The Kraken

I think you miss the point a bit with this part, though you'll obviously have seen from my post above your one that I agree with the sentiment. Referees are entirely restricted in the action they can take to simulation by the letter of the law; it is a yellow card offence. So the referee did not "fail" in the slightest; he applied the law to the very letter. What needs to change is the culture of cheating in football; of trying to cheat and deceive the officials. Other sports such as golf and snooker see the participants actually call a foul on themselves; that'll of course never happen in football, but in football the punishment must become much harsher so that the first instinct of the player is no longer to try and cheat rather than stay on their feet. And the only way to do that is two-fold; firstly, make the punishment much harder, a one or two game ban (multiply it for further offences); and secondly, introduce retrospective video analysis and punish all acts of simulation according to those guidelines. It's far from an ideal solution, but IMO it's the only way to fix such a prevalent problem in the game.

I was extremely worried about the sceptre of administration. Not so much that we would go out of business, that concept never really registered as a genuine concern. More to the point, who we would get as potential owners; there was a feeling on here of "anyone is better than Lowe", and we had a lucky escape with the Pinnacle debacle. Thankfully we ended up getting fantastic owners after going through all the motions.

I thought the regular TV pictures were pretty conclusive that it was a dive; Kelvin was hardly moving fast, barely touched Derbyshire yet he just threw his arms forward, lifted his legs in the air and fell to the ground. The TV pictures were a bit obscured by davies, thankfully the lino would have had a perfectly clear view of it and made the correct call. I'd still prefer to see a much harder punishment for stuff like this; a booking for Derbyshire is well worth the risk to Forest for the potential gain of conning the ref and getting a penalty. Chuck in a retrospective one or two game ban and we might actually see some results. But so long as there are managers like McClaren who claim its a definite penalty because "there was contact" (despite any contact being utterly minimal and insufficient to cause the reaction from the striker that it did) then we'll always have a diving problem in English football.

Indeed, this whole thread could be dedicated to some of his utter nonsense from the past year or two alone. I actually went and had a read back of a few threads from summer last year, just to see what idiocy I had come out with in comparison. Quite interesting reading really; just before the start of the season last year I was wondering if Alex Chamberlain could fill the void left by Michail Antonio.....

So lining up for a whinge that "our season is going off the rails" if we fail to win a record 13th home game on the trot on Sunday. Adkins out.

:lol:

Surely, by that rationale, no-one could have predicted that Huddersfield's run in would have been as good as it was? All we were doing was trying to usurp them, our run was amazing but all it served to do was keep us ahead of them. Anyway, back on topic. Me; "Chris Baird, you will never be a centre-back".

A shame others aren't really. I'm all for putting my neck on the line and making a prediction; I'm also more than willing to have it rubbed in my face if I get it hopelessly wrong. I'm with Saints67 above, when Burley was appointed manager I was absolutely delighted. That worked out well....

Why are there so many utterly terrible Chinese takeaways these days? Since moving to my house a few years ago I've tried many of the local take aways and, with one or two rare exceptions, most of the food that comes back has been absolutely shocking. Just gloopy, salty, tasteless muck for the most part. I've heard Pilgrim House is good, and I'm a fan of Little Buddha. Most other Chinese takeaways I give a very wide berth.

No, I'm not worried. He is still a class act, and will prove so this season. It must be especially difficult for him to command a brand new defensive unit when he has played a total of 0 games with any of his other defenders in those positions. I would say that he needs a series of games with whoever is going to be his central defensive partner though. And Cork is clearly no right-back, hopefully Richardon will have receovered from his injury by Sunday.

I got into a drunken bet with my Liverpool-supporting mate just before the start of the season; I told him that Kevin Doyle would score more league goals than Caroll and bet him £50 To be fair, I'm winning 1-0 at the moment

The expectation levels have risen so sharply since the start of the season that I think this is a genuine concern; many people's predictions of where we are going to / should finish are going up every game, whether those expectation levels are realistic or not, only time will tell. I still very much believe that reaching the playoffs would be a fantastic achievement, although I still have to remind myself of that after every game, there was a part of me that was inwardly critical of the side from Saturday before I realised that I would have bitten your hand off for that result at the start of the season. We're currently very, very reliant on Lambert and Connolly being on form and injury free, with no Barnard to call upon as an option we're looking very light in that department, and that would be my one criticism of the transfer window that we didn't strengthen there.

Indeed. I have no problems admitting that I was sceptical of the appointment, but more than anything I thought we'd made a mistake letting Pardew go. Very glad to be proven wrong. I still think Pards did a very good job for us (his forways into the transfer market have proved to be largely excellent and his signings still provide the spine of our team), but there's no doubting that NA has taken our form and our style of play up that extra few notches since his arrival.

Gorkss is not exactly young but he went to Reading for less than £1M. Would have been the ideal signing IMO. I'm still expecting Fox to be a much better option than Harding, hopefully just needs games to settle in.

Edit: never mind.

In much the same way as a Buy One, Get One Free offer, I'd imagine.

No it wasn't.

They'll have to pay a fairly substantial portion of it if he ends up in the Championship, whichever club he ends up at won't be willing/able to pay most of that. Still, not a hope in hell of coming here. And from what I've been hearing about Danny Fox, I'm not even sure I'd want him here. Look forwards, not backwards.

Yeah, our track record for signing highly rated England U21 internationals like Jack Cork should indicate we just shouldn't bother trying to sign anyone. Adkins out!

:lol: I'm beginning to warm to the dalek, for the simple reason that his wind-ups are so atrociously obvious and bad, despite him putting in so much effort.

Now you're talking.

Forest bringing 2,000. No summer holidays. Saturday 3pm game, not on Sky. I'd be very surprised if it's under 25K.

Unfortunately I agree with this. At the start of the summer I hoped we'd sign a right back as I don't think Butterfield or Richardson are good enough for a team with aspirations for the top spots. Seems NA had it in mind to strengthen the other full back position, which I thought with Harding and Dickson looked much stronger. He's not a bad player, by any stretch, but I'm yet to see a game with him in it where he's done better than "OK". Saying that, I thought he coped with Gradel well when we played Leeds this season.

Agreed, and often just get used for spamming purposes anyway.

I think Bursledon Beckham has a slightly higher class ring to it.