LondonBristolian

That is really positive to know. That support is so vital and I am really glad you have found it to be in place. Best of luck in your own battle.

Time will tell. In Fairness to him, the style of play for the first few games after his appointment was a definite improvement from the tail end of Johnson’s reign. He really did not adapt to injuries to players like Weimann or Mawson and we were awful by the end but he might - or of course might not - have learned from what went wrong with us.

Good for him. We had some good performances early on under him and it was clear in interviews that he thinks a lot about the game. I think the major issue with us was that too many things went wrong that season for a new inexperienced manager to cope with and it all slid out of control. A bit more luck at Charlton and he might actually do okay.

I think this is the major question. There is no doubt Kalas is an asset but, even without a need for us to cut costs post-COVID, it would be incredibly difficult for us to offer him a contract on the same terms unless we are 100% confident his fitness issues are sorted. And the fact Baker was a gamble which sadly did not pay off for us or him might even be a factor against us offering Kalas terms. But, as you say, Kalas might find other clubs are unwilling to gamble on him at the same kind of wage level so he may need to accept a salary drop wherever he goes. I think it will ultimately come down to pragmatism. I suspect the reason that Baker was re-signed in 2021 and Vyner was not offloaded this summer was a simple calculation that those decisions represented better value for money than any alternatives out there. I suspect the decision for Kalas will be based on the question of whether we can get a centre-back who - in terms of fitness, quality and wage - represents better value or not. If not then Kalas will be retained.

Genuine question - what are the benefits to the club of declaring before the window whether fresh terms have been offered to the players? I can see why fans would be curious about it but it's not obvious to me what the club gains by going public on negotiations. In fact, you could argue that Ashton's public comments on Diediou two years ago seemed to have a damaging and divisive effect on morale. Isn't it in the club's interests to keep negotiations private?

Best wishes to him. Hope the treatment is successful, the side effects as minimal as they can be and that he is fully recovered and playing again as soon as possible. I also really hope him and his family are getting all the support they need.

Exactly.

My feeling is he's someone who managers and players will like more than fans in that, based off the impression given by managers, what he does well is execute the manager's tactical plan is the way they want it implemented but without being especially spectacular in doing so. But you could say the same about Jordan Henderson, who was racked up over 300 Liverpool appearances, a Premier League and Champions League medal and an international cup final without most fans working out what he is good at. (Mount obviously has the Champions League win and tournament final appearance too). In Bristol City terminology, I think he's a bit like Matty James. James' contribution during games isn't always obvious but it was very obvious how much worse we were tactically when he was injured.

I think it worth saying is as well that he still 23. He certainly didn't have a great tournament, he needs to up his goals and/or assists and I don't think there is a case for him as a first choice starter for England at present but I think he is (deservedly) going to be part of the England set-up for a good many years to come.

My fear is that the last sentence is where the truth lies. It is easy to criticise Cardiff, and it is right to criticise them as well as they're responsible for their actions but I couldn't say, hand on heart, that I truly believed that other clubs wouldn't also do all they could to avoid financial responsibility for a player who died just after he signed for them. Cardiff come across as callous, crass and insensitive and I really hope City would do things differently in the same circumstances but I'm not going to pretend to be confident on that.

Even if England go out, a semi-final, final and quarter final puts him miles ahead of everyone who is not Alf Ramsay.

Four month injury in October. Back late Jan/early Feb I think.

Did all our central defenders fall down an open manhole?

I'm absolutely gutted for the guy. Quite aside from the severity of injury, it's looking like potentially around 18 months out at a crucial stage of his career and he's going need a strong mentality to play catch up when he comes back. Really rooting for him.

Maybe getting ahead of myself based on the hype but - if Bell is off on loan (which I've no idea is true or not - could Elijah Morrison be a factor? Bell would be the player most vulnerable to being overtaken by a promising wide forward breaking through from nowhere...

Not certain if I am going yet - I usually go for work and think I will next year but it is not certain. But, if so, I’m really happy he is playing. On the one hand I might well end up watching him and, on the other, he’ll pull crowds away from everything else so - if there are better options - they won’t be so crowded.

Personally I think you'd need to be quite easily offended to get upset about someone satirising British behaviour in Indian restaurants. I don't want to speak for anyone else but I wasn't personally offended by it and I've never personally met anyone whose told me that sketch had a negative impact on their life. On the other hand, Jason Lee talks quite eloquently about how the pineapple jokes affected him and, certainly within the industry I work in, I've met a lot of black people and people of other ethnicities who can clearly explain how negative stereotypes and perceptions of them - often reinforced by jokes - has had a direct effect on their career. And, to me at least, there is a clear difference between a joke that takes the piss out of a particular type of entitled behaviour and a joke that reinforces existing negative attitudes in a way that directly impacts on people's lives. I'm not trying to have a go but I genuinely don't understand why some people counter examples of racism or racist jokes with a rush to find something mildly inappropriate a Black or Asian person has said about white people and claim to be desperately upset about it as though getting offended by things people say is some kind of competitive sport. If you genuinely have been upset and outraged by the Goodness Gracious Me sketch over twenty years, and I've missed a whole host of posts, threads and campaigns from you demanding an apology for it then - whilst I think you're overreacting somewhat - I nonetheless apologise for questioning your integrity. But if there's no evidence anywhere that the Goodness Gracious Me sketch had upset you in any way, and you've suddenly felt the need to raise it now, twenty-odd years on, in direct response to another allegation of racism then I hope you'll forgive me for finding your motivation very suspicious.

Why on Earth would Gimme, Gimme, Gimme be apologising for a scene that appeared in a completely different TV show?

I suppose I was talking specifically about TV. I grew up in a very white village in South Gloucestershire and you're absolutely right about the fact that racist jokes and casual racist language was a part of everyday life in the 90s. And I know people blacked up for fancy dress parties. But I still think that, even from when I was 10 or so in around 1992, I knew that there had been blackface TV shows like the Black and White Minsterel show in the past and - whilst a lot of people didn't see the problem - there was a clear sense that shows like that weren't allowed on TV on any more. It certainly wouldn't have surprised me to learn someone blacked up for a fancy dress costume in the mid-90s but it does surprise me that TV editors/compliance people let David Baddiel wear blackface as late as 1995 (and Lucas & Walliams much later). And I to think there was a double-standard where Bernard Manning, Jethro or Minsterels as entertainment were never going to be allowed near a TV show because told racist jokes but there was a new generation of comedians who were allowed to tell racist jokes or (in rare cases) black up as long as they claimed to be mocking the fact that people were racist rather than racism itself, and I think that the line between the two was thin in practice. Ultimately I agree that David Baddiel would never thought of his mocking of Jason Lee as being racist and, as you say, he'd have felt it was no different to mocking a white person with similar hair. But it still surprises me that - given it was an age where other forms of blacking up had been removed from television - nobody editing the programmes spotted the way it would be perceived.

I find Come Fly With ME particularly weird in that it was 2010 it came out and, even by the time of Fantasy Football in the 1990s, it was widely accepted that blacking up was no longer acceptable. There was just somehow become this idea that, if you said you were an alternative comedian, overt racism was okay - as long as you said you were being ironic when you were doing it.

I saw Wilko Johnson at Glastonbury in 2015 or 2016. He was utterly brilliant. RIP.

Yeah - I would have been fine with us taking Pack if King had decided to not sign (or if we had decided not to make an offer) but it was definitely an either/or for me.

My guess is that the argument would be that publicly stating that the owners of the club don't care about the club and are in it for the money brings the reputation of the club into disrepute. There also might be clauses within his contract related to promoting and marketing the club commercially which they would argue would be broken if he started trashing the club. I've not seen his contract but I can certainly see why - whether you agree with his comments or not - United would see it as a breach of contract.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/63601765 Feel he may be on a bit of a hiding to nothing. Nathan Jones probably got the absolute maximum out of their players and resources and even a good manager will struggle to replicate his work. Plus the Watford connection possibly isn't going to go down well...

As far as I understand it, It depends if he has broken FA rules or FIFA rules. I imagine - unless what he has allegedly done is an obscure technicality - a ban would be upheld globally. In terms of whether he had his contract terminated, that would be at Brentford’s discretion and would likely come down to the length of the ban vs the length of time on his contract.