LondonBristolian

Really sad news. RIP.

Bentley reminds me of Shay Given, in the sense that he makes great saves but seems to find himself in teams that are defensively suspect to an extent that you really wonder if it is a coincidence. My questions would be how good his communication are and how much the defence trust him? With Kalas, I think there is a similar thing that - whilst he does a lot of good things - we've struggled to find a defensive unit that works around him. He's been in too many poor defensive partnerships for it to always be his partners' fault...

That was seriously the best you could do? When did internet trolls get so ******* boring?

Better than being a tedious edgelord who is utterly desperate for attention.

Indeed. It literally doesn’t make sense as a comment. I can only assume @spudskidoesn’t actually on know what ‘woke’ means and is really searching for a different word instead. He seems to be talking about people being over-sensitive whereas being ‘woke’ means someone is aware of and passionate about social injustice, not being sensitive to criticism.

I spent quite a bit of time in Bristol Children's Hospital as a child. I remember a nurse telling me and my Mum that Jethro had been there quite a bit not long before - he had a family member, possibly a son who'd been in hospital - and was the absolute loveliest man anyone could possibly meet. Some of his jokes haven't stood the test of time but he was exceptionally funny. Still a massive of his joke about resolving a dispute with a neighbour by suggesting a competition where each of them take turns to kick each other in the b******* until one gives in and then - when his neighbour agrees - giving a good hard kick and then telling him he's won. I'm probably telling that terribly but Jethro did tell jokes in a way that was exceptionally funny.

On a side note, I've just googled Liam Walsh to see how he is getting on. Apparently he has had a frustrating time with injury but is on the verge of making a comeback and there are hopes he can force his way into the team and show what he can do at this level. So that's a bit of new news there.

I think it's only worth doing if he's going to be getting regular games. But there's Baker and Atkinson ahead of him as left-sided centre-back so I'm not convinced he will yet. EDIT: I suppose we could also decide we wanted to get him a League One or League Two loan, which could also make sense. Although - if he's playing regularly at Grimsby and enjoying it - maybe it is best to let him see out the season.

QPR are well stocked for strikers now. I can’t see why they would go for him on top of Charlie Austin, Andre Gray and Lyndon Dykes…

It's because viruses mutate and, as was always a risk, we seem to have a variant is different enough that - until the vaccines are tweaked - won't be necessarily be kept at bay by two jabs, That's not a major surprise - the flu jab is slightly different each year to protect against what is expected to be the dominant variant - but it does mean that, based on the evidence so far, the people with two vaccines are likely to be protected from serious illness but not necessarily from contracting and transmitting the virus.

I've got to be honest. Whilst there are a lot of libertarian Conservatives who will rebel today due to a misplaced sense of freedom, I do thinkTobias Ellwood may have a point in his reasons for rebelling. It does seem slightly farcical to insist on proof of vaccine or COVID test if we're not confident two jabs is enough. Would it make more sense for it to be proof of negative lateral flow only?

As @Davefevshas said, he then quite early in the window said we weren't likely to be getting a striker in. I'm reading between the lines a bit but early in the summer the Post was reporting that the fee for Atkinson was a stumbling block and that we were after Smith from Rotherham but being quoted a million. Shortly after that, we paid the money for Atkinson and Pearson stopped talking about getting a striker in. If the rumour mill was to be believed, we also dropped interest in Tom Lees and shortly after re-signed Baker. My guess is that we originally planned to sign two cheap defenders and spend the budget on a striker but - once we realised there were no strikers at the right price - we spent the money we would have spent on a striker on Atkinson. I don't think Pearson was "rebuffed" in signing a striker. I think he made a decision not to make a signing because he didn't feel he could get a player he wanted. I'm sceptical that January will be different.

Probe is the wrong striker could be foolish too. If we can find a striker who can improve the team, we can afford him and he wants to come then brilliant. But if we can’t find the right player, I would rather we signed nobody rather than another Diony or Engvall. You say Wells and Martin won’t get ten between them but the mentality that we had to sign a striker, even if they weren’t the right for the team, is exactly why we signed Wells in the first place.

Could there, though? I'm not so sure. There's a lot of medications that cause side effects but I struggle to think of any medication that can suddenly produce a side effect months after it was taken, especially given the dosage of vaccines isn't that high. If you take something we know to be dangerous - arsenic, for example then we know a) It will kill if you take a lot of it b) It will cause a lot of damage if you are regularly exposed to it over a prelonged period of time. But I'm not aware that you can be exposed to it, be fine for ages and then suddenly get ill. And I struggle to think of other substances where that applies. I'm quite happy to be corrected by someone who knows their stuff but I just don't see this "it could have a long-term effect we don't know about" idea making sense. The risk with vaccines - as we know - is someone can have an immediate reaction to it, or that it can - in very rare cases - cause blood clots a few days later. But what would the science actually be where it somehow didn't have an effect and then, once it was no longer in your system, suddenly did? It doesn't make sense to me.

The virus was only identified three weeks ago and a lot of countries don't have the facilities we do to test whether quickly test whether a COVID death is Ominicron variant or not. It's not suspicious, in the least. It also doesn't necessarily mean that Omnicron is not a milder variant. It could be and there could still be some deaths. Or it could be that, as Omnicron hits countries with older populations, there are deaths on a comparable level to previous variants. We don't know. But it's silly to dismiss as suspicious purely because it's a bit inconvenient.

At the moment, we don't know anything about the person who died. Generally speaking, each COVID death (prior to Omicron) had knocked an expected average of eleven years off people's lives. People who are "clinically vulnerable" are not necessarily at death's door and could easily live for decades in many cases. With this death, I can understand why people are saying "we can't speculate that the person was not very ill already, even without COVID" but we also can't speculate that they were. The short answer is we don't know and, until we have more facts, it's a little bit crass to assume that someone who we know nothing about was "old and would have died anyway" (to quote Morrissey) as it may be completely untrue.

I think the bit more to it is the general decline of the attacking midfield role and the fact that changes to the game mean that, even when no 10s are used, the type of player is different. We’ve seen the same with players like Dele Alli, who has the world at his feet three years ago only for the game to evolve around him and he be left behind. Ultimately Palmer is a man out of time and out of fashion.

I think Kasey Palmer gets a lot of unfair flak. People seem to jump to assumptions about his attitude but it feels to me their only basis is others’ assumptions about his attitude. For me, he tries when he plays. I think a major issue is he is a confidence player and you can see when the confidence is not there. But the bigger issue is he just does not fit in with how we want to play. Don’t get me wrong. We signed him without a plan and we are now under a third manager that cannot use him. He needs to move for his own sake. But I am not so sure that this is the fault of his failings rather than our poor player acquisition.

Nothing hilarious about it. You have whined a bit on the Internet and pledged to boycott a business that had no input in the rules. Utter virtue signalling. You get a bit of attention whilst doing nothing that changes anything. Those people who have stayed silent have achieved precisely as much as you have with your pretend Protest, which is zilch. At least by staying silent, they are being honest about it.

Indeed. I don't understand this whole "I'm taking a stand by boycotting people who have to follow the law" nonsense. It's pure and utter virtue signalling. If people want to go to London and protest outside parliament or Downing Street that is their business but anyone boycotting a venue or space for following the law is not making a political point but just seeking attention. Sadly the world is full of gutless, spineless people like @Harrywho want to make a lot of noise but lack the courage or conviction to target the people who make the laws and so make a big splash about punishing local businesses instead because it is so much easier to deprive a local business of money than to agitate for genuine change. I find it quite cowardly and shameful.

Which is why you need the systems in place to prevent abuse. And those systems are there.

I don't think very many people dispute that. Pharamaceuticals is basically socialism for the rich - countries (including the UK) contribute millions to the cost of drug development only for big companies to take all the profits and sell back to the countries the drugs that countries have paid to develop. The whole economic model is shocking. But that doesn't change the fact that the researchers, scientists and medical experts who work for pharmaceutical companies are indeed researchers, scientists and medical experts and the level of testing any drug - including the vaccines - has to go through is high, with effective safeguards in place to manage risks. The economic model of pharamaceutical companies is appalling but that doesn't change the fact that the drugs they produce only make it to market once proven to work and to not cause harm and - once on the market - the monitoring processes are stringent. Drug companies are arseholes but the medicines they make are not the same as the economic system that produces them.

On top of that, some people just don't like up-rooting all time. We're only his third permanent club and, despite all his loans, he might prefer avoiding moving where possible.

And is he working on COVID wards?

How would you educate him? He has a daughter working on a COVID ward and has direct experience of the reality of the virus. You have an opinion on the internet. If you had an ounce of sense or self-reflection, you'd be asking him to educate you.