Baba Yaga

Just now, grifty said:

What are you watching it on? I can't find it anywhere.

EDIT: found it!

You can watch them all here I think.

I watched the Ivory Coast game last night, would have been a great game if Equatorial Guinea's finishing was better. Was 1-0 but could have easily been 3-2 or something. From watching highlights I think a few other teams have the same problem.

All teams have played a game each and Cameroon are out on their own with 2 goals scored. They should really score a few against Ethiopia later to bring the excitement levels up a little bit. 

14 minutes ago, Stockwood gate said:

My best friend is Gambian and I have been there a few times and been to the national stadium it’s there first AfCON so come on the scorpions 

Was looking into them earlier, the lowest ranked club in the tournament, have never been to an AFCON before. They needed penalties to a beat a team ranked around 195th in the world to get through the first round of qualifying (to compare to Europe that's lower than Leichtenstein). Then in the next round they won their qualifying group.

For the tournament in general I have to back Senegal to win it (but I thought the same last time and they lost the final). Algeria and Ivory Coast also look strong but not sure they are as well balanced as Senegal. Heard that Cameroon have never lost a competitive game at home (don't quote me on that but if true that's some record) but they don't have the best of teams this time around it seems to me.

1 hour ago, Shaun Taylor said:

Cheers Swede, I love the passing game we play just think we over played it with the short goal kicks when it would have been easier to go long and take away the threat of getting caught on the ball which happened last night.

i don't understand why the Sags dislike Garner so much as it's clear to see that he likes to play good football rather than standard league 2 thuggery kick & rush. Even the Man City supporters were complimentary on how we played, never gave up when we could have collapsed in the first half and that we weren't a dirty team and one that wanted to play without any dirty antics. I've also got to say what a pleasure it was to see world class players and that a top premiership club respected the competition when they could easily have put out more talented kids like Palmer.

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.

4 minutes ago, joe jordans teeth said:

For who

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 

11 hours ago, Davefevs said:

I think there is a view that if we can keep these youngsters together for 18 months, as the finances stabilise, together with some astute signings, we might not be a million miles away from giving it a go in 23/24.  Downsizing isn’t far off being complete!  By this summer we should be at the right squad size and those not part of the future have been moved on.  Might be the odd one still here, but we will be there or thereabouts.

If we can get closer than anyone has since Gary Johnson, then that might be enough to keep the right core together.  I think Massengo is part of that core.

Thats the plan, I think…and my view is an optimistic one, which may need refining in time.  Just waiting for the individual company accounts to come out so I can see whether my estimates for the next 3 seasons have legs or not.

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.

1 hour ago, Ivorguy said:

Just read a report that 25% of EFL players are not jabbed.

Why the hell does a footballer thinks he knows better than the scientists

Hope our lot, given the torrid time NP had had with the virus, are all jabbed

Anyway we shall know soon enough if we call off matches.

If anyone from club management reads this, and we do have no jabbed players, perhaps they could arrange for medical experts to talk to players.

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?

2 minutes ago, IAmNick said:

I'm a bit confused. Wasn't that just predicting that thanks to the jabs we'd hopefully be out of full lockdown by march which is basically what happened?

The age groups were just from the first phase right as it says? Jabbing the rest was phase 2.

I don't understand why posting almost a year old articles means anything. It'd be like blindly still starting a player every game now just because there were looking good in January. Things change as new info comes to light. You have to adapt. Picking one route and following it no matter what would be insanity, no?

But the majority of the restrictions from when that article was posted (full national lockdown) were dropped for the last 9 months or so, so that's the opposite isn't it?

Unless your point is that covid passes are now seen as more useful when the vast majority of the population can use them, compared to a few % back then. 

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.

14 minutes ago, BTRFTG said:

No scaremongering but having not known anybody test positive since the schools went back my wife and I know of over 40 people who tested positive TODAY.

Thankfully they're fully vaccinated so no serious symptoms as yet but when they say this new variant is a super-spreader they ain't kidding.

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.

4 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

https://www.mailplus.co.uk/news/45502/countdown-to-15-million-jabs...-and-freedom-day

Don't usually quote the Daily Mail outside of Sports news but found the actual article from late 2020.

The scope of the rollout- numbers and age groups of the current programme- exceeds anything in there. Just look at the age groups!!

I recall Whitty suggesting that it, ie Covid would eventually resemble the flu. Some truth, but a difference there is that those who have flu shots tend to be old, medically vulnerable or both? I've certainly never had one.

I know Covid isn't the flu as such but absolutely nothing in there about boosters or vaccinating even under 30's!! Medical vulnerabities aside in the case of the younger age groups.

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.

Just now, Lrrr said:

Well in UK what reason could the prime minister want for a distraction, he certainly hasn't been in the news lately to justify such a reaction....

FWIW boosters as a precaution though still well worth it if it keeps hospitalisations down and reduces pressure on the NHS.

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. 

Just now, Eddie Hitler said:

 

It's more difficult this time around because this variant has such a rapid transmission rate that once you have a big problem with too many hospital admissions to cope with then it's too late.

This is the variant where I probably would choose to prefer risking overreacting to risking underreacting.

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.