Whitey Grandad

It’s a meaningless statistic. If every team was of roughly equal quality and goals were scored at random times then one team would be top of the table and one would be bottom.

I had a couple of day visits when we were on a cruise in 2016. One day in the Crimea and one in Odessa. We went to the Raglan Heights and saw where the Charge of the Light Brigade took place and also had a tour of Sevastopol before having lunch at Balaclava and doing a tour of what had once been a secret underground nuclear submarine repair base. All these are now under the control of the Russians. Sevastopol was leased to the Russians and Ukraine was grateful for the revenue. Maybe Russia got tired of paying for it and decided to take it over. It was interesting trying to get the locals to open up when you were chatting to them. They were guarded in their responses almost as though they were still afraid that someone was listening. Our guide’s husband was a lieutenant in submarines in the Ukrainian navy and in the Soviet navy before that. She said that of the almost four hundred submarines that had been in the Soviet navy Ukraine got the worst two when the Soviet Union was dismantled. When the Second World War ended all citizens of Sevastopol had to donate one day’s free labour every week in order to rebuild the city. She showed us an apartment block that her grandmother had helped to build by working Sundays. Odessa was an interesting lesson in capitalism or rather the absence of it. There were half-finished apartment blocks where people could by an empty shell and then fit it out later once they had earned some money. There was no banking system that would lend them money for them to pay off over time. Good luck trying to start a business there with no capital.

As Oscar Wilde once said, "It would take a heart of stone not to laugh"

Colour? Luxury! Watching the cup final on a black and white television was a challenge if one team played in red and the other in blue. It was usually the only live game you’d see in a season.

Such stores don’t exist any more, do they?

Watching the other games this weekend has made me appreciate even more our slick passing style. Other teams seem haphazard in comparison.

I’m prepared to cut him some slack. Let’s not overlook how much players improve once they receive the benefit of our coaching system.

Or maybe it was Croydon, that was the ITV transmitter. In the early days the BBC and ITV companies built their own transmitter masts so there were duplicates everywhere, such as Rowridge and Chillerton Down on the Isle of Wight. Eventually they agreed to cooperate and later transmitters shared the same mast. I cannot believe we used to spend so much time staring at a screen waiting for the pages to update.

I’m more annoyed that we’re still having to pay a toll to cross it.

Thanks for the update but I cannot imagine that my matchday experience will be affected in the slightest.

I have just noticed that we are on page 404. Does this page actually exist?

I bear some responsibility for Teletext. Working in a team at the IBA we developed the specification for the system and produced the first computer-driven transmissions from the transmitter at Crystal Palace in about 1975/1976.

It’s called a ‘diplomatic illness’.

Is that you Mrs. McCarthy?

I don’t see the point of it. Once the game is over we know the final score.

A terrible angle from which to make such an important decision. Another of my gripes about VAR.

Point taken. My post was not particularly aimed at you but at the wider audience* out there. Not that the sorts of people who don’t look across at motorways would ever read this thread. * ‘audience’ is not the right word for an Internet forum. I suppose ‘readership’ would be better.

That is so petty and childish. Well done

I thought they were one and the same person. Have you ever seen them in the same room together?

Surely you know me better than that Some people seem to have a visceral hatred for anything with the word ‘European’ in it.

That’s not relevant. The Highway Code is quite clear about joining the motorway. You should match your speed to the traffic that you’re joining before moving across to join them. Whether that traffic is doing 50mph or 70mph the method is the same. I regularly see joiners who seem to think that they have right of way and don’t adjust their own speed in order to blend in smoothly.

Opportunity

The ECJ is nothing to do with the EU.

Forster

Yes, lovely goal. I don’t know how many were sitting in the stands but there were another twelve spectators on the pitch