leffe186

Job done for Scotland.

Tbf I am - didn’t realize how many of the starters played in Italy

Not been paying any attention to Scotland. That team looks…not great - am I missing something?

Solid start for perv cam in the Scotland match.

For the aural learners out there this is Danny Kelly’s take. He was incredibly angry at Levy the other day and I often disagree with him, but this seems entirely fair and reasonable:

The Lewis family is definitely stepping in, but nothing to do with Ange or “taking the fall for sacking”’ him. He’s more likely to take praise for that. Seems likely a particular Lewis or two decided Levy’s taken us as far as he can. The question is whether they’re going to put in some money themselves or look to sell. Still an open question.

They might be really young. Just brought on two 20-year old subs including one of our kids (Jamie Donley who scored that mental FA Cup goal for Orient v Man City).

Northern Ireland woke up after that and have been pretty good second half. I thought Luxembourg looked quite good too tbh. Northern Ireland scored a cracking goal, then a third after Luxembourg went down to 10 men. I know somebody here said they’re just lower division players but I think the standard has been pretty good. They’re young, and some of those players are legit. Galbraith was absolutely brilliant for Leyton Orient last year and he looks the part here. Really enjoyable game. Ref’s done a pretty even job too, which has helped.

It’s partly guesswork because he’s been very careful and private over the years, but it seems he’s something of a micromanager and has his fingers in absolutely everything. That’s been a double-edged sword. He’s brilliant at the financials but does seem to want to squeeze every little drop from a deal which slows everything down and maybe antagonizes the orher side. He’s a fan but not necessarily a football man so he relies on others to advise him on football matters - as he should - but sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t, and always it feels like he’s itching to tinker… …ultimately though, it’s hard to tell if the constant haggling was a shortcoming or not. Like ON suggests, we were on a downswing when the PL started; at just the wrong time. A decade of mediocrity - particularly after the previous decade - was hard to swallow and he came in in 2000/01. As a barometer, the end of that season was when Sol Campbell left for Arsenal. Then two years later Abramovich came in and the goalposts moved. Levy knew we couldn’t compete with that and so we tore things down and started to rebuild. A long and hard road - great decisions like bringing in Frank Arnesen as Director of Football were immediately stymied by Chelsea throwing money at things (he was poached after one year). I think chipping away at things and eking out every penny for years meant that when he needed to go for it he just couldn’t do it. You guys know the deal: when you’re up against sides with far more resources than you (a) can‘t afford more than the occasional transfer fuckup and (b) even when you do get it right somebody comes along and throws their weight around (Carrick, Berbatov, Bale, Modric, Isak etc). In those circumstances I think he’s brilliant at fighting his corner but was reluctant to spend when it was just blatantly obvious it was what was needed.

Yeah, with somebody.

Yeah, it’s all relative. There was that window we spunked a fortune on guff like Ndombele. Getting in Conte and backing him. That first couple of years when we just tore it all down and started from scratch. Recognizing that the key way forward apart from selling out was building a fuck-off stadium and then actually making it happen. Telling City to fuck off over Kane. The wage thing was with one eye on regulation but the received wisdom is that we needed to keep things tight, like I say, to keep the banks onside. Simultaneously holding us back while taking us forward. Again, it’s plausible I guess.

Well, quite.

Was gonna say. @The College Dropout Yeah, the ambition thing is the stick he was and is beaten with. When he did gamble it failed, but the counter-argument was that he needed to keep a tight rein on things - first because we were building the team in the Abramovich era where we were far behind on money, and then because they were building the stadium and needed cash and to make sure the banks were confident enough to do the long-term loan. Maybe. He clearly tried to walk something of a tightrope, and I will always maintain that our progress from 2003 to 2016 was a hell of an achievement. One that he can take a lot of credit for,

I will say, if there’s one adjective you would apply to Levy it wouldn’t be glorified.

Yeah it’s what you’d expect - there’s a vocal minority who have been Levy Out from day one, a fairly vocal minority who’ve defended him throughout (BSODL, can you guess what that stands for?) and then probably a lot of people who recognize the good and the bad. Like many things, it ebbs and flows depending upon what’s happening IRL. He’s done a unique job I think, but it’s been trending back towards Levy Out since Poch left, unsurprisingly. It definitely feels like there have been a lot of people turning against him over the last couple of years, for both justifiable and unjustifiable reasons I think. Eze and MGW aside, it’s ended up being a very good transfer window yet the same old accusations of opportunism, brinkmanship and unnecessarily tough negotiations seem completely fair. It’s fascinating and a bit scary to see what’s next, but being charitable I do genuinely suspect he might have been biding his time until we were in a genuinely good position. He’s always been a fan, after all, and that means something,

What is the Liverpool/Arsenal route?

ENIC own 85% or so, and Levy owns 30% of that 85%. Something like that. No idea what that means going forward. The rumour was that Qatar were interested but put off by Levy wanting to stay as Chairman or CEO or whatever, but Stifler told me Qatar weren’t interested at all so it must be something else.

I mean he did a pretty good job at the football side of things - we were seriously good under Poch with significantly lower wage bills than the big guns. We had to work under restrictions to get the new ground built, and it’s really a couple of glaring missed opportunities in transfer windows that poisoned the well. Good time to leave tbh. We owe him a great deal, but it also seems like his constant involvement in almost everything was a little too much in the end. It was just extraordinarily bad luck that we didn’t win anything under Poch, but the Europa Cup feels like a nice bookend. Again.

Ooof, just about made it. Really solid result for Wales.

Been a great game for the last half hour. Kazakh no9 looks lively. Wales doing much better after they took Johnson off, which may or may not be connected.

Thank goodness Wales scored, hopefully there’ll be a bit less bullshit timewasting now.

Nice one, actually using the App now.

Are there any games on Amazon Prime for free?

Yeah I gave up on doing the work myself, was told that the Saliba thing was a loophole that’s since been closed.