SteV

I would imagine Huijsen opted for Bournemouth because they agreed to a (non-prohibitive) release clause. That’s no good for us.

Exactly. It’s great having that kind of strategy, especially for a club of their size, but it’s yet to get anyone to break into the CL places. Only teams to have done that are ourselves and Villa, who have been able to invest more heavily on ‘established’ talent. That’s not to dismiss that method completely, there’s clearly merit in getting some players from that kind of market, but if it’s going to be your predominant market, don’t expect it to get you to the real top end.

Modify. Much like the Black Cat Bar at Stadium of Light.

No, but I suspect the plan is to hopefully give one to everyone that’s applied. But until they have those numbers they don’t know.

Ian Wong is the Mr Big. The Albanians* were just the foot soldiers. Probably on a tenner for every scarf they could source back to Wong and his OCG pals. *obviously I’ve no idea if the bloke was actually Albanian. He had that sort of Balkan Albanian/Romanian/Bulgarian look about him. So I went with Albanian on alphabetical order.

When we were heading back down Wembley Way after the match, some Albanian-looking fella came up to my mate and offered him a fiver for his scarf, which he obviously refused. I see what the plan was now!

He’s out of contract.

There was however no issue with Sunderland ST holder Jeff Brown being one of the main presenters for years.

If there’s anyone is a parade, then no.

You can probably blame it on questionable communication from the club (again), but it seems astonishing how many people don’t actually know, or understand, what is planned.

Apparently he’s already turned down MotD because he wanted to keep doing our games (may have had other personal reasons too like).

Midnight tonight

Been said plenty of times before, but he really is an elite commentator. The footage of him calling the final whistle is tremendous. Looks as emotional as the rest of us, but still manages to stay composed and deliver his words.

Do you genuinely think that was ‘priority’ in any meaningful way?

He ran about for a couple of mins (albeit it gingerly) after it happened like, so he can’t possibly have a broken hip.