Kaizero

I mean, I felt I covered that quite well in my post - but apparently I couldn't have given this response We know. They don't. We don't decide what others think of us, and others see owners with a combined net worth higher than the other 19 PL team owners, combined! Of course people that don't follow us in as much detail as we do will have preconceived expectations and opinions about us based on nothing but headlines.

While we're on the subject of "missing" posters, is @Village Idiot still around and posting less often (to the degree I feel I've not seen a VI post in absolute ages), or has he left the village?

Whilst I understand and "get" this opinion and te thought process behind it, I believe we (the collective NUFC fandom) are so used to being a part of the "shit" PL teams that we don't realize that we are one of the big teams that are having a shit/inconsistent season - thus giving the shit teams a golden opportunity. This season isn't actually "perfectly poised for us", because we are no longer a team who'd make headlines if we finished the season in the top four. It'd not even be headline news if we mounted a title challenge, it'd be us doing what everyone else has been expecting us to do after the takeover. Whilst I love Howe and, on principle, oppose kneejerk manager sackings - I'm genuinely baffled by the lack of media scrutiny directed at Howe for failing to meet the media's pre-season expectations for us. We, the fans, know the details of why we're not doing as well as people expected us to do post-takeover - but the media pundits that cover the "entire" league and aren't specifically following us, do not. My only explanation for the lack of media scrutiny/pressure being piled onto Howe is the fact that he's English, and the pundits avoid going after "one of their own" until the writing's on the wall. If Howe was a filthy foreigner, we'd 100% see tons of coverage raising questions about the NUFC owners/admins as to why we don't just sack the manager as the team underperforming expectations is his responsibility, all the while avoiding to mention the fact the manager can't strengthen the team because of the idiotic new PL financial rules

On average you wait less than 10 seconds longer than you do when a linesman intervenes in a match. Yes, a few times it takes absolute ages - but that’s because the Referees barely know what they’re doing when they do it in real time. Which leads to them just getting more confused when they get a chance to review it in slow motion from multiple angles. If IFAB worked to make the Laws of the Game suitable for VAR, VAR would work almost perfectly. They don’t do that. Instead they work to make the Laws of the Game even harder for a referee to correctly interpret when VAR is called into action.

You’re the one that brought the Nations League into it, putting the “blame” at its doorstep. Then, instead of adressing what you said, you pretended that you didn’t say anything of that nature, before going on to seemingly go out of your way to act patronizing Each to their own and all that, it just makes no sense whatsoever. If you didn’t mean to “blame” the Nations League, you could’ve easily clarified that with a one sentence reply. Instead you seemingly decided that you wanted to take a completely different approach instead of clarifying what you’re now saying is the reason for how you’ve acted.

Without the Nations League we’d have never seen a WCQ group like Group L and nations like Montenegro and the Faroe Islands could’ve only dreamt of having a chance to directly qualify for a World Cup through the actual, offficial, UEFA Qualifiers. Maybe, and just maybe, they could’ve lucked out and snatched one of the Nations League qualifying spots and made it into a World Cup the long way round - but now? Now they have an actual chance. Their games are no longer “glorified friendlies” and their role is no longer restricted to being a nation only “making up the numbers” in their group. The Nations League has delivered way, way, above expectations and made international football competitive and entertaining - for all nations. Just because someone is born in one of the “big” football nations and therefore, without probably even meaning to do so, continually act just as “entitled” as Liverpool fans get accused of being - taking qualifying for major tournaments, and victory in most matches (competitive matches just as much as non-competitive) as a given and therefore now views International breaks in the football calendar as a “bore”… That, in no way, means that the rest of the world does. Someone posted on here saying that if NUFC played in the Conference League this season, we’d cherish every moment and if we won the trophy at the end of it - we’d celebrate it for years to come. It shouldn’t be hard for a NUFC fan to understand how people from “smaller” nations view International football. For us, the “trophy” would be qualifying for a EC or WC - we’d live on that achievement alone for at least 10+ years. When the press in Norway asks people to vote for what they view as the pinnacle of Norwegian sport, the winner has been the same since 1998… The 3rd group stage match against Brazil in the France WC that we had to win if we were to advance to the Round of 16. We went 0-1 down in the middle of the 2nd half, the coaching staff made the last subs of the match based on “letting X player get some minutes on the pitch to experience playing in a WC before going home”. They weren’t made based on tactical reasons to attempt turning the match around, we were 0-1 down to Brazil in a WC match after all. In the last 10 minutes of the match, we turned 0–1 into 2-1 and qualified for the Round of 16. That match went on to etch itself into our collective memories as the absolute peak for Norway as a nation doing sports. We unceriomoniously got knocked out in an extremely boring 0–1 loss to Italy in our eventual R16 match, but nobody cared then and nobody cares now. We’ll never win a WC, but that late summer night in 1998? That felt like watching Norway lift the trophy. Until the day NUFC lifts a trophy, I genuinely don’t think anything related to sport will even come close to challenging what I felt that evening, pure unfiltered bliss. And that bliss came into existence from the 3rd match in a WC group stage - not from lifting a trophy, but because that match mattered so much for the entire nation, and our team didn’t let us down - even when nobody actually believed we’d win at any point before the final whistle was blown. I love International football and will continue to do so until the corporate greed that’ systematically ruined European club competitions in less than two decades manages to ruin that part of modern football as well.

Frightening lack of manners. I can only hope, for the sake of the people around you, that you don’t behave like this offline. Refusing to engage in meaningful discussion, on an online discussion board, is paradoxial behaviour manifest.

I feel you're kinda moving the goalposts a fair bit with every new post you make about it, to be fair My combined Xi would look very different to the one I posted if you'd said to pick the players at their absolute peak

So... the current manager of Norway, Ståle Solbakken, just gave the press some interesting quotes about the Rafa situation Apparently he confronted Rafa about it later the same day Rafa said the things he did as the Norwegian FA hosted a dinner both attended. He said Rafa told him "the press had repeated certain things without the surrounding original context they were said in". Solbakken goes on to say that he was well aware that Rafa just said the same thing as everyone else does when they get confronted about them "rocking the boat". So far everything Solbakken said had been by the book and what you'd expect a currently employed manager to say about an unemployed manager making a public play for their job. Butthen ... and this is where things start to get wicked... Solbakken starts ranting about how he believes expressing public interest in a managerial position that's occupied and unavailable should be an automatic disqualifier when the time comes to actually hire a new manager, and that the Norwegian FA shouldn't even be thinking about Rafa because of how he had acted when he (Solbakken) was under contract. Then he went on to say disparaging things about how he believes Rafa is "too defensive" a manager and that Rafa couldn't "handle" the offensive nature of the current Norway squad, so Rafa would be a horrid choice as manager for Norway. In no way, under no circumstances, should the Norwegian FA even look at Rafa, or even think of Rafa... Could anyone BE any more rattled, Solbakken?! Him saying all that, to the press, without being asked directly about the matter – bringing it up as a topic on his own volition – tells me that the Norwegian FA probably is actually considering Rafa and maybe even probably have begun early talks with him about the job. Should Solbakken get off on the wrong foot in the upcoming WC Qualifiers, he'll probably end up sacked as we've underperformed (compared to our once in a lifetime available talent pool of world class footballers in all offensive positions on the pitch) his entire tenure as Norway manager. He has a worse record than Lagerback, Høgmo and Drillo - at the same time as having generational talent available to him during their peak years playing football. I hadn't taken this seriously, or even thought it even semi-realistic, at any point in time before Solbakken seemingly just lost it and thrashtalked Rafa in an obvious attempt to make the Norwegian FA stop considering him

PL GPM in NUFC colors: Demba Ba: 1 in 151 Papis Cisse: 1 in 208 Alexander Isak: 1 in 131 If we're talking absolute peak, apparently it'd be wrong to choose Cisse over Ba... I'm as surprised as you probably are

Point me to what you've supposedly written that I've failed to read properly? I've bolded and underlined the relevant statements you made in your posts that 'caused me to respond, as it should make it easier for you to actually type out a proper response instead of something as idiotic as what you just did in the quote above. If you didn't mean what you posted, then you should've elaborated on your opinion rather than being as direct and to the point as you were, leaving no room for other interpretations no matter how many times I'd re-read your posts. At least I've bothered initially reading them, and now bothered re-reading them a couple of times attempting to find where you said "the loser gets an easier group" in any of your posts, but you haven't. Expecting people to assume you actually meant to say the above when you said the following makes no sense; Now, if you'd have included this in your initial complaint about the draw, making that assumption would've been easier and more straight-forward; However, what you initially posted was that the WCQ Draw was, as typical, ridiculous. This apparently thanks to the Nations League shite. The changes stemming from the Nations League have not been around for enough years to have any form of "typical" impact on anything, let alone a WCQ draw. This is the first draw where we actually see the positive ramifications of the Nations League having a genuine effect on the group draw for a WCQ, which led me to respond with my post - asking for a genuine response as this subject matter actually interests me greatly. Instead, you resorted to the lowest form of forum etiquette, proclaiming you didn't even bother reading a post before responding to it.

Pope; Tino, Colo, Schar, Santon; Ben Arfa, Bruno, Tiote, Cabaye; Cisse, Ba So 4 players from our current XI and 7 from the 11/12 season, apparently I feel this is a perfect example of peak nostalgia bias having an impact...

This opinion about the Nations League effect on the WC Qualifier Group Draw is one I've only seen voiced by "fans" of the traditional "big" nations. The complete opposite opinion appear to be universally held by everyone else In my eyes, this is the first WCQ Group Draw in my lifetime that hasn't been farcical, so I can only assume that the aforementioned opinion on the matter exist only because it affects the traditionally "big" nations in an unfavorable manner, or? 🤔 If that's not the reason, I'd genuinely would love to hear some reasoning for why it's "farcical"? No ulterior motive behind that question, just genuinely interested in understanding why I've heard Englishmen, Italians, Spaniards and German say the same as you did all day – whilst hearing nothing but praise from people hailing from smaller nations. This in addition to me, as mentioned, joining the people from smaller nations praising the draw changes – feeling this is a vast improvement for the UEFA WCQ on a whole.

I dunno, given Norway's current crop of players and our apparent vaccination against qualifying for major tournaments since EC Spain in the year 2000, 12 EC/WC's ago - making Norway, at the very least, live up to already low expectations - has to be one of the most intriguing challenges when it comes to International management. The fact Nagelsmann made a fucking point out of having to beat Italy in the Nations League QF's to avoid having Norway in their WC qualification group makes no sense to me, but I know that's just because I'm Norwegian and therefore familiar with the fact we're so opposed to qualifying for a major tournament that the time we got closest, we decided to throw it all away because the government refused Romania's national side entry to Norway during the Covid-19 lockdowns, giving them a 3-0 victory on walkover. Pretty much all other results than fucking exactly 3-0 would've seen Norway with utmost certainty having qualified for the 2020 EC On paper, I concede our national side looks exactly like a once in a generation talent pool offensively. We have a shit keeper and a shit defense, so naturally our current manager insists on making Norway "build from the back" and focus on defense, so you know... no matter if we get Germany or Italy in our group, they'll cruise to victory in it I'd love Rafa as manager for our current crop of players though. I think his style of play has gone out of fashion in club football, but would still be all the rage when it comes to international football. The fact he, unprovoked, said he was aware that the Norwegian FA didn't operate with a wage structure anywhere near what he'd usually ask for in club management, and that he'd work within their budget if it became a reality one day, stating; "I've made enough money for three lifetimes already, money's not important - I just want to focus on football."

Guy was in Norway last week, told the press that if he's still available when Solbakken leaves the manager hot seat after the WC 2026 qualifiers, he wants the job. If it became available before that, he wants the job. Said that the current crop of players in the Norwegian first team picture was a smorgasbord of talent that he'd love to work with. Of course the guy's not going to tell the press "fuck no I wouldn't touch the Norway job with a five foot pole" when pushed on the subject, but the straight up "yes, I want that job" answer instead of the usual "maybe, who knows? football is a funny old game!" politician answer to wave away those type of questions felt like him actually meaning it when he said it Especially as he followed it up immediately by listing a shitload of Norwegian players, some not even established first team members of the national team, U21-players, describing how he'd utilize them with Ødegaard and Haaland tl;dr - I think Rafa miss managing a team

Decided to actually do something constructive with my burning hatred of anti-VAR footy fans not realizing they're protesting the wrong fucking thing, so wrote up an article to serve as content for my football agency as we near the January window slamming wide open... only issue being that there's no audience built up organically at the moment, so I'm just pouring my vitriol out into the vast ether of the Internet Which means I'm posting it here as well so maybe someone actually ends up seeing the fucking article

Thought "amount of local fans" was an interesting rabbit hole, this was the most up to date statistic I could find for the PL:

Wouldn't call Targett a "failure" given his reported price tag and the reasoning for bringing him in. He did what he came to do and has provided alright cover since then. I'd not class him as a transfer "success" as he didn't outperform expectations, but calling him a "failure" I find a bit harsh given that he did what was asked of him and didn't underperform, all whilst not costing an insane amount to sign in the first place. Wood was, and is, a weird one. The price tag was horrid, but if I was to rate the transfer as a whole and thus include what we recouped from him - I'd say it was £8m well spent. Not a transfer "success" but not really a "failure" either. Burn has outperformed the fee we paid for him, so he's absolutely a "success" transfer. Same with Pope. Gordon hasn't outperformed his transfer fee in my eyes, but hasn't underperformed either - so I'd rate his transfer (at the moment) on par with the Targett and Wood transfers. Hall and Tino I feel have so far underperformed their transfer fees, regardless of the faith I have in them for the future. I'd feel wrong to rate them as "failures" at the moment though, even with what I said was my opinion on the transfers currently, as you gotta account for future potential as well. Instead, I'd just include a third option, "Okay", in addition to "Failure" and "Success". That would make my review of the same list look like this: Burn 12m = Success Targett 15m? = Okay Wood 25m = Okay Pope 12m = Success Gordon 45m = Okay Hall 35m = Okay Tino 35m = Okay Osula 10m = TBC So two "successes" and five "okays" out of seven transfers total. I'd say that equals a very decent transfer record. (Osula can't be anything other than TBC at this point).

What bothers me is that sacking Coote for doing coke and being caught isn't helping anyone, it only makes matters worse. The obvious correct move in situations like these would be for the employer to offer "help" to the person caught using drugs, essentially having them choose between mandatory rehab/educational seminars or losing their job. in this instance, the FA Ref's Association publicly stating they'd intend to "help" Coote with his "problem", you're hammering home a point to the public that someone doing drugs need help because they have a problem. In my opinion, that sends a message that could actually positively affect people as nobody wants to need being helped or feel they themselves have a problem and aren't "cool" fuckers breaking the law, fuck the police and all that jazz! Instead, what this reaction will do is just continue hammering home that the only actual reason why drugs are bad is because they're illegal and people shouldn't be breaking the law by doing them. Might not have gotten my point across perfectly here, but hopefully at least in an understandable enough manner

The form table for the last five games sure do have a beautiful relegation zone:

As I feel obliged to have my agency sometimes publish content online to maintain some relevance on SoMe platforms and search results, I wrote a short piece about fans protesting VAR: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7268176316275838977/ tl;dr cliffnotes are that the reasons fans are protesting have genuine validity, but that they aren't actually protesting the actual culprit for their dislike of VAR - which eventually could lead to football as a whole becoming much worse than it is today. FIFA having hustled their way into IFAB not being able to pass any revisions/additions/removals to the Laws of the Game without their vote has, since it happened, continually made the game worse every year following the annual IFAB board meeting. The EC this summer was the perfect example of this, as the outrage fans showed against VAR turned into a fire that ended up continually having gasoline poured onto it by the media looking to turn the outrage against VAR incidents into clicks and ad revenue. In reality, however, EC 2024 was the most accurately refereed international competition in history. What fans were actually enraged about wasn't VAR, it was the referees utilizing VAR to correctly apply the Laws of the Game - which at the time had just been given its annual post-IFAB board meeting update, which included an even larger amount of mind-boggling rule revisions and additions than it usually does. Granted, fans can't exactly be expected to, once a year, read through ca. 230 A4 pages worth of rules and regulations that referees need to be aware of so they can enforce them in every professional competitive football match across the globe It's about the same length as The Great Gatsby, but instead of reading about a mysterious millionaire with an obsession to reunite with his former lover, it's bullet point after bullet point in dry, bland, language that flows just as fluently to a reader as the Terms & Conditions text everyone ignore when they click "accept". If fans want to see football improve, they shouldn't be doing it through a VAR witch hunt - they should burn the actual witches, IFAB, at the stake.

From a purely geographic standpoint, I can never truly wish Bodø/Glimt well, whatsoever*. That said,I can't really deny having experienced some joyous emotions from being able to witness a Norwegian team regularly qualify for the group stage in a European competition AND not ending up just making complete fools of themselves for six straight matches before crashing out of Europe, finishing bottom of their group! Been far too long since Rosenborg were regulars in the CL from the mid-90s to the mid-00s, our league isn't great, but neither is it as shit as our teams have pretended like it is when playing in Europe Putting the rest of the post in a spoiler as I ended up going off on a loooong rant about football rivalries and culture in Northern Norway, as well as football's status and history in my hometown compared to Bodø - then realized where I was about to post that very specific rant about non-Newcastle/English football and concluded that it might just be interesting enough for someone with enough hipster-esque football club interests like Disco to bother reading, and even then I'm not even sure it's interesting enough for Disco

Lampard actively, at least, appears to be wanting to become a manager and appears to be keeping up to date with tactics and visiting other clubs to learn from other managers. I put "appears" in italics because for all I know he could be like the pair you mentioned, Gerrard and Rooney, who doesn't even appear to be doing anything other than relying on getting gigs because they used to play footy themselves once upon a time - not caring that playing and managing are two completely different things

No-one asked, but my personality type won't allow me to not explain Bodø/Glimt's weird name The club was formed as "FK Glimt" in the early 1900s when football was still mainly played regionally, not nationally, in Norway - which was fair enough given the vast distances to travel during a time when mass transportation mainly took place by boat However, a few years after after WW2, Norway got its first national league pyramid and it became known that a club from the Trondheim region also had the name "FK Glimt", and were formed before the Bodø team with the same name. So they changed their name to "FK Bodø-Glimt" to differentiate the teams, them changing their name even though being the "bigger" club was simply due to respecting the fact the other club called Glimt were named so first. Including the hyphen was to ensure people remember saying both words when referencing the club, as "Bodø" and "Glimt" are both two other, independent, clubs. HOWEVER As betting on football became increasingly popular in Norway, the third and final change to their name took place; changing "FK Bodø-Glimt" to "FK Bodø/Glimt". Now, one might ask oneself "why bother making such a small, seemingly unnecessary, change to their club name"? The reason was as simple as it's genuinely a bit dumb; when you bet on football matches, your betting slip used hyphens to differentiate between the home and away sides, so they changed the "-" to "/" so there'd be less confusion at the bookies when bets were placed on matches that seemingly were played by three teams, for example "Bodø-Glimt-Rosenborg"