Chip20

Afraid so.

Oh, come on!! FFS!

Boo!

That's a horribly condescending post. Are you that obnoxious in real life or just on online fora?

I concur with all of the above. One of my favourite City players; especially for his attitude. Yet another example of untested potential being spotted by our setup and being given the opportunity to develop it.

That memory has come to my mind a couple of time recently. I remember not being sure at the time whether that was a sensible tactic or not. I have found myself wondering lately whether Farke would consider issuing such a proclamation. To date DF has been very much about keeping the feet on the ground.

Nah, that was Athletic Charlie.

Aye, part of the goals conceded thing is likely to be because of our attacking play. We have lost the ball in midfield on quite a few occasions and that is always likely to happen with wing backs bombing up the pitch in support and with creative midfielders trying to make things happen. The OP is entitled to his/her view that Lewis could potentially be an even better player if he were to bulk up a bit but I am struggling to think of [m]any occasions this season where a goal has been scored as an immediate consequence of him being shrugged off the ball easily.

I haven't had a chance to. Can you do the honours and enlighten us please?

A really good question, OP. It is really hard to pick out one player that we really couldn't do without when everybody who has stepped in to cover injury and suspension has slotted in so seamlessly. I can see the argument for Pukki being pivotal and we have not really been tested in how we would cope without him for a prolonged period. On the other hand, I do wonder whether other strikers within our means would have fared equally well this year with the 'ammunition' he has been supplied with. Others have mentioned Leitner and I agree that his pedigree, technique and creativity would be hard to replace. He certainly looked the dog's danglies in the first half of this season, but on the other hand he has been absent for an extended period and we have coped without him. He and Vrancic seem fairly interchangeable. It seems to me that our form this season really clicked into place when Buendia and Aarons were introduced to the side. Again, we have not really been tested without them since then and, to me, they seem integral to our way of play and to so many of the chances we create. Both have pace, tenacity, top ball control and an eye for a pass/cross. The thought of doing without either of those two fills me with dread. But then the same could be said for Stiepermann and for Lewis. The former offers something that others in the top half of the pitch don't seem to quite as well as him and Lewis's pace and attacking instincts, like Aarons, seems so pivotal to our threat on the counter. It is hard to determine what exactly is the glue that binds it all together this season. So many players play their part and it is hard to envisage coping for an extended period without almost any one of them. As Parma has observed, it could well be the philosophy that Webber and Farke have created that is behind it all rather than one individual player. But, with the OP's gun to my head and having to make a decision it still comes down to one of Buendia or Aarons for me. I can't really put my finger on why but I think Buendia gets the nod. The lad is like Wes on steroids. He's here, he's there, he's every f'kin where, he gets stuck in, he's tenacious, he robs the opposition, he can spin on a sixpence, he can spot an opportunity from a mile away or from six inches away and play a slide rule pass through the eye of a needle. I want to watch this guy in an NCFC shirt for the next ten years and see him take us to the Champions League title ( and beyond!!). It's a bleddy tough call, mind. So many quality players this season. Lord knows who will win POTS this time around.

Just playing devil's advocate here but... a) If a speed enforcement officer or two in Manchester were diverted to investigating the racist graffiti during that week surely some smartass could equally then ask why they were wasting resources on that (perhaps trivialising it as a mere act of graffiti in the same way many motorists trivialise the dangers of speeding) instead of crimes some might deem even more 'worthy', such as, perhaps, unsolved murders, sexual assaults, GBH, slave trading, child/domestic abuse where people have actually been hurt rather than intimidated. While the crime you describe was certainly vile and disgusting, your logic suggests scarce resources could still potentially be better deployed elsewhere. Is there no room in your hierarchy of worthiness for preventative policing at all? They should only be prioritising the most heinous crimes and nothing else? The same way we should only spend NHS money on treating illnesses that have already happened and none whatsoever on preventing them in the first place? b) Are you aware mobile speed enforcement vans are not always staffed by 'full fat' police officers? Oftentimes the person in the van is not qualified to be doing the 'proper' police work or "catching 'real' criminals" such as the example you cite. They have a dedicated role and are not available to be redeployed to your more 'deserving' acts of criminality.

Incidentally, I am fully aware that speed is not the only cause of accidents on the road. Lack of concentration and indicating is likely responsible for the majority of them. It is the overall attitude of motorists that irks me. Driving is dangerous and too many people seem to forget that very quickly once they have their licence. I appreciate your stance on safety, Lakey, but cannot understand your inability to keep below a maximum speed. It's more Gunn's attitude to driving that has set me off. Getting caught because you took your eye off the ball one time is one thing; to never learn anything from it suggests his attitude to road safety stinks.

I would be astounded if you were punished for doing 1mph over 70, Lakey. As others have said, you genuinely seem like a reasonable kind of person but what you have described so far about your driving comes back to my fundamental issue with many drivers' attitudes on the road. It's alright to break the law (routinely, too) as long as it can be justified in people's own minds. As others have said, speed is one of many things we all have to be aware of every second we are on the roads but it falls down people's priority lists very quickly after passing their test. I don't understand why you can balance all the things you eloquently described in your overtaking manoeuvre but seem fundamentally incapable of assimilating an awareness of your speed into the equation. The whole excuse about focusing on the needle to the detriment of everything else is trotted out time and time again and is completely disingenuous. The periodic glance at the needle takes a fraction of a second and the view out of the front window remains in your peripheral vision during that nanosecond. You don't have to do it every second; you can 'feel' how the car is responding to your input. You also don't have to keep the needle right on 70; you are allowed to drop below it. If you can't get past your lorry doing 65-67 then there was little point in overtaking it.

What Ginja said. People always describe the process of checking the speedo disingenuously, as if they are being asked to fix their gaze on the needle and nothing else. Lakey, you check your mirrors before your manoeuvre and you can be aware of the lateral distance as you pass the lorry in your peripheral vision. Once you've reached 70 you know full well whether you have sped up subsequently without having to stare at the needle. As above, if you have to stare at the needle to know if your speed is drifting upwards you are not competent to be in 'control' of a motor vehicle. It's like putting somebody with no spatial awareness in charge of a forklift. Do you have to think equally hard about which pedal each foot is on and which direction to move the stick in every time you change gear?

I'm with crabby here, I'm afraid. Several observations in your response touch on the attitudes of motorists that really bother me; particularly the complacency and sense of entitlement. 'Conscientious' drivers being caught out are obviously not Conscientious enough. It is not beyond the wit of Man to stick to or below the maximum permissible speed (see my point above about being poked in the **** with a needle for even the most minor infraction); what is lacking is the will. People don't want to have to stick to the speed limit and they convince themselves it is fine to creep a little over occasionally because they get away with it time and time again. If you really cannot help creeping over the limit periodically then you are effectively admitting that you regularly lose control of your vehicle. Do you think people who regularly lose control of their vehicle on their test would pass it? Do you think it is right to have people on the roads who cannot control their vehicle? Where else would that be justified? "I occasionally open my door without checking for bikes; I occasionally set off without checking my mirrors and indicating; it's not my fault, I just can't help it; please let me keep my licence of competence anyway". Incompetence is not a justification for breaking the law. You would still be committing theft if you 'forgot' you were still wearing that watch you tried on as you left the store even if it were unintentional. We have to take personal responsibility for the things we do. I'm also with crabby on your point about an indiscretion overtaking a lorry. Again, people justify breaking the rules (and the law) on the grounds that it is 'safer' in order to ease their conscience. If the lorry was travelling considerably slower than you then you would have been past it in seconds; if you were only creeping up on it and thus worried you would be adjacent to it for an extended period then why the 'need' to go past? If it was only travelling marginally faster than you then what is the harm in remaining a safe distance behind it? How many hours longer would your journey have been then? Again it is the attitude of entitlement. Got to get to my destination in the fastest possible time; it's ok to break the law occasionally to save myself a minute or two off my journey. The difference in attitudes can be seen at traffic lights too. So many drivers speed up as they approach them in case the lights change; the safe divers slow down as they approach them...in case the lights change. Safety first; not your own personal gain. Drive to the conditions? Absolutely; I am with you on that one. But, still within the restrictions of the law. The rules, whether you agree with them or not, are there to be fair to everyone and to keep everyone as safe as is humanly possible. Driving to the conditions means going less than 30 in a 30 limit where necessary, or less than 70 on a motorway if the context demands it; not exceeding it because - hey - you're smart and you know best. The concept of driving to the conditions does not give an individual the right to unilaterally decide that the current speed restriction imposed is inappropriate and that it is acceptable to exceed it, even for ten seconds. Again it goes back to people feeling they should never be inconvenienced and they have a right to step outside the law for their own individual gain. In what other circumstances on the roads should we be able to use our discretion when it comes to the law? Would you jump through a red light at a crossroads because you can't see another vehicle approaching, for instance? The 'conditions' might appear to be an empty road and not a soul in sight, but is it acceptable to take that risk? Regularly? I also sympathise with your experience of your progress being impeded unnecessarily when the road was empty. However, the limit is the limit regardless of how justified or otherwise individual drivers think it is. Everybody should stick to the rules or there would be anarchy and more to the point, even more unpredictability on the roads than there is already. The one about driving faster because there is hardly anybody on the roads really irks me. It's as if people think that accidents only happen when there is a lot of traffic around. I wonder how many of the 1,793 UK road deaths in 2017 happened on roads that appeared empty? I've certainly, in my time, read newspaper reports of fatalities where survivors have reported something along the lines of "he just came out of nowhere!" I don't know how many instruments you think motorists are focusing on but the speedo is the only one that needs to be consulted regularly while moving. I see so many people suggesting it is dangerous to be focused on that instead of the road ahead as if they are being asked to stare at it and occasionally glance at the road in front of them instead of the other way around. That is not how checking the speedo works in reality and everybody who uses that excuse knows it. You don't have to drive with the needle persistently in the centre of the mark; you just have to not exceed it. But people don't like to ever be even 1mph slower for even five seconds. Again; their priorities are all wrong. Personal gain over safety. You are right that speed cameras are one-dimensional and don't catch the plethora of other offences committed on the roads. However, the fact stands that if people adjusted their attitudes to speed and to road use in general then the cameras would serve no purpose; nobody - conscientious or otherwise - would ever get caught out. It is perfectly possible to drive within the rules if the will is there. What I have seen over the years, though, is that complacency creeping in. People don't feel they should have to concentrate as much as the driving test demands, they feel entitled to drive at the maximum limit (and beyond) for the entire duration of their journey and that anybody who impedes their progress is a 'hazard'. The attitudes are all wrong on the roads. Far too few drivers place an emphasis on safety first; it's all about me, me, me and it costs far too many people their lives year on year. Complacency, inattentiveness, and selfishness.

The traffic would also flow a lot more smoothly if everybody would: a) check their mirrors before changing lanes b) indicate their intention to pull out and wait for a suitable opportunity instead of just pulling out regardless (sometimes blinking the indicator once after they have commenced the manoeuvre as something of an afterthought) c) Be continuously aware of the impact their actions are having on other road users (and actually being bothered about it). As I mentioned above, there is far too much complacency on the roads and, I would add, lack of risk awareness. People get away with it, and get away with it, and get away with it until one day they don't and the results can scar whole families for life. There were 1,793 deaths on UK roads in 2017 and I bet not one of the people who caused the respective accidents spent one second between setting off and the moment of impact thinking to themselves "I could kill somebody by my actions today". I bet they all thought they were good drivers (or cyclists or pedestrians) because they had never caused anybody's death before.

Yes; it's based on fluid mechanics. When there is the same number of vehicles heading down a narrow channel then a load of the vehicles trying to travel faster than the others doesn't help; it only causes disruption and a rough ride. Think of emptying a bottle of water; you tip it upside down to try to get the liquid out as swiftly as possible and you can feel the resistance and see the disruption. Or you give it a squeeze to force it out quicker but then there are repeated delays (stop-start, stop-start) while the air feeds back into the bottle for you to press again. The quickest way to get the water out of the bottle is to slow down the flow so it leaves the bottle smoothly. It feels as though it is taking longer than it should but it is quicker than the alternatives that require less patience. Too many drivers still don't seem to 'get' that about busy roads; they are only interested in how quickly they think they can get out of the area and can't see they are the ones causing the congestion and the bottlenecks. This is what the 50mph or 60mph sections of smart motorways are designed to achieve. Very few things are done "for no reason"; the frustration road users feel is usually from not knowing what those reasons are.

If he secures promotion I am sure we will all love him just that little bit more... and the Farke Rap will need updating once again.

Oh, thank Christ! There are some others in the world who think like me. I'm a follower of 'Idiot UK Drivers Exposed' on Facebook and it really isn't good for my blood pressure. Although there is generally appropriate condemnation of every clip showing somebody performing an overtly dangerous manoeuvre, whenever the topic turns to speeding (and particularly fines/cameras/speed traps) there always seems to be a proliferation of people moaning about 'pointless' speed limits and attempting to justify routinely travelling faster than they are legally entitled to. Most of their justifications bear little direct relevance to the actual issue concerned and even where people think the set limit is inappropriate or outdated or they think that speed cameras are only money-generating 'scams' (yes, that word actually gets used; as if people are somehow being tricked into breaking the law), it doesn't excuse the act. What other laws do these people routinely break just because they disagree with them? There is far too much complacency and inattentiveness on the roads and the main reason people speed is because they are so used to getting away with it. To add to the observation made by Broadstairs, I think many drivers have a distorted sense of how much time they are 'losing' when having to drive 10mph slower for half a mile and this gets allied to a general sense of entitlement that pervades British society both on the roads and off them. Safety should be everybody's number one concern on the roads, not shaving one or two minutes off the overall journey time. There seems so little awareness of the danger many drivers pose every time they get behind the wheel, to themselves and to others. The OP seems to me to reflect this lack of self-awareness on the roads. The odd few mph over the limit here and there is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg. These were the few times over a relatively short period, when somebody was there to catch it. The fact that it was several instances over a short period will not be because he was unlucky and happened to be passing a speed camera on the two two or three occasions a year he slipped marginally over the limit; it will be a reflection of his general attitude to driving and his belief he is entitled to drive faster than the law permits. Even if he was inattentive for a few brief moments every so often, that would still be no excuse. Drivers should be fully in control of their vehicles at all times; if their speed wanders then they are not in control and they are not driving with due care and attention. If all motor vehicles had a needle in the seat that jabbed an inch into the driver's backside every time they strayed 1mph over the current limit I am sure every single one of them would quickly find it within their capabilities to keep below the limit. You don't have to driver permanently on the limit; just keep below it. It's Bryan's attitude to driving that has got him the ban; not bad luck or a harsh judge. I'm afraid I have no sympathy with him on this one.

That puts them top as things stand.

Chuckle. Good stuff again. It's the gift that keeps on giving with Lambert, isn't it?

I still don't know what it was actually about. He uttered something in the post-match interview about one of our players running 30 yards to get his player booked or something? Have I missed anything else?

Aye, I don't think we would be anywhere near where we are now without these two exceptional full backs. Whether the scouting and managent team could unearth similar gems with the proceeds of any sale is another question, though.

New and improved. Love it!

I'm pleased for the lad and hope he gets picked up by a top club soon with full England call-ups to follow. I also hope we have a mahoosive sell-on clause with Leicester.