ponsaelius

Admittedly if it stays like this they're gone.

Get in

They're definitely not absolutely gone. Bolton won't get another point and Barnsley/Birmingham won't get many more either looking at their fixtures. It's going to take a result in at least one of their last two which might look unlikely on paper, but may not be depending on the state of play for both of those sides.

It's easier to just accept that they will survive.

There it is.

It's natural to expect the cunts to get out of it, however unlikely it seems. A win today would put them right back in the mix mind with Burton to come.

They'll win it now. Reading are really bad.

Was £2 million actually. Still, they've probably wasted a fair amount of that that on trying to replace him with 3 terrible ones.

They were by far the better team in the half, could have had 3 goals, the only difference is the terrible goalkeeper vs the decent one they sold.

Mackems battering the goal at the moment. Somehow can't score.

I've got a river. They just hit the post and had a shot off the line.

There's no way Palace are going down with those remaining fixtures.

The loan system is a joke. Chelsea run a model now where player recruitment is more like asset management than squad building, designed purely to hoover up talent and flip them on at a profit. It's a pretty successful model too (despite the likes of Salah, De Bruyne, Lukaku slipping through the net...) and an obvious culture shift from the club as it enters a period where their spending power will likely diminish slightly during the construction of the new stadium. The loan system in it's current model is exploitative of players, in that it very often hurts the development of both the youngsters who enter academies and particularly expensive recruits who become loan fodder. It's also a negative for the power balance of the league in that it allows big clus to hold all the cards. For example a club like Chelsea potentially beating a smaller club to a player, loaning him out to said club for a couple of years so he can develop, and then they either keep said player or charge the smaller club a huge chunk of TV money to buy him. In a world where the loan system doesn't exist said player would have instead joined the smaller club in the first place, developed there, and then benefited them by being sold on. The loan system is theoretically a good thing for youth development, but in a world of unlimited squads it becomes a tool for reinforcing already existing structural inequalities between clubs and often to the detriment of many players. In a world where the loan system doesn't exist (or is at least severely curtailed), less players will make the often bad choice of joining a team that is way too strong for their abilities, and will instead go straight to a smaller club to play regularly. There's no doubt the likes of Kenedy and Atsu have wasted years of their careers. This will in turn mean smaller club takes on all the benefits of purchasing and developing the player, rather than developing the player for somebody else and then either a. losing them or b. paying a small fortune to sign the player.

Bumping this as it's been 5 years and I recently passed the #100 mark. https://www.footballgroundmap.com/sewelly The guy that runs the site is always updating it, and has some people helping out now, so it extensively covers loads of obscure countries and leagues. Calling all anoraks to complete and post their own.

I don't get the Juventus love-in tbh. I wanted them to win just for something different, but if it had been one of the big English clubs, or a Real Madrid, PSG, Bayern Munich that did what they did 12-13 years or so ago, I doubt they would be admired the same way. Juve didn't 'do something' 12-13 years ago. They were charged in the Calciopoli scandal based on something that had (and almost certainly still does) gone on for literally decades. But as much I hate them, you simply can't understand it without understanding the wider context of Italian football and Italian society. Juventus had a system of control (led principally through Moggi) that manipulated officials, the transfer market, the media, agents, everything. But the thing is they weren't and aren't the only club doing it. Every club in Italy is bent, it's just the most powerful ones are best at playing the system in the same way they have the best players and the best managers. The fact is that a year after Calciopoli happened, in 2007, more and far worse incriminating evidence came out. But people were bored and it disappeared without much comment. The state of play is almost accepted through a believed inability to change things. That and the fact for a lot of Italians, doing whatever you can do to win, whether that is buying the best players or manipulating officials is all equally fair game.

Since December 30th Leeds actually have a worse record in the league than the mackems (11 points vs 12). Chance for them on Saturday?

Northern League fixtures are continuing to be decimated by the weather at the moment. Request has been made to extend the season by a week to try and get fixtures finished. This is an all too familiar story in non-league football. Now I'm very much a traditionalist in most things but IMO there has to be questions asked about the non-league season and the calender in which it runs. It is almost inevitable every year that fixtures throughout winter will be decimated and that teams will be left playing multiple games a week in the latter part of the season. Is it not a more sensible idea to start the semipro and amateur non-league season earlier in the summer, and allow it to run later the following year, with a significant winter break sandwiched in between. This would certainly limit the number of games that are obliterated by the bad weather. It would also probably provide extra revenue for clubs in that it will see greater attendances when there is no other football on for people to consume. Generally I'm strongly against the idea of a winter break in England, but that's because the facilities of the PL and Football League are generally more than capable of dealing with adverse weather. The non league game is different.

Some good left back options on there.

Yeah for a start he's physically far better than Manquillo. Gets up and down the pitch really well. There's no doubt he was really raw here but then who coming out of our academy sides isn't. I think another loan would have been good but maybe the lad wanted the permanent move last summer.

Weird bump but just wanted to point out that he's been very good this season. YB will win the league for the first time in 30 years and he's been a top performer - with quite a bit of support (admittedly mainly from YB fans) for him to go to the World Cup as Lichtsteiner's understudy. Probably means nowt as he'd have never got a chance here but interesting to see what happens with his career.

Yeah the likes of Ross McCormack went for £15 million ffs. There would be no excuse to get less than 20 for Mitro.

4-1.

How is that even possible?

https://twitter.com/JordanNorr1s/status/981083423593902080?s=19

Aye it's a fair point. It just means we really need to get Woodman out on a decent loan next year.