Bedred31

We’ve only lost one more game than Milwall who are in 5th and two more than Middlesbrough in 4th. The difference is the win/draw ratio. We’ve drawn 14- 1 more than Wigan who are bottom .I think we underestimate how well Pearson has done in making us gritty, resilient and harder to beat. Next step is to be more potent in the final third.

As Jerseybean has noted, double page spread on Scott in today’s Guardian. Great article- and may help to push up his price- but left me depressed. Obviously we have to be a selling club and talented young players have to have the chance to move up in terms of opportunity and salary, but the money coming in in the last few years (must be up to £100m with Scott) hasn’t made us any better. Can’t get it out of my head where we would be today with Webster, Kelly, Reid, Brownhill, Semenyo, Scott.

Most digital tickets need to be validated / activated when you arrive at the stadium ( otherwise people just take screenshots of their mates ticket). This usually requires Bluetooth and, more importantly, a system that can stand up to 40000 people arriving in one place and trying to log in at the same time. For the World Cup in Qatar- perhaps one of the most digital countries in the world- it was an absolute shambles for some fans.

Marginally above a League 1 side which has managed a goalless draw?

I was going to start a thread on this - unusually for me. At 58, I thought I was too long in the tooth to be bothered by this sort of nonsense, but yesterdays MOTD was simply risible. To put our 3-0 on last as part of a brief roundup, half an hour after highlights of a match played 24 hours earlier and sometime after Ipswich’s 0-0 showed utter contempt for our club and region. There’s being unfashionable and then there’s being deliberately ignored. No wonder we never get a penalty.

Just when it seemed that today could get no worse, looked up from my phone to see LJ on Sky saying ‘we just want to play to the philosophy and execute it properly’.

We can concentrate on the league!

Midweek away game at Brighton, early 90’s, and Osman chipped a ball into the away end during the warm up. Gallantly I leant to the left, thereby avoiding a direct hit and ensuring that the ball crashed into the midriff of the woman sat behind me, where it deposited a carton of coffee over a very expensive looking fur coat. Mrs Osman was not best pleased. “Christ, what a prat”, was only one of her responses, referring to our player/ manager, not me. And, sadly, I was tempted to agree.

Aqueducts and a modern road network?

Why put away fans in the upper tier when the lower tier is completely empty?

Finally found it. Can’t shake the feeling that I’m ultimately going to wish that I hadn’t.

Met him in a Berlin hotel restaurant during the 2006 World Cup. Full of red wine, I interrupted his meal to ask for a photo. He smiled and insisted we walk to the other side of the room where “the light was better”. That sort of nonsense must have bugged him hundreds of times a day. He really did seem to be a genuinely nice bloke with the patience of a saint. Great man.

If you think being a parachute payment team is irrelevant, you’re gong to have to explain why Burnley and Sheffield U - two teams who had a terrible season last year- are 1 and 2 in the league- and by a country mile.

And, like, having no commercial income at all from ticket sales, food, drink etc for over 12 months was irrelevant to all this?

People who think the Landsdowns are ‘a pox’ need to explain where the £20m + pa to cover our losses is going to come from without them? Vague ‘financial consortiums’ don’t come up with that sort of write off money, fans like SL do. And while I dare say that some is the spending under Junior/ Ashdown was unwise, these were the players ( ie this was the spending ) that allowed us to compete in the top half of the Championship. People on here who complain about ‘deadwood’ and ‘financial mismanagement’ really understand nothing about modern football, the effects of Covid or FFP. SL is a great chairman and when he’s gone- and I dare say he will be soon- we’re going to miss him mightily.

Yeah, I remembered about 16k! We had some good Boxing Day results. Encouraged by this one, whole family went to the Hawthorns on Boxing Day a couple of years later and we were thumped 3-0. My mum was so appalled I don’t think she went again until the final in 1987- which we also lost.

Outstanding OP - and much appreciated. Christmas exile to family in rural Suffolk- no Sky. Personally would take a draw now.

My conditional category 3 ticket for the final- allocated via the ESTC and valid had England reached the final - was about £700. ( I paid this in June, incidentally- refund probably about February next year.) In other words, a seat behind the goal was the equivalent of almost 2 years season tickets at the Gate. And my cat 1 Euro final ticket last year was £900. Pricing for major competitions is now beyond obscene and FIFA will simply lose the fans if this continues. As a more mature fan, I can remember the 1982 World Cup in Spain. Terraces and tickets cost a few quid- sold on the day from cigarette kiosks in Bilbao!

We’ve lost £64m over the last two seasons. £64m. I really don’t think we’ll be bringing in 6/7 players in January. And if NP decides to stay, I’ll be pretty grateful. It’s pretty crap at present and I suspect it’s going to get a lot worse over the next 18 months or so. We’ve been here before and survived. We’ve been relegated before and bounced back.

Just about to post the same. Complete hero- even got a positive response from D Dublin.

Budweiser, I agree, is not exactly real ale, but when it’s 32 degrees and you’ve traveled over desert by bus to get to the flippen ground, it would have gone down nicely, even at £12 for 500 mills. Good chap on the England Supporters Travel Club Facebook page has posted an exhaustive Doha drinking guide. I fly tomorrow. And on a strictly personal note, since this morning my growth is not a ‘tumour’ but a ‘cyst’, meaning that it’s not cancer and I’m apparently not going to die, although it seems that a chunk of my tongue may have to be chopped out. So if you’re at Gatwick’s South terminal around lunchtime tomorrow and you see a 50 something bloke lying on the carpet, laughing uncontrollably and swimming in Stella and his own urine, do say hello.

Actually, 50 years on 25 Nov- first game was a 1-0 win v Sunderland. On the plus side, the 5p program ( which I still have) is now £2.99 on the inter web. Bizarrely, I’ll be in Qatar for the USA game on the anniversary- would never have believed that then.

I’ve been supporting City for 50 years next month (blimey) and this is a very long way from the worst I’ve seen.

Bit of (admittedly tangential) context. In my area, Luton airport has just finished the Luton Dart- a monorail between the station and airport. It’s only 1.4 miles long. It replaces an efficient existing bus service. It cost £210m ( that was the 2017 budget- final costs are not confirmed yet). And it’s sole purpose is to reduce the journey time for passengers ( essentially EasyJet) by 4mins. This, I’m told, is ‘levelling up’- not helping people in Portzed to commute to work in the docks or the city.

Classic example of the truism that when an employer adopts a complex appointment process, the successful applicant is usually the candidate who best adapts to the process, rather than the best person for the job.