 | Forum Reply | Former Coventry performance head on the 'pseudoscience' taking over football at 16:52 22 Sep 2026
Research is all well and good, but people come to faulty conclusions all the time, and it's more often because the people collecting the data for the experts have no idea what they're doing, than because the experts are bad experts. Be ten times as sceptical of data as you are of science. |
 | Forum Reply | Former Coventry performance head on the 'pseudoscience' taking over football at 11:50 22 Sep 2026
Ice baths stop your muscles hurting. That's it. The Guardian's science desk loves nothing more than pointing at a new development and kissing its teeth and declaring that there's little evidence for it yet. There's little evidence that standing a metre away from an exploding hydrogen bomb is bad for your health. |
 | Forum Reply | New Song For Spurs Fans at 15:49 14 Sep 2026
Teams that go up from the Championship playing Proper Football tend to fall flat on their arses in the Prem, it's a thing. Opponents who have had to think hard about how to stop Manchester City, find nothing easier than playing a lower-budget version of Manchester City. |
 | Forum Reply | Taylor Richards gone…thank god. at 15:12 2 Sep 2025
Laird's diary: August 2021 - Mr. Martin told me to attack! 😊 January 2022 - Mr. Parker told me to attack! 😊 August 2022 - Mr. Beale told me to attack! 😊 November 2022 - Mr. Ten Hag told me he might recall me in January! 😁 December 2022 - Mr. Critchley told me not to attack 😯 January 2023 - Mr. Ten Hag told me to stay at QPR and not get injured so he can sell me in the summer ☹️ February 2023 - Mr. Ainsworth told me to do the haka and then not attack 😭 |
 | Forum Reply | Taylor Richards gone…thank god. at 09:12 2 Sep 2025
To quote Boyle from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I think you may be only 99% right this time. Richards - crap. Balogun - let's go with crap even though we were disappointed he left us for Big Rangers. Roberts - renovation project that didn't work out, missed the Wales World Cup squad with genuine injury, Leeds couldn't get him healthy either. Paal - played at QPR level or slightly better for 2½ years, meant we didn't have to worry about left-back. Iroegbunam - did fine, now a Premier League player on merit. Laird - first-team regular, victim of four-four-f******-two, now a first-team regular for probably a better side than us. JCS - "So, you take him on, and you put medical staff around him to try and get more minutes out of him. Enter Ben Williams, and Clarke-Salter is probably his biggest success story to date." |
 | Forum Reply | Taylor Richards gone…thank god. at 00:38 2 Sep 2025
Taylor's crime was being brought in by Mick Beale and not being very good. That's it. Most of the million football players in England aren't very good. Fair play to Brighton, they rinsed us for a League Two player. He gets pelters for his availability from people who would have complained about him being in the side if he WAS available, so he couldn't win. |
 | Forum Reply | If we go down , does anyone give a shit. at 15:51 26 Aug 2025
The worst thing about being relegated is all the games you have to lose to do it. Once we're in League One we'll adjust to the new reality, win more games than we lose, and have a chance to get a young core in place that propels us straight through the Championship. Really the best that can be said for life in the Championship from a sustainability point of view, is that it's where you have to be to get promoted to the Prem. If your plan is Premier League in five years, you're literally better off spending years 2 and 3 in League One than having to loan in Ronnie Edwards/Jamal Lowe/Andre Gray/Nakhi Wells just to stay in the Championship. |
 | Forum Reply | RND joins on loan at 15:05 26 Aug 2025
And Waterloo Sunset, Gooner-dom notwithstanding. |
 | Forum Reply | Protesting together at 14:59 26 Aug 2025
The main issue I can see with all those suggestions is that Pigbag is already in a minor key 😉 |
 | Forum Reply | RND joins on loan at 14:45 26 Aug 2025
I'm nicknaming him Maestro - "Norrington-Davies" is the orchestra conductor's equivalent of Lennon-McCartney 🤓 |
 | Forum Reply | Taxi for Marti at 16:40 15 Aug 2025
Clubs aren't deciding in round 1 whether to take the League Cup seriously. The optimal strategy as practiced by almost everyone is to treat the rounds up to the quarter-final as slightly more intense friendlies, and then start taking it seriously if by sheer luck you happen to win all your games and find yourself in the semis. |
 | Forum Reply | If Celar is the answer what's the question 🤔 at 23:54 10 Aug 2025
Mostly this, yeah. Celar for me is the epitome of a Replacement Level Player, to borrow a Moneyball term. He knows the game enough not to embarrass himself, but we could find another player kicking around on a free who will contribute exactly the same. Look at it this way, if we'd had a guy called Gianni Sellers on trial from Concord Rangers, 13 caps for British Virgin Islands, YouTube channel packed with worldies, manager says he's got the best nose for goal he's ever seen at that level, and then he copies Celar's performance against Preston kick for kick. Would you be worried about missing out on a generational talent if you didn't sign him up? Or would you think, nah, not ready for this level, and we've got Lloyd and Kolli as medium-term projects already? |
 | Forum Reply | QPR: The Modern Circus of West London – Column at 16:54 4 Aug 2025
Interesting facts, and all credit to Gareth Dixon for his role at QPR, but this piece was definitely given to an AI at some point in its life cycle with the instruction "make this sound prettier". |
 | Forum Reply | Morecambe FC RIP at 15:14 3 Aug 2025
Here's my favourite little factoid for the "reality hits" side of the argument: Here's every team in last season's League Two ranked by average home attendance. Bradford City (17762) Notts County (10626) *AFC Wimbledon (9745) Chesterfield (8505) Doncaster Rovers (8057) Port Vale (7622) Carlisle United (7425) Swindon Town (7229) Milton Keynes Dons (7025) Walsall (6470) Tranmere Rovers (6389) Gillingham (6268) Grimsby Town (6067) Crewe Alexandra (5397) Colchester United (4998) Newport County (4239) *Cheltenham Town (4198) *Morecambe (3410) *Barrow (3381) *Bromley (3111) *Fleetwood Town (2995) *Harrogate Town (2968) *Salford City (2849) *Accrington Stanley (2556) And here's the same for League One. Birmingham City (26326) Bolton Wanderers (21325) Huddersfield Town (18817) Charlton Athletic (18112) Wrexham (12781) Reading (12535) Barnsley (12211) Wigan Athletic (9946) Stockport County (9630) Blackpool (9619) Rotherham United (9330) Peterborough United (9151) Lincoln City (9004) Bristol Rovers (7880) Leyton Orient (7875) Mansfield Town (7769) Northampton Town (6629) Cambridge United (6597) Exeter City (6513) Shrewsbury Town (6207) *Wycombe Wanderers (5413) *Crawley Town (4393) *Stevenage (4005) *Burton Albion (3254) The asterisks are the NEW teams in the EFL post-1986 - the ones who came up from the Conference/National League who hadn't previously dropped into it. This is the kind of correlation that statisticians dream about - EVERY team who came up since 1986 ranks below EVERY team who was voted in pre-1986, in both divisions. With the exception of AFC Wimbledon for obvious reasons. |
 | Forum Reply | Sheffield Wednesday at 14:37 3 Aug 2025
Heck no, can you imagine? "Man's nan dies in A&E waiting for a doctor while team of Government-paid millionaires lose 3-0 to Portsmouth" Never mind the outcry if the safety notice on the North Stand magically disappears, or if the team signs a bargain bin Russian striker from Turkey and the work permit gets waved through... |
 | Forum Reply | Singing from the same hymn sheet – Fans Forum at 22:04 31 Jul 2025
"We've looked at how other successful bakeries have made cakes, and whereas before we might have had some really good flour, butter, eggs, all the rest of it, the questions we have to be asking are - what can we do with those inputs, those "ingredients" if you like, to give them the best chance of turning into a cake? If it was as easy as just mixing all the ingredients together, we'd be implementing that model, but we've found that unless you put them in some kind of vessel first, then mixing them is just going to cover your whole room in semi-solid bits of food. So we've got people working on that, trying out all different kinds of pint glasses, and then of course that feeds into the whole issue of, do we want to be the bakery that just smashes the ingredients together with our fingers? Or is that an area where we can make incremental improvements like getting in there with a toothbrush or some kind of plastic straw, going anti-clockwise instead of clockwise? So many variables that go into a decision like that, and that's before you even get to the question of how long to microwave it." |
 | Forum Reply | Morecambe FC RIP at 21:24 31 Jul 2025
Clubs of Morecambe's size have been going bust for a long time. The drop from League Two to National League is particularly lethal. Before Morecambe it was Macclesfield, before them it was Rushden, Hereford, Chester, Halifax, Scarborough, Darlington, Boston... I've probably missed some. Other, better-run teams step up to replace them. |
 | Forum Reply | Kit Porn at 00:29 31 Jul 2025
Whitby Town. (That's one way to stop the old gits telling you your pink away kit looks weak.) |
 | Forum Reply | Sheffield Wednesday at 00:14 31 Jul 2025
Owners like Chansiri? Wednesday fans were delighted with Chansiri in 2016 when they made the playoffs. Step up from Mandaric, never felt this much trust in an owner, man of integrity, really gets what we're about as a club. The best owner in the EFL is a promotion (to raise expectations) and two relegations away from having the fans marching to the ground with his face crossed out on a banner. |
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