Midfield_General

All of those things would be removed? So they'd buy up the entire postcode and all the land for miles around and level it to the ground to make way for this awesome new development? How many billions are being spent on this? East Street, the Bargate and Town Quay weren't just made up of 'shops' either - they had bars, cafes, restaurants, entertainment venues and whatever else, and they weren't miles away and surrounded on all sides by an industrial wasteland and a football ground. And no-one went, which is why they all fell empty, got boarded up and then got shut down completely before being bulldozed to make way for flats and a few offices. Unless you first build - and then successfully sell - thousands of new homes in that area first to create a new permanent population concentration of affluent professionals, no-one is trudging all the way down there for a splendid day out or a delightfully bijou city break. It would be commercial suicide to try it.

So the High Street is dying on it's arse, East Street Shopping Centre (in the centre of town) went because no-one went there, the Bargate Shopping Centre (in the centre of town) went because no-one went there and Town Quay Shopping Centre (in a prime waterfront position) went because no-one went there, but people will flock to a new retail development which is 25 mins walk out of the town centre and surrounded by a gas works, a concrete plant, a run-down industrial estate and a red light district. Righto. Outside of a match day, the only thing I'd make the effort to travel to St Mary's to buy would be crack.

Just discovered that Rudi Skacel’s full first name is actually Rudolf. Which seems appropriate as he did go down in his-tor-y, and is only ever talked about for 3 weeks of the year.

How about the bang average loans hall of fame? Not the Maxwel Cornet/ Mason Holgate-levels of absolute shite, or the invisible men like Gronbaek or Caceres, but the utterly nondescript players who maybe contributed enough to encourage an initial flash of optimism that they might be OK, but otherwise didn't do much and were either quietly dropped or were packed back off to their parent clubs once their loan spell ended and were subsequently missed by absolutely no-one. Kevin Danso, Jan-Paul Saeijs, Chris Lucketti, Iago Falqué, Phil Ifil, Jordon Robertson, Maarten Stekelenburg, Ryan Smith, Filip Djuricic, Neal Trotman, Dany N'Guessan, Joe Rothwell, Adam Hamill, Jacob Mellis - this is for you.

I always really felt for Gorman. When Burley went he made it clear he didn't want the job but took it on anyway to help the club out because it was an absolute mess at the time. He had recently lost his wife after a long battle with cancer, the team was shit and the club was skint and in freefall on its slide down to League One. You could see at the time the unbearable stress he was under trying his best to do a job he didn't want with zero resources and a personal life in turmoil.

Big Ange in before the Christmas decorations are taken down

The argument seems to be that Frank was an internal appointment who no-one had heard of at the time, and he worked out, so they must know what they’re doing. But surely they’re well enough off now that they don’t need to roll the dice on a low-cost, high-risk gamble. Very odd.

This does look like it's happening: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c3w48p7n014o That is one hell of a risk that surely they don't need to take. Loads of decent managers would love to have a shot at that job.

Takumi Minamino looked like a shrewd bit of loan business at first. Was excellent on his debut, played the full 90 straight off the bat, scored a very decent goal and just generally looked like a threat. Then I can't remember any other single thing that he did after that. Wiki says he scored two goals in 10 games for us in total, but I don't remember the second one and just seem to recall that he dropped off fairly spectacularly after that good start.

By all accounts Tadic was on something like €135k per week at Fenerbache. I appreciate he's a free agent now, but I would be surprised if he wanted or needed to accept a fraction of that sort of wage to get the shit kicked out of him in the Championship. I would have thought a final decent pay day in Saudi or somewhere would be more appealing at this point in his career.

If that is actually it, it’s so weird how the front and the sleeves look like they’re from two different kits and aren’t even the same shade of red. Mental. So near yet so far.

Young, hungry and guaranteed to improve

The Sainz ‘story’ is bollocks. Just a random misspelled Facebook post from some knob trying to start a rumour for the lolz. Nothing on any credible news source. Which is a shame, because if we signed Sainz his song would write itself.

Juric clearly keen to make a head start on getting sacked from Atalanta

As it stands Van Nistelrooy is still there and there's not a lot of noise about him leaving. A lot of their fans seem to think he'll be staying, not least because they can't afford to sack him. They're skint. Even if they did get rid of him, I can't see them being so desperate for their next man to be Rohl that they'd pay a £5m release fee for him, given their situation. They'd go for a free agent.

That Ings tweet is from an Aston Villa fan in Belgium with 190 followers. It’s just a complete random talking absolute bollocks.

Wouldn't it be more likely to be a 'gardening leave' type scenario, where he could resign but would still be held to a notice period (e.g. six months) during which he can't work for anyone else? Jordan did that to Steve Bruce at Palace if I remember correctly. Once that notice period expires though I don't think the previous club can have any further hold over him. Not that a six month garden leave period would do him a lot of good for a club who was looking to appoint someone now though, e.g. Leipzig.

Ooof, another smack in the teeth for Danny. He's currently desperately trying to convince Leipzig to hire him after being passed on by us, Leicester, Middlesbrough, Hamburg and Werder Bremen because their madman Chairman is demanding £5m to release him from his contract. I wonder if he might actually do the unthinkable and resign at some point, just to get out of that basket case of a club, even though it might potentially personally cost him millions in lost earnings.

Looks like this might be happening: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/jun/17/sheffield-united-ruben-selles-take-over-from-chris-wilder-manager Big decision to sack a manager with a track record of winning promotions, who in his last season has overcome a points deduction to get them to within a whisker of promotion back to the Premier League, to replace him with someone who's just come fourth bottom in the same league and been sacked for underperformance. Especially when the reason is that the incumbent manager 'disagreed with the owners' enthusiasm for a heavily data-driven player recruitment system'. So hopefully Selles gets off to a bad start with his squad of cheap spreadsheet players, the split fanbase revolts and they implode nicely. Then that's one promotion rival who would have been a big threat pointlessly and needlessly weakened. Excellent.

He was a major transfer target for Martin at Rangers, who has signed him twice before. They seemed pretty confident up there that their 'special relationship' would be enough to get him to join them, but instead he chooses to go to Norwich on a free. Ouch. Martin's first Champions League game is in just over 4 weeks time.

Just to keep things ticking over then: have we done Shea Charles to Leeds from a week ago, from some shite Leeds site who got it from seven throwaway words with no sources in the Daily Mail? https://www.leedsunited.news/transfers/leeds-united-are-now-considering-surprise-raid-to-sign-15m-southampton-midfielder-that-pep-guardiola-loves/ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-14792559/Premier-League-clubs-Newcastle-Magpies-Champions-League.html Or the subsequent 'actually he'd be more likely to go to Rangers', in the opinion of a random journalist, with absolutely nothing to back it up? https://www.leedsunited.news/transfers/look-away-daniel-farke-as-leeds-united-midfield-target-told-hes-now-more-likely-to-sign-for-rangers/ Pretty weak stuff isn't it. But it's all I've got.

Got to love these articles. Headline: Genoa want Sulemana at all costs Article: Genoa think €10m is too much

Second half of Soccer Aid was entertaining. Everyone else is having a light-hearted jolly kickabout for charity, then Carlos Tevez comes on and treats it like he’s playing for Argentina in a World Cup final, batters random celebrities and skinny Youtubers out of the way left right and centre, scores 4 in 10 minutes and then commits a textbook professional foul to prevent a breakthrough for an equaliser that would have taken the game to the penalties the organisers clearly wanted. In any kickabout there’s always one person who takes it just a little bit too seriously isn’t there. Also never thought I’d see Leonardo Bonucci ironing out Stephanie Houghton, but there it was. Straight through her. Got the ball though.

He should sign up with whoever got Bednarek 70 grand a week for losing his man and flailing his arms around

On a different note, when I was at Uni in Cardiff a car pulled over while I was minding my own business walking down the street. The driver wound down the window and very rudely demanded to know 'Where's the football ground?'. It was pre-Google maps, and I wasn't sure, so I gave him the best directions I could off the top of my head. He tutted and sped off without so much as an acknowledgement, let alone a thank you. After he'd gone, I realised that the driver had been Phil Neal. I also realised the directions I'd given him had been completely wrong. And I was glad. Fucking rude prick.