The Kraken

Southgate said in his interview after the game that they wanted to assess for any injuries and they’d make the decision in the next 24 hours. One would think they’ll do fitness assessments tomorrow morning and hopefully announce after that.

I watched Spain v Portugal last night and it was a really good game. Plenty of chances and entertainment, some really good football on show. Compared to the England game I thought it was a world away in entertainment value.

I don’t know them all but I do know BA were set to take on some of FlyBE’s old routes. Faro and Malaga are definitely in. Alicante and Murcia were other destinations in Spain that they used to go to, I would be surprised if Alicante isn’t one of them. I think Barcelona too, maybe. And I think they had a couple of destinations in the south of France. No idea on the other countries I’m afraid. Edit. Didn’t read the link to BA site 🤭

I have a few pals who support Palace and they don’t think much of PVA these days, consider him a liability. They’re much happier with the young lad Tyrick Mitchell.

And Garth Crooks still spawns a living from the beeb too. Absolute cunt.

Hardly surprising the club use 135 to try to pin it to ‘something’. Kits change every single year, and there’s three outfield kits every roll out, so any little gimmick to flog them will be picked up on. I like the idea of having a sash as an away or third kit every year. Could mix up the colours even, white and red, yellow and blue, Everton’s black and red is decent.

Is that really how vaccine efficacy stacks up? 80% means that the vaccine doesn’t work for 1 in 5 people? I thought (or assumed really) it was more that the vaccine works for everyone but only gives on average 80% protection? Hence why scientists can say that they’re confident it will massively cut down on hospitalisations and deaths, it won’t stop the disease entirely but will mostly ensure severe and hospitalisation cases are prevented.

Jesus wept.

Harrison Reed and Mario Lemina at Fulham look quite tasty.

Pervert

Just watching MOTD. Great to see Tella’s massive smile again, good lad. christ, the commentator was dreadful though. Gabi Logan is top class, mind.

JRod is worthy of a mention. Ok, not truly a second striker in a 442, but definitely more of a forward than a midfielder and had a decent season with us before getting injured.

Peter Walton explained why it’s not handball, it wasn’t immediately part of the build up to the goal therefore not given. Flaky rule but there it is.

Yep. Labour have done a very poor job of presenting a decent opposition, but even had they done better, the Tories are riding the vaccine wave at the moment, propped up by having delivered Brexit. The most important issue in most people’s lives since Brexit has been getting vaccinated as quickly as we have. The Tories have overseen both those, and any points raised about sleaze, corruption and nefarious contracting are completely overridden by much more important success factors, which satisfy their base but also allow them to break into old Labour heartlands. Quite how long it will last remains to be seen, but I can’t see Labour getting anywhere close before the next election. Besides, at the moment I’m completely unsure what Labour are “for”, so while I’d likely never vote Boris, Labour don’t really give me a credible alternative right now.

It seems to make sense to switch it to the UK. But, given the date of the final, the attendance would be limited in any case, early Euro games at Wembley are something like 25% capacity. It is much better than 0% of fans on the other side of the continent, of course, but a final here would only see a small proportion of fans in the stadium.

I suppose it’s time for a return to standard stripes for a season. 5 year contract with Hummel. I think I’d quite like to see us putting in a stripes variant every 2 or 3 seasons though, as we’ve had with the Rank Xerox and the sash. Ideally I’d like a return of the late 80s half and half, if not that a feyenoord style half and half at some point, that’s got some tradition for us from way back and IMO looks good.

I like our badge. There’s typically a few articles/blogs every year about the best badge in the Premier League, and the Saints badge typically does just fine in those rankings. It’s not the best badge and it’s definitely seen as quirky but it works ok. Until such point as I see an alternative design that is better, I’m more than happy to keep it. I’m yet to see anything else that has been put forward that I prefer. If there is a better option, then by all means I’m open to change, just haven’t seen that option yet.

I don’t think the errors are worse with VAR. Some of the really heinous decisions, such as our disallowed offside in the cup final, have largely gone. But VAR still comes down to individual refereeing judgements, and as there are still errors, it shows that the likes of Jon Moss still cannot arrive at the correct decision even after replaying the incident for many minutes. VAR is there to help refs. But it seems some of them need a lot more help than that to get to the right decision. At least there is a decent system to overrule shoddy decisions, though it doesn’t fix the problem. As for VAR offsides. Being as they’re obviously here to stay, I’d much rather just have the feet as the measure, as it’s clearer than looking for the t-shirt mark or whatever the latest wheeze is. That’s just my personal preference though.

Lots of open tabs on that screen. Not sure what YouPorn and PornHub are, but they sound interesting.

St George is the shittest patron saint ever. Never set foot in England, and didn’t even kill a dragon. He was also one of those forrin types, Turkish and Syrian heritage.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is just a shot across the bows of UEFA who are about to announce their new Champions League format. This whole format really hasn’t got legs. German clubs aren’t going to get involved as the vast majority of them adhere to the 50%+1 ownership model. PSG won’t do it as they’re owned by Qatar, who will stay loyal to the establishment after being gifted the World Cup. This seems like a “look what we could do” threat rather than a plan IMO.

I can’t recall us having even a single shot in the first half. At all. For 5 or 10 minutes in the second half we finally got out of first gear, but aside from that it was a shockingly poor performance. No quality at all really.

He shouldn’t do, normally refs only get one FA Cup final in their career and he had it in 2008.

I’m reading that 40+ will be able to book from tomorrow. As such I just went on the nhs central booking site and was able to book my jab for Friday (I’m 46), friends same age have just done the same. Worth checking.