TheBrownBottle

It’s the stupidest rule in the history of football. Teams used to train in public - what exactly are they really going to learn about the opposition that they didn’t know already? Storm in a teacup.

Nah, some things were always shit or cringe.

It’s what the bars on a cell look like through a fish-eye lens

Likewise - it’s still incredible to me that he did it. Shitbag move.

Tbf most clubs aren’t daft enough to play lyricless stuff like Local Hero when the teams are coming out, like our own version of the Spanish national anthem. Get a brass band on the pitch and get the crowd singing The Blaydon Races would my fix, but plenty seem to prefer standing and listening to a Knopfler guitar solo

No, that isn’t the reason - it was singing that song at Wembley. Personally, I’m more inclined to take KK’s word over Cole’s re him downing tools, too - or perhaps he didn’t score a goal in his final six games for the club because he just forgot how to shoot …

Quite right - it’s Darlington for Hartlepool. The Smoggies have no-one who gives a shit

Selling in the summer doesn’t have any bearing on today tbf

@Minhosa’s post was really interesting - I can only imagine what Nickson was thinking as last summer unfurled. It also shows that there were people at the club who knew better and were ignored.

They likely couldn’t have sacked Howe even if they wanted to - there’s a good chance given our league placing that paying the manager £10m to clear his desk might topple us over

According to KK’s autobiography, he thought he’d been tapped up and checked out long before that And singing that KK is a ‘sad Geordie bastard’ on national telly knocks acting like a dickhead for a move into a cocked hat for me

Personally I’d have fired the nepo baby. But not allowing for that, we seem critically understaffed if said nepo baby was in the position he was last summer - we’re coming up to half a decade in; where are the professional scouting and transfers team?

Do Rangers and Celtic have any which aren’t linked to internecine religious hatred or violence in Ireland? Hail hail is the only one which springs to mind. The other famous ones - yeah, fucking awful.

It is - my concern is that this has all been PowerPoint presentationed away. Zero accountability for last year, no changes in personnel - the only thing which can’t happen again is wasting time on unrealistic targets, given our diminished status and lack of a budget

I never saw Milburn, MacDonald or Gallacher play And Isak is clearly a far, far better footballer than Cole or Ferdinand. For all the ‘rat’ patter, we don’t win the LC without him edit: if Isak is a cunt, then Cole is one too. Unless my lip-reading was wrong during the post-match celebrations at the 1996 FA Cup Final …

I am one of life’s worriers, but I am getting increasingly concerned that this summer is going to be an action replay of last summer

Plus ça change and aaal that - colour me unsurprised

I want us to win regardless of what impact that has elsewhere At the same time, the worst case scenario is that it could be hilarious

Phil Neal with better teeth

My favourite Smoggies are the ones who go on about how they’re all from Yorkshire, and their real rivals are Leeds Face facts lads - it’s Hartlepool

My avatar should confirm that wouldn’t be the case No, I’d play three up top

Yes, the 99/00 one with the Brown Ale badge was decent, it has to be said

For £69m we could’ve bought most strikers on the planet. I’m pretty sure that someone vaguely competent could’ve found a player for that money who could’ve scored 7 league goals - I mean, Bobby Shinton did finish top scorer with the same tally of course, but that’s not usually something to shout about. Callum Wilson - who we realised on a free having decided that an ageing player made out of paper mache couldn’t hack the PL anymore - has scored 6. On average, Woltemade needs 70 mins more to score a goal than this version of Wilson. Woltemade has been poor, and I’m not convinced at all that this is solely down to Howe’s tactics. Every time Howe moved the lad further back, he’d drop further back again. He doesn’t appear to have a striker’s instincts; worse, his vaunted technical ability isn’t close to being high enough to justify the half-arsed strolling about he does during a match. He’ll likely go back to Germany at some point to pootle about for a top six side over there.

Have to say though, I think it’s good they’ve paid tribute to great teams of the past with the design. In this instance, the heroes of Notts County’s Anglo-Italian cup finalists of 1993/94:

It just seems impossible to actually knacker up B&W stripes … but adidas know how to give it a right good go. I still think the misty-eyed stuff re adidas really was down to the 95-97 kit - most of what they produced was utter shite. ASICS, Umbro, Castore and Puma all produced consistently better kits designs.