Kaizero

The article didn't have a go at fans at all, it only had a go at Yasir joining celebrations on the pitch.

I was mistaken. He's been to two matches "Sheik Mansour has been to two Manchester City games in his time as owner, in 2010 and 2023, the latter being the 2023 UEFA Champions League final"

Steve Bruce is single-handedly the reason I no longer view Pardew as horribly as I know I probably should

This is a bit "whatabout"-ish to be honest. Israel being genocidal cunts doesn't mean Saudi Arabia should get away with the shit they do. Both states should be stopped from doing what they're doing. Now, I don't know if the NY Times are very pro-Israel in their news coverage or not. If they are, your point is very valid, and I apologize for mentioning whataboutism

For me, if the owner has seemed enthusiastic about the club and given interviews about how they plan to run/run the club, they should be allowed to partake in celebrations when the club they own achieve success. I feel nobody can argue that Yasir hasn't been vocal about his desire to improve the club, win trophies and more. He's put "his" money where his mouth is, he's entitled to celebrate. Club owners that choose to run their "property" from the shadows and aren't vocal/visible in their role(s), however? They can stay in the director's box when the team win something... like the below. The below is absolute bullshit, the guy's been at a match once since taking over the club:

Agree with this. I'd only have been inclined to agree with the journalist's views on owners joining celebrations if Bin-Salman himself came onto the pitch. For all intents and purposes, no matter how different reality might be, Al-Rumayyan is "only" an employee at a state owned investment fund – not a brutal dictator ordering the murder of a journalist.

On the "Last 15" form table, they're in a relegation spot. Truly looking like this a season of two very, very, different halves for them

That's First Choice England CB, Dan Burn, to you

Literally went from plain English for 45 seconds straight and then to "Yerurgh Erbhle? Ehbdseh yerguh yerrble blergrh yerr??"

Would've had him at a B ranking before the League Cup win. That said, it's kinda impossible to not go with an A at this point

I'll be the devil's advocate here for a second, but if we were to give the narcissist the benefit of the doubt (remembering that his main priority has always been his #1, himself, and that everything else has, and will always be, of less importance to the man) – at the time he spouted those bits of absolute crap to the media, he wasn't really lying, was he? Of course his motivation for saying those things were to prop himself up as "doing a better job than expected given the difficulty of the job"... but that in and of itself doesn't mean that we as a club, during what probably was the worst period of penny-pinching during Ashley's ownership, weren't set-up to compete with, well... anyone, really Now, if Pards wasn't a narcissist, we'd most likely not have heard him spout that kind of shit in public. I've mentioned my dinner with Pards on here at least a couple of times in the last few years, and the man repeatedly stated how much he liked the club and the fans and wish his time here had been under different circumstances, all whilst calling Ashley every expletive under the sun. His reasons for liking us are deeply rooted in his narcissism and his hatred of Ashley stems more from him feeling Ashley didn't allow him to "push on" after finishing 5th, and not from the general shitness of Ashley's ownership. But, IMO, if you look past the how and why of things when it comes to Pardew's view and opinion of the club and the fans, which are all rooted in him having narcissism and (naturally enough) not being aware of the fact he has it – the guy genuinely likes the club and dislikes Ashley*, so... yeah *He likes the club because we were the club that allowed his ego to soar higher than it should have been allowed to, and he hates Ashley because he believes he stopped him from soaring even higher in his unearned position as our manager. Whilst that's not the same as liking the club for normal reasons or hating Ashley for logical reasons, at the end of the day he does like us and does dislike Ashley.

Just realized Frank Lampard's got a 13-3-5 record in the league since taking over at Coventry, that's a PPG average of 2.00... If stretched over an entire season, that's 96 point – which was enough for direct promotion all of the five most recent Champo seasons before the current one, would've won the league two out of five times as well. Does this imply that, god forbid, Lampard might actually possess some tactical knowledge and acumen? Or is it just a flash in the pan freak run of form? If anyone that keeps a better track of the Championship than I do (which wouldn't take much) could enlighten me about which of the alternatives it is, I'd appreciate it 🙏🏼 Until someone tells me otherwise, as I'm not exactly about to go look at Coventry highlights or keep any more track of the Championship than currently (which'll likely be checking in on the standings in 3-4 weeks time) to figure out if Lamps actually has some previously unknown/unseen managerial talent or not

Would be a great signing, and that's me saying that with the added anti-own-nationality-player bias already added to the mix If we went for Egeli over Nypan, it'd (IMO) point towards us having a quality scouting network set-up to spot and go for the (arguably) better and more first-team-ready player of the two – rather than do what the other "big" clubs look like they're doing; chasing headlines about youngsters.

C- at moment, B+ at max potential.

IMO it's more a sign of lazy journalism, as I have my doubts when it comes to how much knowledge a journalist for Goal has about youth players worldwide – beyond those already "known" due to being at "big" clubs, as well as those at "smaller" clubs who's had interest shown in them by "big" clubs. Just from a Norwegian perspective, they've listed Sverre Nypan at #15 – yet in reality, Sindre Walle Egeli looks an even bigger talent. Difference between the two being that Nypan has experienced clubs like Arsenal and Man City explicitly expressing interest by inviting him to visit their facilities, which in turn has been broadly covered by national and international media. Meanwhile, Egeli (less than 6 months Nypan's senior) has excelled in the Danish Superliga and already been given his debut for the national team. Yet, Egeli isn't even on the list...

Iconic commentary

Much too wordy, and he's lost the magical "implication" touch in his text where the joke's kinda hidden beneath the surface. Like his first attempt at a Saudi-diss, if he'd left it at "desert city", it'd have been amusing. He didn't, which made it feel "in your face" and kinda like what writers do when they don't believe their readers are clever enough to get the joke unless it's telegraphed directly into their dumb faces That said, this frame absolutely destroyed me:

Sat in silence for what felt like forever as neither mind or body knew what to do with themselves, then I just broke down in tears – took a few seconds for me to shake off the PTSD from past horrors before realising the tears were tears of joy.

This. It's perfectly okay to disagree about a subject and still remain cordial, never felt this was anything other than two people with two different viewpoints about him discussing Murphy.

If scouts used your method for comparing players, it'd be pure chaos. The ranking method utilized was combining a data set consisting of chances created for team, big chances created for team, goals scored, assists, xBuildUp90 and xChain. Then weighing and averaging those values for a player acting as a winger, before combining them into an average weighted score. I'll give you that I did not include "successful take-ons" in the data set.