Elma

Nowt against any of those really. Leeds the one I dislike the most but feel they'll add most to the Premier League and is as close as we'll get to a derby/short trip. Always had a bit of a soft spot for both WBA and to a lesser extent Norwich. Nowt against Southampton but a long trip. Hull also a short trip, but feel they'll be whipping boys and unlikely to make it anyway. In summary, WBA, Norwich, Leeds in that order for me.

If we get the £20m then I'd take that, as it could buy a £50-60m player under FFP. Anything less and I agree - it's not worth it bearing in mind they are our closest league competitors over the last two seasons and Ashworth will have lots of intel (which becomes less and less relevant the longer he's on gardening leave). Probably why we've set the fee at that level and I think they (both Man U and Ashworth) may have misjudged this. There's certainly no real incentive in us letting him go for under £10 million so if they weren't prepared to go even that high they've put themselves in a difficult position.

I live 7.5 miles from there. Not been that much rain this week and none today. Strange.

You must be younger than me. We won six in a row here once (think I was at four of them). Personally, considering our troubles in the capital at one time, I'd consider it one of our happier hunting grounds.

This is beautiful on three counts. We need City to win the cup. I can now whole-heatedly cheer for Coventry against Man Utd tomorrow. Seeing Chelsea dominate and lose a semi with a winnable final behind feels a little like payback for 2000.

My best mate is from Barrow. Was there before Xmas for their 1-1 draw with Notts County at Holker Street. Pete Wild (manager) has done a cracking job there after their board picked a couple of duds after Evatt went to Bolton. Hoping they finish the job and get into the play-offs against Bradford on Tuesday.

Agree - hence my question about whether they may have approached Niall and Biffa again. It seems like newcastleunited.com has been owned continuously since the late 90's so it was probably already in the stable and made sense to use that regardless.

Wonder if they approached Niall and Biffa? Doubt they would ever give it up. If memory serves the club tried to get NUFC.com years ago.

Bit of trivia - Henry Blofeld's father was a good school friend of Ian Flemming. Appreciate you've stated last decade, but go back a little further and we had 6-1 in an FA Cup replay in 2000, and 7-1 in the league in 1996. We've been on the other end of some down their place too. A mate of mine who supports Spurs says we're their modern day bogey team (it used to be Coventry apparently). Not sure I'd agree with that as they have a fair record against us - it's just when we win we often go big.

Don't think it looks too bad, and I prefer the sweep of the bottom of the white on the back to the square we had at the weekend and in the UCL this season. I understand the commercial reason for doing it too (pushing people towards a name and number) but from a purely aesthetic point of view, in my opinion you can't beat a striped back with a square black patch and white number, ala Juve in the 80s and what we had for a few years on the Asics kit. If executed properly, numbers and names could be supplied on the patch (probably be easier to apply) and it would keep the design open for those who prefer a plain, striped back.

Emil Krafth seems especially excited for the women in the official congratulations video…

As far as I understand it: If he gets a yellow he moves to 10 and gets a two game ban. He then has to keep under 15 until the end of the season to avoid a three game ban. However, he's not been sent off so any subsequent reds this season give him the appropriate ban for the offence, one game ban for two yellows, last man etc, or three if it's violent conduct. If he takes a second yellow in the game to convert it to a red, he gets an immediate one game ban as he's not been sent off so far this season. His yellow tally drops back to nine and he has to avoid 15 by season's end. However, if he got a subsequent red (either straight or two yellows) in the remaining games he'd get a two game ban (four if it's violent conduct), having been sent off already. So probably best to take the second yellow and convert to a red to reduce the immediate ban and keep his yellow tally down to nine ahead of the remaining six games, but it does increase the risk of a longer ban later if he were to get a red in the last six games.

In the (admittedly short) highlights clip I saw he made Almiron look two-footed but, fair play, he's having an impact in terms of goals and assists. Interesting that he started ahead of the much more experienced Jahanbakhsh.

I understand the view of those who want it binned but there was significant clamour for it when big decisions were being incorrectly called and it was working well in other sports. On the first point, I don't see it as VAR any more, not in the sense it's being used now. It's simply giving the onfield ref another chance to see the incident so it would be the ref and the ref alone reviewing the footage. If he fails to uphold the team's decision to review then it's lost, like in cricket. It will encourage teams to use it strategically and not waste it frivolously. You could always give two reviews but personally I'd favour one. The only abuse of it I can foresee is teams throwing it at last minute goals against if they haven't already used it.

Agree on that. My take on VAR would fix that. Give each team one review per game that they can use for anything they think is a major mistake (retained if upheld). Automate the offsides so that only really leaves fouls for goals, mistaken identity, and card upgrades/downgrades. The team notifies the 4th official, and the ref goes straight to the screen to review with only tech officials in Stockley Park to show every angle requested. Saves on running a second VAR team of officials every game and the onfield ref will feel under no peer pressure at the monitor to make the call they think is correct. Would also save review time as you wouldn't have that window where the VAR team do an initial assessment.

According to Wiki: "He played 48 out of 51 games in 2021–22, missing only one league game by suspension…" Ha…we'll soon knock that out of him.

Now that is a thing of beauty! I don't have my LEE-7 shirt any longer but when I got the numbers online they didn't have the Asics logo on them, back in the day. Similar font though. I did iron them on myself and surprisingly they stayed on for the life of the shirt, as far as I recall.

Ha ha - I cheated and went for LEE - 7, as per the image. Had VENISON - 2 on the blue away, although that one was much easier without the patch. I don't think the Premier League numbers were available back then, but you could buy close equivalents online and iron them on yourself.

This has always been my favourite style for numbers. That was a classic and stands the test of time in my opinion. Ideally the shirt would have a striped back and they would find some way to provide the numbers already made up onto the patch, although that might be tricky for personalised kits where the name/number combo isn't one of the named squad. When that shirt came out I cut a black square of cloth, added the iron-on numbers that you could buy online, and then stuck the patch onto the shirt (with wundaweb I think). It was all do-it-yourself in those days.

It's actually the same word as English - transfer. Probably just borrowed from English like many Turkish football related words. The "ini" part is two "i" suffixes with a buffer letter as it is specifying that it is the transfer specifically of Jamaal Lascelles. Can be confusing to look Turkish words up in a dictionary for that reason as it's an agglutinating language and you need to know the root. In other news, Beşiktaş are my Turkish team due to that being where I lived, and the fact they play in black and white. If he goes anywhere then personally I'd be happy with that (although I'd rather he stay with us).

Disappointed not to hang on for the point. Sickener. No blame from me though. City are superb and we ran out of legs. On another day Wilson, Murphy and Barnes would have been on to run the channels and relieve the pressure from the 60th minute. The first half showed we can still compete and after Villa we'll have played the top three twice with 17 games to play.

Agree with that but I'd probably go one step further. For me VAR was brought in for clear and obvious errors like mistaken identity etc so along with goal line tech and automated offsides, I'd give each team one VAR call a game which would be lost if not upheld. Call would be made via the 4th official and the onfield ref would go straight to the screen for a second look so no time lost while a remote VAR team assess it. No remote VAR team would also mean no influencing of the ref and showing him their preferred angles - just one tech person on the other end who can show any angles requested. Onfield ref's call is uninfluenced and final. The biggest problem with VAR is definitely offsides though, so automating them would be the simplest change and the Premier League were stupid for not going down that route.

Away at Leeds. Edit: This one - from about 45 secs in? Topically, I've also just noticed that the ref that day was Keith Cooper, Steve Cooper's dad.