norwaysaint

I agree with you about voting. We get some pretty silly comments on here during political discussions and I rarely read them now. Too many people believe it's polarised into right politics and wrong politics, refusing to recognise the necessary contribution of both the left and the right. So we get silly comments about "lefties" or insinuations that everybody right wing is racist or selfish. Any country that is left or right for too long will eventually need a change. I am by nature left wing, but I recognise that at times, we need right wing government and would not rule out voting conservative or other. To fail to recognise the left and right wing nature of humanity that needs addressing is just naive. That doesn't mean that I support centre politics either, because that's neither a commitment to one thing nor the other. Governments need changing regularly. That's why in democracy, they usually do.

So Obama has to see out his last two years as a weak and ineffectual president, having lost control of both the house and the senate. It's not going to do his place in history any favours and it gets harder to see a Democrat win in 2016. It's always interesting how Obama and Democrat presidents in general are so much more popular in Europe, even when they're losing support at home. I was wondering how those actually living under his administration feel about it. I know we've got quite a few here that live in the states. Obviously if you were a Republican before, then you already hated him, but have many here been part of the swing away from him? It seems pretty clear to me that the US is gearing up for another Republican president, but it'd be interesting to see people's thoughts on Obama and the current situation. Did you know that the Republicans have not won a presidential election without a Bush or a Nixon on the ticket since 1929? There's a new George Bush on the way up now too.

We are now just over a quarter of the way through the season, so I think we can safely extrapolate the statistics to say exactly how the rest of the season will go. That means we can expect to finish with about 88 points, maybe a couple less if we have a dip in form.

Yeah, and big Vic...

I'll be very disappointed if everybody isn't singing this at the hull match.

It's not just how well we're doing, it's how much worse everybody who left is doing. Add to that that suddenly Cork can score goals and you have to assume that somebody somewhere in Southampton has a lamp and very few wishes left.

Before anyone else clicks on this, you should know that this team includes Hooiveld.

I think West Ham have gained more points than us and beat City too. Newcastle have gained more points too and beat the team that beat us. If we got it, it'd only really be because of the eight goals, aside form that we lost to Spurs and had a narrow win at home.

Excellent result, great to see Bournemouth doing so well. Hope they come up next season. Hope we meet them in the cup too.

I'm no fan of CB Fry, I find him a little over obsessed with what other people post, but how can you say he didn't express an opinion of his own? He posted on this thread that he thought we'd do okay and that the squad would come together by the winter. He was right and the people who were right on this thread were given quite a bit of abuse. Why shouldn't they be allowed to bring this back in the light of things? You may have a valid argument for him being a ****, but you make a fool of yourself and weaken your point when you don't stick to what's right. I like this thread being brought back, I think too many people have destructive kneejerk reactions and are quite unpleasant in expressing them, this is a way of trying to hold that in check. It may be harmless in football, but maybe it can carry over to silly kneejerk reactions to all sorts of things they are ill-informed about, such as immigration, "political correctness" and many other topics we see on SWF.

Imagine how we would have reacted last season if Chelsea fans had said their reserve LB was better than Shaw? I have no idea what's going on or how good players really are these days. I thought Lovren and Shaw were top class players. I wonder if Schneiderlin will suddenly seem massively over-rated when he leaves.

I don't think so, you deserve some credit for keeping some perspective when many were losing there's and being pretty abusive to you. I found this thread pretty entertaining to re-read. It's interesting to see which posters came out of that able to hold their heads high and which should feel a bit silly. The things people mocked you for in the OP have so far proved to be about right. I'm just glad I didn't comment...

Not exactly. We're third now, if we get the results we stay there no matter what anyone else does. If they get good results they get to challenge us, but it's what we do in our matches that interests me the most, because it's our position to keep. I doubt we will stay there, but our results are what I'm interested in here.

I don't see the problem with the accent. People use assumed accents all the time in songs (usually US) and even when reading poetry we might adopt an accent that fits the style. It isn't delivered as a parody or in a mocking style. It's just ****.

Pretty likely that over time, the bigger clubs have the resources to reel us in and overtake us, but as Chelsea and City are the ones most clearly beyond us, they can take all the points they like off everyone else, thanks. Like others have said though, it's not so much about what they all do, except the schadenfreude when big clubs fail, it's what we do that interests me most.

Shaw has suddenly gone from world class to a bit poor and unfit Lallana is a bit average Lovren has gone from commanding to wobbly Lambert is making no impact MP is still not getting much out of Spurs Tadic seems to be an improvement on Lallana Pelle has almost certainly had more impact than Lambert would've Schneiderlin stayed and has been excellent Cork is scoring goals Our two new CBs have been solid, certainly not worse than Lovren was last season. Bertrand, despite never excelling anywhere else, is now looking even better than Shaw did last year, but with more scoring ability RK is a more likeable and entertaining manager than MP and is keeping pace with his results or improving Clyne is flourishing under RK and has been far better than Chambers so far this year We are third, all of the clubs we lost players or staff to are below us Pompey are still very poor and not going up We made lots of money from our transfers We've had our biggest win ever, including the fact that nine times out of ten our goalie would have been sent off early on Did I miss anything? Seriously, has one of you sold their soul for this or something?

It'd be nice if somebody would call him an unsung hero again on this thread. I never get tired of constantly hearing how he's under-rated and an unsung hero. Good news.

That's an odd thing to say. Health workers were infected on US and Spanish soil while treating ebola victims. Now other people will be treating them. It's clearly not impossible that one of those will become infected. As with any disease, the more people infected, the more people infected and it could spread from those. Does it not count unless there is a wholly unconnected victim in a country? They "got it" in the US and Spain. Others might too.

I cannot believe that somebody has actually suggested Coventry on this thread without a shred of sarcasm or irony. Has anyone said Wolverhampton yet.

As an expat the places I love to go to in the UK, except Hampshire to visit family, are the Lake District and the Lizard in Cornwall. Both beautiful places, if you enjoy amazing scenery and great walks, you can't beat the lakes. Haven't done York, but I've heard it's nice.

So Redknapp says MLT built a football club. Just trying to remember which manager got the club relegated, leading to its collapse and the need to rebuild it all again.

Last year was pretty crap for skiing here, exceptionally mild. I think I only skied four times all year. Happily, as a result, they extended our season ticket to cover this year too, which is outstanding customer service. Now there'd better be a bit more bloody snow...

I suppose it's natural that when people post something that turns out to be right, they bring it up and resurrect threads to show how great they are, but when they get it utterly wrong, like hypo and co here, they get a bit stoppy if it's brought back to them. I think it's equally relevant and if anything helps people not jump in with uninformed opinions so quickly next time. we're all wrong often enough, I said I didn't think we wouldn't sell any key players in the summer...

I'm so disappointed with that apostrophe that I feel the rest of your posts on this thread are soiled.

It's not racist as they have not discriminated unfairly against anyone. Quite the opposite actually, you would be more inclined to say they were insensitive by treating the black and white models the same, as there are obviously those who have had racial abuse directed at them involving the word monkey. Many people would have preferred them to show more discrimination in choosing which children should model which outfit. It looks like they did it without a thought about race, meaning there is no racism, only possible insensitivity.