Ted Bates Statue

Keep it at arm's length like the rest of the media frenzy around certain clubs... it's bad enough with them praying for Liverpool to win the quad and Everton to stay up. Here's a nightmare apocalypse scenario for you, imagine if West Ham actually won something. 😳

Not that I've seen any, but surely that's got to be respected in this day and age when so few players stick around long enough to make it to double figures at a club (as I note JWP is due his premier league debut milestone at the start of the next season). Always appreciate the small expressions of lurve between you two and I eagerly await the inevitable heartfelt exchanges on the misuse of the ignore function.

I would probably compare the women's game to Formula E at the moment, early days for both sports and there will be similar levels of discussion (and relative lack of speed...). The difference however is F1 fans who aren't interested in Formula E tend not to feel a desperate need to announce it.

Objectivity is fast becoming an alien concept to sports broadcasting. I get what you're saying. Having said that, it would take a minor miracle for them to be proven wrong in this instance.

Living inside your head

Tella is barely a year younger than Djenepo, but one of them is a rising star - young, hungry, guaranteed to improve - and the other is being run out of the club having exhausted his chances with everyone having given up on him, no future. Djenepo might not be the answer but I don't think Tella is either. I would like to be proven wrong but sitting on the bench or going off with cramp does not help his cause. I expect he was kept here as insurance against an injury crisis, but to the detriment of his development. As you say, he should have gone out on loan somewhere to demonstrate he can do a job at any level. Have to interject - he was like that at the very start!

Once they bin off Rodgers they ought to get Claude Puel in to show everyone how it's done, I've heard he is a rather underrated coach. Purely hypothetical but with players of their calibre, he would surely show his true managerial ability.

Funnily enough, if you take their league results only, RH and CP happen to have a similar win percentage with RH's still being slightly better. Of course, there is plenty of time yet for Hasenhuttl's percentage to become even worse. With hindsight I think the club recognise that aside from Ings and for a short spell, Gabbiadini, we have lacked a reliable goalscorer, and that has helped RH stay in contrast to CP's sacking.

Stop pissing on our bonfire, we are definitely getting relegated and we will never win a game ever again. Fact.

Wow, so it's the Ajax kit then. Thanks both for sharing your info.

Nobody would have dreamed of calling them that when they were languishing in the Championship, Selhurst Park was very quiet the season we got promoted and the Ultras seemed like a naff idea born out of desperation to breathe life into a club that was losing the will to live. The difference between now and then is being in a league that teams actually want to be in.

They have been incredible since January, apart from the loss to Cambridge. On that basis I think Howe has done enough to take the next step and earn himself an interview with us. Of course he will have to answer to stiff questioning from the board as when Saints show top 5 form for twelve fucking months on a relative shoestring it doesn't mean a thing, so it still remains to be seen as to whether he can do more than achieve the coveted 9th place trophy that most mid-table sides dream of.

"I hear you're a racist now..." I'm sure we can afford ourselves a bit of amusement, notwithstanding his IP address telling you that his real location is actually a bedsit in Camden or wherever.

Maybe it was a muddled attempt to ask why we had to use our away kit when we could have simply played in red and white? Instead we ended up with two teams playing in blue!

'Mr Chocolate' springs to mind, AKA Mark Wotte who also had a high opinion of himself apparently. I recall someone on here claiming the academy players came up with that one. I'm sure we had another manager since then with the nickname getting recycled. Guessing it would have been Pardew. Agreed with all the above. My guess is a lot of information was probably gained from chats in the pub, and all that completely dried up when the pandemic hit - gossiping with Zoom or Skype isn't quite the same. Without anything of substance, we're reduced to shouting shit at each other on here (and ditto even when there is, realistically). It also doesn't help that on the pitch we veer from the sublime to the ridiculous over the space of a few weeks.

Yoda sometimes speaks with a unique syntax pattern, but always with the correct grammar.

Behave, Benitez did not get Newcastle relegated

Depends which liars and propagandists we're talking about. If it's Russian liars and propagandists, then that's just following the crowd, man. You are merely basic lamb riding the bandwagon. But if you can rise up against the western liars and propagandists, only the most enlightened and politically aware are capable of it and that takes true wisdom and courage. KGB Colonelship awaits (or not - just ask Philby). Of course it's a lot easier to rail against the mainstream media when you've just lost your contract with, er, one of the big players in the mainstream media and find yourself at a loose end. I guess his experience with drumming up interest for his autobiography must have opened his eyes to the awful world of journalistic sensationalism. Perhaps MLT can put his scholarly youtube research activities to one side and actually go to Ukraine to investigate the truth behind the noble peacekeeping operation.

That is so unbelievably tinpot. Really hope they get promoted to the Championship so they don't have to bumble around in this division for another year.

Ah but I bet Broja gets into much better positions for scoring, so that his Xg would be far superior to whatever Wood would get... I sense another thread leaking into this one!

Interesting point although this site has different figures, possibly your numbers include cup matches as that would account for an approximate 20% difference. https://www.fotmob.com/leagues/47/stats/season/10418/teams/ontarget_scoring_att_team Incidentally, I have been noting that our win percentage in the league has been very close under the two managers.

Good points/ Our best bet is to outsmart other teams, not outspend them, and I do feel more confident that we can attempt that with Sports Republic. There will always be teams like Everton, Villa and Brighton blowing huge sums of money and ending up nowhere near challenging for Europe but instead bumbling around with us in mid-table or worse. West Ham would be in that group as well if it weren't for Moyes.

Think the decade in question here is the 1990s...

I get nervous about eating out for the same reason. For all we know, Lighthouse might have been eating horse meat lasagne for dinner, and who knows what was in those drinks if he didn't brew them himself and grow all the ingredients. Notwithstanding that, you might struggle to find people who agree with your sense of freedom, especially when you consider that the vaccine wasn't compulsory under almost all circumstances. Slight digression but bear with me - I heard recently during a discussion of the concept of happiness on Radio 5 the story of Eva Eger, a holocaust survivor, who was sent to Auschwitz. On the day she arrived her parents were killed and that evening she had to dance in front of Mengele. The last thing her mother told her was "Nobody can take away from you what you put in your own mind". She took the advice on board and that evening visualised that she was dancing to the music of Tchaikowski in the opera house. She also commented that she considered her guards to be the ones truly in prison... Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that she survived in part through staying optimistic through incredible hardship, and bringing it back to topic, perhaps freedom really is a matter of perception after all, even if it means sitting at home and not having fun in the Alps. Apologies for the rambling but I found it interesting and felt it applied here to an extent.

I'm not sure either Keegan or Strachan agreed to anything, from recollection it was mostly forum hype claiming Strachan and Martin O'Neill were spotted in Winchester. MLT, however, had agreed to joining the board - possibly chairman(?) and that obviously helped get him on side. I don't think anybody at the time really held the incident against him as a person, as ultimately it all ended up ok. Even if the club got wound up, people still probably would have given him credit for having acted in good faith. Having said that, it was widely observed that the preference towards the Pinnacle deal held up the Liebherr bid and I think it was somewhat damaging for his credibility. He claimed Pinnacle backed out because of the points deduction but, it was plain to most that he had completely backed the wrong horse. At various points in the decade after his playing career ended, fans and media talked about whether he could join the coaching setup or the board. The Fialka incident put a stop to that. Obviously he has now gone on to find a new audience who will worship him like we once did. Strongly agree with your last sentence.