Feedthewolf

Morning all! A bit of a banker by my standards this week, but the odds look rather generous. Atletico Madrid are 7-0-0 at home (F17 A7), whereas Almeria are rock bottom without a win all season and an away record of 0-1-6 (F6 A19). Odds are around 2/9, which is still pretty short, but should be a lot shorter IMO – if it was Barca or Real at home, it'd probably be about 1/12! As for the Norwich match, Preston are on a poor run of form (lost their last three) and also have a tendency to ship goals. You'd expect them to come to Carrow Road looking to shore up and sit tight, but BTTS has still been a staple of our season so far. As such, I think Adam Idah to score anytime and a draw (11/1 on Bill Hill) looks a decent shout. Best of luck, everyone!

This is amazing stuff! Has anyone ever managed 12/12 on a double set of six before?! Best of luck tonight @TIL 1010! And congrats @Mr Angry on the match bet win! Coupled with wins for both the men's and women's teams, I make that a bloody good weekend all round.

I reckon four points from the next two. I think we'll beat Preston, who have lost their last three, and then draw against Wednesday. I also think we'll sneak a draw at Portman Road, although I'm fully prepared for our 14-year run of dominance to come to an end.

I will reply to this in more detail later, don't let me forget! Busy day at Wolf Towers...

For anyone who's genuinely interested in artificial intelligence, I thoroughly recommend 'The Coming Wave' by Mustafa Suleyman. The advances that AI has made in the past 18 months or so are exponential and incredible even by the standards of technology and Moore's Law. In every area of society, business and technology, harnessing AI will be absolutely fundamental to success. It sounds to me like we're using Attanasio's historical predilection for statistical analysis in baseball with Knapper's expertise from Arsenal, and hopefully between them they'll have the smarts to execute something that could give us a significant advantage. With the way AI is going, it's not even the ability to use it to analyse impossibly large and ever-increasing datasets to find patterns; it's about using deep learning to get it to create its own algorithms and analyses based on what you want specifics you want it to find. This is why people without a programming background are now able to easily create their own very specific GPTs and even sell them on to other people who are interested in similar outcomes. A one-size-fits-all approach to data in football will soon be completely anachronistic; it's the ability to know what questions and prompts to input to allow the incredible computing power to find you those marginal gains. A truly fascinating time in human history, and the 'data arms race' within football will already have begun behind the scenes. EDIT: And the bit I forgot is that the power is increasing expotentially, as is the accessibility, therefore the cost will reduce dramatically too due to the 'race to the bottom' that will inevitably occur.

I've heard worse language from twats. (Sorry, that's a callback to another thread from earlier.)

Yeah fair enough, wrong choice of words. Can't argue with anything you've posted there.

The use of the word 'supposed' implied that I was not taking the comment as fact. The whole nature of my post was that it's much more nuanced than just dividing fans between 'the good ones' who don't complain and 'the bad ones' who do.

Spot on. And they need to realise that making sweeping generalisations such as these will, in turn, lead to more (and more vociferous) criticism. A lot of Delia's supposed supportive 80% (of which I am one) would no doubt agree that the language used over the past few days is entirely unfair on the supporters. It's such divisive rhetoric to divide the fanbase into 'wonderful fans' (those who don't complain) and 'boo boys' (who do complain). We all have a lifelong vested interest in this football club, and we're all entitled to our opinions. Even though I know there is a small minority of fans who are vitriolic and deeply unpleasant, there are probably a huge number of loyal, fair-minded and reasonable supporters who are entirely unappreciative of the way she and her husband have behaved in recent days. The complete straight-batting of Connor Southwell's very reasonable question about governance was especially galling. For a couple who have spent their entire lives in the media, they don't half drop some PR blunders. It might be prudent at this juncture to show a bit more humility; in their advanced years, it should be more apparent than ever to them that while they are still 'majority shareholders', they are 'custodians' of a priceless community asset rather than 'owners' of a commodity. I do hope the end of their tenure is not bookmarked by an increasing amount of sniping at the fans. It's not a good look.

Just thought I'd pop in to say how delighted I am to learn that 'twats' gets through the swear filter. Twats.

@nutty nigel, just to keep my 100% picking record up, please can I replace the postponed Blackpool v Forest Green pick with Galatasaray to win away to Pendikspor?

So literally everything Mark Attanasio has said in that transcript is 'shambolic, unfocused drivel'? I suggest you read it again without your confirmation bias glasses on and try to find a bit more perspective. Sure, there are some toe-curling one-liners from Smith & Jones, but if you can see nothing but 'drivel' in the Attanasio quotes then I seriously wonder about your capacity to understand what's actually happening at the club.

It's 'one of those', isn't it. None of us will ever know exactly what is thought or said behind the scenes, but it's certainly not beyond the realms of possibility that the alleged desire to speak to prospective owners was just a smokescreen until recently when they knew they were getting too old to continue. As with everything, I'd expect the truth is somewhere in the middle ground; on the one hand they love running the club and don't want to part with it, and on the other hand they care deeply about it and want to make absolutely sure that when the time comes they hand over to the 'right' person. A few years ago there was that ill-advised Henry Winter interview where they said something along the lines of "we don't even listen to offers... Tom will inherit our shares... I'm sure some fans won't like it but that's the way it is". That stance has obviously softened now, but I do genuinely think that in the past couple of years they've gone about the potential handover in the right way. Love them or loathe them, they know the club inside out, know the area and the community, and want to make sure it remains in good hands once they've moved on. How we arrived at this point is almost immaterial now; all that matters is the cut of Attanasio's jib. I, for one, am impressed with what I've seen and heard so far.

It does make sense if you consider the amount of stock that D&M placed in the Webbers to run the club for them, rightly or wrongly.

Yes, that's about where I'm at. Whatever accusations are levelled at Stuart Webber, he found Attanasio to take Foulger's shares, and it certainly looks from reading that interview as if he really knows what he's doing. If that's Webber's lasting legacy, then it could prove a very adequate counterbalance to the decline we've seen since summer 2021. I think this could be about the best outcome we could hope for given the obvious worsening of on-pitch results and reduction in squad quality/value. We're still 'self-funding', but the 'self' doing the funding is much richer, much better connected, and much more willing to speculate to accumulate. There will be a painful and long-drawn-out transitional period, sure, but it certainly seems that the combined minds of Knapper (from a footballing perspective, with years of experience at Arsenal to draw on) and Attanasio (from a business perspective, with huge amounts of capital and sports team ownership expertise to draw on) could be a really good match for the club. This season could be arduous, but we're not going down and we're not going up. Fingers crossed that at some point in the next six months we have a new head coach with a more progressive style to look forward to, as well as a clearly defined pathway to reducing the average age of the squad, using our statistical model to unearth more diamonds in the rough, and the re-establishment of a tangibly attractive playing style that runs from the Academy through to the first team.