Shak

I mean, if this was my first exposure to Wraith I'd think this was a pretty good interview.

I move we embed this at the top of the forum. I don't think there's a better clip to sum up the last 24 hours.

Thought that was gonna be a joke and the plane was gonna crash or some shit.

We won't be signing any good players.

Man, that post LFEE. People like you who did so much work the last few years are heroes and better than a lot of the fanbase deserves. Thanks so much for all you did, sounds like your father was rightly proud.

I teach lots of Saudis so this will be great conversation material, actually Might start offering private classes teaching the history of the club, charge extortionate prices.

I wonder what he did with all that extra free time. Probably speaks 8 languages and is a world class violinist.

Aye, the odd game down the pub with a couple of the lads and just being able to antagonize Man U fan friends is as involved as I'll get. Might post the odd formation on here... maybe

I do like the idea that the guy whose job it is to control all access to the training ground also has a few other bits and pieces to do to keep him busy

Good friend of mine works for a sports science company that did some work with NUFC while Rafa was manager. They also did some stuff with Man City. His boss was telling him about visiting the training grounds two consecutive days. Lots of stuff that was night and day but his favourite was that at City he got a key card in advance and detailed instructions on who he was to meet and at what time and where in the building. At Newcastle he was given a phone number to ring when he arrived outside and the lad who answered had to come out and let him in.

I still don't know what Joelinton looks like.

Sweet moves I actually watched the game last night with a couple of friends, think they were shocked at how far out of touch I've fallen with football. Had no idea who Mount, Phillips and Saka were Was a really good first half to watch, from the second half onwards though it just seemed a matter of time before England scored. What's the craic with VAR now? How was that Kane penalty shout not given? Seemed pretty stonewall? He does go down very easily a lot but seemed like the guy clattered into him on that one.

I like that people seem to think that there is some big group of people at the club and around the sport in general that know how this is all going to play out and they're all passing info to each other and making their moves accordingly. Seems more likely that nobody has a fucking clue how this is all going to go, hence the whole court case.

See, everybody wins.

I usually skip your posts though so I don't know what that means.

I have faith in Froggy that this is brilliant trolling.

Got that as a birthday present for my 30th. Was lovely. Got shrunk in the wash, was snug as hell... then I put on weight and it was game over. Also lost the lacing and it didn't look as good. Might get it again actually, was class.

I've been glued to this thread since this all happened. Hoping these six leave the PL, leading to a complete collapse of the shitshow it's become and this ESL to be every bit as shite as I expect it to be. You showing up braying your shite has been a nice shot in the arm for the thread.

Absolute disgrace that @Mike was the one you were sure of and I was just an afterthought. I've poured years of my life into hating on the little toerag. (Pip is a good guy tbf, he's just a truly awful sports fan)

I think a big plus of the NFL is how relatively short their season is. Four months, 17 games. Most years a 9-8 record is going to have a decent shot of the playoffs so as long as you're not a complete disaster of a team you'll still be in the playoff hunt even with a 3-5 record halfway through the year. You'll still get some late season dead rubbers of course, but by the time things start to take shape and a large number of teams are out of the hunt it's almost playoffs time.

Can't speak to baseball and basketball but that's very much not the case in the NFL. The salary cap dictates the maximum they can spend on players per season but the owners are also obliged to spend a minimum of 89% (over the course of a 4 year period) of it too. You'll occasionally get teams "tanking", which is when they trade or cut their best/players for extra picks in future drafts, but this is all done with the aim of it allowing you to be really good a few years down the line. The Browns did an extreme version of this a few years back and were pretty much a laughing stock, four years later they have one of the best rosters in the league and are a legitimate Superbowl contender next season. Not to say that the NFL is devoid of problems, it certainly isn't. But I do think it's as close to perfect as you can reasonably expect in terms of creating a level playing field. As others have said though, that's a system that's come together organically over decades and is massively dependent on it essentially being a one country sport whose athletes only have one league they can play in. Attempting to uproot the system that football has in place and just implementing a US sports model is completely unfeasible, and the way this ESL is structured doesn't even seem to want to do that as the bigger teams will still be dwarfing their fellow "super clubs".