TheBrownBottle

I could picture a West Ham or a Wolves paying decent whack for him in England. A few years back I would’ve said a half decent Spanish club like Betis would have gave us a good fee, can’t see it at the moment.

Don’t think I’ve ever been particularly upset by a player leaving tbh. I remember Gazza leaving when I was a kid and that seemed momentous, and Andy Cole pissed some off. ASM and Almiron aren’t in that category for me.

Yep, they are for me.

Gordon is ASM’s replacement, Barnes is back-up. I wouldn’t consider ASM to be close to Gordon, and Barnes scored 13 PL goals last season in a relegated side - ASM managed 12 in four years. If you’re blaming Barnes for his injury, I can’t help you there. But the idea that we haven’t upgraded isn’t on at all.

I think Barnes is an excellent option to have. Very direct, excellent finisher. The signing made perfect sense to me - shame he’s been injured.

He’d want money to invest I’d expect - the Mackems are potless. Even if they won the playoffs and went up, their fate would likely be the same as last year’s promoted sides.

Yeah, I think Adam Cleary is one of the better YouTube football people. I haven’t read FourFourTwo in well over a decade, so I’m not sure if he writes in it too

I managed about five mins of it. They seem like canny blokes tbf, but I’m not sure it represents any form of entertainment

I quite like WBA, they’re a natural top division club (both in terms of history and average attendances), the only time I’ve enjoyed seeing them lose was under that fraud. Good to see that they’re recovering after his tenure.

Jesus. I always feel a weird mixture of sympathy and eye-rolling exasperation when people get scammed like that

It’s the same as all clubs - the ‘attendance figures’ are tickets sold. That’s also how Arsenal has 60k every week, yet some of their games vs ‘lesser’ opposition have obvious gaps in the seats. The difference is that the Mackems give away / sell for dirt cheap shitloads of tickets, and loads of those punters don’t show up - unlike at SJP etc

Graham Potter’s Chelsea base salary: £12m/pa Sunderland’s last reported turnover figures: £26.2m (£5.1m loss) So that’s a massive fucking NO MackemMagic, you silly cunt

‘Jeremy Beadle has a massive cock. But on the other hand …’

Wonder if his memories are the same as mine - the away end revelling in Brian Pinas coming on as sub. ‘Stand up, if you’ve got a Pinas’ etc etc. I was 15, alright? I thought it was funny.

I don’t think it was handball either

Look, the 7,000 employees - who all work at the same time, the whole ‘shift work’ thing is a lie - who work at Nissan are all MLFs, and that’s why there are 25,000 empty seats. Even my mate from Chapel Park who works at Nissan who doesn’t support Sunderland would be there, because that’s what Nissan workers do

I’m not convinced it was a handball either - but proximity to the ball plays a role in where a player’s hands are. You’re not likely to worry about handball if you’re ten yards away - you’ve got plenty of time to move your arms away from the ball

Honestly mate, they were winding themselves up as much as owt else. Their profligacy in front of goal was hilarious. Laughed my head off every time Fabian Ruiz lined himself for another pisspoor long ranger.

Pope was MOTM for me too, tbh. But I’m not changing my mind re the OTT time-wasting.

No, I think we understand it. But it’s cartoonishly OTT when we do it - and it didn’t disrupt PSG at all. Nothing changed about the onslaught.

thanks Rod

Feels a lot less controversial after watching this:

That’s my understanding too - but playing double the amount of likely stoppage time doesn’t help.

Yeah, anything would have done. For me, the fact that PSG seemed to be creating roughly one chance per minute meant that we weren’t actually defending well at all those last 20 mins - PSG were just profligate. A goal looked inevitable.

I think I might have written on this thread somewhere during the game, but Pope’s ostentatious time-wasting doesn’t really help - we were punished by Liverpool last season under similar circumstances. That type of shithousing just leads to the referees adding ridiculous amounts of stoppage time on - all to delay a goal kick by about ten seconds. The club need to pack it in.