Wurzel

Full strength (although to be fair I know longer have any idea what tyat is). Selles will want to have a 100% record on his managerial cv. Be interesting to see players' reactions to the events so far this week. Hopefully they'll come out smiling and spend 90 minutes running around like duracell bunnies overdosed on Red Bull. .

Fans "should" be able to sit together in perfect harmony, and, if an away fan keeps themselves to themselves, probably do. But if they are going into the home ends in colours, giving it large, drunk, or chances are all 3, that's just trouble waiting to happen. It's against ground regs and if stewards are doing their job right they should never even make it through the turnstiles let alone to their seats. The club should be bombarded with emails with a link to this thread so they are aware how often it's happening. You can bet your life stewards take a "didn't see it, so it didn't happen" approach, and aren't reporting it unless it's the few isolated incidents they are actually forced to deal with. The club themselves are probably unaware of the extent of it and are probably congratulating the stewards on nipping it in the bud when it is reported. No-one likes a grass but isn't then a text number for reporting incidents during the game, bombard them with that as well. My favourite response would be our own fans forcibly removing them from their seats, with a clear reminder not to try it again, but we all know who it will be receiving the lifetime bans if/when that happens. BTW, OP or Admin should change the thread title , it's clearly ongoing, not only the ManU game

Nope, when two teams have identical records head to head decides, so our crap performance at Villa keeps them above us

As a kid (and even a young man) the WC Wall Chart would already be up and I'd be getting more excited every day it got nearer. For 4 weeks my social life would be arranged around the fixtures Today, many years on, I'm not even sure without checking who England have in their group, let alone all the qualifiers, and certainly unaware of the dates of our fixtures. For a multitude of reasons this just doesn't seem a "real" WC. I'm against it on footballing, political, humanitarian and prejudice reasons, yet no doubt like all tournaments when it starts I shall get sucked in and still be watching the first few games - I can't see how not watching a free to air programme forms any kind of relevant protest - but I'm already thinking it's going to need something extra special to keep me interested after the first few days.

If Carlsberg did first posts on a message forum ...........

I was always convinced at least 20% of the turnstiles mysteriously "didn't register" for every night game. They regularly seemed packed, overpacked even but the official attendance was always way less than it seemed. All seater stadiums obviously put paid to that 😂

Sign of the times, a pre-match thread for our next fixture turns into a much more interesting one reminiscing about the 1980s. If only we could be have a performance and atmosphere on Saturday like we used to get in those days.

No chance. Even in an attempt to disguise himself there is no way MLG could bring himself to post using such poor punctuation.

"🎶Jonhnstone's Paint Trophy, you'll never win that🎶"

For me common sense is if your arms are in front of your torso, provided you don't deliberately control it with them, play on, it would have hit your torso anyway. If they are outside of your torso then free kick, if it hadn't hit the arms it would have gone past you. Forget natural position, forgot intent, if it wouldn't have hit another part of your body if the arm wasn't there then it's a fk. A caveat is needed for distance to prevent players aiming for the arms, a couple of metres should be enough to pull an extended arm out of the way.

Just seen the West Ham v Bournemouth highlights. Does anyone - and I include referees and VAR officials - understand what is handball any more?

I'd have settled for getting to the Europa Conference, but the World Cup? That would be fucking amazing!!!! #WTFILN

Except Arsenal accumulate a squad of youngsters with the intention of them growing together, with the potential to win the league one day, maybe this year. We accumulate a squad of youngsters with the intention of selling them on before we get to that winning things stage and starting all over again. Although to be fair, once we've been through that cycle 3 or 4 times we should have raised enough profit to then be able to retain a squad that could challenge for honours*. Realistically it's taken Arsenal several years to get themselves back to that stage. * Edit: This plan of course relies on the assumption of us not getting relegated in the meantime

I'd agree. But if SR policy is attracting the young up and coming kids the attraction of first team football and a stepping stone to something bigger is probably a bigger attraction than the manager himself. A big respected name is probably more likely to attract older well established experienced players, something we are blatantly desperate for at the moment.

Presumably Ralph himself does, otherwise he'd have done the decent thing and walked by now.

How was the Block 1&2 area on Sunday. It looked to from the highlights that there were still people sat in Block 1 although camera only captured the first dew rows

You look at that XI + bench. Probably 2, 37, 8, 10 guaranteed starters (some would argue about Adams, I still think he's our only up front option atm). The others just look totally interchangable. Can't make up my mind, does that mean we have a strong bench, or a sh|t starting XI ? Edit: Tongue in cheek question, think we all know the answer

Just had to Google him. Confused by .... Homesick for Wales so moved to Spain.??? Can hear the You Don't Know What You're Doing chants being warmed up already. But Sounds like a dream team. Saints and God. I mean I can't see God stopping Haaland scoring against us, but he should at least keep us up.

I think it was meant to be as well as, not instead of. For whatever reason it didn't come off. I've only just realised everyone, including Aribo, he was already aware of through already working with them and/or their agent. Maybe he's used up his "pool" by bringing them all here and decided to jump ship before he was expected to find us some unknown talent for January.

You pretty much echoed my thoughts. Probably the nearest thing to Koeman around. Highly experienced player and pretty decent managerial record. Yes they've struggled in Europe this year but that's at CL level, wer're not expecting anyone to have us competing at that level (yet lol) but at Europa level (which should at least be something for us to aim for) he's done ok with arguably a squad that doesn't come close to our "worst squad in the PL. Not sure how he fits with the bringing on kids philosophy though.

Rangers are out. Giovanni von Bronkhurst anyone?

Starting to lose interest now. Keep coming back once an hour to see the anouncement of the new boss and Ralph is still hanging on in there. 😠 Are SR not even reading this thread? Between us all we must have suggested every suitable manager going - and a few unsuitable one's too - surely one of them wants the job.

Definitely. Even without the character building aspect, why go and spend a few weeks in hot sunny Florida and expect them to come back and be at the peak of their fitness in the coldest period of our season.

Probably just the law of averages. Playing for us a keeper gets more to do than at any other club. Oh for those days of FF and his consecutive (was it 5??) clean sheets when he was so well protected he hardly had a difficult save to make.