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Reply | There is no economic logic in keeping Darling.
at 23:00 5 Jan 2025
We're not going to get relegated.
As much as some people like to pretend that we've got one of the worst squads in the division, we don't. Not even close. Williams is doing his best to make it look like we do, but we don't. |
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Reply | Second BREXIT Referendum
at 22:43 5 Jan 2025
There is a very strong argument to be made for increasing the voting age rather than reducing it.
What the hell would the average 16 yr old know about the World? At that age I was a Welsh Nationalist. Then time passed and I began to understand how the World worked and what a bonkers opinion that was.
Frankly I'd raise the voting age to 40. And then I'd only allow sufferage to people who had worked in the Private sector for the most part, excusing certain professions such as the NHS and Armed Forces. |
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Reply | Oldham grooming gangs: Government blocks national inquiry
at 22:19 5 Jan 2025
Yeah.
Hard to avoid the conclusion that ol' Elon is just chucking shit to see what sticks rather than having anything approaching an actual understanding of the situation.
I mean, he's defending Tommy Yaxley-Lennon. A convicted fraudster and drug dealer. If he'd put as much work into working out what to say on X as he does into Space X then perhaps he'd do more damage. |
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Reply | To clarify to date
at 22:16 5 Jan 2025
Much of Williams's output since "The Unpleasantness" has resembled a husband who has been caught cheating and wants to save his marriage. Excessive compliments to players like Grimes and Darling and a general sense of working as hard as he can to salvage things and promise that he's fully committed from here on in.
Problem being if he's been caught having a wandering eye once, all anyone can think about is when it'll happen again. |
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Reply | There is no economic logic in keeping Darling.
at 20:57 5 Jan 2025
I wonder if how much we're paying him factors into the amount of minutes he gets.
To me we're overpaying him by at least £250k per season. Maybe double that. Football is full of clubs who make bonkers financial decisions so I doubt that we're the only team to offer a player a bumper payrise to stave off no interest, but it's still annoying. |
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Reply | Oldham grooming gangs: Government blocks national inquiry
at 20:15 5 Jan 2025
Most of the political establishment in the rest of the Western World has spent much of the last Eight years vociferously campaigning against Trump. Our own current Foreign Secretary is on the record calling him a "deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. I don't really think anyone has a leg to stand on here, as little time as I have for DJT.
Far more troubling is the fact that Musk things that Farage is the leader of a political party, rather than a registered company which he owns. [Post edited 5 Jan 20:16]
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Reply | Swansea City v West Bromwich Albion : Match day thread
at 14:48 5 Jan 2025
It's partly because we don't have a player who can play those kinds of balls consistently (we've never properly replaced Paterson and Cullen for all his recent purple patch is not the answer) and partly because, as previously mentioned, by the time we're in the position to start threatening their box they've got enough players back to defend to make the job that much harder anyway.
You'd expect our main creative midfielder to step up and do it but he seems quite happy to just keep passing it from side to side, taking as little risk as possible. Risks are something that they appear to have been repetitively drilled out of taking. It makes us predictable.
Another indicator of that is how often do we leave two players up when we're defending a corner? |
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Reply | Swansea City v West Bromwich Albion : Match day thread
at 12:29 5 Jan 2025
The amount of times in recent games I've seen Bianchini (no slouch) make runs for passes that almost never come I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree.
We're just not geared up to do things quickly. |
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Reply | Swansea City v West Bromwich Albion : Match day thread
at 12:19 5 Jan 2025
Those shots include wild ones from outside the box though. Tymon is good at those.
If we were getting clear opportunities in the 18 yard box and missing them then I could get behind the idea that it was a striker issue, but we're not even getting the touches in the box. Never mind chances. Out of 732 total touches yesterday just fifteen were in the area. In that Leeds game it was 22 out of 519. Less possession, but they're doing more with it.
Incidentally, those successful final third passes that people keep bigging Grimes up about caught my eye. Leeds had just 47. Us? 105 in total. No doubt the majority played to someone on the flank who eventually passed it back. Racking up the stats.
Leeds get the ball forward quickly with the minumum of fuss as we found out down here. Carved us open time and again as we could not get set defensively. We give opponents as much time as they need to do it, and just end up butting our heads up against a defensive wall. |
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Reply | Swansea City v West Bromwich Albion : Match day thread
at 11:52 5 Jan 2025
This is precisely the problem. By the time we do get into the opponent's final third their defence has had the chance to get itself set, which is why we end up so tediously having to go back and fore between the flanks and middle.
Possession for the sake of possession just leads to boring football. Possession with intent is key, and that's where we've been falling down for most of the past four or five years. People are starting to vote with their feet at the lack of entertainment on offer. There must have been less than 10,000 there yesterday. The family stand was particularly sparsely populated because what youngster raised on Tiktok and Youtube wants to be bored out of their skull watching this? |
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Reply | Swansea City v West Bromwich Albion : Match day thread
at 11:39 5 Jan 2025
Two shots on target from nearly 60% possession so no, we quite clearly didn't create several opportunities. The one single opening Vipotnik had he flashed a shot just centimetres past the post. For the rest of the game both he (and eventually Bianchini) had nothing to work with.
The other question is why, when Cullen was having such a stinker, we didn't take him off and play both Vip and Bianchini together, something Williams seems entirely reluctant to do.
Football is a simple game but we seem determined to vastly overcomplicate it. If one of the shortest players on the pitch can head an equaliser when we finally do put a half tidy ball into the box, why do we end up spending so much time faffing about with the ball through the middle and on the edge of the area instead of trying to move the ball with more pace and intent than we do?
None of our attacking players are being well served by this dross. There was one moment in the first half where in the space of about ten seconds Grimes received the ball three times in enough space to turn and move forward yet chose to immediately pass it back where it came from each time. Any attempt to try and play with tempo or on the counter is stifled by the skipper, clearly either acting under orders or a manager too weak to stop him. [Post edited 5 Jan 12:01]
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Reply | Swansea City v West Bromwich Albion : Match day thread
at 11:21 5 Jan 2025
I'm not sure how many previously quite prolific forwards we're going to get through (one of whom has already become a firm fan favourite elsewhere) before people start to consider the possibility that the forwards aren't the problem. |
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Reply | To clarify to date
at 18:03 4 Jan 2025
Replacing a manager is expensive and disruptive and not to be done on a whim. I don't doubt that serious conversations are being had between Coleman and the other investors as to whether or not Williams is the right option going forward. Maybe even pre-dating recent shenanigans. Perhaps LW got a whiff of it and that's why he wasn't discouraging interest from elsewhere.
My gut instinct is that they are deeply unconvinced that he is the right person, and had WBA scored the goals they probably deserved to today he might have been out on his arse next week. One thing is for sure, we need more than a Russell Martin tribute act if we're serious about getting out of the division. |
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Reply | Past Managers
at 16:32 4 Jan 2025
The Rodgers football once he put Dobbie in as an AM is a contender. It's easy to forget that quite often when he went for his Britton/Gower/Orlandi midfield we weren't all that fun to watch. Ditto the first season in the Prem. As soon as Siggy came in at the midfield sharp end our football just clicked into another gear.
I'm going to go out on a limb and list the 2005/2006 season under Kenny J as one of my favourites too. Something like 110 goals scored in all competitions that campaign. We were a hell of a lot more fun, and played better football, than some of his critics even today will admit. |
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Reply | William speculation unhelpful says Coleman
at 15:40 4 Jan 2025
It's mostly because we have far too many supporters for whom beating Cardiff is their #1 priority. Martin did it four times so they adore him, no matter how poor we usually were in the other 44 games of a league season. |
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Reply | To clarify to date
at 10:00 4 Jan 2025
Yep. All of this. Now we're getting the "It was only a joke!" nonsense. |
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Reply | It has been a long time?
at 09:51 4 Jan 2025
Fer was an excellent player and one we never really replaced until Franco.
Ntcham could have been a Fer replacement (if a bit more attacking) but Russy preferred to play him on the flanks. We saw during that last run in what a terrible waste of talent that had been. |
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Reply | William speculation unhelpful says Coleman
at 23:14 3 Jan 2025
There is a significant proportion of our support who will blame ownership over literally anything else when it comes to our underachievement in recent seasons. Not entirely inaccurately, but perhaps obsessively.
For example, there are plenty who will insist that Williams is extracting the absolute maximum from the squad he has available. To which I can only respond "Huh?".
To me he's on borrowed time. We need to move beyond Martinesque platitudes and see some sort of willingness to get the best out of what is available to him instead of mindlessly persisting with systems and denying that he can do better with what he's got.
I grew tired of such nonsense between 2021 & 2023. |
| | Dr_Winston
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