Icecream Snow

"Wood emerged as a top target for Newcastle as he has a £20m-£25m release clause in his Burnley contract." Pretty crazy for a 30 year old with 18 months left on his contract

When you use the clubs own money to buy it, and still haven't bought it fully, should set off a few alarms bells.

TIFO video that's well worth a watch. Whilst it's on Man United it highlights the issues that a modern midfielder has, and the complex skillset required. Modern teams are so good at pressing now, and teams are needing players in the double pivot who can receive the ball from defence against the press, move it up the pitch, but still be able to break up play with the necessary physicality and athleticism. Basically the point of the article is that someone like Scott Tominay at 6' 4" isn't considered very good in the double pivot 6/8 position, and even at world class clubs people are struggling to find players who can play in that position..

But Johnson's never followed the science, he's ignored it until he's backed into a corner, at which point he finds some excuse. It's always about the politics, and he never does anything until he's forced to, and when it arguably could have been handled more effectively earlier. In October 2020, Starmer wrote to Johnson supporting Sage's call for a two week circuit break over half term, which he completely ignored. Then we ended up with a seven month lockdown starting near Christmas with Johnson using the South African variant (beta?) as the excuse. Since he got away with 1200+ deaths a day in January/February 2020, I'm assuming he thinks the worst is now over. Which is probably true after the vaccination program, but the NHS is still struggling to cope.

I think it depends a lot of peoples circumstances, prior to Mar 2020 I was doing 2-3 hours travelling a day to get to work and back, so that frees up a lot of time for me and gives me the opportunity to do things socially that normally I wouldn't have had the time to do. I get on with my work colleagues, but I wouldn't say we were friends.

At my workplace, IT staff have been told that we're working from home in 2022 and possibly never going back full time. We've got employees in USA, Belgium, India and the UK, and especially in India it's seen as a big factor in employee retention. I've worked six days in the office since March 2020 without issue. However I did hear from a work colleague that a certain colossal tech giant is going to force all their staff back in the office as they've invested so much money in office space that they feel they have to make use of it.

From the Athletic Pivotal to any sale of Southampton is Gao Jisheng, the Chinese businessman who paid between £180 million and £200 million to purchase an 80 per cent stake in the club from Katharina Liebherr in 2017. Since that initial investment, however, Gao hasn’t put another penny in. It must also be said that he hasn’t ever taken a penny out, either. To get through the pandemic, Southampton’s hierarchy had to turn to MSD Capital to secure a £78.8 million loan; with the interest at 9.14 per cent, repayments will cost them £7.2 million a year.

TIFO did a good article on Southampton, well worth watching

Think it's the opposite. The interview Kieran Scott did a while back said they had a small, tight team, which means that when one or two heads leave in quick succession it can cause a bit of turmoil.

By all accounts the recruitment this summer was a bit of a mess due to international scout Chris Jones leaving for Crystal Palace at the end of May, Kieran Scott wasn't involved as he was off to Middlesbrough, and Manchester City recruited one of our analysts. I'd heard that a lot of our top targets got better offers elsewhere.

Two seconds ago you didn't know who they were or what they did. You still don't know what they do. But hey, If you've got a fantasy narrative that they forced Webber to sign Sargent, then there's no point trying to explain anything to you.

She's not head of recruitment, she's head of emerging talent. Lee Dunn is head of recruitment. https://www.canaries.co.uk/content/club-issues-update-on-football-and-recruitment-structure

She's widely acknowledged as the person who noticed Emi Buendia's stats and recommended that Keiran Scott take a proper look at him.

More like 40 million Zimbabwean dollars

Doubt it, I'd argue elections have been won over the last forty years on who promised the lowest taxes, irrespective of what that meant to public services. Blair only came to power because he promised to match Tory policy and not put up taxes in the first term and had Murdoch's support as well.

Amazing deals https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/27/brexit-the-biggest-disaster-that-any-government-has-ever-negotiated Spurrell predicted in January that Brexit would cost him £250,000 in sales. “We lost £270,000, so I got one thing right,” he said, describing the post-Brexit EU trade deal as the “biggest disaster that any government has ever negotiated in the history of trade negotiations”. His online retail business was hit immediately after the Brexit negotiator David Frost failed to secure a frictionless trade deal addressing sales to individual customers in the EU. Spurrell said he had lost 20% of sales overnight after discovering he needed to provide a £180 health certificate on each order, including gift packs costing £25 or £30. He said the viability of his online retail had come to a “dead stop”. Spurrell said he had pursued new business in Norway and Canada but post-Brexit trade deals sealed by the government had put barriers in place. “We no longer have any ability to deal with the EU as our three distributors in Germany, France and Italy have said we have become too expensive because of the new checks and paperwork. “And now we’ve also lost Norway since the trade deal, as duty for wholesale is 273%. Then we tried Canada but what the government didn’t tell us is that duty of 244% is applied on any consignment over $20 [£15].” That meant Canadian customers who ordered a gift pack worth £50, including transport fees, were asked to pay £178 extra in duty when the courier arrived at their door, Spurrell said. “As you can imagine, customers were saying: ‘You can take that back, we don’t want it anymore’.” Norwegian duty on a £30 cheese pack amounted to £190 extra, he said.

So is former Chief of Staff Dominic Cummings a banned word, or did I misspell it ?

Both Sturgeon and Drakeford were sensible enough not to break the rules. I know Sturgeon had a minor transgression or two, but starting with ****'s trip to Barnard Castle, and now with the various Tory parties, it's hard for the English public to take tough measures from the Johnson administration seriously.

Liz Truss is to Machiavelli what Boris Johnson is to succinctly answering a question.

Stealing from the Guardian. SO the number of cases is accelerating rapidly, but a smaller percentage of those cases being admitted to hospital

Possible. I'd suggest that his mate and ex-director of communications Lee Cain is probably involved somehow as well. Given how aggressive the likes of BBC and Sky are being without fear of reprisal, it feels like the king makers behind Johnson have given up on him, and are prepared to watch him fall off the cliff.

Sounds like the Allegra Stratton tapes have more to offer *munches popcorn* 😂

Maybe she's a great choice, she already has plenty of experience in caving in during negotiations, especially with Australia.

I don't like either side, but looked like Fraser ran into the keeper well after the ball had gone on the slow motion replay.

Eddie Howe's got them all trained at RADA, great at playing for free kicks, and going down under the slightest touch as if they'd been shot.