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Post by bowranger on Sept 22, 2018 11:45:52 GMT
I saw the length of Bow's post and though Ingham must be back! Will have a read and comment when finished - probably around Tuesday... LOL - yes let us hope that Norwich behave themselves! HEY. I resent that comparison. Sure, I sometimes write a lot like Ingham but he steadfastly talked sense...
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Post by bowranger on Sept 21, 2018 11:01:18 GMT
I do feel sorry for the lad. I think it's a confidence issue and his move to another championship side was a baffling one. Should have gone to a league 1 team, would be banging in the goals for fun. Can only assume that he was thinking of the money, christ knows what Sheffield United were thinking! Quite right -no need to kick a man when he is down. This just goes to show though that maybe we are not the only club who makes the odd mistake in the transfer market but then again he may start to bang in a few goals, regain his confidence and prove everyone wrong. I think things started to go downhill for him when we asked him to either play upfront on his own or out wide - neither of which fitted his abilities.
If he does not come good, he is only on a one year contract and I fear his reputation will be so low he may then struggle to even find a league one club. I never really rated him and did not support his signing so I feel we may also be partly to blame for his downfall.
The strange thing is that most fans loved Mackie because he always put in some effort and never stopped running but his goal return was even lower than Washington's. Washington was similar in his approach and effort, both were played out of position, but the majority of fans really never got behind him as they did with Mackie.
Yeah, I think the way we played him didn't help. He was never a lone striker, seemed baffling when we played him that way. I certainly got it wrong but thought he looked a half-decent signing at the time - I was guardedly optimistic. Good age, decent record in the league below, international caps etc. Seemed the right 'sort' that we should have been looking at. As with anyone from the league below, you can get gems, you can get people who manage the step up and you get people who don't cut it. With the Mackie point, I think his personality and impact was a bit different. He's always been rambunctious and loud, whereas Washington had more of a kinda...niggling, workmanlike way about him. Worked hard but in a different way. As an aside, when we beat Wolves at home, my Wolves supporting mate was full of praise for him - asking about our little bastard of a striker and how quick he was! I think what Mackie had in his locker was his obsession with lost causes. He'd charge after balls most people would ignore - often to no effect (but we all loved it anyway). But there were plenty of occasions where he crafted chances out of absolutely nothing through sheer bloody-mindedness and graft. Add in the iconic goals (Derby away, Liverpool at home etc.) and it's a different thing. But I agree in principle - both never hid, both always gave 100% but one was loved and one was largely disliked.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 21, 2018 10:44:20 GMT
Okay, so you can out rant me Bow I obviously touched a nerve and you clearly have more current experiences than I do. Good stuff there! Good point about the use of mobile phones, I guess it makes everyone more accountable. Attached is a link to the history of the Millwall Bushwackers and includes details of when a grenade was thrown on to the pitch at Brentford. That caused a huge media storm, but I fear just like a naughty school boy they rejoice in their punishments. I guess there is real kudos to being 'in the firm'. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millwall_BushwackersThe only other thought I had was that with most clubs, away travel is carried out with a recognition that every club has its lunatic small traveling group. It is not that hard to sidestep them. But if you travel with Millwall, there must be a high expectation of trouble and it must be much harder to sidestep. I suppose what I am saying is that a large number of Millwall's away support are likely to be of a type. Fundamentally, they have no desire to change from the base up. They are more likely to say 'bring it on' The only effective measure I can think of is to ban away travel and make an example of them. Tackling the home hostility requires more thought though. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millwall_BushwackersHaha out-ranting is nothing to be proud of, but I can definitely get going if I'm annoyed and there's a lot of coffee involved. Naughty school boy mentality is a good way of putting it - for some people, I think being on the fringes 'of the firm' feels powerful and the attraction of that to the type of people who thrive on it can be as much as (if not more of) a draw to them as it is a deterrent to the people it puts off. Fact is you don't have to be violent to get off on that - the way Millwall are policed at most places mean there's plenty of blokes who can enjoy being all brave and loud and intimidating safe in their police escort without ever having to get into a scrap. It's apparently a bit of a nightmare for a lot of their 'regular' fans because that reputation follows them everywhere, but they don't travel in big numbers a lot of the time. Anecdotally, a lot of their naughtier lot do not travel unless it's to games with potential for trouble, so you get situations where they only take a couple of hundred to games away up north and there's no trouble whatsoever, but those who do make the trip have to deal with the same level of policing and restrictions and harassment. I think there's also an element of their reputation being rehabilitated because of the CPO protests and how crap and sanitised a lot of the modern football experience is now. As in, for some people nostalgic for 'pwopah football' they probably never experienced themselves, Millwall don't seem unpalatable but "authentic". If you haven't experienced going to Millwall or dealt with their awful minority in person, it's easy for a lot of people (particular younger football fans) to see Millwall as disliked because they're the polar opposite of the glossy football product image Sky and the Premier League sell us. For all Millwall talk about bias in the press, now all you get is talk about how fantastic the intimidating atmosphere of the New Den is. As people have been recalling on other messageboards, when we went there in 2011 and saw Millwall giving out monkey gestures to black QPR fans with zero punishment and hundreds of locals spending the entire game baiting our lot rather than watching the game (or celebrating with their own players), the post-match punditry was all about how wonderful the London derby atmosphere had been. At the exact same moment, our lot are outside getting bottles and coins lobbed at us while we're kettled for half an hour. My mate had half a plastic seat sail through his hair, almost scalped him. But what a great set of fans, eh? What a noise they make! MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL... For all I've ranted about it, I don't think I'd like to see Millwall getting travel bans. For all the absolute bellends they've got, most aren't (at most fixtures, anyway) badly behaved and shouldn't be punished collectively unless it can be avoided. This will never happen but my ideal scenario is that Millwall start taking issues like we saw at the last game seriously and actually engage with fans on it. Make it clearer and firmer that racism and violence won't be tolerated - they say they do that already, but I think it's outward and not inward. To me, after the incidents with Wolves and Spurs last year, the FA should have hovered the possibility of a travel ban or partial ground closure over their heads and told them to sort it out. Millwall punish fans when there's external outrage, media coverage and when the FA get involved but I don't see a proper desire from, as you put it, the "base up". For the fans part, the onus has to be put on them to police their own stands. Not just getting banning orders when they get caught, but nipping it in the bud when it's happening. Like other clubs' fans (including ours), they've got to start drowning out abusive chants, confronting the people near them when they're doing offensive crap. If, as we keep getting endlessly told, that the vast majority of Millwall fans are wonderful people, then we should be seeing that vast majority making themselves known and sorting out their own problems visibly, verbally and dare I say it, not being afraid to dish out a slap to racists when they rear their head. As a poster over on LFW said: I just don't think they can have it both ways - their own fans' defensive arguments actually contradict themselves. If most of them are all so wonderful, then why does this keep on happening? But take them on their word and let them prove it, give them the opportunity to sort it out themselves. And if it doesn't and it keeps going like this then by all means, starting closing off bits of the ground. I don't like it as an approach but maybe this so-called sleepy silent majority of Millwall fans will be prompted into action by it.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 21, 2018 9:45:20 GMT
I do feel sorry for the lad. I think it's a confidence issue and his move to another championship side was a baffling one. Should have gone to a league 1 team, would be banging in the goals for fun. Can only assume that he was thinking of the money, christ knows what Sheffield United were thinking! Same really, he plays like his confidence is in the loo. My assumption was that Wilder saw something in him and could get him firing and was relatively low-risk on a free. Even when Washington's confidence was low, he's always been a slow starter - even at the Posh, he wasn't scoring regularly for his first few months at least before he hit his stride. Wilder doesn't seem a bad judge of player and knows the league below well, so it could end up working out. But as we've been saying, it really seems like League One is where he'd be better off.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 20, 2018 18:21:00 GMT
QPR 2 - Norwich 1.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 20, 2018 11:26:19 GMT
Thanks for that Ricky, really interesting seeing that stuff in historical context. The downside is that you've opened a bit of a Pandora's Box for me to go on a right old caffeinated written rant. Apologies to all, off I go.
On the point on policing, it definitely does appear to be a quite a regional thing. I've never experienced (at football) the kind of policing you had to endure at Leeds, though the negative experiences I've had with overly aggressive and provocative policing have mainly been via West Midlands and Yorkshire police. There could be all sorts of reasons for that. Cynic in me says that part of it is a London thing - plenty of football fans further North seem to hate 'Cockneys' (as we keep getting called) coming to town and considering most cops fit a similar demographic to many football supporters, they probably don't like us much either. I always think that 'behind' the uniform, if you're away at Leeds, the cop getting arsey with you is probably another 30-something Yorkshire lad who isn't a fan of a group of Londoners being a bit noisy and having a good time on their patch. No different to a good chunk of people in the John Charles Stand on a Saturday, but with a lot more leverage. More broadly, I think it's just what football fans in general are taught to 'accept' and because of our broader reputation and a minority's reputation for behaving like idiots, policing can get away with being a bit rougher. A fan gets arrested and the public assume hooliganism.
It's certainly not as bad as it used to be. Asides from professional standards being more enforced, the police's reliance on 'Forward Intelligence' cameras and CCTV for prosecutions also polices some of their own behaviour. Ditto the ubiquity of fans with smartphones - any time it kicked off or fans were arrested last night, fans swarmed in with their phones to film it. And I think quite a few police forces increasingly realise the logic that if you treat most football fans with a bit of respect and give some leeway, it keeps antagonism low. At Birmingham away, it was quite surreal having a copper with a thick London accent approach our table in the pub to introduce himself as the fan liaison officer, talking about our players in-form and so on. On the one hand, it's quite nice to see officers taking a 'facilitating' approach - where the remit is to ensure that everything goes well and safely. On the other, it's hard to shake the sense of intelligence gathering - them making sure they note the regular faces and so on. It's awkward because for all the positives of being chatted to and approached like a normal person and seeing an ostensibly friendly face, I'm also aware that being a football fan who doesn't kick off or behave poorly doesn't mean you are protected from repeatedly being treated like a potential criminal at matches.
Like with all policing, it's an absolute mixed bag. Some games, constantly being corralled and pushed about and filmed on handy-cams is intimidating and makes me nervous for just being there. On other occasions, you're very, very glad the good ones are about. On the way home last night, my mate and I were very glad of the officer who let us have a quiet word to find out where the Millwall escort was being taken so we could quietly be let out and slip safely down to Wood Lane instead. Similarly at the Millwall home game a few years back, a police line was a very welcome sight when Millwall broke out of their escort and chased me and my parents (both in their seventies) and dozens of others through Batman Close.
Though I will say some of the policing last night seemed a bit odd. Pre-match the balance seemed to be broadly right but Shepherds Bush does seem to suffer for not having a large, explicitly away-only match day pub. When the big Walkabout was open next to the Empire, you had most of them in one place and the atmosphere seemed decent in there (even if the beer is crap). I went in there to meet a Man City supporting friend a few years ago when we played them and the place was huge and bouncing. It makes going away easier for everyone - fans get to have a drink and socialise safely with their fellow fans, the cops can keep a hands-off eye on most of the fans easily, everyone wins. Last night, the Uxbridge Road was absolutely crawling with small groups of Millwall trying and failing to get into pubs because they had nowhere they could go. Subsequently, there seemed to be no proper escort as there was no central place to round people up - with a lot of the younger fans resorting to drinking cans on the street. Meanwhile, we tried to go for a quick drink in the White Horse to meet some friends and found the place completely shut off with two police horses out front and the fans inside effectively locked in, so we just ended up going to the ground early.
Post-match, the decision to march Millwall fans up Bloemfontein Road (but not in an escort) and then lead them straight onto the Uxbridge Road meant QPR fans heading for Shepherds Bush/SBM tube stations walked directly into the worst of it. The Uxbridge Road is always busy after the game and we only realised it was Millwall's mad lot until it was too late. Soon as we came out the top of Loftus Road, we were past the point of no return. People were scrapping, people were getting arrested so by that point we had to keep walking among them and hope we weren't started on because the moment you stop to try and turn around, you may as well have put a flashing light that said "QPR" above our heads. I'm not sure how that could have been avoided. If you keep them inside the ground (like they do to us at the New Den, for f*cking AGES), there's the risk they'll start tearing the place apart because they've lost. Maybe they could have just put them into a manageable escort on Bloemfontain Road by holding back in the streets for 10 minutes and then walking them along the Uxbridge Road in one manageable chunk? I'm not sure.
As an aside, this match was an absolute perfect storm in terms of costs for QPR. You've got far, far more police than usual, which we have to pay for, in the London Borough that charges the highest rates for policing (as you say Ricky, plenty of tasty overtime there). Meanwhile, because of the change in day, the fact it's live on Sky Sports and it's Millwall means a lot of people stay away for one reason or another. Some because they're scared, some because it's no longer convenient, some because the opportunity to watch it safe and warm at home or in the pub is too tempting. I'm amazed we actually hit ~12,000. It looked less.
On the issue of dealing with racist and violent fans, I could bang on forever about it (and I have, I've got some published articles on it...zzzzzz, I know). But the crux for me is that it needs to be a proper mix of approaches and one often does not work without the other. So I agree it does need to be addressed far better from a top-down perspective. Millwall 'the club' could do a lot more. They do issue condemnations and banning orders but by the same token undo chunks of the good work by being obsessive about how 'unfair' their reputation is. They do engage with Show Racism The Red Card but I don't see them doing that harder or on a more grassroots level then plenty of other clubs who don't endure anywhere near the same issues (happy to be corrected). On the one hand, I see the cynical reasoning on that - the club want more people coming through the turnstiles and if they were to more overtly try to tackle the clear problems they have, the more it solidifies their negative reputation. No different to a company not wanting to issue a negative financial forecast unless they absolutely have to.
I think (and hope) it's obvious from my previous posts that I am someone who thinks football fans in general get a bad rep and I think it's unfair. I've stood with plenty of clubs, even clubs I don't like for whatever stupid petty footballing reasons many of us harbour, when their fans have been treated like crap. I've done stuff about Coventry's battle with SISU, despite Eoin bloody Jess. I've engaged with and defended fans of clubs who protest about bubble matches or high ticket prices when others sneer at them. I supported the campaign against Millwall facing the CPO on their ground. So I don't think I'm biased or somehow putting the boot in unfairly.
Football fans, by their nature, are a fairly rebellious bunch even if they don't realise it and subsequently don't tend to take well to being lectured. We get lied to and taken for granted a lot - be it by our own clubs, by TV companies, by train companies, by over-zealous stewards, by FIFA yadda yadda yadda. So I think for fan culture changes to actually make sense, have credibility and stick it has to come autonomously from football fans themselves. Or to put it another way, schemes like Kick Racism Out Of Football are really positive and play a key role, but most fans' experience of that campaign is occasionally seeing players wearing the t-shirts or hearing a tannoy announcement. That's why real change has to have a bottom-up part to it, ideally at its core. Challenges to racism in football needs to be authentic and its about fans themselves laying out what is and is not acceptable in their stadium and their stands. There are loads and loads of big and small parts of this that happen allover the place - it's not always worked, but it's there and it happens.
On larger levels, you've got examples like Celtic. Their fans made monkey noises and pelted Rangers' Mark Walters with bananas. Subsequently, they form Celtic Fans Against Fascism and tackled the problem verbally and physically. A few years ago, a Middlesbrough fan was arrested for tearing pages out of the Qu'ran and mocking Islam at Birmingham away. The next home game? Boro fans organised a march against racism. Even Chelsea, with their reputation - first game after the racist incident on the Paris subway, Chelsea fans had a large "Black or white - we're all blue" banner in the ground. On the micro level, I've seen it countered plenty of times, from the example I said about seeing a QPR fan give another one a hefty slap to the chops for racially abusing Paul Furlong to seeing a Sheffield Wednesday fan shout down a fellow fan who was making racist comments about people on the Central Line.
The key, incredibly important bottom line about these examples is that they are all based on fans openly going "we've got a problem". Not trying to sugar coat it, not trying to explain it away, not trying to push it all on press exaggeration. They take it in, they reluctantly accept it and they bloody do something about it. It's not a quick fix but it all adds up and the main issue is that it counters normalisation. When it rears its head and has no consequences or condemnation from fellow fans, it becomes tolerated and it festers.
Millwall have had high profile incidents like this but the same response is not there and it never is. In 2017 alone, Millwall fans were targeted by the FA for racially abusing Wolves players and then faced high profile condemnation for racially abusing Son when they played Tottenham. Was there a notable fan response to this? Was there a banner? Was there soul-searching? I am very happy to be corrected on this but as far as I saw, all we got was Harris having to yet again condemn the racist behaviour when he'd justifiably would like to be talking about his team's performance and more online hand-wringing from fans. It's a constant "No One Likes Us, We Don't Care" victim complex. No counter response, just the same old tired lines about people picking on them and pointing vaguely in the direction of a "nasty minority" they do nothing about.
I looked into it to try and find counter arguments to balance this and so far I'm coming up blank. The well-maintained and dense 'Millwall History' website looks into the issues in quite some detail, but their fan-written article is exemplary about what I'm talking about. It is littered with classic diversionary phrases like "reverse racism" and "social justice warriors". They correctly point out some sketchy examples of the press exaggerating behaviour by Millwall fans. There are real examples of unfair smears and attempts to demonise the whole club. That exists and it's wrong. By the same token, they dismiss personal accounts written up by people who have experienced racism at Millwall as fans or players as "embellishment" without proper cause or contradictory evidence. Meanwhile, I've read the whole bloody article they have on the topic and I cannot see one example whatsoever that documents them taking the initiative and dealing with it themselves. When posed the question about whether racism at Millwall has decreased in the same manner as it has elsewhere...well, the person doesn't go to games much anymore and hasn't been to many other grounds as a neutral so cannot possibly comment. Typical.
Now all football fans can be illogical and knee-jerky. Even when it's your own club being shown to be behaving in a crap way, it's easy to be on the defensive. Football is about hypocrisy and for all the wildly differing opinions between a fanbase, their still 'our fans'. For a lot of us, our instinct is to defend them. No different really to hating Warnock at Sheffield United but loving him at QPR. So I get it, to some extent. But the level on which Millwall fans seem to largely absolutely reject any sense of self-reflection or accountability is endlessly frustrating. Because the real fact is, it's only them who can change it. You cannot legislate racism out of football and you can't fully police hooliganism out of football. Fans need to be responsible but all we ever get is excuses.
Brute fact is I've been going QPR for about 25 years now and I can say hand on heart that while I've seen isolated elements of racism and violence at football in different parts of the country and from different sets of away fans, the scale of it from Millwall is repeatedly far, far worse. Not just in terms of the level of abuse, but in terms of its frequency, the amount of people involved and most crucially to the point I'm banging on about, the fact that their "regular" fans seem to never, ever intervene to stop it. I've seen some nasty moments at QPR, from Portsmouth tearing the place up and Chelsea fans kicking off in the home end as a child, to avoiding coins and spit at Ninian Park. But the only time I have ever properly feared for my safety and the safety of both fans and the general public in the era of 'modern football' is Millwall home and away. And that's the same for plenty of other people I've spoken to.
To sum up this rant, yes, it is only a minority of Millwall fans who are macho, violent bigots. It's also true that other clubs have pernicious issues with racism, albeit nowhere near on the scale it was decades ago. I also agree the issues with Millwall can be exaggerated. Sometimes maliciously so and that's not fair. The key difference though is that firstly, Millwall have got a far bigger problem than the vast majority of clubs and no claims of righteous indignation about press hyperbole changes that. And secondly, while there's dozens of notable examples of other clubs' fanbases identifying a problem and dealing with it, Millwall's fanbase seem to be consistently far, far more concerned with their own reputational damage control than taking some accountability and changing it. That's why it's different, that's why it's so awful and that's why I am so sick of having to see our community suffering whenever they descend on Shepherds Bush. I'm sick of seeing regular people going about their lives having to duck into shops and looking terrified on the Uxbridge Road in a way that simply does not happen on anywhere near the same level with other clubs' fans. That's not because the tabloids have exaggerated a story, that's literally my experience as a football supporter. That's not a police problem, or a Millwall 'the club' problem - it's their fans' problem and they seem to have no appetite or desire to change it. And that is shameful.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 20, 2018 0:13:34 GMT
G’mar chatima tova, fellow Rs.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 19, 2018 23:56:28 GMT
Right, now the off the pitch stuff.
This is mainly just me ranting to get this out of my system because it's pissed me off so much, but indulge me.
On the way home, a mate and I got caught up in the mass of Millwall fans on the Uxbridge Road going back to the tube. All in a big mob, they weren't rounded up in an escort for quite some time, with a few taking unprovoked pot shots at Rangers fans walking home. A few got arrested. We had to keep our heads down and keep moving.
So now amongst that lot, here's some of the stuff I witnessed and I reckon it's important it's spelt out.
I saw Millwall fans deliberately racially taunting Asian shop owners. I saw one Millwall fan run up to an Asian man outside a shop and call him a paedophile and said "they" should be sent to the gas chambers. Another friend further down the road saw little mobs of Millwall fans intimidating anyone who wasn't white and putting on offensive accents and taking the piss.
Plenty of this not only happened in earshot of the police but amongst big crowds of Millwall fans who either encouraged it or ignored it.
Yeah yeah, we all know Millwall have some scumbags but the impunity in which they do it and the way not a single one of their fans take responsibility for it is an absolute disgrace. I'm so sick of having to hear the usual crap about how they're unfairly labelled and the bulk of them are all lovable heart of gold South East Londoners.
Yes, most Millwall fans aren't like that but most Millwall fans are seemingly a hundred times more likely to defend their fans' image than deal with their own very, very serious problems. Take some accountability. There are plenty of fanbases in England who have had problems with violent racists and plenty of them have taken their own steps to deal with it. From Middlesbrough fans demonstrating against racism after one of their own was arrested for a hate crime, to my teenage memories of being at Birmingham away and hearing a QPR fan racially abuse Paul Furlong and him promptly receiving a hard slap to the face from the fan next to him.
Millwall fans, meanwhile, for years, have done and continue to do nothing. All excuses, no accountability, no public outcry. The stands are our responsibility as fans. If you don't challenge it, it festers and it normalises. In 2011, I went to The New Den and watched a fan make repeated monkey gestures at black QPR fans over and over again. Not a single Millwall fan challenged the bloke on it. A steward didn't intervene. That is not normal and it's still going on and it's still not ok.
Fair play to some of our lot who challenged the Millwall fans on it verbally, at the risk of arrest or getting a kicking. Telling them in no uncertain terms that their behaviour was disgusting and there were families about and to get out of West London.
I bloody love the Uxbridge Road and I'm proud of our club being in a multicultural area. It breaks my heart to see racist, violent thugs intimidating our community. And I am sick to death of Millwall fans never, ever taking responsibility for their own "element".
Rant over, it just put me in an absolutely crap mood after such a good result. Cheers.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 19, 2018 23:12:15 GMT
Just home, here's my ramblings.
First up, fantastic three points and a clean sheet. We had a ropey period in the second half but we really deserved the win. Could have been more too, but we didn't quite get it together to kill the game off properly - came close though.
Weird thing about Millwall is that they seemed to jettison the things they actually do well. We got a minor glimpse of it in the second half but I kept waiting for a well organised, hard working, direct bombardment and it never came. At the away game last season (with help from awful tactics from us), they took the game to us with ugly but very straight forward, regimented football. Maybe Morrison not leading the line stopped this? Our tactics certainly played a part. I mean I don't really care for the reason but they look a shadow of the side that did us and had a late season run last season.
On our lot, quite a few positives. Cameron slotted in quite well and worked hard. There's a lot of nice reading of the game there, like how he intuitively slots in to the left when Bidwell is further up the pitch, snuffing out attempts Millwall made to counter. He's not got that ratty, niggling element that Scowen brings to the midfield and like Scowen, his solidity came at the expense of a few awkward passes. But he's probably a bit rusty. Good from him.
Wells' runs are an absolute f*cking joy to watch and seeing Freeman and Eze seek him out even more so. His movement raises the game of the others around him by adding such a wide variety of options for them to pick him out and he wins more in the air than I thought he would. He made some diagonal runs off the CB's shoulder into space that seemed utterly unpredictable and inventive. Sometimes Eze/Freeman found him, sometimes they didn't, but it's exciting watching them figure eachother out. Not a player I'd imagine leading the line but he did it well.
Quick word on Cousins too who is starting to look a little more like the player we thought we signed a couple years ago. Jury's out on him but at this rate of slow but steady improvement, he could be a proper asset. Unfussy, smart, quick.
Eze, predictably, was boss. Man on a mission. So much swagger and confidence. Knows when to take his man on, went to make a slide rule pass and when to eat the challenge and hit the deck. Millwall couldn't live with him, so many free kicks won in dangerous positions and deserved his goal. Makes their decision to let him go look crazier by the day.
His penalty shout, from my view in R Block, looked a bit dodgy to me but I'm told that the Sky pundits all said it was definitely not a dive (?). At the time it looked like he took a little contact late at high speed then tumbled when he felt he'd lost the ball. Didn't look a dive but maybe a bit...young player trying to force the ref into a decision? Glad I'm apparently wrong on that.
Lumley largely solid - missed one cross which was a bit scary but earned his clean sheet. He still looks a little uncertain about playing it short but when that didn't work out, he lumped it safely out of danger. He's young and for all his vocal confidence and assuredness, there are moments in his play where you are reminded that he's young and playing regularly at this standard for the first time. And that's fine and he's taken his chance with both hands. He doesn't rush, either. Though some of that was because of running the clock down.
Which leads to a broader point. Gamesmanship and game management. We are actually bloody doing it. A bit. At two goals up, Lumley walked that fine line between taking his sweet time and not risking a booking. We faffed over our free kicks. We talked to the ref. When play broke down, we took the air out of Millwall. It's nowhere near the levels we saw from Preston and Sheff Utd but we are looking a bit savvier. I felt maybe that we tried to shut up shop a little early as our running with the ball on the ground rattled Millwall and was our best form of defence, but it's churlish to complain - we still ground it out.
Quick bit on the defence. I thought Lynch and Leistner did well but we still lack a bit of nuance and pace back there. Leistner had a bit of a dodgy moment where he missed a header and Rangel bailed him out, but he tends to clean up his own mess and when an awkward ball caught him out, he frequently put in a good recovery challenge. Lynch got absolutely roasted once in the second half, reminding us about his Titanic-esque turning circle. But they both did the basics, broadly, very very well. Worked hard, won plenty in the air - Lynch in particular really putting in a shift on that front.
So yeah, good that! Well done our lot, uuuuuu Rs!
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Post by bowranger on Sept 18, 2018 9:56:02 GMT
I remember the fuss about Newcastle signing Mirandinha in the 80s. Honestly the news coverage was like he was from the moon rather than Brazil. I have a perception it was not only money that has created foreign dynamic. Major competitions seem to cause a upturn. For example the foreign influx took quite an increase after euro 96. Liverpool sign Berger while Man U signed Poborsky from the Czech team alone. That makes sense, I could see that having an effect. I think the key thing is the Premier League's brand positioning during that time, too. It feels like a few years into the league's existence, the idea of the Premier League shifted from the pinnacle of English football to marketing itself as The Best League In The World (TM, Sky Sports). I think it built on taking the heritage of English football that was often respected (or even mimicked) worldwide in European fan culture and formally marketing it - hyping itself as the most competitive league, the best atmosphere, the most passionate fans, the most iconic stadiums etc. which in turn meant competing in terms of having the 'best' football with the 'best' players...which in turn meant investing big money which clubs could spend on the best worldwide players. Which I think feeds into the Euro '96 point. If Euro '96 is demonstrating the best in European football and the Premier League is the Best League In The World, then those are the kind of players that should be being attracted. And while Serie A was arguably the romantic 'pinnacle' during a lot of the 90s, they soon couldn't compete with the money being chucked about in England. On the players' part, if they wanted to challenge themselves at the 'highest' level and create maximum exposure and earnings for themselves, the Premier League's (successfully completed) task was to make England the destination to achieve that. More money and global reach means more of the world's best players, which means the extension and expansion of the Premier League brand...and repeat.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 17, 2018 15:43:36 GMT
Bow, Rangel isn't loan so Swansea won't have any say. Thanks, edited - short term deal as a free agent until January. Point stands, though .
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Post by bowranger on Sept 17, 2018 13:50:31 GMT
I believe in a recent interview Amit said the aim for this season was (again) to stay up and then kick on next season. That makes sense to me and the use of one season loans to achieve safety this season is fine with me. The tests are firstly what will happen if Furlong gets fit and playing well enough by December - will we let Rangel go or do we keep him for the rest of the season either as first choice or as cover as Furlong does have a habit of picking up medium term injuries. I would say keep him if finance allows.
Second test comes at the end of the season. I cannot see that we would keep Cameron - just financially and probably the same would apply to the strikers. In that case we must be looking for Oteh to have progressed and be ready to take a striker role and to have identified or developed younger players to replace the other loans. I still think it will take another season after this before we will be anywhere near the younger team that the club had been talking about - or if we do see that young team earlier I think we will be struggling.
I would not mind seeing Wells staying with us for another season or 2 - Rome not built in a day and all that and remember young man Zamora!
The other question is will Goss ever be fit and performing to the potential he was said to have. If that happened and he could control the games from midfield it must be a plus but I have doubts on whether it will happen. On Rangel, my take is if Furlong and Kakay are both fit by that point then having a 35 year old RB on subsidised wages is an extravagance that makes little sense. It pushes Kakay back further at the expense of a loanee and Furlong's done nothing to suggest he can't play that role in the first team. I don't buy Furlong's injuries being a 'habit'. I'd get it if he was de facto injury prone and his injuries were related but they aren't. For example, Grant Hall's injury setbacks are different aggrevations of the same core injury, which isn't the case with Furlong - he just got injured, thems the risks. Agree on Cameron, I can't see that making sense beyond a loan. He's ostensibly here because he has the double role of providing cover for Scowen (now Manning's gone on loan) and filling in at CB when required. Either via Hall or a signing next summer, the CB issue needs to be fixed permanently going forward rather than band-aiding it as we are now. On the strikers, it depends on what this new loan policy is. If we just panicked after the poor start, then I'd imagine we'd be trying again to sign a new striker having off-loaded Sylla and/or Smith in the Summer on a permanent basis. Oteh's progression isn't going to come anywhere near the first team seeing as we've subtracted one (Washington) but added two (Wells and Hemed) layers ahead of him. Unless he starts featuring on the bench before Christmas, I'd imagine we'd pack him off on loan in January if we can and then assess in the Summer break. If the loans signal a change in direction (small squad, topped up by higher quality loans like the old Pulis method) we could end up doing the same thing with a different version of Hemed and Wells for next season. Too far in the future to really tell, really. As I've said before, it doesn't necessarily need to be a "young team". It's just that those young players were playing as part of a more experienced side, were scoring and now they are not. They had decent levels of integration under Holloway and we were not struggling then. It's not a dichotomy of playing with experienced loans or playing the kids, it's about a balance and that balance has tipped towards the former now. It seems like post-event logic, to me, where because we've got some good quality older heads in on loan our youngsters have gone from exciting young prospects for this season to needing to be wrapped up in oodles of cotton wool or sent off on loan. As almost always, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. And our response ain't in the middle. But it's happened now and we're winning games, so I'm not complaining. I'm just weary about the future and the changing messages. Goss - I just have no idea. I've not rated what I've seen, he's barely featured and he went down in my estimation when he refused to go on loan to League One before finally spending a few months at Glasgow Rangers. I don't really see how it fits into this team in the near future.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 17, 2018 10:32:57 GMT
Interesting but sad to see that Smithies does not even make the bench for Cardiff - I wonder what is going through his mind now having made the move, not getting a game apart from a disaster of a league cup game and likely to end up back in the Championship next season - and probably not a starter. From our point of view it was good business to move him before his contract ran down and his fee probably was enough to finance the 4 incoming loans of experienced players. Many were against signing experience but I feel the turnaround in results since they arrived is no co-incidence. Meanwhile Washington has started where he left off with us - coming on as a sub and missing potential match winning chances but still putting in the effort. Manning (from watching highlights) seems to have been ignited by his loan and probably out to prove a point. Still I think it was the right decision as he was down the pecking order and not going to get much game time with us so better to let him have good regular football at Championship level. If he continues to do well either he will make the move permanent or will be back with us if we have to sell in January. I am not sure he is a direct Freeman replacement and I still hope we can hang on to Freeman in January. He is too important to us going forward and we have more cover in defensive midfield than attacking midfield. Maybe if Freeman goes we will see someone like OSB or Oteh coming in to replace him. Overall conclusion is that I think our summer window activity has proven to be better than many expected at the time. With Manning, I probably see him more as a Luongo replacement because of his engine, but the fact that his role isn't crystal clear is probably one of his strengths for the future. He can play a Freeman role in attacking midfield/behind the striker (though with less guile, he's very different). He can bring the ball forward like Luongo, he can cover Scowen in terms of having bite and tenacity. He's even filled in at left back before and done absolutely fine. So he's certainly versatile. If Freeman was to go, Osayi-Samuel could certainly play a role if Saturday's shape is anything to go by, seeing as he'd just slot right into the left of midfield - weirdly, fulfilling a position where we've not previously seen the best of Freeman. How many times did people, justifiably, point to Freeman being poorer for being out wide as opposed to behind the striker? It's arguably why he didn't do so well at Bristol as he now does for us. What does seem quite exciting about this 4-4-2 based on Saturday, though, is that it's certainly not a traditional left midfield role and ditto with Eze on the right. They aren't wingers, so we don't have them playing like wingers - they have the freedom to drift inside, swap sides and generally cause problems through their unpredictability. It's weird to see how it'll turn out, though. On one hand, you could argue that the addition of both Wells and Hemed and the subsequent binning of the much lauded 4-3-2-1 system means we've still got the pressure of including Freeman and Eze in the midfield, but are now doing so in unfamiliar wide positions. With the middle options being filled with Scowen (absolutely essential on the defensive/cleaning up side), Luongo or the currently in-vogue Cousins, there's nowhere else to put them...which in turn, means a strange situation where we've actually adapted the formation into one Smyth and Osayi-Samuel would be well suited to, but they now have no route in to actually get a game. On the other hand, the fact that Freeman and Eze do not play traditional wide midfielder roles in this new 4-4-2 could mean that Osayi-Samuel and Smyth are useful off the bench because of how different they are. As in, both are players who are very happy roasting full backs and getting to the by-line - they are far more direct, less tricky, more traditional than Eze or Freeman. Both players could certainly give tired defences a very different threat to worry about if we're chasing a game, say. I wouldn't put Oteh near that equation though. From what I've seen of him he's very much a traditional striker. Strong, brave, snaffles up chances in the box. He's not quick or tricky, his inclusion would be dependent on whether combinations of Wells, Hemed, Smith or Sylla got injured or fell out of favour (not that Sylla seems to be 'in favour' whatsoever). My take on the transfer policy in general hasn't changed much, other than being very happy about the very positive recovery we've mounted. I don't think we've torn it up and started again but I do think the level of change in strategy has been underplayed. I also don't think the future implications are as benign, either. I actually typed a load out about my take on it but annoyingly, Clive on LFW already summed up a similar view far better than I could have so I'll just copy and paste it here: I think a thing worth reiterating from that is that scepticism about our use of the loan market is not rooted in my or anyone else's gut instinct, it is based on the rationale brought up by the club themselves.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 17, 2018 8:46:07 GMT
Enjoyed that story Terry, good read with my morning coffee, nice one for sharing!
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Post by bowranger on Sept 17, 2018 8:32:22 GMT
Haha to be fair, I believe my awareness of EPPP can largely be traced back to that article! Though certainly agree, it's amazing how little information there is about it out there, particularly in terms of how the Football League was strong armed into implementing it.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 15, 2018 17:44:06 GMT
Gonna copy harr and say QPR 2 - Millwall 1.
I think we'll score two, concede one from a set piece and then just about survive an aerial bombardment til the end (watch this definitely not happen...).
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Post by bowranger on Sept 15, 2018 17:37:45 GMT
Be very interested to see the reports on how we played and see the highlights to work out what the shape was like.
On paper, it looked to be almost a 4-4-2 in a shape which many of us (and definitely me) thought 1. wouldn't happen because of McClaren's preferred shape and 2. wouldn't work because it wastes Eze and Freeman being pushed out to the flanks! Having Freeman and Eze on the pitch is a priority but I'd assume in that shape, Osayi-Samuel would be a shoe-in on the left. Maybe the shape contorts to when we are in and out of position? Maybe it's a setup geared towards away games? Or an experiment that was worked on during the international break?
All seems quite odd to me, but can't complain, it's three points. Either way, interested to learn more and see if we do the same thing against Millwall.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 15, 2018 16:49:28 GMT
Gotta laugh, we were in 18th until that 2nd goal, we're now in 20th! And we regain those two places after Bolton score! I'm very pleased with this result. Come on Bow. Where's the match report? Provided you went, that is! UuuuuRrrrrs! Typically cos we won, I didn't make this one! Having to pick and choose some of the away games at the moment as staying overnight for the Swansea game so having to watch my pennies. Add in the train strike up that way, sadly decided to swerve it. 3 points away from home, absolutely buzzing.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 15, 2018 10:30:50 GMT
I think at face value it could be useful in mitigating the issue of big clubs hoarding youngsters but in the context of English football, The Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) is still the really key problem. There's plenty of writing about it online so I won't bang on about it, but the crux is that the system puts into place rules where it makes it far easier for Premier League clubs to take talented kids off of the lower league clubs who develop them, leading to a system where the likes of Chelsea are free to (relatively) cheaply hoover up youth players en masse. Rather than aiding their development, it just seems to be used by big clubs to mitigate the risk of any other club discovering the next Gareth Bale or Dele Ali. It's why clubs like Brentford have ditched their (very decent) academy set ups - why bother with the expense of developing kids for years who can be taken away for next to nothing? It's more cost effective to invest in a lower league and European scouting network and seek out bargains that way.
Of course, EFL clubs voted for this situation - but only under the very heavy duress of the Premier League holding them to ransom over it. Accept EPPP or the Premier League will cut the money they send downwards.
There's a good quote on it from Northampton's academy boss when Everton signed 15 year old Fraser Hornby from them:
"We always want to keep our best players, but under the EPPP if a player is wanted by a Premier League club then it is just about impossible for us to resist, given the processes set out as part of the EPPP."
So it feels a bit similar to my view on FFP. Righteous intentions but makes little sense in the face of the broader structural problems. FFP works poorly when the incentive to gamble for promotion is already so high, bigger clubs financially dope the wider transfer market and the EFL doesn't give a crap about implementing its Fit and Proper Persons test properly. Similarly, a loan cap could certainly be helpful but when it's already legislatively so easy for Premier League clubs to hoard young players with the primary objective of avoiding the risk of other teams uncovering a gem, would limiting their loan opportunities matter much?
I mean, it could, but it actually puts the onus onto the young players and we've seen recently that mindsets could be gradually changing. If a player has the self-confidence that they'll crack into a Premier League first team regardless or they just want the money to play in the reserves/academy, it won't make a blind bit of difference. But if they are young players who feel that regular, competitive football is important, then it could actually make an impact. A loan tends to be seen as a pathway towards first team selection - a proving ground. If there's only eight slots for that, then they may decide that it's better to stay at their lower league club and get their experience up and proof themselves there instead...which in turn would mitigate the negative impact of EPPP. So you'd have more Eberechi Eze's than Josh Bowler's, say.
I don't think 8 players would be too tight, but if that potentially needed mitigating like 75 points out, one option could be to only apply the cap to players at a certain standard within the club, such as the U23s/reserves set up? So clubs could loan out as many academy players as they like - the argument being that the U23s/reserves are more formally for players who actually have a potential shot at the first team rather than just being hoarded forever. Which in turn would put the onus back on the young player - do you want to go to a big club as just another academy 'prospect'? That could backfire though, as I guess there would be nothing to stop a big club telling a youngster that they're only going into the academy to bypass the loan cap and that, really, they've got a shot at the big time, whether that's true or not.
As 75 sums up well, it looks to be another example of the football authorities having some good intent behind the idea, but will it actually achieve what they want?
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Post by bowranger on Sept 11, 2018 13:30:47 GMT
Wow! If we could land Crouch, I would be on the first flight across the pond. The first (and only) game I ever attended was when he first had joined the team. I watched in complete amazement. I would love to see his career come full circle and wrap things up wearing the hoops. Please let this come true! Bonus: he doesn’t need the money. I’m pretty sure he would sign a very favorable contract with us. Get this done! I'd agree with this - if Crouchie was available now. But he's still under contract at Stoke, playing - and presumably earning a lot more than we could afford. With our January transfer embargo, the absolute earliest he could come in would be next summer. Who knows what situation we'll be in then. Would make absolutely zero financial sense but I bloody love Peter Crouch and would have him back here in a heartbeat. He's too expensive, he's old, it makes a mockery of our sustainable approach yadda yadda...but to see him in hoops again would be phenomenal!
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Post by bowranger on Sept 11, 2018 11:39:25 GMT
Yeah, have to admit that I didn't lose any sleep over Luton getting done over, despite it being massively unfair. Which is kind of illustrative of why I feel you won't get a lot of general fan pressure on the FFP issue in the short-medium term, even though most fans you talk to think it's massively flawed. Asides from it being pretty complicated and applied weirdly, most people don't actually care if it isn't happening to their club or its happening to a club they dislike. I have friends and family near Coventry so actively supported the 'SISU Out' campaign there and hated how they were treated by the EFL (aka always the first to clamp down on clubs in admin but absolutely fine with such ruinous arseholes taking the club over). Luton though? Couldn't have cared less frankly, horrid club. Such is the hypocrisy of football. There's fantastic examples of cross-club solidarity on issues such as ticket pricing, excessive policing etc. but FFP is too complicated and too partisan for most to have much of a stake in unless it's your club getting punished. Isn't it strange how we all have these (ir)rational likes/dislikes! I don't have much regard for Coventry but have nothing against Luton! Perhaps due to Gordon Stachan's rant about how unfair it was on Coventry to be relegated. I do have fond memories though of the "donkey" free kick & the chocolate brown change kit! I think the Luton thing is age related, as before the '80's the clubs & fans appeared to get on reasonably well & had a mutal dislike/hatred of Watford. Indeed, they were quite popular with Rangers when Stock & Keen were there. Mind you, one thing against them is that they signed Viv Busby (Martyn's brother) rather than me! Back to the main topic. Points deductions can have a major knock-on effect on clubs & should not be applied lightly. However, I do wonder if the EFL have reached the conclusion that this is the only punishment that might work as an effective deterrent. Fines & transfer embargoes have achieved next to nothing. Logically there has to be an infringement scale that applies to all clubs, but would you punish Wednesday the same as Birmingham? I wouldn't, due to Wednesday not flouting the imposed embargo. I have little symphathy for Brum due to their signing of the left back. Where would you place Villa & Forest in this regard? I would give the maximum penalty to Forest as they have a previous conviction & have totally disregarded FFP this season. As much as I detest Villa & would love to see them hit hard, I couldn't punish them as harshly as Forest or Birmingham. So, to sum up. A scale of maximum punishment must be in place & all clubs must be aware of what they could face for non-compliance. However, all punishments issued should be made on a one-to one basis & not automatically incur the maximum. Is this a bit of a cop out? Haha I am a big fan of the chocolate brown kit, genuinely like it! My soft spot for Coventry was simply because of moving to the Midlands in my teens and I lived relatively nearby. Obviously there wasn't another Rs fan to be seen and most people supported United or Villa, but the little cluster of Coventry fans were the only mates who I could actually talk football with - who went to games and 'got it'. Some of them moved to London and I used to occasionally go to local away days with them when QPR weren't playing - including Watford away where a lot of fans spent a good chunk of the match shouting at now QPR man John Eustace! I was at Highfield Road for the Eoin Jess goal and remember that heartbreak and anger all too well. All the same, after visiting them at the Ricoh Arena and realising just how screwed they were, it was very hard for me not to feel bad for them. I wouldn't put them on our level, but they do have a very similar gallows humour to QPR fans. Amazing in retrospect how they ever thought building a stadium in the middle of bloody nowhere that needed 20,000 fans through the turnstiles just to break even was ever a good idea. Weird how these things work out. Coincidentally, I still see Watford stickers about Luton all over the place, particularly around the Euston Road/Kings Cross area. It may well be an age thing about Luton - my dislike is a combination of things really. Part of it was hearing horror stories from slightly older friends about matches against them in the late 80s and 90s and their fans' penchant for using knives. The other part of it is the nasty racist vocal minority down there who included the people who went on to form the EDL. Obviously unfair to tar the fanbase with the same brush but as you say, football is certainly an odd world of both rational and very irrational hatreds of certain clubs! I don't think what you're suggesting is a cop out, it should certainly be a sliding scale in my opinion. Even in the legal system, there's mitigating and aggravating circumstances in line with the 'spirit' of the law in question - for example, assault is assault, but there's a difference in spirit between a group of five people assaulting a lone stranger in an unprovoked attack and someone ending up assaulting someone when they were the person attacked. So I agree with you when it comes to the difference with clubs like Brum and Forest. They breached the rules in the same way Villa did, but both did so having had previous warnings and pushed on regardless. So I think there is a sliding scale to take into account in terms of severity and spirit. I'd say a club saddled with long term contracts for players on unsustainable wages without break clauses and are committed to shelling out for the medium term is less severe than clubs knowing the rules, knowing they are in risk of breaching them, but decide to put two fingers up to the rules.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 11, 2018 9:47:56 GMT
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administration_(British_football)No there were 12 other clubs to loose points after us in 2001. See link, Coventry lost 20 points in total. It is a interesting read though............wonder what it will look like in a couple of years. No points deductions since the rule change, but that could change with Bolton and Birmingham. Don't think that Bolton will go into administration. Their Chairman is just playing poker with the club to see who blinks first. He will take it to the wire, he is saying take what I offer you or get less through administration. I suppose he would argue it is for the long term benefit of the club, but if he allows it to enter administration then I feel sorry for their fans (even though it helps us). Barmy times Agree RE: Bolton. It's over a £5m bill I believe and I'd be surprised if they couldn't find that level of investment themselves or elsewhere. The poker comment does feel cynically true and it feels like that happens more with football clubs because of their position in the community. When people care so deeply for a football club as an institution, it's the usual important issue of peoples' jobs on the line and so on, but more broadly they can argue "enforce this and look what it will do to Bolton as a town".
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Post by bowranger on Sept 11, 2018 9:44:49 GMT
Well it is certainly true that successful teams getaway with it and those that fail are over penalised. Never had a lot of time for Luton and never really enjoyed playing there, but their penalty was incredibly unfair. Coventry had a huge(soulless) stadium but suffered terribly with their fans having to go to Northampton of all places. Portsmouth were so close to going out of business. All the time it is the fans that suffer for the actions of the tossers who run the show - club owners and the administrators. Yeah, have to admit that I didn't lose any sleep over Luton getting done over, despite it being massively unfair. Which is kind of illustrative of why I feel you won't get a lot of general fan pressure on the FFP issue in the short-medium term, even though most fans you talk to think it's massively flawed. Asides from it being pretty complicated and applied weirdly, most people don't actually care if it isn't happening to their club or its happening to a club they dislike. I have friends and family near Coventry so actively supported the 'SISU Out' campaign there and hated how they were treated by the EFL (aka always the first to clamp down on clubs in admin but absolutely fine with such ruinous arseholes taking the club over). Luton though? Couldn't have cared less frankly, horrid club. Such is the hypocrisy of football. There's fantastic examples of cross-club solidarity on issues such as ticket pricing, excessive policing etc. but FFP is too complicated and too partisan for most to have much of a stake in unless it's your club getting punished.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 10, 2018 18:19:51 GMT
QPR 1 - Bolton 1.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 10, 2018 9:43:47 GMT
Not so long ago we were sweating up to the last game of the season on whether we would be handed a promotion ending points deduction because of the Ali Furlin transfer. With the riches of the PL and promotion now on offer I cannot believe the clubs - who actually form and elect the EfL- will accept an open ended ability for them to deduct points without having a specific guideline of potential deductions and time limits within which they can be made. Imagine the situation where a club heading the Championship at the start of April, or even after the last game, are suddenly hit with a points deduction that would take them out of the automatic promotion places and potentially out of the play-offs - and cost them £200 million While we are busy discussing the Birmingham situation, which is more likely to have relegation implications, points deductions at the other end of the table can have even greater financial implications. When we look at clubs such as Wolves Villa Forest and even Boro who are or have pushed or broken the FFP limits it is clear that the teams at the top of the Championship are in theory more likely to offend than those lower down. The smaller clubs, eg Rotherham, with far less income are far more restricted on what they can spend but have to struggle to spend a million or 2 while other spend a fortune. Conclusion - a Total ****-up by the EFL Yes, some papers are reporting that a points deduction could 'even' be applied this season. Shows the confusion though. The scenarios could vary from: Birmingham being relegated due to the scale of the points deduction Birmingham being relegated by being rubbish and the points deduction therefore having no effect Birmingham fighting to survive this year in the knowledge that next season they face a points deduction rendering them noncompetitive anyway Birmingham facing a points deduction in the third tier following relegation and potentially facing a relegation battle to avoid a second successive relegation Birmingham being unable to commercially offload players as they cannot replace them through an embargo (unless given a like for like provision similar to QPRs) Birmingham getting away with it (soft penalty) thus encouraging others to ignore FFP. Not easy is it? At the end of the day, the poor fans of the football club concerned suffer. The weird thing that this throws up is how clubs handle the low times. I think in a lot of situations (and cynic in me says it's deliberate), points deductions are dished out predominantly to teams who are already in a hell of a mess to begin with. Teams who are already struggling and heading down and then they get battered again. I think Coventry is one example, didn't they get relegated and then ate a points deduction and survived in the league below on a points tally that would have seen them reach the playoffs if it wasn't for starting with negative points? They suffer a lot, but it's smaller teams who are already in trouble. Just making a bad situation worse. The risk to clubs getting a points deduction that could effect promotion is that it could be the start of a tail spin, not the end of one. Like 75 says, for a lot of clubs, missing promotion could "cost" them £200m. Probably not that full amount in real terms of "cost" but certainly in the tens and tens of millions if they had bankrolled the club in breach of FFP on the basis of accessing the Premier League money the season after. Irony is that if we went with the logic of how FFP is supposed to work, a sacrificial lamb like that could work in limiting the incentive to gamble. But the reason it feels unlikely based on the EFL's record is that the potential for that club then tailspinning downwards from a point of success is huge. Firstly it removes the predicted cash injection, secondly it lumbers the club with players who are likely on high wages and long contracts without any of the funds to actually see those out in a sustainable way - like what happened to us, or the rebuilding job Nigel Clough spent years achieving at Derby when they came down. Difference is that there'd be no parachute payments to soften the blow, so it's a hell of a situation to contend with. It's also the exact situation FFP is ostensibly trying to get clubs to avoid. Short version being that an FFP points deduction for a club already struggling kicks them when they're down but a points deduction to a successful club can set them on a downward spiral which could take absolutely years and years to recover from. And in terms of the EFL's experience on these matters - Coventry, Luton, Portsmouth, Leeds i.e. teams already in big trouble to begin with - it would feel more likely that they'd penalise a Birmingham than say, Forest if they somehow got into the promotion spots. All speculation but in terms of public perception, the former looks like a club did it to themselves, the latter looks like it's the EFL's fault.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 9, 2018 12:20:29 GMT
Part of the Championship winning side at Brighton. Opts to leave Brighton to join Birmingham as part of the 'arry expensive transfer splurge - rather than playing in the top flight. Seeing him play last season only made one wonder how Brighton secured promotion with him between the sticks. Birmingham with all their problems do not see him as their first choice keeper this term. So he has joined Southend on an emergency loan conceding 3 on his debut - the first being his fault. The decline of a keeper is very easy to spot, there is no hiding place. But Ricky, didn't you hear? It was nothing to do with the money at all, it was all about being stable for his daughter's SATS exams!
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Post by bowranger on Sept 8, 2018 15:47:44 GMT
Note how this has secured coverage from large outlets - Sky Sports News, The S*n, The Telegraph - but not a single one of them so much as mentions the word 'Redknapp'. Pathetic. Yes, but that has always been the case. He has gone through club after club creating havoc and yet he is remembered in the media for his achievements at Portsmouth - against the odds. But then look what happened to them. The media seems to take the position that any manager can only spend what the owners sanction, so the buck stops firmly with the owners - and that has to be correct. But it would be pleasing if just one of the journos would join up all the dots regarding 'arry , even looking at what the fans of these clubs think about him after he has left. But sadly, he is worth more to the media winding down the window of the Range Rover giving them a story. Wonder how his knees are now? The You Tube video I posted on this thread yesterday evening shows the view of how QPR got away with murder is the very opposite of what the EFL wanted recorded from our case. They wanted to be seen to have won hands down to be able to enforce FFP going forward. But the huge mistake that I believe they made was not declaring what penalty would be incurred for future breaches. I think that the EFL may well favour points deductions (they did not know what to do with the QPR proceeds), but it should be on a sliding scale and also be calculated across all 3 divisions. But it should be known right now what that scale looks like. The timing related to the calculation has to be firmly pinned down as well. You cannot have a club breaching the rules, winning promotion and then have a penalty pending for years (like Leicester, Bournemouth & QPR did). As proven, by 2 of those clubs, it can be possible to bank the prize and then pay off the fine from the loose change. I suspect that we are in for points deductions across the divisions with appeals and outrage as promotion and relegation gets decided by the whims of the EFL committee. In summary, it needs to be totally clear. Totally, Redknapp is always going to be worth more to sports media in the medium term while he gives people nods on transfer speculation and engaging audiences (whether through people liking or hating him) on panels with all his old football chums. 'Trific. I mean fundamentally, it has to go back to the owners on the basis that even if it is not entirely their fault, they greenlight transfer spend, they have to be tied to the punishment to stop them bailing and leaving the club in a worse state (e.g. converting debt to equity) and they still hold overall responsibility for the club's financial health (or lack of). On the scale thing, it's certainly a difficult thing to calculate and there's a hell of a lot to consider. As you say, if you give chicken feed fines relative to Prem TV money for clubs who made it to The Promised Land, it does nothing more than to legitimise the gamble in the first place. It's a cynical way to look at it, but if you went back a few years and went to Bournemouth in The Championship and said "you can pay £4.75m, payable upon promotion and in return you can ignore FFP" they'd probably bite your hand off. One awkward consideration of point deductions is figuring out the 'worth' of the players brought in. Clubs overspend ostensibly to get more and better players, which in turn means better results, which in turn means a higher place up the table and promotion. But those gambles can go spectacularly wrong or turn you into world beaters. For example, a team that breaches FFP by assembling a team that goes on to storm the division and win by 12 points - is a three or six point deduction meaningful? Surely it's unfair to assess that the players brought in only via breaching FFP were collectively only worth one or two extra league wins? By the same token, looking at a club like Birmingham, three or six points could be the difference between Championship and League One status, should they carry on the way they are. Sometimes big earning players make you worse! And more to the point, it should shed light on Redknapp signing all those particular players in the first place if they've essentially made Birmingham no better... What a bloody mess the whole thing is. Not a helpful point but I still feel like that while FFP is incredibly poorly thought out, the overall goal makes sense (stopping a club from risking its own existence through unsustainable spending). But that goal is totally unrealistic in the face of the realities of modern football. It does not take into account how financial doping of the transfer market by the top clubs trickles down the football pyramid in the form of value being massively inflated. It does not take into account the basic desire to be competitive from a lot of clubs when the Premier League TV money on offer is so, so lucrative and attractive - it entices clubs to gamble. And fundamentally, punishing clubs for unsustainable and reckless financial behaviour seems to be completely at odds with a lack of any effective Fit and Proper Persons Test for club owners. It's all very well that hypocrite Harvey banging the drum about financial sustainability when his body are prepared to let any old dodgy person sink their claws into football clubs to begin with.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 8, 2018 13:07:29 GMT
Note how this has secured coverage from large outlets - Sky Sports News, The S*n, The Telegraph - but not a single one of them so much as mentions the word 'Redknapp'. Pathetic.
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Post by bowranger on Sept 3, 2018 18:16:59 GMT
Cheers for the insight Ricky. Caught the second half and quite enjoyed it, though missed out on the less-spotted Goss. Agree with your observations - particularly about Chair and McNulty. Also thought Joe Felix looked pretty bright at right back, though amazed by the amount of freedom he was afforded. He frequently ended up cutting in as far as the centre of the pitch at the edge of the penalty area. Credit for Oteh's bravery for his goal. Not dissimilar to his goal at Burton in that he would have known he was at risk of getting absolutely clattered but flung himself strongly at the ball regardless. Yes, it was strange how the game changed in the second half. But there are positive signs emerging from the Under 23s. Less positive was that there was no sign of Hall. I thought he would be continuing his comeback with the Under 23s during the International break. As I said earlier, makes the inclusion of Bassong all the more puzzling and I hope that his extended stay is not connected as cover for Hall's rehabilitation or lack of it. Definitely - and it was interesting to hear Sinton quoting Ramsey about the key difference between the U23s and the first team. Something along the lines of in the first team, the result comes first, then the team performance is assessed and then individual performances are evaluated. With the youngsters and reserves, it's the opposite. So you have this weird situation where, particularly with trialists and people on the fringe of the team, individuality comes first. Which I guess accounts for why you see more runs, more long shots and so on. That is definitely worrying about Bassong and the lack of Hall. If I put my positive hat on, it may just be a matter of Bassong being without a club and we are happy to have him around the place to get his fitness up - though agree that that is odd when it comes at the expense of one of our own players. Perhaps we are just handling Hall with kids gloves? As in, we see him as important and want to ease him back into the first team so don't want to risk him ahead of the international break and the training sessions with the first team squad?
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Post by bowranger on Sept 3, 2018 16:47:58 GMT
Cheers for the insight Ricky.
Caught the second half and quite enjoyed it, though missed out on the less-spotted Goss. Agree with your observations - particularly about Chair and McNulty. Also thought Joe Felix looked pretty bright at right back, though amazed by the amount of freedom he was afforded. He frequently ended up cutting in as far as the centre of the pitch at the edge of the penalty area.
Credit for Oteh's bravery for his goal. Not dissimilar to his goal at Burton in that he would have known he was at risk of getting absolutely clattered but flung himself strongly at the ball regardless.
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