havanatopia

Is indeed a beautiful sight.. Home Away Total P W D L P W D L P W D L F A +/- Pts 1 Wolverhampton Wanderers 8 6 1 1 8 5 1 2 16 11 2 3 29 15 +14 35 2 Cardiff City0-1 8 5 3 0 8 4 1 3 16 9 4 3 21 12 +9 31 3 Bristol City1-0 8 4 3 1 8 4 3 1 16 8 6 2 25 15 +10 30 4 Sheffield United 7 6 0 1 8 4 0 4 15 10 0 5 20 13 +7 30 5 Aston Villa 7 4 3 0 8 3 2 3 15 7 5 3 21 13 +8 26 6 Derby County 6 4 1 1 8 3 3 2 14 7 4 3 21 15 +6 25 7 Leeds United 8 3 2 3 7 4 0 3 15 7 2 6 23 16 +7 23

Get innnnnnn O'Dowda.

Clear as a whistle out here but all the streams are not working; guess they just upload the info just to grab some click ads. First booking for cardiff.. Peltier. Good.

A Philippine international player did I hear? Bruno Mango?

A very nice trumpet rendition there for the Last Post.

Arhhh Smith at RB. I think this line up will be fine. Decent bench.

Bizarre.. just for the friggin straggler national teams as well. Stone a crowsons.

Quite true.. have it ready to go lets see.. doubt it. I do.. but not in a pub. Where have I been; no matches next weekend. Is this yet another international break or FA Cup weekend?

I have that but am meeting up with some friends in the pub and wondered if cric and vip were streaming it; do not particularly want the bar to have my log in info.

Does one think that if this is a 3 at the back that Magners will be more comfortable or less; after all, we all know he prefers to be more central. Also, anybody know if there is a stream of this match anywhere?

Somebody was saying O'Dowda can play right back so it may well be a 4-4-2 or indeed a 3-5-2. I like the curiosity.

Jolly good Pegs. It actually means eat your lamb and sit in the corner... I suppose that could be considered beneath most. A speedy and healthy recovery to our increasing band of injured players need it more.

Right on boss.

Ewch i fwyta rhywfaint oen ac eistedd yn y gornel.

Indeed I do squire although it will be 10pm here!

There are more than 10 million sheep in Wales which accounts for over 80% of the Welsh agricultural economy. In New Zealand, while the number has fallen as the country has diversified into beef and swine, there are 30 million sheep. That is about 1 person for every 7 sheep and in Wales the proportion is 1 for every 3. The subject of sheep is relevant to the subject of football because in the relatively distant past a sheeps bladder was used in the manufacture of a football although it was usually procured from the pig family. I have no statistics on the best sheep bladder but if one assumes that the wool from the Welsh mountain sheep has historically been considered of inferior quality to the English sheep, according to Robert Trow-Smith in his book 'A History of British Livestock Husbandry' , the so too the internals. Sheep have often been used in a derogatory fashion, including on this forum, to talk about football fans from the other side of the bridge. Aside from it being a slight on a football fan, debatable for some, it is also for the sheep. And since I have written much about Cardiff, the city and Cardiff the club I was left with Cardiff the fan. May I request, therefore, that the large part of this opening to a thread is not considered my own personal slight on a Cardiff fan but merely to put forward or hypothesise on the subjects place in the hyperbole of the average English fan and how it all really came about. To set the tone, in the lightest possible way, I derived a commercial from Toyota which, at the time of airing on New Zealand television in 2006, caused an equal measure of hilarity and outrage. The diaspora of British ancestry in New Zealand may very well have pointed toward a Welsh and English divide in those polarised opinions but, alas, that we shall never know. Perhaps it is more subtle in the New World. The New Zealand Advertising Standards Authority determined the phrase 'sheep shagger' , as depicted in the TV commercial, was not viewed as offensive to the majority of New Zealanders. And so ended the issue. I have a friend who lives in Christchurch and he echoes my opinion that in New Zealand the authorities tend to debate an issue firstly and then, if they cannot decide, they usually allow it to be trialled and if nobody is hurt and if there is benefit to the local community then whatever it is one usually finds it being adopted. This pragmatic approach seems to have placed New Zealand in good stead down the years. I suspect this commercial would not even be aired let alone be debated, after the event, back in the motherland. In Prestatyn the phrase was the subject of a 2013 court case, after Anthony Taaffe, yes that was his surname, from Bolton and a guest at a holiday park in Gronant, called an off-duty policeman and security staff "a bunch of sheep shaggers". In Taaffe's defence he claimed that the phrase was "a term for people living in the countryside". He also admitted a second similar offence in which he called a police officer at the custody unit to which he had been taken, a "Welsh sheep shagger". Taaffe was fined £150 after he admitted racially aggravated disorderly behaviour. They clearly don't like it 'up and at em' in Wales. There is not a lot of depth or need for such in understanding where this expression derived; in New Zealand, Like Wales, there are more sheep than people and Australia and England respectively have derogatively used the term because of it. Although the following conversation may have happened at some point in history and places a slightly different slant on the origin making out that the Welsh are perhaps rather cunning and the English, taking something at face value, deferentially fair. Englishman "You are going to have your hand chopped off with an axe because you stole a sheep." Welshman "I was in fact taking the sheep to f--k." Englishman "Oh, thats good then our law endorses sheep shaggers. You will only have to lose a finger. In the Lleyn Peninsula and on the upland plateau between Abergwessin in Brecon and the Devils Bridge in Cardiganshire, to this day, live the purest breed of Welsh sheep. In almost all other areas of Wales the sheep is an amalgam of English and Welsh breeding. The Rhiw Sheep of these two areas is a small tan faced animal light in frame and fleece and virtually unfattable. No wonder Sheep from out yonder were bred in much greater numbers leaving these skinny mountain runts to engage in other obscure pursuits or provide meagre rations of sheep wool for tea towels and old rags. Wales will forever be known for sheep regardless of whether they are of a majority English blood line. The Yorkshireman in charge of the highest placed Welsh team in the football pyramid crosses the border this morning full of outward bravado and not a little confidence. The Welsh may or may not have the last say on this thread. Marvellous folk they are really entrusting their rise to an Englishman who has certainly so far been doing is usual sterling job. That Wales even have teams in an English league is a unique anomaly that much of the world would not understand. I don't really understand it either but thats for another day. Many say this match is a barometer of how much the club have progressed. I doubt it and, moreover, we should simply place faith in the management to do their homework, set up their team and motivate them with their usual knowhow. The end result will not be season defining but it will be very satisfying to witness broad smiles on our faithful flock come 5pm.

Yeah but that article also says he studied a course called 'coma'puter science. So no wonder all the Gas have been in a daze for 2 years and only now waking up to realise what is happening to their club.

And hopefully we can pop Cardiffs also. One poster said words to the effect 'if someone had offered me two away wins at the start of the last two matches I would definitely have taken it'. I think that remark could be contender for classic status. ! Who are you? Show yourself!

Welcome AL, put it on your list of 'to do's' my friend. Well worth it I feel. Lots of decent little pubs and eateries, nice tight ground, on the banks of the Thames, an autumnal evening with beech leaves falling a plenty and the red of City blazing another trail. Gorrrrrrnnnnn.

In 1902 the Manchester City and Wales player, Di Jones, cut his knee on a shard of broken glass during a pre-season match. The wound became infected and he died. City refused to accept liability because it was a friendly. Jones, they maintained, was “not working". There was no insurance cover in place, so his wife and children received nothing. Until 1961 the maximum wage for a football player was capped at £20 per week and £17 during the close season. The intervening years saw many instances of threatened walk outs over pay yet it was not until Fulham's player Jimmy Hill under the auspices of the Professional Footballers Association that the players 'walked off the job' 56 years ago. The decision to strike was the culmination of a campaign that had been going on almost since The League kicked off 125 years ago. When Liverpool first won the championship, in 1900/01, the average wage of their players was £7 a week. The following season The Football League introduced a maximum weekly wage of £4. A remarkable move that you would simply not witness today. In 1920 it stood at £9, but four years later it was down to £8. Fast forward to 1953, the year of “the Matthews final”, and the upper limit was still only £15, reduced to £13 over the summer. Before the Second World War a footballer’s pay was above that of the average worker. By 1960, despite the advent of television and European competition, the gap had closed. To the consternation of the Pools companies, the strike was scheduled for Saturday 21st January. There were signs that the clubs’ resolve was weakening, with a handful of wealthy clubs alert to the advantage they might gain from being able to attract their rivals' stars. Even Bob Lord, the outspoken Burnley chairman, suddenly conceded there should be no wage-ceiling. In contrast, his counterpart at nearby Blackburn Rovers, Jim Wilkinson, argued that even a £30 maximum must be opposed as “it would be suicide for many clubs.” The chairman of the Trades Union Congress, Ted Hill, appealed to the public to boycott matches that went ahead. He also warned darkly that the labour movement would “remember the blacklegs when they finish in football and want to come back into industry.” Then, with 72 hours to go before the master winger became a striker and picket lines were manned at grounds around England, the League management committee persuaded the clubs to agree to abolish the maximum wage. The PFA, emboldened by the news, opted not to call off the strike. There had been no mention by the League of the union’s other historic bugbear, the retain-and-transfer system, which, as the redoubtable League secretary Alan Hardaker put it candidly, “enabled a club to retain a player against his will at the end of his contract and, not only that, to pay him less money while doing so.” Hill and two union officials were summoned to the Ministry of Labour to negotiate with Hardaker, League president and Barnsley chairman Joe Richards and Chelsea chairman Joe Mears. The PFA again prevailed. The strike was off. The first player to benefit from the abolition of the maximum wage was Johny Haynes of Fulham who must have thanked fellow Cottager Jimmy Hill profusely in what was a life changing moment for many players. Haynes' salary jumped five fold to £100 per week and he became the first in history to do so. And from the relative hardship and 'slave' like contracts that footballers were subject to came this militancy of revolt which not only changed the wage settlement but also the contracts under which players were subjected. Jimmy Hills' predecessor and first PFA Chairman was Jim Guthrie of Portsmouth who relied less on Hills' PR skills and more on old-fashioned militancy which he thrust it into the heart of the debate over pay. Guthrie made a well-publicised trip to Molineux to meet Billy Wright and other Wolves stars. After a dressing-room ballot, a game against Athletic Bilbao had to be cancelled. Guthrie argued that night games under the lights were outside of normal work hours and that the players should be paid overtime. Today the balance of power has shifted towards the players. Pay levels within the higher reaches of the English game mean that certain individuals earn more in a week than Stanley Matthews and his generation made in a lifetime. The Bosman ruling of 1995, which gave the footballers freedom to move without a transfer fee when their contracts were up, further strengthened their position. And most would not argue that it has shifted far too much towards the players. We have Jimmy Hill's determination to blame for setting that in train and yet at the time and well into the 80's few would have begrudged the players their rising income when they usually have such a short career. Johny Haynes made a club record 594 league appearances for Fulham spanning 18 years from 1952 to 1970 and scoring a very impressive 146 goals as an old fashioned inside forward. Haynes died at the rather young age of 71 in 2005 but he is eternally remembered with his statue outside Craven Cottage. His England career is equally impressive with 56 England caps and 18 goals and he also captained the national team and took part in two world cups. Haynes was known as a precocious passer with neat and tidy control of the ball and his England career would surely have sent him to the 1966 World Cup were it not for a car accident which curtailed it. Driving at night along the Blackpool front after a Fulham-Blackpool game, he was involved in an accident which left his knee severely damaged. He fought his way back to play for Fulham, but was never again called upon by England though he was still only 31 when England won the 1966 World Cup. Craven Cottage is always for me a favourite London venue. Having lived or worked nearby in the past it was a brisk walk for a 3pm or evening kick off during what I recall fondly as balmy late summer evenings in days gone by. I particularly recall that season when Kevin Keegan was in charge and City were fighting tooth and nail with them at the top of the 3rd Division. Those were particularly remembered matches. I hope the evening kick off today is at least a dry one. Enjoy a nice pint of Fullers and enjoy the game y'all and help City bring back the 3 points. My thanks to the EFL for much of the text of this match thread and I humbly remove the word 'Official' from this day forward; what was I thinking. !

Give me all the time in the world and I am a good passer. Under pressure I am poor. Can I have a trial? No surprise there; look how far and fast they have fallen.

Decent win. well done City.

Apparently its Sunderland 2 City 1 .. courtesy of the rad Briz guy.. numpty.

Blimey Preston cannot hold a lead today.

7 hours ahead here.. it helps!