Dr Balls
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Posts posted by Dr Balls
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Gambling is a “mugs game” and for every person who says that they can “beat the bookie” there are thousands who definitely don’t. A couple of quid a week on the lottery or on the half time draw is fine, but beyond that the problem with gambling is it’s like anything else that gives a “rush”, whether that’s drink, drugs or even mobile phones, and that dopamine hit becomes addictive. Watching exciting football used to do this for a lot of us but Manning broke the spell for quite a few on here recently it would seem!
Joking aside, football particularly has a problem with gambling, both in terms of sponsorship (The “Skybet” Championship?) and for young players with relatively large amounts of money, more time on their hands, and little direction on how to protect themselves. And it can either lead to bans during their playing career (Toney) or in later life poverty, especially amongst those stars of yesteryear who actually made relatively little from the game by modern standards, such as the recently departed Stan Bowles:
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Finally decided to renew my season ticket, against my previous judgement, and tried last night online. Wouldn’t accept any of my cards. Tried again today and same problem.
Then spent 1 hour on hold today before getting through to customer services (I started at number 20) and when they put through my original credit card it worked fine.
So the warning is that it may take ages tomorrow morning to get through to speak to someone if you don’t use the online system or if the online system plays up and it won’t accept your card.
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Now fit and recovered from injuries, Roberts is proving just how good a player he is. A back 3 that includes Roberts and Dickie means we have players who can pass and are happy to bring the ball forward out of defence, plus score goals.
Agree that Tanner has improved this season defensively on the right but his first instinct is always to pass back as he approaches the halfway line. A more progressive right centre back with some more height might not go amiss.
And unfortunately for Vyner, I just don’t see him playing in a back 3. He is fine at this level defensively and we have seen flashes where he can bring the ball forward and go past players but his passing is poor. A give away to an opposition forward every game is not good.
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24 minutes ago, Lanterne Rouge said:
Sky said offside
4-0 Swans. Liam Walsh with the 4th
Is he still there and actually playing football? He’s been out as much as Naismith this season every season since he left! The term “collector’s item” should be falling from a commentator’s lips…
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If this is how Lansdown has felt about the rugby, goodness knows what he has thought of some of our home games recently. Excitement in terms of our playing “style” has been in short supply much of the time. And no I am not going to mention “that” game as a counter argument, although it was a return to how this team plays best.
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38 minutes ago, GrahamC said:
Agree.
Think the argument they’ll be looking to keep him appears to be based on the first half of the season at Hull where he did pretty well.
As an aside I don’t think Hull particularly wanted him to go in January but the injection of funds then that enabled them to sign Carvalho, Zaroury & Giles meant he wasn’t going to be a regular.
The reason I don’t get Kasey Palmer vibes if he signs is because basically as I expect our business to be on a small scale, a 10, a striker, a reserve keeper & then only further deals if the likes of Conway or Cornick move on.
This means he (or the 10 we sign if he doesn’t join) wouldn’t be in a Szmodics, Paterson log jam for a place, we’d be effectively betting the farm on them.
My view is if Manning wants him (my hunch is he does) we make an offer & if Burnley want anything like what’s been quoted, we move on & look elsewhere.
Funny you should mention Paterson, because I would suggest that he’s a better player than Twine even now. Not that I would be looking to get him back either. The point being that there are better players with a greater Championship pedigree out there than Twine, who probably wouldn’t cost more in fees or wages. The advantage Twine has is that Manning clearly likes him and trusts him, evidenced by despite yesterday’s shocker, he wasn’t subbed off.
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9 minutes ago, Silvio Dante said:
I don’t overly disagree, but if you think we’ve been “fortuitous” in the games post Easter (and I’d add to your analysis above the four Vardy chances pre our goal Vs Leicester) then the balance has to be whether in the six games post Southampton we were unlucky to only pick up three points.
(NB - avoidance of doubt I’ll say in the three wins post Easter I have liked our intent and that helps deserve points)
Those games were (in chronological order):
QPR (H), Weds (A), Cardiff (H), Ipswich (A), Swansea (H), WBA (A)
If you (or anyone) thinks we were unlucky to only get three points from those games the argument is that it’s luck balancing out. However, if the stance is that we got pretty much what we deserved from that batch, then people with that view should be concerned about the performances that continue - if not the results.
Out of those 6 previous games, the best performance was against Ipswich, when a draw would have been a fair result. We were lucky against Swansea, having been bobbins for most of the game, we were undone by a corner against Cardiff, but did nothing to deserve any more from that game, and the other 3 losses were deserved as we were really poor. I know it’s often said that the sign of a good team is one that wins when playing badly, but the opposite argument which fits us is that if you play badly most of the time you really can’t be that good!
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The more I see the less convinced I am about Twine. Best performance was his first game against Watford when he scored. Since then it’s been diminishing returns and today he veered between anonymous in the first half to dreadful in the second. Are we more creative with him in the team? No. If anything in the same position, Mehmeti has looked better than him recently, which hardly suggests Twine is going to take us to the next level.
Against all that though, is a shared history with Manning, so the likelihood is that he will want to sign Twine permanently whatever anyone us might think.
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6 minutes ago, Nescot said:
Can’t say anything positive it’s not allowed on here.
So unbeaten in the last 5 games, which is good, but the results have generally been better than the performances. Dreadful first half against Huddersfield today, a copy of the Swansea game last month, with not a single shot in the first 45 minutes. Last weekend indebted to Max for keeping a clean sheet against Sunderland. Good win against Leicester, decent performance versus Plymouth, while the Blackburn defence was giving away more gifts than Santa at Christmas!
Happy we have the points, and defensively we look pretty good, accepting that we were missing both Dickie and Vyner today. However, still unconvinced that Manning has really cracked how to get us playing forward, particularly how to break down teams that sit in and play 2 banks of 4 across the pitch and are happy to watch us huff and puff in front of them with minimal penetration. Also very lucky to come away with a point this afternoon.
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11 minutes ago, exAtyeoMax said:
I’m not totally sold on Twine, but that is because I don’t think he’d want to sign for us.
On recent performances the term “show pony” comes to mind. Thinks he is better than he is , but really isn’t all that good. Gave the ball away countless times today, offered little going forward, and had a shot near the end that was just a “look at me” punt when there were far better options available. He’s lucky we got the penalty or otherwise he could be up for belters over that one!
Would I shell out £5+ million on him in fees and many thousands per week in wages on the basis of what we have seen so far? Absolutely not. He’s very lightweight and easily robbed of the ball at this level. He may have torn up League 1 a couple of years ago, but on a similar level, scoring all those goals in League 1 didn’t make Kieron Agard a championship level player.
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Just now, Back of the Dolman said:
Andy King has done a job at CB and he could have played in the middle of Tanner and Roberts.
McCrorie RWB and then Sykes in an advanced position.
I’d of had Knight back in the midfield two with one of James or Williams
Agree either King or Knight-Lebel could have played in the middle of a back three. We had nothing to lose so why not play them. With Tanner and Roberts there we had no height at all against a tall physical centre forward, and it showed.
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8 minutes ago, The Humble Realist said:
Was 98th minute, saw it on the clock but happy to be corrected if someone can prove otherwise.
Yeah I'm not saying anything about post the penalty as obv lots of arguing etc.
Making the point that if the ref should have played 'to at least 100th min' that would mean they wasted 4 minutes in the 5 minutes ...which they didnt .
They wasted at least the first 2 minutes of the added 5 with the shot to the midriff from distance, for which the player went down as if he had been hit by a sniper. Then there was their substitution with Sorba Thomas walking from the far side of the pitch to go off , hugging his teammates and waving to the Huddersfield fans in the Atyeo, so that was at least another 30 seconds. It all added up and the penalty award can’t have been more than 20 seconds before she was planning to blow for full time. Then it took ages to get taken, because of Huddersfield arguing and time wasting. Which is why there was only about 20 seconds played after the restart. All makes sense and perfectly managed by referee sticking to the rules of the game. God knows we have had some awful refereeing performances at home in the last few seasons and this definitely was not one of them!
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7 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:
I'd rather he wasn't at wingback. I appreciate injuries have perhaps forced it a bit.
As in he should be higher up (still prefer a back 4 and Sykes high on the right).
Can anyone explain why we were playing Sykes behind Knight/ Knight ahead of Sykes on the right side until Williams went off? Made absolutely no sense and really didn’t work. Neither player looked comfortable playing out of position. That one’s on Manning.
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7 minutes ago, The Humble Realist said:
That would mean they wasted 4 minutes in the 5 minutes which obviously didnt happen (the 5 mins started on 91)
The penalty was awarded in the 97th minute. The Huddersfield players then spent 2 minutes arguing with her about it and time-wasting, which earnt them 2 more yellow cards, and that’s why it wasn’t taken until the 100th minute. Huddersfield only have themselves to blame for such blatant time wasting, especially as it came back to bite them hard on the arse!
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28 minutes ago, KegCity said:
They’ve been poor together since they started as a pairing. Both good individually just need someone to progress with the ball alongside them.
Playing James and Williams in central midfield in a 3-4-3 formation and shunting Knight out to the right forward position was bizarre. It didn’t work and we only looked any better when Knight went back into midfield as he at least looks to take and pass the ball forward. James and Williams were safety first, creativity zero today.
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1 hour ago, Stockwood gate said:
Yes that’s him he was excellent
Proper centre forward, something we have missed since letting Chris Martin leave last January. Never been replaced and it shows.
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1 hour ago, George Rs said:
Should’ve brought Mehmeti on much earlier. Love or hate his decison making he makes things happen, consistently.
Twine had a much better second half i thought but still not worth the £4m that Burnley want.
Twine was awful today. When he wasn’t giving the ball away, he was weak in possession, wasting opportunities and generally just really poor. If I was a scout watching him today, I would have had nothing positive to report. Contrast the Huddersfield no. 8 Jack Rodoni who was awesome, should have scored, and set up their goal. I would pay £5 million for him over Twine as younger and more potential.
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26 minutes ago, Lanterne Rouge said:
Love to the family Colin................................
Unlikely being from Portsmouth that he would support ‘Uddersfield, but look forward to him attending “The Gate” next season and getting worked up to the point of exploding, especially if we have a female referee!!
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1 minute ago, Lanterne Rouge said:
As someone else said earlier a Norwich v Ipswich play off semi would be a thing of beauty.
The 24 finger derby as it’s otherwise known!
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Stayed to the bitter end as I always do but my god it was poor today and I wouldn’t blame anyone who lost patience and left early. It was akin to the game against Swansea, especially as we again didn’t register a single shot on goal until about 60 minutes, and then it was the tamest of efforts. Yes we were missing Dickie and Vyner but the set up was wrong, with players playing out of position, and quite a few just being really poor. In today’s performance Burnley should be paying us to take Twine off their hands, but he wasn’t the only one to have a shocker. And please can we stop playing Jason Knight anywhere other than his best position in the centre of midfield. He’s become the Weimann of this team, far too good to be dropped but played out of position to accommodate other less good players.
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This division is bonkers. Whoever of the top 4 doesn’t make it into the automatic places will be worried about facing a team on form in the playoffs. And the team currently best in the form table are Norwich. Until we do the unthinkable and win at Carrow Road next weekend!
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13 minutes ago, PHILINFRANCE said:
To be fair to @StGeorge, it was pretty impressive.
There, their and they’re are frequently misused and, in true Eric Morecambe style, @Open End Numb Legs managed to get them all in to one sentence, but not in the right order.
I must say, though, I suspected that he might have done it intentionally, especially as he went one step further with his wear ever.
The Noddy Holder “school” of spelling!
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14 hours ago, Different Planet said:
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Wout Faes have a good game, strange player
Like an even worse version of David Luiz as a defender - with obviously the same hairdresser!
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Leicester away form is amongst the worst in the league. Lost their last 3 away games 1-0 against us, Millwall and now Plymouth. It’s only their home form that’s keeping them near the top.
Bournemouth
in Football Chat
Posted · Edited by Dr Balls
To take the well worn adage, with 45 games gone, the league table looks like 1 team promoted, 7 more going for promotion, 1 relegated, 1 all but relegated and 4 that could be, plus quite a few who have underperformed - plus Preston North End and Bristol City in 10th and 11th!
Do I see us going better next season? The defence is now one of our assets rather than a liability, largely thanks to O’Leary, Dickie and Vyner. However unless we actually learn how to score more goals, we won’t be going anywhere. We are currently very dependent on opposition mistakes and getting awarded more penalties than we have seen in years. We certainly don’t play to the strengths of any striker I have ever seen, nor does Conway play like a central striker who is going to score many goals. Half the time he is out on the wing when he should be in the box!
And my concern is that Manning wants to play the Guardiola way prior to Haaland arriving at Manchester City, which really negates having a striker, with all the focus on the midfielders to score goals. Sorry but at Championship level, without significantly more funds for the best midfielders in the division, I just don’t see that way of playing working. Even Russell Martin and his possession-obsessed style at Southampton still has Adam Armstrong as a striker scoring 20+ goals this season.