Orly

It's a big call by Daniel to shift him on. He wasn't dreadful at any point in the prem (perhaps bar Southampton), and he single-handedly controlled dozens of games for us over two seasons in the championship. There'd be no reason to assume he couldn't replicate that form this season, so I hope whoever takes his place is up to the task, because they are some pretty big boots to fill at Championship level.

Kevin Muscat I presume?

Hah, the irony of getting out of 'financial fair play' by throwing 8 million at the FA to make it go away.

If you'd had offered me £10 million for Todd at the start of this season I would have laughed all the way to the bank. Such was his rate of development this season, I'll still take 10 million (with a sell on clause), but slightly grumble about it on the way to the bank.

I'm not going to pile on Daniel here in terms of his job security, I want him to stay - but I feel this is on him. His continual "we are favourites for position 20" schtick, and talking about "we cannot bring players with enormous quality so we must work with what we have", etc. Translated, to the squad this says "you're all sh1t". At the very least from a psychological perspective it seems like a bad idea. I suppose the argument could be made that he was taking the pressure off them, but it very evidently didn't work.

On this showing we'd be lucky to recoup the £1 million we paid York.

Was literally shouting this at the TV at that precise moment.

No porkies - possible that I can't count, but regardless am not impressed with him thus far in this match, and I didn't expect much from him beforehand. Also, where can I find in game player stats - do you have a link? Looked but couldn't find them.

Duda has given away the ball 4 times, from the 4 times he's had possession by my count.

I particularly liked how the commentators tied themselves in knots trying to make it sound like Igahlo and Maguire's 2 yard shinned finishes were somehow better than Cantwell's 20 yarder (keeper could have done better, & 'really difficult to get yourself in the position to finish like that (re: igahol) ps - no it's not). Do they have zero awareness of themselves?

Have some of that McTominay you dirty b#st#rd.

Would like to see Leitner get a run out, even though I seem to remember him being fairly cr@p in his last start (Bournemouth?). Best - if at all possible - to keep him 'on side' for our inevitable Championship season next year, where he'll be an invaluable asset if mentally up for it.

Noble subject, I take my leave of you ,my friend. My reply was very evidently a joke, and life is too short. Laters.

The same thing all the other non-football threads (brexit, covid, etc) were doing here - being a distraction from a rather depressing season. Thanks to those who listened. Ps - '..and Smith', and also 'South Sider', if your siblings are on Radio Norfolk, you have my consent to post your own plug without condemnation, am happy to turn the other cheek, even if it is basically welded to the couch in this weather. Now I think about it, maybe the phrase doesn't mean THAT cheek...

Nuked for privacy reasons

Resident Trybull-fanboy 'offense-taken-mode' activated.

This is a wind up, surely? Have any other squads suffered so many injuries since the resumption, because if not, I think now would be the time to stop blaming "bad luck" and start looking at what we are doing to contribute to these injuries and take action.

I'm getting my popcorn ready for this thread in advance.

And, if the virus is carried in droplets of spit, you wouldn't want to be on the other side of a debate with Mr Carragher would you? 😇

Also, if they ARE asymptomatic, that would presumably mean that they are at least slightly less contagious, as no symptoms means no coughing? Therefore no guarantee of them infecting anyone else? (I know it can still theoretically be transferred via droplets just from breathing, but there'll be far fewer of the droplets as opposed to coughing?)

You're welcome to query anything I post Nutty - just because we may or may not hold differing opinions to each other doesn't mean there has to be any ill intent. Whilst sporting events are of course "unimportant" in and of themselves when compared to life and death scenarios, the resuming of the premier league (and others) would serve as a paradigm of how we can triumph over the adversity of this virus and return to some semblance of normal life. We can't control the virus (yet, contrary to Boris' slogan), but we can control what we do and how we act in the presence of this virus.

Well there's a very simple reason to, but it's based on the following supposition: The virus is - quite possibly - never going away. It may NEVER get any better. The vulnerable may ALWAYS be at risk. And so then the question becomes, how long do we adjust / restrict our way of living? Granted, that's a really bleak thought, but if you consider how in the grand scheme of things, we're one misplaced asteroid away from becoming human paper mache, or one despot away from nuclear war. I think it's important to keep living, before the chance to live is taken out of our hands entirely (by death from covid, or any other numerous causes). Economic arguments pale into insignificance by comparison of the fact that to have a life, you have to live. I like this quote from some old Roman dude called Epictetus who said "I cannot escape death; but cannot I escape the dread of it? Must I die trembling and lamenting?”. To clarify - I'm not accusing you of 'trembling' at all - you've been going to work as a key worker - but I think it's a great phrase to be borne in mind in this pandemic situation.

That's the real question isn't it, which we current have different answers to. But, IMO, the risk is so negligibly low for healthy people, that all of our efforts should be focused on protecting the vulnerable (i.e shielding them, rather than hoping that we can get rid of the virus by social distancing and isolation alone), rather than restricting the activities of the healthy. Always good to hear counter arguments though.

The reason why it's much, much, MUCH safer to restart the premier league, versus telling every man and his dog they can play football again, is fairly obvious. There are 20 teams, with 25 odd players, with around the same number of staff and support staff, all subject to regular testing and procedure. Totalling in the low thousands I imagine (fag packet maths). If we, as a significant percentage of a populace of 30 million-ish blokes went and started playing football together, that would be a considerably different proposition.

"WoN'T SoMEbODY THiNK oF THE CHILDREN PREmIER LEAGuE FOoTBALlERS" Sorry, not on a wind up or trying to be an @rse. The protectionist argument for footballers just greatly amuses me.