TheBrownBottle

The sprint time claim comes from Superstars in the '70s - he did 96m (he was given a 4m head start) in 10.4 seconds. Much faster than most could ever hope to do, but some tales become taller in the retelling. I get up at 5am every day - including weekends. I don't arse myself with lists, mind - I've got labradors who want fed, watered, and walked at that time. Maybe that's where I'm going wrong - it is why I'm not world class at what I do like Jake. Unlike Jake, most of us don't get decisions most days of the week - Mon-Fri the list would be 'shit, shower, shave - gan to work, come yerm'. Fucking lists my arse.

He played Barcelona in a pre-season friendly - a glorified training session. It's not the same level as competitive league football. The lad might come good, but if he's not getting minutes it is for good reason - I did think when he joined that the SPL was a big step up. The old Division Four would have been a better place for potential minutes a la Anderson.

Yeah, I'll join the 'Norman was a canny bloke' club. Seemed sound to me - a rarity on their pods.

Brad Friedel never did recover his sanity after Keegan decided not to sign him for NUFC. Though his theme for The Terminator was awesome - stick to fillum music, Brad.

Moved that one for you - sentence reads much better now

Stuttering drunk who lost the shirt off his back on a call centre business in Italy yonks ago - which is why he ended up commentating on Football Italia. Likely hates all things forrin as a result. Just a guess mind, not everyone who is a cunt needs a tipping point. I can just about separate the art from the artist when it comes to football - I mean, look who I have in my profile picture on here. It would be nice if the club legends weren't complete wankers, but hey ho. Supermac hasn't kicked a ball in anger for NUFC in nearly half a century - its easy enough to ignore. edit: I now know who 'Scotty T' is, too. My loss.

Yeah, the Gotze move was first class shitbagging. Fucking horrible club.

Being sacked for not winning the league at a canter is damning of the entire structure of German football at present. Ten titles in a row in a major league is a joke - the Bundesliga is often lauded up for its ownership models, but Bayern’s total dominance (rather than just winning it every other year) has coincided with a massive downturn in the national team’s players and performances. It’s embarrassing, in all honesty. And I’m sure Bayern being the biggest pusher of ‘FFP’ has absolutely nothing to do with their dominance - the worst of the closed shop brigade. Cunt’s club. Edit: for context, unless this has changed in the last decade and I’ve forgotten (can’t be arsed to check), three in a row is the most managed in English football. Herbert Chapman’s great Huddersfield and Arsenal teams managed it in the 20s and 30s respectively, Liverpool’s superb early ‘80s side, and Ferguson managed it at least once from memory (99-01; I think they may have done it again under him, though I could be wrong). Winning ten in a row is such a joke that no-one has even managed it in Scotland.

We also need to allow for the sizeable differences in tournaments from the past until now - ‘74 and ‘78 were 16 team WCs; Euro 76 was a four team Euro - it was much trickier to qualify. England weren’t awful at Euro ‘84 - they were in a four team group (again, an eight-team tournament) with Italy, Spain and Belgium. They were ok at the 2010 WC - as per, they lost to the first good side they played. The draw vs the US after a goalkeeping calamity dropped them in there. Euro 00 is always talked about as a disaster, though it was a tricky group (England beat a terrible German side - though apparently England beating poor Germany sides then didn’t count, but Southgate was the man who oversaw a win vs an equally shit Germany at Euro 22). It was also a very average England side - of that side which beat Germany only and Scholes and Beckham have a chance of making the current side. Dennis Wise was on the LW ‘14, ‘16, ‘88, ‘92 and ‘94 were all the worst showings for me - poor sides made to look even worse. They were also low points in terms of football talent - or in the case of ‘92, an absolute doylem as a manager who was playing Tony Daley, Neil Webb, Carlton Palmer and Andy Sinton ahead of Waddle, Beardsley and Wright (also Barnes and Gascogne were injured).

I know where you’re coming from - ultimately, international managers are at the mercy of the talent pool they have available. But for me it is about what they achieve above what might be expected - and clearly we disagree about the talent pool available to Southgate - which is why Rehhagel’s achievement in 2004 should be seen as a superb piece of international management, yet I never see him named in discussions re great international managers (etc etc)

Italy are, for me, an average international side - but in Italian terms, they’re a bad side. Southgate is a conservative manager, but he’s the FA’s dream. I understand where you’re coming from re the difference between international and club management, but I actually think he’s blown several chances at this point - EURO 2020 in particular (England’s track record for home international tournaments is W-SF-F - home advantage helps). At WCs, they didn’t outstrip their usual performance - losing to the first decent side they play. He isn’t terrible - McClaren was terrible - but his selections are beyond favouritism at this point, and I think he’s a reactive manager.

We’ll agree to disagree KI

Doesn’t mean that teams don’t become poor. This is the worst generation of Italian players post-war. Couldn’t qualify for two successive WCs for the first time in their history. I’m sure all those who think Southgate is a good manager will call for him to get the NUFC job when it becomes available.

The generation which won the u-17 and u-20 world cups and u-19 euros you mean? The best batch of young players we’ve produced success-wise? Only dafties underrated this pool

Yep. First side since the mighty North Macedonia to achieve that Herculean task.

There are some depressingly thick Geordies out there … https://mobile.twitter.com/RightToon/status/1638844393116385280

Just turned this on for the second half, Jesus wept I forget just how shite Maguire is. How Southgate is still picking some of these is beyond me - almost as if he’s a failed second division manager.

I’m calling for NUFC to return to wearing blue shorts. We won loads wearing them.

I’m trying to think of which clubs have changed their first team kits in recent years. Cardiff were very recent, Liverpool and Leeds are relatively recent (in my dad’s lifetime, anyway) edit: Villa occasionally play in stripes. Same colours though.

Just what I was thinking. Hurst would change his own name never mind the club’s if he felt it would get him into the club boardroom for an afternoon

Self-awareness isn’t one of their strengths. They also fail to mention the SOS’s greatest appeal to away fans - it’s a short walk from the Metro station, which means you can drink in Newcastle before and after the game with a convenient half hour or so train ride to the game and back

I’d want Man Utd to beat the Smoggies, it has to be said. They’re not proper rivals but that doesn’t mean I want them to succeed.

It’s perfectly easy to argue against - where did the previous figures come from? Which decisions were reviewed in order to come up with the ‘decreases in diving’, etc? What was the solid basis upon which a dive was judged to be a dive? Which leagues were used as a control group? I meant it when I said pseudoscientific. It’s completely qualitative and built upon suppositions. You see cast-iron facts - I see fundamentally flawed amateur research. NB VAR being the root cause of the reduction in WC FKs - how often is VAR used on FKs? How many times has a FK - not a pen - been ruled out or given by VAR? The answer, of course, is zero - it doesn’t rule on them. But apparently the 30% reduction is down to VAR? Correlation mixed up with causation there.

The Forest game had Anderson’s goal changed because of a ‘clear and obvious error’ - i.e. the defender ‘didn’t deliberately play the ball and therefore Longstaff was offside’. This obviously was incorrect, but it didn’t stop them chalking it off. It doesn’t improve the game one bit - it simply means that more contentious calls might be called correctly at a cost to the spontaneity and democratic structure of the footballing pyramid. I’m far less bothered about that - I enjoy the human element of sport. The only ‘fans’ I can imagine enjoying this nonsense are those who’ve never actually been to live football matches, and therefore football to them is just another TV program to watch. They can go and grab something from the fridge whilst the VAR official makes up their mind.

Again, you can cite all the studies you like - they’re still making qualitative and not quantitative arguments. ‘Diving went down’. Completely qualitative, pseudoscientific shite. Also, a reduction in the number of fouls given is not proof that foul play has decreased - it is just as likely to be that referees won’t blow for anything which is not absolutely blatant knowing full well that their mates in the booth can pick up the slack - see Forest v Newcastle.