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Reply | Support for Paul Smyth
at 19:30 6 Feb 2026
Within the past few years, I was a runner for a fairly mid-level distance running team at a university in the States. Not exactly the Olympics, yet I was struck by how much it's an expectation for athletes to have a "presence". I was the only member of the team not on social media, and our school's media people would provide pictures from races, "hype videos", and a whole other assortment of total rubbish.
One race, I was asked to pace my teammates to a certain time and given the option to step off anytime after halfway. Our coach had given us a rollicking the previous day because the first day of competition had gone poorly.
Mid-race, out in front, setting the pace, having no clue where my teammates had disappeared to behind me, fearing another rollicking, I decided to finish the race but not without shooting a "What the hell's going on?" shrug to the side of the track. I get passed by one person, the race ends, my coach is less annoyed than anticipated, and I think, "Well, I overreacted a bit but no harm done".
Fast forward two days, the bloke who won the race has put a mocking video seen by thousands on social media heavily featuring me gesticulating, having misconstrued it as showing off while leading a race. A load of people in his comments saying things like "Haha, let's find this kid and humiliate him, what's his account?". It went slightly "viral".
Then, under no encouragement from me, all of my teammates descend on his page and essentially leave mildly abusive messages. So now, I have an entire virtual ground war occurring on Instagram because I got cheesed off and made an exaggerated shrug in the middle of a race.
It died down and I benefitted from not being on social media, but I share this to illustrate how much of a cesspit social media is in how young people essentially live on there and the rules of polite society, empathy, giving people the benefit of the doubt etc. fly out of the window. In a sport like football that is more tribal, professional, and popular, this sort of thing becomes 100 times worse and could 100% lead to a serious case as alluded to above.
I'm probably preaching to the choir here because I know this forum skews older (sorry), but staying off the phones is sound advice. |
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Reply | Frey
at 20:08 26 Jan 2026
I tend to gravitate towards players who have quirks that make me chuckle to take away the pain of our frequent embarrassment--e.g., Michi Frey having his own name tattooed across his chest, celebrating by giving himself a unicorn horn, and sprinting like a waddling duck trapped in quicksand. Will miss him. |
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Reply | Sell Jon Varane ?
at 16:32 12 Jan 2026
I thought the point made was that Varane's brother won the World Cup with France, just as Jobe Bellingham's brother is a world-class footballer and this assigns far more pressure due to bearing a fairly unique/distinct name in the footballing world. |
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Reply | 35 points after 23 games, what’s the realistic target after 46?
at 20:12 28 Dec 2025
Our best totals since relegation are 68 and 66 with Warburton, I believe. 56 last season. I'm worried we're only a Burrell injury away from having Frey up front from a long stretch and have only one reliable left-back.
A slight dropoff to mid-60s might be good for top half and an overall improvement on last season. Anything more than that and I will be pleased. Cannot bear to think of playoffs unless we are still in and around them in ~March. |
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Reply | Middlesbrough F.C V Queens Park Rangers Match Thread.
at 16:19 13 Dec 2025
Cannot stand their #9 Conway. Moaning for a penalty in the first minute after a clean tackle from Mbengue, moaning for another penalty 5 minutes after that, taking a penalty to "get his goal" when his lot already have the game won, clattering Dunne for no reason and then trying to get him booked, diving every other minute. Doing better than any of our players, mind. |
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Reply | Tyler Morris's day out in Wrexham
at 16:00 16 Sep 2025
I thought London was shown the door for referencing bullying allegations live on stream? He was still on comms after the Bamford episode. |
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Reply | Celar
at 02:26 26 Aug 2025
Conversely, he scored 51 in 116 in all competitions for Lugano in the Swiss League. It isn't like he's some kind of fraud who wondered into professional football by mistake, but he looks completely wrong for the Championship. Similar to Madsen.
I just scanned Fortuna Dusseldorf's squad list and Celar will be lining up with Jordy De Wijs. Perhaps they can bond over shared past trauma. |
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Reply | Analytics
at 18:00 14 Aug 2025
I'm a data analyst that doesn't work in sport, so treat this with a grain of salt. My instinct is that the quality of model/strategy matters more than the quality of data or analytics personnel at the high professional level.
If you're looking at metrics, the players at the top of your list will vary heavily based on what metrics are most valued, how they are weighed relatively to each other, and how you weigh the context of what the player is doing (e.g. how good is the league? how much do you care about the relative quality of teammates/opposition? etc.)
I would be willing to bet that for us, it's Nourry or a collective group of overseers who establishes the "model"--the metrics/variables/profiles being targeted--and then it's up to subordinates to carry out the grunt work and then present reports to the real decision-makers based on different model variations, different player pools by nation, etc. That's why I say it's more the leadership direction than the quality of analyst/data that really makes a difference.
Old-school scouting must still have a place, though. I'd guess that the data serves as an initial screening process, and then players at the top of lists are then scouted in a more traditional sense? If anyone has genuine knowledge of analysis/scouting these days at this level, I'd be really interested to know. |
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Reply | QPR v Ride A White Swansea Match Thread
at 20:50 26 Dec 2024
I think next game at Norwich will tell us a lot. These last two away displays against Brizzle City and Swansea have been utterly awful, whether it's a personnel thing, a tactical thing, or combination of both. It's one thing to cede possession and make do with ~30% of the ball, but attempting to become a counter-attacking team relying on the wing pair of Smyth and Saito to provide all of the transitional pace clearly isn't working when you look at the dearth of times we've troubled defences.
Not sure what the way forward is, and I have a bad feeling about the games ahead without either Cook or Morrison to steady the ship. |
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Reply | New player incoming apparently
at 17:19 11 Aug 2024
Spot on, sdm. Had a teacher once go on about how he edited Hitler's page to say he was the Devil's stepson. Apparently it stayed on for weeks before someone edited it back. And that's a high-traffic page subject to regular vandalism, you'd imagine.
Got to feel for the volunteers who do everything on Wikipedia. Real labour of love, used by millions, great resource, etc... but always comes with kids messing around or, in this case, over-eager QPR fans perhaps trying to wish a new signing into existence. |
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Reply | Confession time - Play off winners
at 22:24 27 May 2024
Can't believe we're all forgetting about R's legend Modibo Maiga. That man scored a magnificent three-yard piledriver on his debut. Expecting a statue announcement any day now. |
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Reply | National league
at 00:11 3 May 2024
Bromley boast Mitchel Bergkamp (son of some Dutchman or other) and former Ranger Cole Kpekawa among their ranks. Don't remember much about Kpekawa to be honest, but apparently played for us six times total in the league and once in the Prem after coming through. |
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Reply | Lowe- our part in his downfall- match thread vs the Lillywhites
at 21:54 20 Apr 2024
Not at all comparable to Phildo's major surgery, but I watched from the USA after pulling my hamstring quite late in a race that I'd been looking forward to all year. Walked back to my house seven miles into a ten-miler, rang my dad, and got to talking about the upcoming game by way of diversion.
We specifically discussed Dykes and his lack of goals recently, so for him to get the winner and us to win a few hours later has turned the day right round. You best believe I hopped around in glee when "Hi Ho Silver" started playing. Enjoy tonight, everyone! |
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Reply | Patrick Bamford
at 13:09 25 Mar 2024
Bamford has a few blatant ones that instantly come to mind, too. There was the thing against Aston Villa where he dived to get Anwar El-Ghazi sent off in the melee after Leeds had cheated (when Bielsa acknowledged it and let them score). There was the dive against us that got Begovic sent off. There was the handball against Rotherham. Probably forgetting a few. |
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Reply | Anderson
at 01:09 7 Mar 2024
Maybe one detraction is Diangana getting past him a bit easily to score WBA's second. Still had a brilliant game like so many others out there, though. |
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Reply | Goals Conceded
at 20:51 26 Feb 2024
Hasn't done himself any favours with the Chelsea links. A few dodgy passes and errors here and there, but an experienced pro. He inspires more confidence in me than Dieng did towards the end of his time here. |
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Reply | Square one – Preview
at 00:32 17 Feb 2024
Does Andre Gray fit into that too with the whole Covid debacle? |
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Reply | Football Shithouses Thread
at 18:17 17 Jan 2024
Wasn't there a headline just last week about how much Mr. Toney wanted to repay Brentford after they stuck with him? Clearly he and his agent saw that and arranged this as quickly as possible to keep the whispers about a move going! |
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Reply | Too much negativity on here
at 15:59 14 Jan 2024
I'd love to be proved wrong... but as Clive mentioned this lot now have to put together as many wins over the next 19 games as they've managed in the past 60 (essentially half of said games).
Yes, we were unlucky today, but the reality that we can lose when playing that competently means that even if we stumble onto miraculous consistency in terms of pure performance things are still quite bleak. |
| | turnsey
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Site Scores| Prediction League: | 38 | | TOTAL: | 38 |
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