SteV

From 7:45 for those that want to make their own mind up: https://youtu.be/3K360keBTag?si=T3QHvuRJILwwEBli

When people are saying “he wins the ball”, do you honestly think going completely over the top of it and landing on it with your knee, whilst smashing into the the opponent’s upper ankle, constitutes “winning the ball” in the modern game?

It’s a very poor tackle, but it’s a very odd leg throw from Watkins after he’s hit. Suppose it probably did hurt like.

Not sure I have a strong preference either way tbh

Does it matter? Yes of course it does. It’s clearly not ideal preparation for them. Does that mean we definitely going to win? Obviously not. It helps a little bit. We’ll see if that help is enough.

It does make a difference like. Ask any manager if they’d rather have a clear full week to prepare for a game, or have to play three games in that week, and you know what the answer would be. It obviously doesn’t mean we’ll get a result, but it’s silly to pretend it doesn’t help us, even if only slightly.

£88m he cost.

We’ll be on tender hooks to find out.

I would imagine most probably do. Seems like a very Levy-thing to ensure that they did. It’d be the ones signed recently that would worry me. I know Levy was still there when you signed Simons, but he was obviously on the way out, and it may have been others that took control of getting that one done. Obviously Gallagher would be the other major one on big doe you would worry about.

Well no, I very much doubt they’ve seen the contract to know for sure, but he’s reporting that’s what ‘sources’ have told him. Like any story, could be right, could be wrong, but Matt Law’s reasonably well-established, so you’d think he’s got half-decent sources…

Matt Law in the Telegraph saying there’s no wage reduction clause in Simons contract.

I think people are referring to you making the same point with different words in every thread….

🤫 let’s keep that to ourselves until we’ve peddled him for £50m+

Tino will have to go if he doesn’t sign a new contract. His value is too high to allow him to leave for 50% less next summer, or worse still, nowt in two summers. I mean I suppose you could gamble that even if he doesn’t sign one now, he will do at some point in the next two years, but that would seem fairly reckless.

It was terrible timing in terms of the optics of it, definitely, much like Pope’s was after Marseille. But the unequivocal nature of the way Howe answered the question about whether he was injured was enough for me. People will say ‘well he said that about Isak’. But he didn’t, not in that manner. On top of that Craig Hope says he’s been genuinely injured, and if there was any journo that would love to run a story about how someone is chucking it….

People need to get back to accepting that players do actually get injured. Sometimes for a long time, sometimes for a short time. This season we’ve had accusations of ‘fake’ injuries for Pope, Elanga, Tonali and now Gordon. It’s ridiculous. The way that dickhead carried on in the summer has left a lasting scar…

Looking at Forest’s schedule and whilst we have 8 days between playing Brighton and them, they actually play Mon-Thurs-Sun.

That’s fair, and maybe I was slightly dismissive of their achievements, but ultimately, I still think the point stands that they’re fighting a losing battle overall, they’re just doing a good job of slowing the tide down.

I understand and respect, even agree to a point, that it’s the wrong attitude to have. My point is more I can fully understand why someone would adopt that attitude, especially if they haven’t got the time and space in their lives to fully absorb all of the information that surrounds these topics. What we often don’t consider, and this relates to all teams not just NUFC, is that the majority of people in a fanbase, even a match-going fanbase, just want to go and support their team. They don’t want to get caught up in everything like this. ‘They should consider the greater good’, you’d probably say, and, aye, they should, but football’s meant to be an escape, not an additional grind to everything else in life. In someways it’s a bit like taking an interest in politics (going off on a wild segway here…). You should really, cos it can have a genuine effect on your life, but at the same time it’s easy to say ‘nah, it’s not very enjoyable, and it won’t make any difference anyway’.

Have their actions actually made any significant difference though? I don’t know the ins and outs of being a match-going Liverpool supporter, but apart from having some cheaper (much cheaper by PL standards you might say) tickets, their off-field gripes appear broadly similar to all the other major clubs (ourselves included). I understand completely the premise of ‘you can’t just sit back and do nothing’, and it’s a fair argument to say things might be worse were it not for their actions. But it all feels a bit like taking a catapult to a gun fight. The small ‘wins’ achieved tend to pale into insignificance against the overwhelming commercialism tide that engulfs major PL clubs nowadays. Having read all that back, it sounds a bit like I’m saying fan-activism is a waste of time, and that isn’t the point I intended to make, I guess it was more that I think it’s understandable why people may look at it and think that, and perhaps we shouldn’t batter them for coming to that conclusion.

Almost certain he’ll be off abroad somewhere. Most likely to a slower-paced league:

Sky covering bases in case it’s the game West Ham go down.