Baba Yaga

They were in the play off places in league one when the previous manager walked out on them but by all accounts they weren't playing easy on the eye football. Garner came in and started changing the style of football and their league position tanked. Think he brought in quite a few players and their squad became disjointed and struggled to adapt. I think it's easier for their fans to blame him for their relegation rather than other managers/their owners but there was quite poor recruitment under his watch I think and their slide began when he was in charge.

Was thinking in the prem off the bench at least and maybe more starts in the upcoming rounds of the cup if he keeps doing well. Probably a few good players in front of him mind you. As for Swindon I think after getting completely dominated first half they will be pretty happy with that, penalty save and the goal were good moments and it wasn't a complete cricket score against a very strong Man City side. Defence was a but suspect at times but they are league 2 for a reason.

Normal service resumed now, haven't heard of Palmer before but would like to see him get some more game time.

Good finish that to be fair, can they get another ?

Looks like Swindon sticking to their passing football principles lasted about 10 minutes. Can't blame then really though.

Strong team to be fair, Pep knows that Garnerball is not to be taken lightly. Talent recognises talent. ?

Starts in 1 hour unless there is some last minute covid outbreak, thinking of giving it a watch and seeing how a local team get on against one of the big boys minus a few first teamers. Maybe tonight Ben Garners managerial career takes off after a bumpy start ?

I am not knocking the club as SL will still be bailing it out to the tune of millions per year, I am just playing around with what the most likely scenario based on the goals of lowering the wage bill, using more academy players and possibly changing the type of players we look to sign. To be honest future success does sound a little bit based on high hopes and belief rather than investment levels and current progress although that is probably similar to most of championship clubs who don't receive parachute payments and have been squeezed quite badly by covid. To use 2 financial extremes think of Blackpool's 2010 as one approach to getting promoted and let's say Fulham's recent big budget promoted teams as the other. Our strategy is somewhere in the middle but drifting slightly more towards to Blackpool model (being very simplistic here but hope this makes sense). There will always be 1 or 2 clubs every few seasons who buck the trend and get promoted against the odds, and I think if Nige gets the culture improved and like you say astute signings then those things will go a long way to improving on the current position at least.

Just thinking about the club's strategy they might talk up our ambitions when they want to sell seasons tickets but really I see a club that is only going to be downsizing over the next few seasons. Think the hierachy would be satisfied being a stable championship club with a slashed budget promoting the academy but I don't think that the majority of fans would be so accepting after another season or so of it. Not sure how much HNM is on and what his current market value is but I wouldn't be surprised if that part of the budget could be put to better use elsewhere, it's not like he is a guaranteed starter and there are lots of injuries at centre mid and if he's an attacking mid then academy players have been picked ahead of him. Seems like he has a really good attitude but wonder if a move might be best for both sides, but anything in January could leave the team short especially if there are anymore injuries.

Brentford are reportedly one of the PL clubs with the highest vaccination rates but their game this weekend has been called off after 13 players and staff tested positive. While things like that are happening I don't think there is a strong case that it's the unvaccinated's fault, scapegoating them and pushing towards mandatory vaccinations is completely unethical (especially when outbreaks can clearly still occur either way). Apparently most City players are jabbed but it should remain personal choice.

Is this a conspiracy theory? https://interestingengineering.com/bill-gates-backed-firm-to-release-150k-gene-hacked-mosquitoes-in-florida

Southampton vs Brentford off Brentford are one of the most vaccinated premier league clubs according to reports but they have still had an outbreak. I believe Wolves, Leeds and Liverpool (3 players tested positive and miss their next game) are the others.

Same thing at Cheltenham... https://www.ctfc.com/news/2021/december/covid-19-update/

Good on them it's a sensible move for a club in their position, only a fool would think that this policy is going to help stop the spread and there are likely to be big queues outside at kick off time. However doesn't their ground have terracing and therefore the limit is something like 4,000?

My comment was only based around covid passes and the vaccine rollout. They are sold initially as one thing but are in reality something quite different. I don't think it's anyone's aim to sustain policies like lockdowns long term but we will see if covid passes and coerced vaccines are rolled back when the time comes, or if we see more fear based media/politician/big pharma logic to justify their existence for longer.

Will have to see if this variant translates into hospital cases or not, if it doesn't then the imminent case-demic might end up being quite entertaining and more ridiculous than anything what we have had so far.

Bait and switch. People wouldn't accept the rules at once so they are brought in gently. Same thing with basically every covid pass that has been brought in and then later extended. The behavioural scientists have done a fairly good job to be fair.

Cool graph but seems a bit odd having it done over a ten year period like that (although I am a big fan of swiss ramble). I remember 2011-13 it seemed to me like SL accepted relegation to sort out the wage bill. Not sure if wages to turnover was any better under LJ/Ashton but they had a good run of transfer fees for a few years which made things seem a lot more rosey until that dried up, now we are back to more of a downturn again. Like people say it shows the difference between clubs who never made the premier league and those that did. Huddersfield for instance I am sure their number would be around 100 if they didn't make the prem for 2 seasons/get parachute payments.

Possibly but I believe one third of the country have already been boostered and that will include most of the at risk people. At this point I am not sure that the upscaling will do as much as you might think, I would argue that there could be a lot of pointless vaccinations to act as a distraction. I believe they said initially that it would take a couple of weeks to find out how serious omicron is, I think that deadline has now passed and South Africa don't seem to be suffering on the scale that we have seen in previous waves. That has been forgotten and any cautious optimism has been pushed to one side and instead the pushing of fear has been ramped up massively. We will see how it plays out with UK hospital numbers but I think that trying to get as many people scared as possible/ramping up testing will exacerbate the problem, there seems to be a massive disconnect between reality and the media narrative it will be interesting to see how that develops.

Judging by the number of people dying in South Africa this has all the makings of being the biggest political overreaction in living memory. The hype from the media is off the scale and the political solutions make little sense but rather they need to be seen to be doing something. Collective responsibility is looking like collective insanity.

Didn't think he played that badly, yes he probably should have put that chance away but he was involved in the build up of the goal (as he is for lots of goals this season). Had some neat flicks and touches throughout the 1st half which contributed to some decent play, if Semenyo was more match fit you would have taken Martin off instead.

He played a few good balls into Semenyo today, Derby weren't the most physical team and I think that suits his game. Thought he was better than Massengo in the 1st half at least but probably my eyes weren't on the defensive side so much.

There's also a fair bit of confirmation bias from people saying things like 'I'm sure it's a new directive' without having anything to support that opinion. I do think this warrants some further investigation as the incidents are really beginning to stack up. I don't think conflating all vaccines together is a good way to look at this. There have been numerous times throughout history when vaccines have failed too.

Just a reminder Derby still would have been 21pts behind even if they had drawn that game ? They need play off form to get out of relegation and despite good results against Bournemouth and Fulham I can't see them getting close to that. Will still be an uphill battle on Saturday I think if neither James or Williams are fit enough to play. If Barnsley or Peterboro go on a run then that would be a bit more worrying, I knew Hull had picked up but fair play just realised they have won 4 on the bounce.

I think the best thing for Scotland and Wales would be to get each other in the draw for the final stage, should increase both of their chances of qualifying. Would quite like to see Portugal and Italy get each other too in the final bit, would be happy seeing at least one of them fall in qualifying.