Ex Lion Tamer

I think it's the chance to be leading football strategy at a multi club group rather than just one. He'll have people working beneath him at each club doing his old role

Inject this into my veins

Gao > Askham > Lowe

Or he knows he's not good enough for our level and just wants to play?

Hopefully Semmens will stay but if he's been tasked by Gao to sell the club, he'll do that and take a nice payoff if he has to leave

This is a plausible explanation for why media aren't reporting on it and why we don't know the identity of the buyers

I thought Salisu was bang to rights but where the inconsistency lies is that Brighton and villa should both have had players sent off against us for double yellows

Yep, definitely got to use the squad here

We also have to unpick how much credit he gets for nurturing these players so that their values have risen to that level. Having that squad value despite spending much less has to some degree to be to his credit

You can easily turn that around and say that whenever anything goes wrong, some will always say it is Ralph's fault. Even if their "solution" may not have worked in practice. It's an easy game from the stands. The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle

It's not really a bad line up except Walcott, assuming the Armstrongs and Che aren't fit to start. I'm not sure of the logic of planning for Tues though given the chances of further cases and it being called off

Also, "strong" rumours?

The weird thing is why he signed a new contract if that was the case

These figures are out of the total population rather than just those who have got covid. In reality a higher % of people who get covid would die

It's a solution but I think any government that did it would get voted out by people appalled at the sight of people dying untreated in carparks. And you might even end up with too many vaccinated people going untreated

The vaccine has massively reduced the danger but so many more people are going to get it now, so the load on the NHS could end up the same. Example: these figures are made up but explain the principle: 10,000 cases leads to 1,000 hospitalisations before vaccines. NHS overloaded. 10,000 cases leads to 100 hospitalisations after vaccines. NHS not overloaded. 100,000 cases leads to 1,000 hospitalisations after vaccines. NHS overloaded.

The point is that we'll never develop enough immunity to stop catching the virus altogether, but we will develop enough immunity to stop having to be hospitalised in such large numbers. Vaccines have taken us a long way towards that, but we need infection-related immunity on top to be able to get back to normal

Those illnesses are different because the vaccines are 100% effective. Coronaviruses and flu mutate all the time, meaning we have to keep updating the vaccines (like we do with flu) and accept getting infected on a regular basis (like the common cold, which is causes by other coronaviruses)

It's a question of how fast we can go without the NHS being overwhelmed, but we're getting there

The vaccines are only 90% reliable so we all need the super immunity that comes from having had the virus as well as being vaccinated

Well the problem is covid on top of all the other things. And ultimately if hospitals are overwhelmed they're overwhelmed. It is true that we'd be in a better position if the Tories hadn't been underfunding the NHS for the last decade

I agree, most importantly loads of older people I know seem to be deciding they need to live their lives now and can't be bothered with caution. There might have to be a lockdown to protect the NHS but it will only be delaying the inevitable really

Well herd immunity is around 70% if I remember right. One way or another covid is going to move from pandemic to endemic by enough people getting it and building immunity. How quickly we get there depends on how transmissible this or a future variant is, how much it/they cause serious disease, how many people have already had it, whether pressure on the NHS forces lockdown(s), and the extent people tire of being cautious and decide to face the music. I honestly think we're not far away from people being widely infected in large numbers but who knows, even the experts don't

There's still a lot of uncertainty about how many people will get seriously ill from the new variant. I'm not in the group who are desperate for an immediate lockdown but if the NHS is going to get overloaded, then we'll have to. To answer Turkish's point, this variant is so transmissible that everyone is basically going to get it. Vaccines + natural immunity through infection mean covid won't be as strong against our defences in future. Just like how Spanish Flu was a huge killer during/after WW1 but now it's descendents are largely harmless because our bodies have had it so many times and built immunity. That's not to say that previous lockdowns were a waste because they allowed us to wait for vaccines, protect the NHS and wait for this potentially milder variant

That was one expert, he didn't say without a shadow of a doubt, and he later owned up to being wrong. When have the covid deniers ever admitted to being wrong?