timeEd32

I think that's my favorite start to a 2nd half in the history of football.

This is probably for a different thread, but I think Chelsea have a real chance of imploding if they stay out of the CL for another season or two. I wouldn't group them with the other two.

Weird half because I'm annoyed we're only 2-1 up, but absent a 10-15 minute stretch we were pretty terrible and could easily be losing.

Sit down Martin.

Love it

I love him but Bruno does some really dumb things.

Murphy skins one man and suddenly thinks he can do anything.

Their heads are dropping. Foot on the gas please.

What a fucking ball. He looked miles offside.

That's one way to make up for 5 minutes of crap.

They are well up for it. Need to survive the first 10-15 minutes.

I don’t understand the rules of this sport anymore.

Would really like a 2nd but this is a very refreshing performance.

A rest for Almiron seems right. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have stats showing he’s running less or slower than earlier this year. He’s also been figured out by every defense since Leeds, but that’s a different problem.

Pep is just thinking about what he’s going to eat later.

He’s banned for two anyway so wouldn’t matter much.

Eddie loves a 60th minute sub.

When was the last time we scored from a corner?

I thought he was concussed during the final. Should have come off really.

This is both incredible and torture at the same time.

Do you think we’d have more points right now? Do you think these imaginary signings would give us a better chance next week? Would any of them have guaranteed a top 4 place?

New plan: pain

I’ve still yet to see an answer to the question of who could we have signed that could have guaranteed a top 4 position? And I assume this is ignored because the answer is no one. The fact is they were going to be taking a risk either way. There are two reasons I find a lot of the criticism hard to take: 1) It has a FM like quality to how acquiring players goes when the reality is very different. I assume we were active in January but the players we wanted at the prices we wanted weren’t available. Want to complain about not getting someone on loan? Fine, but I point back to the first question on who is really going to move the needle. 2) None of us know what the budget is and who the targets are for the summer, so we also don’t know how certain moves in January would have changed those plans. We do know that a big problem is we have half a squad of players who aren’t good enough on not insignificant wages and we shifted a couple of them. Supporters can live or die by each week’s results and there’s some justified complaining to do at the moment (I’d really like to see Eddie find another system we can play when we’re missing certain players for example), but thankfully the people in charge have longer term and bigger ideas.

I agree I think there may be a big surprise, but I'm not sure how moving it slightly NW would help due to St. James Terrace. Unless you mean moving into the park?

Each sport is different and it could be implemented in a hundred different ways. Baseball doesn't have a cap, just a luxury tax. Go over an amount and pay more fines. Stay over that limit in consecutive years and the fines escalate. The NBA has a cap, but it's known as a soft cap (kind of similar to a tax). The NFL and NHL have hard caps. No matter what is implemented there will be loopholes. The NFL basically has a separate sport of accounting gymnastics that takes place in spreadsheets. The thing that matters IMO is the punishment and how well it is enforced.