Baba Yaga

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.

I wonder what the all time record for consecutive promotion followed by relegation seasons is. Rotherham currently on 5 yo yo seasons and top of the league as it stands.

Steve has struggled at bringing in the right football brains to get the club to the big time but on the infrastructure he has definitely delivered (I seriously doubt Wael can and will ever do that). In my view we could do a hell of a lot worse than Lansdown but financial constraints/squad rebuild mean the future outlook doesn't look great right now. Championship is a stacked league of evenly matched teams and I think sometimes very average chairmen get lucky to get a promotion but BCFC have never had things come together in that way. For every Watford, Burnley and Brentford currently in the prem there is a Forest, Sheff Weds and Ipswich who have potential but have done bugger all for 10-20 years. As for the Gas they are serial underperformers too, I think with a new stadium they could easily be an established championship club on the scale of Millwall or Preston who every year have a small chance of having a good season and being in the play off mix, Barton has a point here but all Bristol City/Rovers managers recognise the potential but none have managed to get their clubs to the next level for a very long time.

I wonder if more electric cars will really mean more demand in general and therefore higher household electricity costs for everyone. One big problem with ending fossil fuels is a less diverse energy network, and I can't see the transition not being painfully costly for many. I am quite fortunate to live close to a bus route that is convenient for Ashton Gate, even though I am pretty pro car in general I got the bus to one game and it worked very well and will probably do the same on Saturday too.

Think it's a good calculated risk by Gerrard, Rangers were fantastic last season but don't look like equalling their points tally this season or how far they got in Europe. Villa are underachieving in the prem too despite losing Grealish. Premier league is the deep end compared to the SPL but I believe he has picked a good club and will be hard seeing him get a better offer come along anytime soon, especially if his Rangers record looks more average in future. Shame that Celtic and Rangers have become stepping stones for mid table prem clubs because they are both massive clubs but money talks. ? I wonder if Gerrard has enough experience to look any better than the likes of Ole, Lampard, Arteta etc (the good players, average managers club). If a clubs doesn't want to compete with their rivals financially for a couple of seasons then I see these type of appointments being made, will be interesting to see if Villa spend to take them to the next level or not.

Definitely makes him stand out, you can see other footballers like Lingard and Bellerin getting into the fashion business and DCL has a massive social media following so it's easier to get more views. In an age where we also have Marcus Rashford playing the philosopher in google adverts it seems that more footballers want side gigs away from their primary income.

Saw interview with Warnock on the FL show after the Boro game last weekend when he already said he was off, was interesting that he said that he hadn't given him enough in the transfer window and also that Gibson had taken a back seat and that it wasn't good for the club. You might say that is similar to City right now and also why would he want to come here when there is no money to spend, I think this is completely unrealistic myself but would be interesting if it did happen.

19th place but only 6 points off the play offs, I mention this because it goes to show that after the top few teams how evenly matched and bang average things are in the championship. Birmingham game was dire and there are some troubling signs from recent games, if James is out then I see that being a big problem for the way we play too. However there are lots of examples of clubs above 19th having bad runs for 5 or 6 games already this season and I am hoping that the situation isn't quite as hopeless as it looks right now. The nature of the championship is there are usually lots of winnable games around the corner.

Barnsley are on awful form so based on that it really should be a home win. Should have beaten Forest to be fair and if one of those other chances had gone in then it probably would have been. Hoping it's not a cagey game today where we are waiting for a long time to carve out chances but as long as its a win we will take it.