. In percentage terms there are very few clubs for whom this is not true. The upside, from which we frequently benefit, is that we are closer to the top of this chain than the bottom.

The Tour de France attracts the highest live attendance of any sporting event. Cycling is hugely popular around the world which totally baffles me as most of them seem to be on drugs. Quite impressive really, when I was on drugs I couldn't even find my bike

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.

I stopped reading and replying ages ago... life is, in a small way, a little bit better for it.

I watched most of the match. Idah generally played very well against some top centre backs. He took his penalty really well. The big question marks for me were over the two occasions when he laid the ball off to Ogbene to take a shot at goal and both shots were blocked. On both occasions, I wondered if a more confident (selfish?) striker would have taken a shot themselves - it looked to me as though Idah was in a good enough position to do so. Of course, if Ogbene had scored then we would have praised Idah for the assist. Duffy seemed to be calling the shots as captain - constantly directing other players. He also made some strong challenges to stop Dutch attacks and generally looked a formidable defender. On the down side, as paddycanary said, it seems he played the goalscorers onside for both Dutch goals. Good that both players now have six days off before the Stoke game - they must both have been exhausted. Rare for Idah to play a full 90 minutes +

Shakespeare should be apologising to you. Bravo. 👏

I have posted before how i ended up making my posts in italics but i won't trouble you with the in and outs of it. As for you and your thought that i am attention seeking for goodness sake have a word with yourself. Anyway as i obviously have your attention ever thought of starting your own forum ?

I heard he is going to the USA to set up a women's team for them.

As did Netherlands. 4/6. @Mr Apples Kazakhstan was an inspired pick btw!!!

Apparently you can see it from space!

It was his big moment and he nailed it!