ant

Always at least one or two sterling examples. Far too under-represented a style - and my 'first love' in beer.

Off topic, but damn - did you visit? I don't own it, but run it. Treat it as my baby! Lemme know if you swing by again.

My frustration from today is (very gradually) subsiding, and with a less emotional hat on, I don't believe you can take a derby as wholly representative of the intended playing style. That said, he did have a solid couple of weeks to ruminate on today. If we're still wanting after the next 2 or 3, there'll be big questions about whether he can get us anywhere close to promotion. I wouldn't want to be the one making that call, but somebody will need the stones to.

Let them pull us down to their level in the first half, and never truly went for it when they bedded in and played for the draw. Saw a reasonable amount of quality on the pitch, but we kind of feel scared to truly utilise it. In a conservative 'don't lose' mode. If Still is to be a success - and we're to be genuine contenders - we'll need to shed that mindset pronto.

The only thing I can possibly imagine is that we're trying to make them do the legwork and profit later on. But that's an incredibly charitable assessment. Zero cohesion so far, and support dropped right off after 20 minutes. When will folks learn that being loud in Spoons and quiet in the ground does no good? We can only improve. One hopes.

Just walking past Riverside Park, about 5 minutes from Bitterne Park Triangle. I can already hear the ground.

A few of my lot have a superstition of only drinking imperial stouts before an important match. Doing my bit and cracking one shortly. 🫡

Weirdly have a good feeling about Jack with this one (and I'm no big fan of his). If he can keep a lid on it, he'll be an asset. He gets it.

It's been lovely sitting on the last derby being 4 goals in our favour, and I'd give a fair amount for us to repeat the feat. But I shan't be greedy. Win. At all costs. By any margin.

I wonder why feminism is required?

Probably the last remaining link to primitive man. Imagine the lifeforms you could cultivate from it. Or don't... 🤢🤮

In one of the worlds I'm more familiar with (beer), shady folks posing as consultants advised breweries to claim tax relief for each new recipe, under the guise of research & development. Once HMRC caught on, they (quite correctly) claimed that simply changing the types and amounts of hops & malt, the water profile etc. didn't constitute R&D. Eventually clawing back the dodged tax. By the time this happened, the 'consultants' had unsurprisingly disappeared. No consequences for them; everything landing on the breweries. I imagine this is a common hustle across all sorts of industries. Is this not more similar to what's happened to the footballers than the speeding analogy? In that the driving at 70mph would have to have been an attempted circumvention of road laws, or exploitation of a loophole. I.e. Kingsbridge set the players up with a loophole they shouldn't really have been using - with all of the risk on the individuals.

We've got rid of an awful lot of bloat, that's for sure. If we get promoted I'm fully aware that we'll require yet another rebuild (with a completely different approach to last time, and VERY astute recruitment). But the way we've done business, there should be a bit more financial flexibility to aid in attempting it. In terms of the Championship stars we've picked up, should they not be deemed good enough for the Prem I feel we should still be able to recoup some value from them. I.e. not complete dead wood. The squad still has its foibles, but I'm not sure there's a team in the division with a 'perfect' set of personnel. Of course there's always an inherent risk to such wholesale changes, too - but what was the alternative? I'm feeling cautiously optimistic for the first time in a while.

Given Scienza appears to be done, how did the window stack up? We were slower off the mark than many had hoped, but broadly aware that most incomings would depend upon outgoings (well, until the mini meltdown). The first couple of signings were lumped into the 'clever bollocks' category, if arguably a bit more targeted in terms of the physical attributes of Downs and Quarshie. Time will tell on both. We lost both Dibling and Fernandes, as feared. But sought reasonable fees for them, and crucially didn't sell too late. Did we spend too long chasing Spertsyan? Probably not, in the end. If it had come off it surely would've been worth it, and we didn't hang about once it was clear it wasn't happening. George Long... The biggest question mark of the window? Not so much in his signing as a 3rd keeper, but in not targeting competition for Bazunu. In terms of Roerslev, it already appears a common sense move. The flurry of Azaz, Fellows and Jander signings was good fun. The couple of days where it felt like we were signing everybody going. Jelert makes sense too, and the loan is low risk. Scienza at very least adds depth, though surely walks straight into the starting XI. We hoped Spors et al would clear house, but didn't really think they'd manage to slim down the squad to this degree. Did we? The fee we got for Sulemana was frankly astonishing. Very tricky to put a score out of 10 on our summer, because so much depends on this 'Championship stars'/'European gems' plan gelling to a cohesive whole. That and the trust in our keeper/strikers paying off. But IMO we've given ourselves a better chance than I'd anticipated. Perhaps that's indicative of how lowly I regard Sports Republic, though. 🤷‍♂️

That Sky table doesn't include transfers that are reported as undisclosed, even where the value is known. So it's more or less useless.

Been mulling over this, and I reckon if players have the quality and the bottle it's not really an issue. Actually judging which of them meet the above criteria... That's a different matter.

Love the sentiment (and I fully subscribe to it), but our fanbase has gone properly soft. Heaven forbid we go behind. The ground will be silent.

Think some of links will need to start being taken as the smoke & mirrors they likely are. All sorts of games going on behind the scenes. Not a chance we're serious about signing them all!

If all of these transfers come off (and it's sounding strangely promising!) we alone will have seen a pretty huge turnover of playing staff since the Wrexham match - let alone the rest of the clubs in the division. It's becoming ever more ridiculous that the window shuts over 3 weeks into the season.

If we can afford the luxury, then I'd happily take the headache. It's a long old season.

Wednesday's win in particular was pretty funny. They had 20% possession and relied on a Darlow own goal to equalise. Yet Leeds didn't score a single penalty in the shootout, so out they go!

Ideally in the bloody boardroom.

A 0-3 away win? I admire your optimism!

I've changed my mind after rewatching it a few times - yes, Downs could've adapted better to the pass as-was (rather than what he clearly anticipated), but it certainly wasn't the best. It's the lack of pace as much as anything. Was stroked in, rather than whipped across.

On the plus side, we didn't join the 5 Championship teams that went out to lower league opposition. Add in the the 2 all-Championship fixtures that happened tonight and the 1 all-Championship match tomorrow, and that's at least a third of our division out at the first hurdle. Avoid a Prem team in the next round draw; go on a nice little cup run; forget tonight ever happened.