ChippenhamRed

3 hours ago, Monkeh said:

How much does this one cost 150 quid?

I'm done with football shirts, prob because of my age, but the pricing is a rip off especially when most are made in a sweatshop,

That aside it looks fine and I don't get those moaning at the blue away kit, the blue one from the 90s is one of my fav shirts 

I genuinely question the price of football shirts, not only because it's utterly appalling how much they charge now, but can it really be the most profitable price point for the manufacturers?

Imagine if they charged, say, £30. They would still make a tidy profit per shirt, they would sell many many more, and they would retrieve a decent percentage of the market heading straight to DHGate to pick up a fake for less.

I guess their market research suggests otherwise, but it doesn't make it any less disgraceful.

I'd take him in a heartbeat. If only to inject some excitement, intrigue and controversy to this absolute borefest of a club.

I see the Lionesses will also be wearing this shirt. I like that. It never made sense to me that they had a different kit.

Just now, ZiderEyed said:

Definitely, thought it was purple at first

My brain was adjusting for the filter and making me think it was navy blue, but according to the BBC article it IS purple!

A case of over-stylised photography leaving us not able to be sure what it actually looks like.

Lovely kits but the stylised colour filter makes it hard to tell exactly what colour that away one is.

40 minutes ago, A Horse With No Name said:

Middlesbrough just exude dullness.

FA Cup finalists, Premier League promotions, Ravanelli, Juninho, Emerson.

They might exude dullness and I wouldn’t want to live there, but they’ve seen a lot more excitement in the past few decades than we have.

3 minutes ago, MarcusX said:

Not competition specific, he’ll miss next league game, harsh to call him an idiot though - imagine the emotion of scoring that goal. It’s a silly rule.

Well said. Imagine the adrenaline you’d be feeling at that moment as a player.

Stupid rule anyway. Why is it even an offence? Who cares if someone takes their shirt off?

Incredible game. Can’t ever remember a penalty shoot out between the two biggest teams in the country, has there been one anyone know?

EDIT - Never mind!!!

56 minutes ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Rovers 

Definitely worse in absolute terms and have generally been below us in the league. But I would say the potential and expectation is less - from the outside at least. They are probably a bit closer to par than we are given their awful infrastructure, lack of billionaire owner, and the nomadic years.

Basically, football in Bristol is just a bit of a shitshow all round.

6 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Like us, both Swansea and Hull got important infrastructure or elements of it in place well before us.

They did, although Swansea were in the Premier League within six years of their new ground opening. The redevelopment of Ashton Gate was finished 8 years ago…and we’re no closer.

1 hour ago, Eddie Hitler said:

 

Those Man City and Man Utd cup games we had are exciting by anyone's standards.

What have Mansfield fans had to cheer about?

(Cue @Kid in the Riot telling me that they won the European Cup last year!)

The population of Mansfield is 108k. If as looks likely they make it to League 1 this season, I’d say that trumps anything we’ve achieved in the last 40 years relative to the size of the club. Even just being consistently in League 2 is pretty decent for town half the size of Swindon.

1 hour ago, Eddie Hitler said:

Surely the dull teams are those who are rarely promoted or have any cup runs.

Teams like Mansfield, Rotherham, Chester City / Chester.

 

In absolute terms that’s true. But equally I don’t think those clubs have the same potential or expectation for success because they are a lot smaller than us. “Dull” might not be the best word, but I think we are perhaps the most consistently underwhelming. Which is, in itself, pretty dull.

2 hours ago, MarcusX said:

Supposed it depends on the timescales in question.

10-15 years ago we’d have bit peoples hands off to be a “boring Championship club”. all through my growing up we were a league 1 club with the occasional season in division 1 / championship.

Id say there’s many worse clubs to follow than us - and a few that wish they still existed

Genuine question - which club has been worse to follow than us of the last 40 years in terms of achievement versus expectation and potential?

2 hours ago, Kid in the Riot said:

The joke is both were in the fourth tier more recently than us too.

Swansea as late as 2005.

And worse than that, Swansea came within a game of dropping out of the League altogether in 2003. I was at their game against Hull at the Vetch in 2003 which they won to stay up (I was at Uni in Swansea at the time). Of course, both clubs have since surpassed our achievements.

1 hour ago, Red-Robbo said:

I'm not sure having brief spells in the top flight in the last 30 years makes a club "not dull".

Reading are a dull club in a dull town with a dull stadium and could yet drop into the bottom division. 

What we are, is the consistently most underperforming club in the land, given some of the advantages we should have. 

Be that as it may, Reading fans have had a much more interesting ride than we’ve had. Two Premier League promotions, a play off final, and an FA Cup semi final at Wembley.

Turning 40 last year really put into perspective just how little City has given me over the years. Four decades of bouncing between the second and third tiers for a club our size is just so depressing. One notable cup run.

I look at fans of other clubs and I’m jealous of the journeys they have been on. Swansea made their way through the leagues and played in Europe. Luton have made it all the way from lowly divisions. Huddersfield, Blackpool, Barnsley, Bournemouth and even Swindon have tasted top flight football. Bradford, Portsmouth and Cardiff have all made it to a cup final. Some of these clubs have suffered since, but at least they’ve had genuinely exciting periods.

I actually think we must be one of the dullest clubs to support in the entire league. I think you could reasonably say that City fans of my generation have seen the least achievement against potential and expectation of ANY set of fans in the entire country. I’m really fed up with it!

Is there any club out there more dull than us when you consider size and potential?

5 minutes ago, The Dolman Pragmatist said:

If you’ve been supporting since 1971, you will have seen a lot worse than this season.

I’m a bit tired of being told “things have been worse” as a defence of our perpetual averageness.

Things have also been a lot worse for Luton, Bournemouth, Brentford, Burnley, Ipswich and Coventry.

It’s so dull supporting us.

Warnock is available and I’d bite your hand off for a bit of the controversy, excitement and intrigue that would bring. I’m so bored of this club right now. A boring manager isn’t helping.

5 defeats in 6 and we barely deserved to win the one we did.

Manning giving us absolutely nothing to get excited about on the pitch, coupled with an utterly uninspiring robotic demeanour.

Can only see this ending one way. So let’s get rid now.

2 minutes ago, BrizzleRed said:

It’s all very well presenting as many figures and as much data as you like, but its relevance comes down to who’s compiled the figures and data and the message they are trying to convey.  If you want to see how data can be misinterpreted, look no further than Liam Manning!

As I clearly stated, it’s not just my own kids, but the large majority of their similar aged friends who also own their homes.  That isn’t a handfull of people, but quite a large network.  That isn’t just my opinion, it’s actual FACT and being “fortunate enough to own their own house” doesn’t enter into it and is a pretty presumptous comment on your part tbh.

These people aren’t from privilaged backgrounds either, so are very reflective of their generation and prove it can be done.

The data is the data and no one is trying to “convey” anything. It’s just data that speaks for itself. Your experience in your “large network” does not trump that information - and it is frankly beyond ridiculous that you are still defending the notion that it is no harder to buy a home now than it was in the past.

19 minutes ago, steviestevieneville said:

I see you conveniently didn’t quote my follow up post which said I’d plucked that figure from the air. Wrongly so obviously but my point stands . 
My other half’s son is autistic , she doesn’t work & it’s pretty impossible for her to. Does she get & deserve benefits ? Obviously she does . I’ve recently had a  family member pass away with dementia . Did a member of my family deserve benefits for looking after him ? Obviously they did. To counter act that , I also know somebody who hasn’t worked a day in twenty +  years claiming he’s an alcoholic . He’s no more an alcoholic than me , but he’s been claiming thousands for all that time. There are many like him. 
I never once wrote that everyone on benefits are lazy or scroungers . But as with anything these days , if you write even the slightest thing that someone might offended about they will find a way. It’s a sad indictment of society today . 

So you said that 95% of people on benefits are lazy, but your defence is that you subsequently admitted you made it up, so it doesn’t count that you said it. And now you’re saying we’re “offended”. Got it.

6 hours ago, steviestevieneville said:

I’m not saying they’re not. Doesn’t mean you should get discounted season tickets. Just another dumbing down woke thing to say. For every person on benefits through no fault of their own , there’s 20 lazy bastards that can’t be bothered to work . Do you think they should get discounts ? 

23 minutes ago, steviestevieneville said:

Why are you taking my post completely out of context. Where did I say everyone on benefits are lazy . I didn’t did I ? 

Here you go @steviestevieneville. I’d say 20 out of 21 is pretty close to everyone, wouldn’t you?

Not sure “I didn’t mean everyone, I just meant 95%” is the greatest defence.

4 hours ago, BrizzleRed said:

Yes, the house prices are incredibly high now, but historically, the prices have always  been driven by market forces.  If the demand is high, so are the prices, but if demand drops off due to the prices being too high, the house prices are then reduced to the point where demand is stimulated again. 

Maybe I’m some kind of outlier and my personal experiences are different than most, but I just don’t buy the narrative that the old ‘uns have it easy, as was mentioned by someone earlier in the thread.  Both our kids bought houses by their late 20’s and the vast majority of their circle of friends are also home owners.  

What I’ve also noticed is, whilst In my situation we had to make do with clapped out second hand stuff to try and furnish our house when we started out, nowadays there are plenty of young ones who seem to think that kind of stuff has to be new from the start, which we would have found impossible.

Home ownership was and is massively tough, whatever period you bought in and there are a huge number of factors involved, both historically and in the present day.

The bottom line is though, 1st time house prices wouldn’t be at such a high level now, if people weren’t still buying, though I guess a proportion of those buyers could be the buy-to-let’s, which could be keeping the market artificially high.

Housing being more expensive today relative to earnings isn’t merely a “narrative”, it is born out in the facts that you are continually ignoring when presented to you.

Just because your kids were fortunate enough to buy a house doesn’t make the overall picture any less true - and that overall picture is that house prices have consistently risen well ahead of wages, and therefore priced more and more people out of home ownership.

You keep talking about demand but you’re forgetting the other crucial variable - supply. There is a shortage of housing in this country that keeps prices high. We have seen fluctuations around the pandemic and the Truss budget, but the lack of supply has prevented prices falling substantially, and to a more reasonable level.

4 hours ago, RedM said:

Was that when unemployment was at a record high and there were hundreds of applicants for even the basic jobs? It's very different now with vacancies unfilled. There is of course work from home, broadband etc which there wasn't back then. Most fit and able bodied people can now do some sort of work, but unfortunately the benefits system doesn't motivate them too. Obviously there are exceptions but I personally don't see why it would be feasible to offer discounts in this case. The cost will have to be found somewhere, and everything has a cost.

The cost can be met by not giving a discount to pensioners like my Dad, who currently gets a discount despite owning two mortgage-free houses and a generous final salary pension. But for some reason that doesn’t provoke the same outrage that giving a discount to a disabled person would.

2 minutes ago, Welcome To The Jungle said:

Great Post 

The reason I've not been to AG in 6 years is the removal (and shameful way they tried to remove it) of lower rates for disabled fans. I appreciate that disability is a very broad brush, and many who qualify for that rate choose to not take it, especially if they are still able to work. However if you are unable to work, and rely on the state or family, you should get a reduced rate.

If you asked everyone at AG to describe football in one word, I'm sure the word 'family' would feature highly. It is that idea of family, and belonging, which means we should make AG as inclusive as possible, not an exclusive club for Jacks.

I wasn’t aware there was no discount for the disabled, that’s very disappointing.

It says so much about our country that giving a discount based solely on age, to statistically the wealthiest age group in society, is just accepted without question. But the well intentioned idea of trying to balance discounts across the fanbase based on need is met with outrage and lazy tropes about booze and fags. The Daily Mail has a lot to answer for.