Kaizero

VAR to remain won the vote by over two thirds of the vote. We've had some very loud idiots people make noise about VAR "ruining" the experience as a fan watching matches, where (as is most often the case) the majority of people who's not against something have kept silent because they don't have anything to shout about. In the end, the idiots people against VAR managed to shout loudly enough to get this vote to happen. There, as was always the case, their uninformed and unreasoned arguments against VAR got voted down by the majority, because the majority of Norwegians (for now, at least) aren't idiots people with shit views. VAR makes the game fairer than without VAR, as an Englishman, there should be a natural instinct within your very being that triggers an intense support of VAR whenever you're shown the below image: The main argument of the idiots people that oppose VAR is that it, somehow, removes the joy of "immediate celebration" after a goal. VAR has been a thing for years now, people haven't stopped celebrating goals the second the ball looks like it's crossed the line. On average, a VAR check doesn't take much longer than 20 seconds when compared to ref-team discussions regarding potentially disallowing a goal or overturning a yellow/red card, or any other on-field decisions by the main referee that upon closer inspection should've/could've been overturned. Not to mention the fact the argument falls apart already at the first hurdle given the fact offside flags exist, and that they've had a tendency to be lifted after the ball has entered the goal. The opposition to VAR only exist because idiots people in general vehemently oppose "change" as a concept, even when it's objectively improving what it's changed. The very same idiots people are the kind of idiots people that will complain if anything they're familiar with changes.

In case anyone actually needed this reality check, the difference in fixture run-in for each of the clubs involved in the race for the European spots is, you know, pretty much ineligible. All 20 clubs play the other 19 clubs twice, home and away, across an entire season. That said, seeing what I've always said as visualised stats made my heart grow three sizes: That said, in the event that the run-in fixture nerds' are in the right and I'm in the wrong, they should be happy to see Fulham, Villa and Chelsea have "worse" run-ins in their fixtures than we do. On the other hand, Forest and Bournemouth have relatively much "easier" run-ins, with Brighton being just about on-par with us.

My current health situation sadly means I have to be a no-show for this, here's hoping I recover quick enough to be able to attend the eventual FA Cup Final meet @BlazeT44 feel free to hand my spot x1 to whoever's next on the waiting list, and cheers for organising 🙏🏼 Hopefully will make the next one!

"Media" will get tickets from their contact points at the club to cover matches they'd like to cover. I've put "Media" in quotation marks as it doesn't mean the same thing it once did (TV/Radio/Journalists), but now includes influencers, bloggers and more.

Oh, and an English club winning one of the European compeitions doesn't subtract a spot from the English league spots. There's dedicated "Defending Champion/Champion of the League Below" spots for CL/EL/ECL winners now.

5 CL, 2 EL and 1 ECL. No idea how the cups affect EL/ECL.

England will get 5 CL spots next season.

Didn't he end up being the President of the Spanish FA for some time until going down in that sex pest scandal?

Just saw that Cannes, playing in the French 4th tier, qualified for the Semis of the Coupe de France yesterday! Love a good underdog story, me Hope they avoid PSG in the Semis and get to the final.

Seems like it wasn't the implication, though

That's a great site, bookmarked!

You do know that the only person senior to Yasir in the PIF is Bin-Salman, right? Or was that the implication?

Found what might be a better site for this information: https://kassiesa.net/uefa/clubs/ 30 Spanish teams have played in Europe according to that. 24 Italian clubs, and 38 English – equalling Germany who's also listed with 38 teams. According to that site's lists, Romania is the #1 country when it comes to the amount of teams to have competed in Europe with its 41.

Blame Wiki, literally just copied their list

Even though the numbers in your post weren't correct, the implication that England was streets ahead of the rest when it came to the number of different teams that have competed in Europe wasn't wrong: 🇪🇸 (14): Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla, Villarreal, Athletic Bilbao, Espanyol, Alavés, Real Zaragoza, Mallorca, Celta Vigo, Málaga & Deportivo La Coruna 🇮🇹 (25): AC Milan, Fiorentina, Juventus, Inter, Bologna, Cagliari, Lazio, Torino, Roma, Hellas Verona, Napoli, Sampdoria, Parma, Udinese, Chievo, Atalanta, Cesena, Vicenza, Perugia, Genoa, Palermo, Livorno, Empoli, Sassuolo & Brescia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (40): Man Utd, Wolves, Burnley, Tottenham, Ipswich, Everton, Liverpool, Man City, Leeds, Arsenal, Derby, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Blackburn, Newcastle, Chelsea, Leicester, Southampton, Stoke, QPR, West Bromwich, Watford, Sheffield Wednesday, Norwich, West Ham, Fulham, Millwall, Middlesbrough, Bolton, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Wigan, Hull, Burnley, Brighton, Sunderland, Coventry, Wimbledon, Crystal Palace & Bradford

Even Norway's had 26 teams in Europe: Aalesund, Bodø/Glimt, Brann, Bryne, Fredrikstad, Fyllingen. Gjøvik-Lyn, Haugar, Haugesund, Hødd, Kongsvinger, Lillestrøm, Lyn, Mjøndalen, Molde, Moss, Odd, Rosenborg, Sarpsborg 08, Skeid, Stabæk, Start, Strømsgodset, Tromsø, Vålerenga & Viking Weird fake stat, that

I'm five years old mentally Lost it at that typo

Just gonna stop posting tbh, not been able to participate in any discussions on here without immediate derailment for eons now.

I literally pointed out how rarely it's happened that a team placed in the top four after 26 matches ended up outside the top four, I just added the * part to avoid ending up having to deal with someone deciding to start this exact kind of interaction! 5 times out of 29 returns the an historical mathematical probability of 17.2% that Forest will finish the season outside the top four when all is said and done. Essentially meaning 4 times out of 5 they'd finish there based on how teams before them fared when they found themselves in the same position on the table at the same time of the season. In addition, 29 times out of 29 no team that found themselves in the top four at this stage of the season ended up finishing lower than 6th. I genuinely don't think I've missed out on anything when I looked through past seasons, but from experience I'm aware that in the event I'd actually done it, I'd get stuck discussing something completely irrelevant to the topic I wanted to discuss when I made the choice to engage. Instead, as has been the case for a long time now, the only thing that happens on here when trying to actually discuss a topic relevant to its thread is that I end up in a meaningless discussion about something obviously irrelevant for the topic being discussed. You're genuinely one of the brightest people I've had the pleasure of discussing shit with on here over the past 19+ years, so I can't make myself believe you'd not understand the intent behind the * inclusion, and rather chose to do the exact thing I included the * part in my post trying to avoid

Ah well, thanks for engaging in discussing any of the actually relevant topics raised rather than pointing out the fact English is my second language

Your belief in Forest being in a "false position" in the league table after 26 out of 38 matches has been played is a statement that doesn't have any empirical evidence for it. Looking through the PL seasons going back to the first with 20 teams in 95/96, I count a grand total of five times out of a possible twenty-nine, and none of the teams that fell below the "top four" in that time finished lower than 6th when all was said and done*. They're in the position they're in because they deserve to be in it, as whilst it's of course theoretically possible to "luck" your way through 26 matches – the chances of that actually being the case doesn't feel realistic whatsoever. I'd argue that the reason you, as well as countless others, keep claiming that Forest's in a "false position" they don't "deserve" to be in, is simply because they're Forest. Just as the season Leicester went all the way, everyone sat around waiting for the moment they'd start to trail off as they, like Forest, apparently were in a "false position" they actually didn't deserve to be in * I only skimmed through the seasons, so I'm aware I might've missed out on a team or two when skimming through it. I don't feel like I did, but I know it's a possibility, so wanted to acknowledge that in the event that's the case and someone would rather approach a discussion about this by dismissing the actual point I've tried to make in this post in favour of trying to start a back-and-forth about the number of time's it's happened

It's weird how I on one level feel desperate to agree with you, yet on another feel like it's been a long time since the days Man Utd were a club that were given a disproportionate amount of special treatment compared to other clubs. Feels like we all just still suffer the after effects of our collective Fergie-Time induced PTSD

Never bought into the Højlund hype, always felt he was a damp squib – like most Danes

Something that's been grinding my gears for quite a while has been the use of the argument "their announced attendance isn't reflective of the real amount of people that were present in the stadium at the match". There's already tons of actual things one could knock them for, even something fairly close to the "diss" in question, so mocking them for doing what every professional football club in the world does? That feels counter-productive diss-wise. Clubs don't report the real number of people physically present at their stadium during a match, they report the number of tickets that's been sold or given away, regardless of whether or not the people that's bought or received tickets actually show up on the day. That said, the fact that their fans refuse to acknowledge that reality and choose to die on the hill claiming that the reported number of tickets sold/given away is the same number as the amount of people physically present in the stand during a match. We all have eyes, as do they, so everyone's well aware of the fact that the reported attendance isn't the same as the real attendance on the day. Also, them giving out the amount of tickets for free before each match that they do doesn't help their cause, as their reported attendance continually remain at an artificially high number compared to the amount of people present in the stadium on match day – making their weird masochistic urge to die on a hill where they argue their artificially high attendance number is the genuine number of people that showed up even weirder But, yeah... all clubs report artificially high attendance and not the genuine number of people physically present in attendance. So knocking them for their club doing that doesn't feel like a good way of mocking them, especially when considering they're offering up a genuine argument to mock them with as they continue to try making an argument for the attendance number reported being the genuine number. They genuinely can't get people to attend their matches when offering the opportunity, for free, to their supposed "fans" – yet nobody actually care enough about them to bother showing up Feel like I lost track of where I meant to go with this post somewhere around the middle, so apologies in advance if it didn't end up making much sense in the end