TheRock

The antics that the "Big Six" showed during the Coronavirus season, and subsequently trying to enact the Super League exodus must not be forgotten. Not to mention the way that all of these clubs hypocritically accuse each other of "Buying Success", but yet they are all complicit in throwing around money as much as one another. Liverpool should be universally detested by all english clubs, more so the clubs that lost out as a result of the Heysel Ban. Their fans booing the national anthem every time they play at Wembley is also very crass, likewise with regularly not observing pre-match minute silences. Celtic are also constantly guilty of this. Although he is now on the way out, personally I find Klopp often lacks professionalism and can come across as a sore loser, much like Ferguson often was at Man United. When Ipswich had the likes of Sheepshank and later Marcus Evans at the helm, they were a despisable club, their incompetence epitomised by the fact of entering administration upon PL relegation. Fortunately for Town, they have gotten their act together a bit recently with new ownership that actually seem interested in the team, and a manager that plays decent attacking football. Apart from that, there have been several clubs with several unfavourable spells which have not won the plaudits with me, but nothing that has made me permenantly detest other teams.

So essentially, it has been 'railroaded in' by the FA and PL only, with limited to no consultation with anyone else. That is astounding.

Five things have massively ruined the FA Cup for me in the last 20 or so years: Semi Finals always played at Wembley. This is ridiculous and a money-grab by the FA to to continue to pay for the white elephant New Wembley, also takes the prestige away from actually reaching the final. It was before my time, but I bet anyone who went to the Everton SF in 1989 or the Sunderland SF in 1991 would concur with this. Not playing The FA Cup Final on a stand-alone day, once all four leagues have finished. This shows complete contempt for the competition. Kick off times now moved to random times to cater for foreign TV coverage. This just damages attendances, lets be honest if a 3rd Round match is scheduled on a Monday at 8pm kick-off during the second week of January and isn't televised in the UK, no one is going to show any interest. VAR. No words needed for this one. Although how can VAR be used in some third/fourth/fitfth round matches and not others, no integrity in the standards of officiating in the competition ? and now Replays binned. As mentioned a stupid and hypocritical decision no doubt instigated by the PL clubs due to fixture congestion and travel. Yet they swan off to the Middle-East, East Asia or the USA every pre-season and jetset everywhere.

Do you ever watch it? I watched it probably for only the second time in many years since David Dimbleby stopped chairing it. All I can say is that it wasn't a very civil debate, at times more like a shouting match that you'd expect to see in a school or university classroom, goaded on by Fiona Bruce constantly screeching over the panelists. Members in the audience chatting as much unrelated rubbish, whilst the panelists skirt around the actual questions and inevitably descend into ad-hominem attacks on one another. On the rare occasion nowadays that I have free time in an evening to watch any political show, I find Iain Dale's evening show on LBC a lot more entertaining, civil and non-partisan.

Could the Iran/Israel escalation in the Middle East be a major catalyst in deciding the US election?

Another scandalous decision that benefits the Big PL clubs, at the expense of those in the lower divisions who will lose revenue as a result of this decision. Very sad indeed.

If we better Hull's result this weekend, we are probably there. Currently 6pts clear, another 0.1 of a point for us on Goal Difference and another 0.1 of a point for Goals Scored. Bonus for us if Leicester turn up against West Brom on Saturday. A match in-hand is Hull v Coventry next Wednesday, we probably lean towards a result for Coventry, more so if Hull win this weekend. Draw would be beneficial. All Wagner needs to get them to do is focus on winning these two home games, the rest is noise. Don't rest until we are mathematically clear.

Also - not a goal but Grant Holt's return to Carrow Road with Huddersfield was quite bizarre, i think we beat them 5 or 6 nil. Every one of touches or interaction got a massive cheer and applause, with a tongue-in-cheek chant or two of "you fat b*****d", "blue and white s**te" etc. The second half of that game for like a makeshift testimonial for him. 😂

A few spring to mind. Peter Crouch getting a very good reception on returning to Carrow Road after a thirteern year hiatus, when he scored and Stoke beat us 0-1 in 2018/19, The other is Hooper's volley away at Rotherham the season that we won the play-offs. The Rotherham fans were buoyant in the pub before the match that day anyway, as they smugly believed that they were going to avoid relegation, which was reinforced when they bagged a late equaliser against us, and Millwall let in a late goal meaning Rotherham had control of their own fate. Then of course, there's Suarez's goal where he megged our CB (Eliot Ward?) and lobbed Ruddy from nearly 50 yards for his hat-trick, probably one of the best goals at Carrow Road in recent years.

Is he related to Nick Griffin? Or Peter Griffin?

In terms of a prediction it's a high-stakes game for both teams. If Town lose that's a massive torpedo to their hopes of a top-two finish. If we lose we risk finishing outside of the Play-Offs which will mean Wagner's position becoming untenable and inevitably selling players in the summer. A draw would not be as detrimental to us as it would be for them, espeically if Leeds and/or Leicester notch another win tomorrow. I think if its 0-0 or 1-1 at ~75 minutes, the nasty "shut-up shop", "anti-football", "DEFCON-1", "ball-in-the-sky" tactics may be deployed.

An interesting stat that the Pink Un pounced on today: Sargent is looking to bag for the 10th home game on the bounce. For those of you who like a bet you can get odds of just under 2/1.

The below has some quite interesting data in. It suggests South Norfolk will be held by Tories. https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49061-yougov-mrp-labour-now-projected-to-win-over-400-seats Some interesting analysis regarding Reform in there too. It looks like no possible sweatheart deals will help the Tories this time. The Tory/Reform vote is split, but even if thier vote share becomes "unsplit" like in 2019, neither party can get within toucing distance of the Labour polling numbers in nearly any seats, even Ashfield where Anderson's seat is would be a coin flip.

Headlines this morning, Sunak says UK will leave the ECHR if Rwanda flights are legally blocked, and Tories win at the GE. Leaving the ECHR is one of Reform Party's main policies. Talk about desperate.

True, albeit Farage did get very close when he stood in Thanet, a few polls had gave him the seat prior to the vote as no one expected Tories to clear up as well as they did in 2015. That was nine years ago and he has a much bigger following since then, nevertheless the only realistic way for him to win a seat if he stood on a Tory ticket and Reform stood aside for him, otherwise he will always lose to a split vote. Agree regarding Johnson not wanting to be in opposition, plus he is supposedly coining it in heavier than ever now he isn't an MP.

Very true. Sunak's best-case scenario is to stave off calling the GE for as long as possible. And then resign quietly when he inevitably loses. You're right it seems like a bit of a poisoned challice, especially if they do change leader after the GE, they'll have much fewer MPs and less pedigree to chose from. All the potential sucessors are on the right of the party too, apart from Mourdant. The "Boris act II" rumors, and the Farage rumours won't go away either, they may well be able to jockey for position easier in a leadship contest if the percentage of the right-leaning factions within the party keep their seats against the overall number of Tory MPs.

How about something a little more punchy, such as Rule Britannia? Another good one would be There Will Always Be An England.

Who thinks that Sunak may be out on his ear before Christmas? Wouldn't be suprised if louder calls for him to go will resurface again in May if (when) the Tory vote is decimated at the Local Elections. The 1922 may want to try and obtain a new leader before a GE to limit the damage.

#4 is Elliot Ward. #2 might be Butterworth?

Liz Truss 🎣

Agreed, he seemed to get run over in FPTP every time. I think he won't run again unless he is given a safe Tory seat (no longer such thing!), or a Tory nomination at a by-election in a Tory constituency where Reform would stand aside for him, which the Tories would never let happen. Credit to him that despite never being an MP, he has effectively had a stranglehold on aspects of British politics. He forced the 2016 EU Ref after 19 years of campaigning, got Cameron sacked, and gave Boris Johnson a golden ticket to a huge majoirty at the expense of Corbyn and Swinson by pulling his candidates at the 2019GE. He has also had a huge hand in Rishi's ongoing downfall by exposing the English Channel migration debacle, and now has a faction of sycophants within the Tories headed up by Liz Truss. Farage knows his place now, and that's to be his own mouthpiece from the sidelines on trash like GB news, and to sabotage the Tories by holding them to ransom until they have to listen to him.

Unfortunately anyone who has played football at any level knows that 'conning the Referee' using hyperbole, exaggeration and angle shooting is very much part of the game, gainsmanship is ingrained in the culture of football, not ever a huge amount of respect like there is in Rugby. It's all about having the discipline to not react. If it had been a Norwich player conning The Referee to get one of the Boro players off, we would have been lauding them as a genius. Remember Bradley Johnson getting Joey Barton sent at Loftus Road for a 'headbutt'? It's just insult to injury that it was Howson involved, who had a good tenure at his time with Norwich, was the antagonist which has left a sour taste for many. As for VAR in the Championship, a big No Thanks, it is barely working in the top divisions, I think it would be the tipping point in for many fans of all clubs losing interest. One of the pros of this season is how good and free-flowing the matches and decisions are if both teams come to play football. Mistakes will happen in the EFL but as we are a big fish in a small pond, we will always have time in a match to get over poor decisions.

The best point that I could suggest for this topic is that if we were not banned from Europe in the 80's after Heysel, our club would have probably would have had the extra quality in our squad to win those competitions in the 90's, as we would have attracted much better players and a bigger following. I recall hearing on Talksport a few years ago, Adrian Heath was on as a guest, he said that the three bigest losers by far as a result of the Heysel ruling to ban English Clubs were Everton, Norwich and Nottingham Forest, who could have had very different fortunes if they allowed into the European Competitions in the late 80's. All three clubs of course fell off in the mid 90's.

It's funny for all the years that they were playing brilliant football under Robson, they only scooped two trophies. Since then they have achieved very little. Even in the late 80's and early 90's we were the better team, worth remembering that we were barred from Europe for (at least) three seasons due to the Heysel Disaster.

What a couple of weeks, first Galloway winning in Rochdale, now this! The whole Lee Anderson fiasco has massively blown up in Rishi's and the Tories faces. Their poll numbers are now going to be damaged even further with Reform likely picking up more support as mouthpiece Anderson in Parliament will inevitably get more air time now. A pie-in-the-face decision that they let this bloke hold the position of Vice Chair of the Conversatives considering he was under a Labour ticket not long ago, with a patchy record of evicting travellers with a privately hired digger 😂 It gives the feeling of a very similar situation to ~10 years ago look at when Carswell and Reckless left The Tories for UKIP, skewing the poll numbers as Tories were scared of haemoraging votes over the EU issue and Cameron's failed negotiations with Brussels. That was one of the catalysts in Cameron calling the EU referendum shortly after winning the 2015 GE, his arrogance in winning the 2014 Scottish IndyRef and the 2015GE thought he could squash the Brexit issue and mute the UKIP/Farage threat for at least a generation. Totally agree with that. The only winner out of this debacle at this year's GE will be Labour, as they will scoop up some easy extra seats as Reform will siphon votes from the already very weak Tories. Barring any own goals, Labour should easily win a hundred plus majority with what's going on.