king canary

I'm pleased for him. I didn't think he could turn it around but he did. Yesterday was particularly impressive in that after a poor performance and coming up against a team on a high from a last minute winner in a high pressure game it could have been the start of another losing streak. Instead he got the team up for it and it could become a defining moment in our season. Yet, he's still walking a tightrope in my view. If Coventry and Hull win their games in hand then we're still in the thick of a race for 6th. If we fall just short I still think he's failed in his goal this season despite this run.

Interesting that those purchasing now would also be able to get a play-off final ticket if we got there.

It's good but it has been watered down considerably over the last few weeks. Better than nothing but not ideal.

Too angry for Mr Angry?

My first buy was a new build house and due to stretched budgets the council refused to adopt the road- meaning we all had to pay a private service company for 'maintenance.' The most I saw them doing was a bit of low level gardening of the green spaces yet there were over 100 houses paying about £300 p/y for the service. Felt like a bit of a scam to me and I've no doubt those charges will have gone up since I moved out.

Also to add that buying a flat is fraught with extra issues and costs- ground rent and service charges for example, with lots of stories in the news about the latter suddenly soaring. Personally I think buying a leasehold property is a pretty bad investment- if your service charge increases year on year it can leave you in a very tough position when it comes to selling.

I opted to start in season 3- I had been told it takes time to find it's feet and it isn't a difficult concept to get into midway. Just saw the episode where Jeff's daughter decides she prefers the dog. Proper laugh out loud stuff.

I've just (very late to the party) started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm and it is great.

I'm not really a Guy Ritchie person so I've skipped the Gentlemen but I love Umbrella Academy and the Boys.

I think you'd need a knowledge of finance and risk well beyond my understanding to know but in concept it sounds like a solid idea.

But in your whole post you completely fail to mention you need to have THE DEPOSIT. That is most of the issue for young people who are renting. When I bought my first house the mortgage was actually about £500 p/m lower than my rent at the time- me and my wife could easily afford the mortgage. But we needed a sizable desposit even at 5% which was very difficult to save for when renting. Also to add in you'd need the £1,000 product fee, usually £1500+ in legal and conveyancing, likely another £1000 for surveys and valuations etc etc. So for this example house the couple will need likely close to £15k in savings. I've seen it suggested before that people who can demonstrate they have paid rent for a significant amount of time should potentially be eligible for 100% mortgages, which would be interesting but very risky.

The only reason I think this could maybe happen is that Jim Ratcliff apparently wants to make the club more British and thus a British manager makes sense. McKenna has a Man U connection, is up and coming and there aren't many British managers who feel on the rise right now. Saying that it would be huge gamble to appoint a manager with no top flight experience, the fans would likely be underwhelmed and the pressure on him would be massive. Likely won't happen but I don't see it as impossible.

Crazy people still need this explaining to them. It was tough 8 years ago when I first bought, it is harder now. Me and my wife were living in a one bed in London (where our jobs were), paying £1350 p/m in rent- after energy, water, internet, council tax and travel to work we were spending about 50% of our take home pay on essentials. That isn't including food, general household upkeep. We could usually save about £200 p/m maximum, and that was without taking holidays or running a car. To buy the one bed flat we lived in with a 10% deposit we'd have needed £40k- so based on how much we could save that would have taken us about 16 years to get there. Even then no bank would have leant us £360k on our combined salaries. We instead wanted to buy a house somewhere out of London but commutable because we wanted to start a family. We settled on a place in Hertfordshire and the house prices for a 2 or 3 bed were about £250k- most of these needed some work doing too. Affordable but we still needed to save at least £12.5k (if someone would lend us 95%, not guaranteed) meaning at least 5 years of saving at our current rate, while basically denying ourselves any real fun. This is also before you factor in the other costs which come with buying a house (agent fees, lawyer fees, stamp duty, surveys etc etc). Instead we were able to buy due to a combination of inheritance from my wife's grandfather, some money from my parents and the government help to buy scheme. We ended up with a nice new build we could live in for 5 years and start a family in. Without that though we'd either still be renting or we'd have had to have put any plans to have a family on hold while we bought a one bed flat. The issue for a lot of young people is it feels like the social contract has been broken. The idea was that if you did the right things, studied hard, got good grades, maybe went to uni, got a good job that you'd be able to afford the basics of a nice life. However we're now in a place where that isn't the case anymore and yet you've got people who were able to buy houses in much more favourable conditions claiming it is all because they buy too many takeaway coffees or go on holiday once or twice a year. No wonder most don't have time for that sort of ****.

It isn't about opinions though. I am sure there are some people who make poor choices financially and then complain about not being able to afford a nice house. But as various people have pointed out for the average person it is, factually, harder to get on the property ladder than it once was without significant help from family.

Ok but everyone seems to be ignoring the fact they are now making a musical about his life which completely ignores the many accusations against him. Personally that is what I have a bit of an issue with.

Because to get a mortgage of £210k you'd need both to save £10,500 (difficult when as Dylan says half their take-home goes on rent) and be earning enough for a mortgage lender to lend you £210k. I'm afraid you've just spouted a load of classic 'boomer' talking points that don't actually stand up to reality. It is very simple that house prices have risen at much faster rates that wages meaning the average house price is now multiple times the salary of the average wage. Take Norwich for example- average house price over 7 times the average wage. In 2002 it was under 5 time the average wage. Your daughter managing to purchase a one bed flat on £17k p/y- is she in Norwich? A quick browse of right move shows the cheapest one bed (not studio, not shared ownership, not auction) flat is £110k right now. So I'm going to guess she's either bought shared ownership or she had a reasonably sized deposit, possibly with the help of mum & dad? Because no bank is lending a single person on £17k p/y a mortgage of £100k.

What concerns me is I'm not sure how fixable his issues are. He has a lot of the physical tools but he seems to struggle in reading the game- he's often out of position and slow to react to danger. He's 23 and well over 100 games into his career I'm not sure I see these things changing any time soon. Personally I'd keep Dimi over him but I think both are flawed.

Yeah but nobody is making a stage musical about the life of Lewis Carroll that completely ignores those accusations. I don't think anyone is saying MJ's music should be forgotten but making a hagiography about him is somewhat questionable.

Yeah I was saying this at the time. 10 minutes left, we're not creating anything, players look tired- what is the harm in giving Aboh and Welch 10 minutes to see if fresh legs can make an impact. I'd get if we'd created even a couple of half decent chances and were worried about unsettling the balance but it clearly wasn't happening for us.

I did think yesterday was a game where what we really needed was Rowe or Hernandez fit enough for 20 minutes off the bench. There was space in behind and when we actually got the ball to Sainz for him to run at the defence he worried them. Obviously I'd like SVD to be better but I'm not convinced Idah off the bench would have changed a great deal either.

It is always an odd decision to loan a player in on a short term deal who is both unfit due to lack of game time and coming from a different league with a totally different style of football. You look at our rivals and their January loanees were generally playing in England or Scotland and thus didn't need an extended period of adjustment to make an impact.

It is a bit chicken and egg though isn't it? Did the tactics not work because we kept giving the ball away or did we keep giving the ball away due to the tactics? Personally I'd lean towards the latter. We played in a very one dimensional way when we had the ball. If we had a goal kick, Gibson took it to Gunn, Gunn gave it back to him or passed it to Duffy, McLean or Nunez would drop deeper to receive it and then immediately play it back again because Leicester worked us out. There was a good thread on the NCFC Analysis twitter account about the weird shape we'd set up with when we trying to build- basically pushing the fullbacks up high , midfielders even higher and the forwards dropping a bit deeper with their backs to goal. It meant Nunez or McLean had loads of space to collect the ball from the central defenders but nobody to play it to ahead of them because all the space was about 30 yards from our own goal. For that build up to work you need to actually draw the opposition forward to create space to play the ball into. We didn't do that, nor did we offer any threat in behind, meaning Leicester could hold a relatively high line and thus the entire middle of the pitch was crowded and we'd lose the ball. We either needed to keep some of our players a bit deeper to help draw Leicester forward and create space to play Nunez or Sara in or we needed to, on occasion, try a more direct approach into the channels for Sargent or Sainz to chase and keep Leicester honest. We didn't play well but the tactics absolutely played a part in that.

Yes. Leicester weren't very good, we were just worse. Also to add that Leicester finishing in the playoffs having blown a huge lead means they'll be coming into them in relatively poor form which makes it harder.

Based on what I've seen, from the current top 6 I'd say this is my order of preference on who to play... West Brom Southampton Leicester Ipswich Leeds

In a Leicester pub so will keep thoughts brief. Ok in first half without much attacking threat. Inexcusably passive for the first 20 of the second half. Odd to not use more subs when the game was clearly going against us. McCallum was awful, wouldn't be extending him based on today. Leicester did a good job pressing us after 20 minutes. McLean and Nunez weren't in the game and we for some reason refused to be more direct considering we had two bigger players up top. Leicester clearly a better side. Hopefully we don't have to play them in the playoffs.