fgrsimon

A man must have his hobbies! I've still got my Hot Wheels track and very occasionally it comes out into the living room.

Milwall is better than I remember but I believe we've beaten Preston once since 2014? [EDIT] It's actually once since 2011. P18 W1 D8 L9 Gulp, I wish I hadn't looked that up!

Next two games are critical. If we lose both, and our recent record against Preston and Milwall is lamentable, we'll likely be in the bottom 3 and once you are there it's difficult to get out. If we win both we'd probably be in the top 10. Fine margins. I don't think anyone is in a position to say 'we'll be fine'. As other have said, it doesn't look like any team is a nailed on certainty for relegation this season and with a possible points deduction to come, we are currently in the s**t as much as any team.

Yeah and you can kind of understand why Rovers supporters are bitter and twisted. In 40 years (or even 130 years) we've achieved the square root of f .all and for most of that time they've been distinctly worse than us. Bristol is what the 5th biggest city in England and we've won nothing of note between us. It's a shocking indictment of both clubs really and here we are in 2022, us in 18th and them in 19th in our respective leagues.

The imagination of children is amazing. My friend Ian designed and built a Railway Building game for England, Scotland and Wales made of a map showing all towns and cities superimposed with octagonal grids, where you built lines and chose the direction of building by choosing one of the 8 sides of the hexagon. Towns and cities even had some sort of relative weighting for population size which we got, I think, from a big old AA Road Atlas/Travel Guide. The only downside was that to achieve the fidelity needed, the map ended up roughly the size of his living room!

The Right Winger of the team with dark bases is being impeded!

Are you JBs lawyer by any chance?

Ha ha, Joey Barton picked the wrong person to antagonize there in Matt Rhead who is known for his ahem..."physical and confrontational" style. It seems Rhead wiped him out shortly afterwards.

Bristol Rovers FC 'Cheering up Bristol City supporters since 1883' Or should that be 1982? ?

It goes without saying that some of their fans are oddballs but there are two that have caught my attention recently:- One on the BEP site who only ever posts one thing but posts very frequently -"I cannot reply to this comment or I may be accused of being an online bully". Basically admitting every time he posts that he is an online bully. Another on their forum who is always first to post about goals on the match day thread. This means he must be at the game with something like "FFS 1-5!" already pre-typed in on his phone so he can just hit the 'submit' button as soon as the ball hits the back of the net. Strange behaviour in both cases, hinting at deeper psychiatric problems.....

Aden Flint had a similar start to his time here, several costly blunders and bad luck costing goals and points but it worked out pretty well in the long term!

NP is the same age as me. I'm no dinosaur too.

Fo sho fam!

Fair play to him as the last 2 seasons must have been so frustrating for him. Usually out of position or given 10 mins from the bench but he kept his mouth shut and kept himself in peak condition where in reality he had every right to complain. In my view truth is that we always had a10-15 goal minimum Championship player on the books. Don't forget also in that season where our treatment room must have resembled the London Dungeon he played in pretty much every game usually out of position and from the bench. At this point in time I'll even forgive him the Antivax nonsense he used to post!

WTAF??? That is literally like a screenshot from the H&S 'Learning Zone' thing I have to complete every year at work. "Click on the 6 safety hazards in the above photo to advance to the next page". That drainpipe defies rational explanation!

3 points maybe but not 6. I think it's a psychological thing, Reading last season never seemed to get away from the missing (was it 6? ) points despite a reasonable start to the season. I guess always looking at the table and thinking where we would be without a deduction can drag players and supporters down.

And they've failed to get rid of Westbrook again who is hanging around like the proverbial bad penny and prob on a fair salary given that he signed from Cov after a good season in L1 (alongside Liam Walsh who is also residing in the 'where are they now' bin)

Great that it looks like we've kept everyone but must admit I'm still a bit worried about a points deduction...

That already happened, they got demolished at Barnsley.

It's frustrating because we've been in front in every game this season, so if we had a defence that could 'shut up shop', we'd be top of the league and with a toe in the Premier League door already. Logically then, if we can get the defence sorted, promotion is a real prospect because up front we have Weimann, Wells, Conway, Semenyo and Martin all scoring and contributing regularly already this season. This is dreamland as far as strikers are concerned. It looks like we can score goals against anyone in the Championship but can we keep enough clean sheets to compete at the top end? That is the conundrum for NP to solve.

As I remember it, his wife called the police saying her husband had assaulted her, the police arrive and find her with head injuries. It's fairly damning BUT circumstantial and there is no evidence apart from his and hers, unless some friends who I think were present, also are prepared to testify. The interesting thing is what happens if she has to give evidence because if he has hit her and he she says he didn't, she's committing perjury. Of course the judge will have to allow that he's coerced her into changing her story and of course coercion and controlling behaviour are so much more widely recognised these days. We can't really take the high-ground BCFC having employed Danny Simpson and I have no particular hatred of JB but all I can say that if he did lay even a finger on his wife, he deserves to go down and to lose his job.

Luton aren't an awful side, they've had a poor start but it's still largely the team that finished 6th and 20points ahead of us last season.

It's a kind of stupid thing but we as a club should be kicking up more of a fuss about the ludicrous penalty record we currently have. I know NP is somewhat limited as to what he can say post-match but imagine if a Neil Warnock club had this record of one penalty in a year/season, fewest in the top 4 leagues or whatever it is. He would be in the media kicking up a fuss about it every time he had a chance, putting the pressure on the refs/FA, making sure they were aware of the fact before each game, and "we are watching you" as it were. but for the penalties conceded and not given at Hull and the one yesterday had been given, we'd probably have 6 points in the bag. Of course being City, no doubt when we do eventually get a penalty it'll be skied into Row Z! I don't even know who our penalty taker would be, Weimann I guess, taking over from Wells, who I think take the one we did get in recent memory?

That and the fact that Reading and Birmingham, who most people had as near certs for relegation, are already 4 points better off...

For "super computer" read journo just returned from heavy lunchtime sesh in the pub.