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Happy to avoid both to keep double-barreled names out of our squad.

So good.

This was meant to happen before a late cancellation last summer, wasn't it?

Others are into the dark arts, we're into dark science.

As I understand it, he wasn't. But he was the driving force behind the team that drove Brighton's transfers. So make of that what you will regarding his influence on McTominay and others. Personally, I'd imagine his main influence on this would be around yaying or naying the financial considerations - of this and any other transfers that might or might not be affected by it.

Would hope there's a pretty favourable release clause attached for him if they fail to yoyo, seeing as they appeared to mess him around last summer.

Did we suggest he have a weekend break there just to tease @Milanista?

Yeah I know, I meant the photo and quotes. Thought maybe a new interview had come out.

Pulling the same face 25 years later. Where's this stuff coming from?

Yes, along with some little stars tattooed behind his right ear. Will really bring his game along.

Looking at Elliot Anderson's physique in the after match Forest photo, I wonder if that's why he wanted him kept here rather than out on loan for the past 6 months, also...

If I supported Olimpia Ljubljana I'd be feeling really pumped right now.

You need to watch some more of his press conferences Nothing abominable, but obscuring, omitting and misleading are a big part of what he does when dealing with the public. About selections, about injuries, about transfers. I have no complaints about it.

Putting aside the rights and wrongs on Saint Maximin, Howe clearly lies about the situations with our players on the regular. There's nothing controversial about suggesting he'd talk about an injury to cover up a different problem, whether that's true on this occasion or not.

Nah, we were much more rapid and incisive against Forest than we have been in prior weeks. We've had periods of sustained pressure, but the ultimate moves and balls in have been formulaic. Isak, Murphy and Willock have to get a lot of credit for changing us up. Our set pieces have picked up too - that surprise dink from Trippier to Isak in the first half which ended up on the cross bar was great, caught Forest totally flat footed.

I think people who have/are writing us off are making the mistake of overestimating our competition. I can see why you'd expect history to repeat with experienced campaigners like Liverpool, but truly the only thing consistent about them, Tottenham and others is their inconsistency. It's not a fluke, they've got real underlying problems. Meanwhile, I'd argue we've got one of the highest quality lower halves of the table in a long time. No team has any reason to give up on their season at this stage. So I think we can expect the top tier to finish with an unusually low points tally, with very few 3 point gimme games around. As for us, I'm just so happy to see some attacking invention return to us. It looks like we're coming back into form at just the right time...

I genuinely think our overall support has become psychologically frail after the last 30 years, topped off by Ashley. Build someone's hope up that often, and then smash them down lower than they were before every single time and you can do real damage. People stop investing themselves too much to keep themselves defended, and expect the worst so soon as the wind starts turning.

Yeah, it's certainly fair to ask questions, I was myself. I just try to also give credit where it's due! And consider why the thing I want to have happen isn't happening. Yes, I'd like Targett back also. I'd like to find out why that hasn't happened, it certainly doesn't look like he's been frozen out the squad at least. He's had a weird season given the rumours and vague statements around his fitness.

In principle I do agree with you. But the original comparison I was gonna make, which I'd guess would be the popular viewpoint on here, is it's like saying guns don't kill people, people do. Despite that, most people here see the difference in the numbers between Britain and America as being related to the lack of guns here, and don't want all the bans lifted. Even though it's totally true that a million new AR15s wouldn't kill anyone in this country. It's thought that given people will be holding those guns, massacres would be inevitable. The point is the existence of the thing pretty much ensures, given human nature, that light bulbs will be powered, cars be driven fast and shootings will occur. After that it's just a judgement call on whether the thing is worth having despite these essentially guaranteed downsides. Back to VAR, I don't see it having anywhere near enough upside on this entertainment product (the fun being what makes football more popular than other sports like swimming and hammer throwing).

Tell you what, given a couple of wins and the total turnaround of the vibe and attacking intent of the team - following Eddie doing pretty much exactly what many people feared he wouldn't re: personnel - this thread has been very quiet.

You realise none of the links provided here deal with the queries and objections raised, right? The only relevent thing is the following quote from the Premier League's own website: "In 2018/19, before VAR was introduced, the percentage of correct key match decisions was 82 per cent. With the help of VAR in 2019/20, it rose to 94 per cent. Over the course of 2019/20, over 2,400 incidents were checked and 109 decisions were overturned by the VAR, an average of an overturned decision every 3.5 matches." Again, there is nothing referenced in this article to back up the figures or explain how they're arrived at, which was my objection. Interestingly, though, the second paragraph doesn't appear to tally with the implicit claims, on first sight. It effectively states that approximately 4.5% of on field decisions were reviewed and found wrong by VAR in 19/20. One interpretation of this is that on field decisions had improved by 7.5% versus the previous season, independently of VAR - so 2/3rds of the 82%>94% improvement could not be attributed to VAR. That would mean 10.5% of on field decisions within VAR's remit in 19/20 were wrong, and VAR only spotted 4.5% - meaning VAR failed nearly 60% of the time on occasions it ought, by its own standards, to have gotten involved with. Furthermore, the 19/20 figures don't pass the smell test. Presumably the figures relate primarily to the stated issues of 1) goals 2) penalties 3) direct red cards 4) offsides and 5) inside/outside penalty box location disputes. If VAR overturned approximately 5% of decisions as they claim, working out at 1 per 3.5 games, then logically there are only 20 such events per 3.5 games. In other words, they're claiming there were only a cumulative total of about 5.5 offsides, goals, penalties, direct reds and location disputes per game in 19/20. Seems low. I went to whoscored.com and picked 5 Saturday games in 5 different months at random - 1) Crystal Palace Vs Man City (2 goals, 5 offsides), 2) Bournemouth Vs Wolves (3 goals, 4 offsides 3) Liverpool Vs Watford (2 goals, 9 offsides) 4) Arsenal Vs Sheffield Utd (2 goals, 3 offsides) 5) Southampton Vs Burnley (3 goals, 4 offsides). So, on only 2 of the main metrics, these games averaged 7.4 events per game - despite averaging about 10% less goals per game than a typical match that season (2.4 vs 2.72). That's around 25% more events than the PL website claims normally take place, despite not including all the other event types like location disputes and penalties. Something seems off with these 'authoritative' figures. Altogether, no, I'm not giving these sources credibility, as they don't verify anything relevant successfully. They're just unsubstantiated assertions.

You've not even posted a source for your claims, you're nowhere near being able to make this argument.

It's like saying electricity isn't responsible for light pollution, it's the inept electricity users.

One thing that's clear from the celebrations - the players believe the Champion's League is on.

Probably a bit early to be starting Anderson there consistently, but it's certainly a long time since we've had a threat like that coming in from the left.