80

Only saw the highlight vid, but Almiron looks so much more direct now. Loved his drop of the shoulder to create his well taken shot.

I'm viewing the CB pairings as Schar+Botman-alike and Botman+Other. I think the preferred pair will be Schar and Botman for Forest. There is actually a fair drizzle of first team starting this game, it's just that it's mostly defensive and highlights our lack of attacking depth.

It was light hearted... But my point is there's a distinct sense around at the moment that people are feigning interest in order to 'do the right thing'. As opposed to being truly enthralled and moved by it. Re: NUFC, I'm actually pretty happy with what NUFC are doing with the women's team at the moment. That feels much more organic to me. Supporting them and letting interest come to them fairly naturally rather than making up marketing material about how amazing it all is. Like I say, I haven't taken much interest in women's football, but I found the treatment of Sunderland and (as I understand it) Doncaster Belles because they weren't fashionable totally appalling. Completely undermines the idea the boom in women's football coverage is about ordinary women and sport.

Hook, line and sinker, language wars are always fun I don't like the way the argument keeps shifting, that's why I was commenting. Sometimes it's the liberal 'live and let live', other times it's 'you must be supportive and egalitarian in how you spend your time'. I joined in the topic as I noticed guys trying (successfully or not) to make constructive comments about improving the game and being told to butt out huffily. Which again, I'd say is fine, so long as they're not inevitably accused of entrenching the patriarchy through their lack of engagement with the sport. So apparently the only way patriarchy isn't enforced is if you lie and say you think everything is wonderful. FYI, I did know women were stopped from using association grounds after the first world war. Nell of the North and all that. It doesn't change the fact that a lot of the treatment women's football is currently receiving is, ironically, highly patronising. I genuinely feel bad for some of the highly talented female footballers I've seen who are being let down by structural elements of the game e.g. in my view, the goal sizes. If there's not enough difficulty in scoring, they won't get the respect they could otherwise be earning.

In a funny sort of way, our appalling striking weakness gives us a great opportunity to bring in a youngster who we don't expect or need to score many goals, on the grounds that (without Wilson in the team) we have nothing to lose, and already are geared up for the midfield to pull it's weight.

I'm happy to let them do what they like, so long as I'm not continually asked/demanded to care about it. The closest I've come to being interested in women's football (apart from going out of my way to watch goalkeeping highlights for fun) is when Namibia(?) were cheating and trying to kick lumps out of the England girls, I'm guessing about 4 years ago? They'd do well to take the hint that a lot of football supporters follow for the passion, and not continually try to dry everything out and make out it's just a wonderful, polite athletics contest. The smartest thing that could do is synthesize more controversy like that. We'll know women's football has broken through when we see a fight break out on the terraces, to be honest.

This didn't get enough appreciation.

I'd expect option 1 to give us our strongest team performance. Can't really comment on Lewis.

It's starting to not look like random chance that he's started scoring lately... haven't seen his second goal yet, but he seems to be hitting the ball with a lot more conviction since the end of last season. I've been down on him and didn't expect him to go anywhere with us, but I'm more than happy to eat those words if he can keep it up.

Read the chain of posts again as I was in a rush at a time. Realise you were wanting to back up Madras, so apologies. Thought you were Dr Jinx to be honest!

I explained what I thought you were saying in a later post. If I misunderstood, fair enough.

We're probably one of the few clubs who could legitimately claim our staff hadn't noticed our players were asthmatic in recent years

Sounds good to me. The contract durations lately have seemed very sensible.

Would be fascinated to hear an in depth interview with him one day after he's retired.

Good on Matt Richie for doing Bruce's job for him, too.

My interpretation was that he was accusing you of having same level of thought as 'proper football men' like Steve Bruce and Graeme Souness, and aren't enlightened enough to see the clarity and wisdom statistics offer. GSCE Sociology logic.

That's a bollocks thing to say in this instance. Not least because the Allardyces of the world manipulate and hide behind statistics all the while.

His own dedicated thread where I don't have to look at him or see people defending him from people who aren't there would be great, please.

...And if he doesn't respect and take guidance from Trippier then he's a gonner...

He's looked more of an unknown quantity there, for me. And he still has the option to cut in on his left, it's just not the default move.

That's my thoughts too overall. I wonder if that's the kind of thing Howe was hinting at when talking about trying to find squad improvements in less obvious areas of the squad the other day.

Just wondering what the reaction to trading Barnes for Maxi + 10-15m would be then

So... Who considers Barnes an upgrade on Maxi all things considered?

Oh, leaving right now? Ok, you might be right, I would be gobsmacked Yeah, it's pretty easy to make the argument he's worth more than £100m to us today because he's talismanic to people outside our club of where we're going. Lose that and what are we?

I don't think that's true. I agree with the whole of the rest of your post, and Bruno is my answer to that question too, but there's no use in letting yourself get despondent about something like that happening, the pessimism is self-fulfilling. If he ever left, there's a decent chance it would be for £100m+, so the question to ask is what we could achieve with that money. Again, I think your description of him as stardust is spot on, but it was dreamy sentiment that saw Robson blocked from selling an ageing Shearer to Liverpool and future-proofing the team, and the rest is history. If the club wants to be bigger than an iconic player, it needs to act like it's bigger than an iconic player.