GrahamC

They’re the famous quarters, mate. Everyone in the country’s second favourite team with far more fans than their own ground can hold & an away following that no one else can match. Apparently.

A strangely logical choice. Maybe they have realised sacking a successful manager & appointing a “name” really doesn’t work.

Mine arrived on Wednesday but despite the envelope saying “to be signed for” as no one was in, it was put through my letterbox. Not particularly helpful but it entirely depends on your postie, someone else on here had a conversation with theirs & he was taking those back to the collection place if no one answered the door. As it’s on a Sunday there is always tomorrow’s post too, of course.

Think it was pretty obvious by the fact he kicked the ball off the pitch to go off he’d done something that would rule him out for a while. At least it has happened when the fixtures have massively thinned out & if it really is only a few weeks he might miss just 2 league games. None of them are effective there but we do have Weimann & Bell who can play wide & both Yeboah & Nelson too, though neither are anywhere near ready to start games in my opinion.

Me too. In my mind he got a couple & we won 3-1? Could be the strangeness of playing in blue (I was definitely at the Orient cup tie as well) that makes me remember it.

Think that’s super optimistic. Brownhill is linked with a move every transfer window & never does. Not sure how this would Benefit Burnley in any way. Have a feeling that if Hull are bringing in Benson then it is because they expect Twine to be elsewhere by next month, could be us, could be someone else.

Mine arrived yesterday, despite the envelope saying “to be signed for” the postie (probably the one from Viz) put it through the letterbox. If yours doesn’t turn up by tomorrow I’d contact the club.

Pretty sure something similar happened at Northampton once as well. Not the 7-1 game.

Any truth in the rumour that the bloke who designed it’s next project was the Memorial Ground?

Sunderland, 3 or 4 games ago.

Remember a 2-0 defeat at home to Scunthorpe really early in Terry Cooper’s time. Think that 7-1 Northampton defeat might well have been the previous game? Was stood with 2 mates and one of them got chucked out for doing something very similar. The game was so dire we were both envious.

Just the 3 World Cup winners in it, which seeing as there have only ever been 11 English ones, is some ratio.

You’re right. The other big difference is back then there was no freedom of contract. If you were under contract you couldn’t leave & even when your deal expired if your club offered you a new one you couldn’t refuse it & go elsewhere. The Arsenal bid was in 1976 but this state of affairs lasted until 1979 when Gary Collier was one of the first to move clubs in this fashion. Jean Marc Bosman’s court case in 1995 then made it possible to move on for free.

You have answered your own question with these two posts. We can do so by learning from these clubs, identifying similarities & also maximise our strengths where they are clear differences. Luton did this without being anywhere near even mid range payers in the division which answers your first point. How? By absolutely stellar recruitment & seizing their opportunity in a season when 2 of the relegated parachute payments sides didn’t even make the playoffs. A very rare occurrence. Huddersfield (a while ago now), a similar model. Brentford’s route was unique (no Academy, heavy recruitment from Denmark) & is very difficult to replicate. There is also the time to hold & time to fold argument, so when would additional investment pay off, when would it be pointless. We have often got this the wrong way around. The answer here is pretty complex, clubs are often very different in their composition & geography can play a part too. I actually thought the Pearson, Gould (then Alexander) reset after our financial woes put us in a good position to at least threaten to do this, I can’t pretend that with Tinnion at the helm I have the same optimism now, whatever Manning achieves.

Spent a ridiculous amount of my early years from about 7 to 14 kicking one of these around the streets of St. George. Remember the newsagents opposite my junior school (Summerhill) selling them.

That isn’t “infrastructure” it is the things you say. We cannot influence our boardroom, we aren’t a democracy. Our plan appears to be to continue to produce a significant amount of our own players, I might dispute how feasible that is, but hard to argue with the aim. We have tried to up our game in the transfer market, more Mark Sykes, fewer Kasey Palmers but that isn’t a quick fix. My view is in the past we have often made decisions that in hindsight look like the wrong ones, some (Palmer) did at the time, others certainly didn’t. I don’t have any confidence in either our current chairman or Director of Football so hard to be all that optimistic.

You think Bournemouth have a better “infrastructure”? It is all about money.

Scott wasn’t remotely interested in staying, he wanted to go back in January. Top six still doesn’t mean you go up, you still have to win the playoffs. Scott has been injured a lot, there is no guarantee whatsoever that even if he had stayed we would have been top six. No alternative but to sell him.

Yep & despite the joke above, Mark Shail was a very decent centre half. Some of the clowns like Dave Thompson, Julian Watts, Richard Dryden & Gus Caesar we had around that era weren’t remotely in his league.

Nope, not yet.

Had a penalty awarded against them today. The first one in 75 games of Scottish Premiership football… James Tavenier has taken 76 penalties for them since joining in 2015. Who referees their games, the DUP?

It is and a million times more important than drawing at Birmingham or losing to Millwall.

Seeing as it was nearly 50 years ago now most of us around at the time can’t remember where they have put their reading glasses, let alone who was our top scorer in 75/76. I’m joking, I think most of us know that he got 18 & Cheese 15.

My old man (83 soon & not in great health) always used to say to me when a City striker was out injured that Tom got kicked black and blue most weeks, wasn’t exactly the most robust looking (deceptive) but was always available for the next game. Must have been a dream player for AD & having spoken to the late great Gerry Gow about him once, I know his team mates (Sir Geoffrey, Cheese, Sween, etc) all thought the world of him.

I think it is harsh on 4 of them. Wells is obviously in his latter years but we don’t half miss him when he’s (rarely) unavailable. Good squad option. Weimann is in a similar category, I have a hunch this might be his final season with us but excellent servant. Cornick hasn’t worked out, if we can find a solution that works for him & us I wouldn’t stand in his way. Conway & Bell are both only 21, both have already played around 60 Championship games TC has 16 goals, Bell 7 in the league. Both have plenty of time to improve & in the latter’s case I would have no issue keeping him as a squad option even if he doesn’t. Conway will in my opinion play at a higher level than our current one & probably force the issue himself at some point but I wouldn’t rush to move him on.