egg

He lasted 22 mins and was replaced by a kid. It wasn't a B team tonight, it was full of kids. We started a 15 year old. They started a few first teamers. Literally men against boys.

Absolutely. I'd have loads of classics if I had the cash. I also love the idea of a wealthy footballer cruising down to Spain in a campervan rather than the usual lounge at the airport and first class travel. Good lad.

Ha!! Fair point...in the Brexit context I just don't get the point. It's achieved nothing positive, and spending time highlighting all the negatives seems a futile exercise. Each to their own I guess.

Bravo. And the purpose of whingeing about everything that's shit, but that we can't do anything about, is what?

Have you actually listened to it? He makes the point I made above. It's a trade agreement, so it deals with trade only. Not complicated, and non story. I don't understand the purpose of your numerous posts on brexit. It's happened. It's shit. Highlighting all the shit won't change anything, and I can only assume that you're trying to hook someone for a row.

Something of nothing. If I was involved in drafting a free trade agreement, and someone had included clauses not relevant to trade whether that be climate or any other issue, I'd insist on their removal too. Sounds like nothing more than tidying up crap drafting.

For me, yes. Stephens will play himself out of the team at some point, he always does, but I think he's far better than Bednarek when he gets pulled out wide and that happens with Livramento flying forward. Not much in it admittedly, but its Stephens just about for me at the moment. Lynaco needs to be seen of course, but my instinct (hope!) is that we may have found a bit of a gem - let's see.

Superstar. She's going to be a superb player, and is a nice kid with it.

Sense at last. Tino was signed as a RB which is obvious from his OS bio. Talk of shifting to a right sided 10 (or up front as per someone above) after 3 games is strange. He's played RM before, but not as a 10 in our system. If he plays, it's where we've signed him to play. If he plays there, then it's a pick between KWP or Perraud at LB. I agree with you, KWP is the better player. Armstrong on the right picks himself, as does CM, and the CB's at the moment. I agree with the other picks too, although I'm undecided on the left side. It's a coin toss between Redmond or Tella or Djenepo for me. There's also a case for Forster in goal.

No, and you understood my point. Real world businesses will be hit by the NI increase, and that will impact on wages, and employment to some extent. Amazon are another issue and get away with murder, metaphorically of course.

High earners are paying more via this as there's no upper threshold. People earning via dividends will have a tax rate of 39.35% on dividends over essentially the higher rate - that's after the company pays its 19% corporation tax. We're being taxed hard for pretty shit public services, and it's a fallacy that higher earners and dividend recipients get off lightly. I'm surprised you'd say hit employers harder though. I'd have left them well alone. People will expect their employers to give pay rises to cover cost of living increases and they'll look to them to cover the extra NI they're paying. Many businesses are struggling, and an extra 1.25% going out will hit hard.

Yep, and employers too. An additional 1.25% employers NI will hit many struggling businesses.

Grime

Impolite polite question: what's the point of creating a new persona, only to be as irritating as the old one was? Badger is right, you're coming across as a kid.

Sure, the kid's played RM a lot at u23 level, but it's clear from his bio on the os that he was signed as a RB. I also think S Armstrong will be, and should be, first pick on the right when he's fit. The only way to get KWP, Livramento, and Armstrong on the pitch is for one of them to be played out of their best position or the position that we signed them to play.

I voted leave and acknowledge it was a shit decision. There are no benefits that I can see.

Yep. Livramento undoubtedly signed to play, and if Ralph thinks he's the better option at Rab, that's what Ralph is paid to decide. Him playing will have added credence to any assurances we gave Small that he'd play if he signed, and won't do any harm if this tactic of buying young talent from other academies.

I'm intrigued how we'll line up. Can't be a back 3. Alexander Arnold or James in midfield I'd guess

Although several black people I know refer to non white people as coloured people. They'll be gutted to learn that they're racist.

Cheers. That would have been my assumption. It's obvious that most people would want to play, and socialise with people that they know and preferably near to where they live. What surprises me also is the notion that a club, or indeed county, would refuse to play a better player simply because of his colour. I can't see that as anything like plausible.

Cheers, I must confess that I don't know about the Yorkshire situation. That suggests that all clubs across Yorkshire were refusing to give Asian players a game. That seems extraordinary. On to football, I hope that we can all agree that young black players are given equal opportunity, the make up of first team and youth team squads seems to suggest that. Why that doesn't translate to coaching and management is a bit of a mystery though. I'd like to see some stats on how many black / asian people who do their coaching badges (Pro ones) get opportunities compared to white people.

Was a decent car, but it was released years after it was supposed to be, so looked out of date when it arrived. I had a xantia once and drove it down to the Languedoc. I've never had such a comfortable long drive.

That's a good and interesting article, thanks. It says that only 1% of players in grass roots cricket are black (I'm unsure if the reference to "black" also extended to Asian and other non white groups). Does that stand as evidence of institutional racism? Or is the case that, for reasons unknown, black people in this country don't want to play cricket? Perhaps it's because there are no clubs near to where they live, but if that's down to geography, is that institutional racism or an unfortunate fact of life? What happened to Lawrence in 1981 was awful and sadly indicative of the era. It wouldn't happen now though. Indeed, Mark Butcher seemingly experienced no racism issues when he played in a later era. Sure, there is a lack of representation in coaching etc in cricket (and football although the England set up are trying very hard to address that with players like Ashley Cole and our Paul Williams suddenly getting big jobs) has always baffled me. Anyways, my point is that historical issues and a lack of opportunity does not equate to institutional racism now. Anyone can see that things have improved massively, but giving people jobs because they're black, assuming that football has a race problem because a few racists on twitter target footballers, assuming that cricket has a race issue because black people either choose not to play or don't have the access to facilities, calling people racists because they don't support the knee (despite naively believing that the players have chosen to do it), etc, etc, doesn't help. The simple fact is that racism exists, albeit to a lesser and hopefully reducing extent, but a person's ideology will not be eradicated by another person's naive hope that racists can be made to think like normal people by all of these actions.

Decent post, but this isn't player driven. Brentford players (many black, playing for a very diverse club) chose not to take the knee last season stating, and I paraphrase, that it's a load of bollox. They get promoted to the premier league and, what do you know, they're on their knees. Do you believe that they've had a sudden change of heart, or that its got something to do with promotion to the world's richest league and having to toe the line?

Ditto, and I think booing it is daft and classless as a minimum. Anyways, it's here to stay and we'll have the ongoing circus of boos, criticism, "debate", etc.