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I do always think that what coaches and managers say to interviewers is very different to what they say to their players behind closed doors, but who knows?
Look, that was a disaster today but the season is far from over. No one's getting promoted in January.
Also, if we're bobbing around in more or less the same position every season, for every team which "hurtles past" us, there must be another passing us in the opposite direction.
I didn't recognise one of the subs - d'oh - so for anyone as clueless as me, here is some background.
Key takeaway for me: "Isak is a player identified by our recruitment department as having great potential as a ball-playing #6, with good close control and strong defensive anticipation".
I think you really do need to acknowledge that we don't have the strength in depth of a team like, say, Arsenal.
That means that the loss of our best striker and two of our most creative players is going to significantly affect us.
I don't think there's a lack of effort at the moment, it's a lack of quality, especially from an attacking perspective. Luckily, the team has partially counterbalanced that by tightening up defensively. That's a positive.
Finnish instrumental space rock. Every album is excellent, in my humble opinion:
Who knew that you could mix metal and ambient and it would actually work? This Swiss outfit did and delivered it without using any real guitars. This blew my mind when I first heard it and I still think it's a groundbreaking piece.
Heavy psych band Elder and doom metallers Kadavar made an album together and the album spawned this epic rock song, complete with a powerful and moving video:
Here's the receive stance of current world number one, Lin Shidong. You'd normally receive serve front on to the table, crouching and positioned centrally, as Lin is.
You do occasionally see the pros use behind the back shots, and some players - see below - can execute them reliably - but they are such high risk that a standard forehand or backhand shot is usually more sensible.
"Flew in for it all the way from Cleveland OH. Overnight flights Monday, train up to Oxford, sat in Oxford end, stayed overnight in Oxford including a miserable wait in the rain for the bus back".
Wow! Respect to you .
* * * * Does anyone have an inside contact within the club? If they do, they should ask them to print off the extract above and either pin it to the changing room door or give it to JS to read to the players.
The level of commitment to do all that travelling - the time, the effort, the cost - is both astonishing and inspirational.
I fully accept that the last two games have been grim from a quality perspective, but at least there has been no lack of effort.
I do think we should put them in context, though: - Our best striker, Burrell, who is key to our press and who gives us pace up front, is out - The only two players we have who can dribble a football successfully on a regular basis, Chair and Saito, are also out.
This, understandably, makes us a bit toothless and undermines our creativity. It's frustrating but there are no easy solutions to it.
Thankfully, in a surprising break with tradition, the team has got its act together defensively and - jinx alert - managed to ride out this period of limited attacking and creative options without racking up a string of defeats. I wonder how many points we'll have deducted for this sorcery.
Burrell, Saito and Chair can't come back soon enough, though [pray].
Can you print off 16,000 copies of point 4 and put them on the home fans' seats in time for Saturday's game, please?
Spot on. If every player is treated as a commodity for trading at a profit in short order, we'll lose the connection between the players and the fans, as well as the soul of the club.
We need some experienced, older players who not only make strong contributions but who also care deeply and like being here, who want to achieve something in their careers with us, not elsewhere.
I believe it was Andy Walker. I looked him up afterwards, he was a striker for Celtic and was also capped by Scotland.
How he and the Sky commentator held it together, I'll never know. They were so professional and matter a fact in spite of the utterly dire football the teams were "treating" them to. Respect to them both, the pundits, that is
To add to that, after 10 years in this division, 10 years in which, so far, we have got nowhere near going up, I think most fans are suffering from "mediocrity fatigue".
On a positive note - steady now - I feel like we would normally have lost the last two games, so that's progress of sorts, I suppose.
Agreed, although we were very poor, at least we kept a clean sheet and didn't go away empty-handed.
For most of the second half, that felt to me like a defeat waiting to happen. A classic QPR capitulation seemed inevitable.
What on earth happened at halftime, did someone swap the energy drinks for Ovaltine and a couple of Nytol? We were so passive, as if the game were already won.
One other thing: I may be mistaken but we didn't seem to have anyone who could successfully dribble a football, not even over a short distance. I'll admit it's a difficult skill, I was never good at it, but my word, it's a real concern if we have no one capable of that.