OpenC

Surely 30+ years is kinda getting on for a grand tradition I know what people are saying about having something to sing (although I remember being at the Millennium Stadium and the fans Durrr Durrrrrrr, Dur Dur Dur Dedur Dur Durrrrrring along) but whoever called it about Liverpool only making a noise at the start and the end was bang on. The mackems are the same, sing two lines of their song and think it's amazing but then sit in a silence broken only by the rustling of crisp packets for the game. It's just tinkering around the edges and not in the least getting at the real reason for the ever-flattening atmosphere (a ground shot through with aging and/or gentrified fans who can afford it). Wanting everybody involved in a mass singsong at the start is (imho) not too far removed from my granny going on a mystery tour with the WI in 1981 and singing The Day We Went To Bangor on the bus. I suspect, though, that this schmaltzy version of Our Fans , aal the lads and lasses and bairns, aal wi smiling faces, singing the right thing at the right time for the camera, is exactly what they want.

Switching around the songs to make things better but still says Bru-nooohhh like a fucking child

Switching around the songs to make things better but still playing fucking Status Quo

Yeah, guessed from your post that you had too much on to go combing through and it'll be hard for you too so I'll see him tomorrow and find out

It's a pipe dream in 2025 but I always feel like it would be so relatively easy to make it a Home Office approved hostile environment for the please-sit-down-not-in-front-of-the-children people who don't really like the noise and the swearing and the aggression and the inconveniences and bring back the noise in an unforced and organic way. Leave the Milburn for people who want to pay a bit more and have a guaranteed season ticket and a sanitised experience, the cameras don't see them anyway. Get rid of thousands and thousands of season tickets in the ends and the east stand, give people a way to buy blocks of tickets and sit/stand with their mates and drop the price a bit. Will never happen of course, it's just something I think about every once in a while. I haven't even been for years tbh, not to watch the blokes anyway

I think most non league clubs have a historian who would love to see that sort of thing, just in case you had the time to split off the non league stuff and use it for a good cause. My mate does it for Alnwick, I've asked him if he knows anyone who'd take the lot

Roy Keane called the atmosphere issue with his prawn sandwich comments literally decades ago now. It's been on an endless diminishing run for popular and successful clubs since then. Times have changed at the top levels, and gate receipts are less of an issue than they've ever been, so pricing out your supporters and replacing them with spectators made the change in atmosphere inevitable I suppose. It's not for me to judge like, if people want to pay to go and sit in silence and the clubs are happy to facilitate that as long as they get their telly money, then it's up to them. Can't help but think an old fashioned bearpit atmosphere created by a younger crowd paying a tenner to get in would look and sound better on the telly, though. Make it back into the sort of place that most 50 year olds like me generally wouldn't want to go

Libpewl fan at work telling me there's apparently a fear building in the fanbase that he's absolutely fine but about to get whacked with a big suspension for something or other Absolutely no idea where he/they've got that from but all the same

£20 says the lads who wished Isak well on social media

I don't think that's what he was saying mind saying they were all equally shite and he could have taken anyone off isn't the same as saying he just rolled the dice randomly and hoped for the best.

Dangerously low on copium reserves, I fear for a couple of posters if the mackem lads appear

Very bad tempered clash with Jarra today at St James' Park. Visitors went one up from a free kick then hospitalised our 16 or 17 year old backup keeper with a honking and completely needless challenge when he looked to already have it in his hands, serenaded by their extremely classy fans doing the ambulance noise and funeral march for him Alnwick got to 2-1 with just minutes to go but couldn't defend a corner at the death so finished 2-2. Have never wanted to win a game more, or celebrated a goal more than our second but was not to be

Aye, I get that, I just don't feel that the enthusiasm from the top is what it was Most of it was Amanda Staveley to be fair, she seemed to be there at Kingston Park more often than not. I guess with her gone it was bound to feel different.

You get the distinct impression that interest in the women's team at senior levels has waned some and now it's a lot of mercenaries and journeywomen who haven't really been performing rather than the likeable mostly local lasses that it was, they're in a bit of an awkward position I reckon

he's a great player, he'll be a miss at Alnwick. Big powerful lad and a good centre half at NL2 level and probably higher, scored a couple recently as well.

I can't believe they had the nerve to even complain about it. If the ref wanted to do something about it he should have asked him to leave the field then restarted the game while he was fiddling. If not we should have just taken it over his head while he was still tying up, much less waiting for him to stand and slowly trot back toward his goal.

Northern league and alliance players not good enough for the division, so bring in an NL manager as well? It's a power move like

I hope they lose their next three games but he doesn't get sacked just yet. Give him until they're going into April in 13th

Aye we need a change here like

Lad just wants his contract paid up and to fuck off back to a smaller club I reckon

Just wanted Bally back marra

I bet he still plays You Only Get What You Give at half time as well Literally the only place in the world that still plays that song

I hear somebody missed an open goal for Spartans. Hope it wasn't wor pottsy

Next stop, monitoring ref assistants with xOC for expected offside calls and refs themselves with xVO expected VAR overturns

Only real issue I have with the current offside rule is the timing of the call, which will one of these days lead to a serious injury for a player making or receiving a challenge that wouldn't have needed to be made if offside was given five seconds earlier*. Like hans says, there's a line and if you're on the wrong side of it at the wrong time, then it's on you. I don't think the positioning of the line will make a huge amount of difference to the accuracy of human decisions; good arguments either way here though * edit: looks like it's already happened at least once, not sure how I hadn't heard about the Forest one in May