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Reply | Villains Who’ve Supported QPR
at 12:52 2 Dec 2024
Toby Young would be my choice: a man so unbearable his own friends refused to go to his stag do. |
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Reply | Eze release clause
at 12:08 5 Sep 2024
Makes sense when you think about it: release clause deactivates during the final weeks of the summer window so nobody can put in a last-minute bid and leave Palace without enough time to recruit a replacement. Stays inactive over the winter to avoid losing him mid-season, then becomes active again in the summer. |
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Reply | You Are FIFA
at 10:59 5 Sep 2024
Ball goes out of play, clock stops. Ball comes back in play, clock starts again. Matches are reduced to 40 minutes per half to adjust for this. |
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Reply | LFW Message Board Glossary
at 14:13 30 Aug 2024
Also reckon the opposite of this sentiment deserves a mention: "he's useless, clearly never going to make it at Championship level, looks like he's never played football before, get rid of him, another disaster by Les / Hoos / Nourry, the entire club's doomed" after a new player has 15 minutes off the bench in a pre-season friendly, having signed from Atletico Timbuktu an hour before kickoff and speaking three words of English, and doesn't immediately play like prime period Taarabt. [Post edited 30 Aug 14:14]
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Reply | Centre Mid - do we need Hayden
at 11:34 19 Aug 2024
Right now, we clearly need him - Field and EDB have started the season unexpectedly poorly, Colback’s had yet another of his brainfarts, and Varane’s getting up to speed.
But ultimately I agree with the people saying we’ve picked a model, so we should stick with it. Even if we could get Hayden on a decent wage, and even if he’s brilliant for us for a season or two, he’d still inevitably be leaving on a free when he’s 33. We’ve already got that with Colback and Cook - can we afford a third, particularly given that he’s likely to be on a much higher wage at Newcastle?
I think the litmus test here is imagining the players we’ve got returned to a decent level of form, then asking if we’d still need more bodies. I think a fully firing Field and Varane, with Colback and EDB as backup, would mean we don’t need Hayden - in which case we probably shouldn’t sign him. |
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Reply | Match Thread - A Royal Preseason
at 15:14 27 Jul 2024
Not a pleasant watch so far, we look very disjointed indeed, but I guess that's to be expected in pre-season. Massive respect to those who've made the journey, sounding like we're in great voice based on the stream. |
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Reply | Armstrong
at 21:54 19 Jul 2024
Whether he turns out to be the next Sir Les or not, if he wasn't going to sign another contract then the only thing the club could do was get as much money for him as possible. If it's anything like the figures being bandied about, then Nourry and co have done seriously well.
Sinclair's been fun to watch, always done his best for the club, and maybe he'll turn into a spectacular player. I'll be wishing him well, hope he kicks on at Bristol and nets us a hefty sell-on fee. But the club have done exactly the right thing here. |
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Reply | Paul Hall Gone
at 13:34 3 Jul 2024
I'm basing it on a number of players - specifically Eze and Bright, if memory serves - mentioning him along with Chris Ramsey as having played particularly important roles in their development.
Clearly our academy hasn't been producing enough talent, which in a results-based business means people will inevitably be let go. I'm not suggesting he was brilliant by any means. But he seems to have done some good work, and served the club diligently in his decade here. I think we can afford to be generous in thanking him for that, and wishing him well for the future. |
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Reply | Paul Hall Gone
at 18:02 2 Jul 2024
Seems like a lovely guy and a good coach, but I think a top-to-bottom refresh was always on the cards when Nourry came in, given we’ve not produced enough young talent recently. Will be very interesting to see who we bring in, and what changes as a result. |
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Reply | Denmark 🇩🇰 v England 🏴 Match Thread
at 13:42 21 Jun 2024
It's so frustrating to see England go backwards like this. There have been so many improvements under Southgate compared to what came before, but we've had glaring issues for years, none of which seem any closer to being addressed, and now we're regressing on the stuff we'd previously done well too.
Unless there's a massive turnaround in the rest of the tournament, the drop-off in performances over the last few years does suggest that Southgate's methods aren't as effective with this group as they've been previously, and that it's probably time for a change. |
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Reply | I hope this is and stays just a rumour.
at 16:43 13 Jun 2024
Even if he's entirely motivated by self-interest, then Marti jumping ship now makes absolutely no sense, for exactly the same reasons that it was always the wrong choice for Beale, or at the very least a totally unnecessary gamble.
With the greatest of respect to Hammarby, this is Marti's first properly big, visible managerial job anywhere, and obviously his first in England. He's done fantastically well for half a season, but then so have plenty of other coaches who never amounted to anything.
Leave now and - as was the case with Beale - his next job *has* to be a success, otherwise he's got nothing else to fall back on, and his six months here begins to look like a fluke. Push on this season and prove it wasn't a flash in the pan - I'm not even thinking about getting into the playoffs, just taking us from relegation certainties to top half would be huge - and he'll start being linked with far better jobs than Sunderland.
Even if it doesn't go perfectly, he can't be any worse than Ainsworth, so his reputation isn't going to be at serious risk while he's here unless he screws up monumentally. Given the way the club's being run now, and how he's got the team playing, the odds of that happening feel very low indeed.
Staying for another 12 months has all of the upsides, and none of the risks. He'd be an idiot not to do it, even if he doesn't care about QPR at all. I agree with Clive though - this time next year it'll be a very different story. |
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Reply | Bands you haven’t got around to listening to yet but here great things
at 21:07 24 May 2024
Can are brilliant, Beefheart is extremely patchy but the good bits are great, Zappa is too self-consciously zany for me (try Todd Rundgren instead, who’s just as inventive but less smug about it)
I need to get properly into The Fall but never know quite where to start. Same with Somic Youth and, to a certain extent, shockingly, The Beatles, whose singles are obviously inescapable but I can’t say I’ve ever sat down and listened to one of their albums from beginning to end. |
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Reply | End of Term Report 23/24 – Goalkeepers
at 16:21 17 May 2024
I think a D's fair on balance.
He was brought in as a stopgap, and has mostly done okay in that role, with some great saves at crucial points. However, between what appears to be a fairly hefty wage, the captain's armband, the repeated howlers, the dubious tweets and all the rest of it, I think it's fair to say he's underperformed overall. Far from the worst signing we've made in recent years, but that's not exactly a high bar.
This is one where we absolutely have to learn from Adomah - renewing the contract of an ageing pro who's simply not up to it any more, eating up FFP headroom that should be spent elsewhere, is madness. If Begovic is here next year as anything other than an experienced backup on massively reduced wages, then we're in serious trouble. |
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Reply | End of Season Review - Live Now On The Patreon
at 17:53 13 May 2024
Off the top of my head I can think of paying for the server and associated website maintenance, licensing for match photos, and other content-related costs (I don't know if the guy who records and edits the audio for the podcasts does it for free, for example, or to what extent Clive needs to get things legally reviewed).
Then there are the costs of getting to games (largely for our benefit in recent seasons, it seems, rather than because Clive has been particularly enjoying the experience) and the costs of his time in writing, editing and managing everything - not least keeping us in line when the forum gets a bit spicy - which I suspect is likely to have impacted his other paid employment.
I don't think the line between hobby and job is as clear-cut as you suggest: plenty of people start doing things for the love of it, but as they become more successful things get more complicated and cumbersome. And plenty of people earn a pittance doing a job they love, when they could earn more elsewhere. The line between monetisation and passion has always been, in my experience, a pretty fluid one.
Either way, it was very clear when Clive set up the Patreon that he couldn't keep running LFW for free. I think the response since then shows how much value we place in what he does - if Clive is making a small cut on top of his costs for running LFW, I doubt any of us would begrudge him that in the slightest. |
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Reply | Odd fact but it does pose a good question....
at 10:56 3 May 2024
Think this came up on here a while ago didn't it. I find it mad that anyone in our fanbase would envy Palace's position.
For clubs of their or our size, there are basically three options: spend what you can afford based on matchday and other income, which would see us sitting somewhere in the middle of League One; get your owners to fund your losses indefinitely (our current business model); or establish yourself in the Premier League, use the TV money to stay competitive, and work towards being financially self-sufficient (which is what Palace are doing).
They're not quite there yet, but they're not far off balancing the books rather than relying on their owners to fund them. They've got an exciting young team and manager, playing very decent football and occasionally giving the big clubs a bloody nose, and largely staying clear of anxieties around whether their club's going to collapse into non-existence if they get relegated. If they get the sales of Eze / Olise /Wharton right (or had done the same with Zaha) they could be in a position to push on towards Europe.
Each to their own, but I find that miles more exciting than whatever we've been up to over the last 11 seasons. |
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Reply | Are we capable of going up next season.
at 15:55 30 Apr 2024
He currently seems destined for bigger things than a lower-half Championship team, but it's all about gradually building a reputation.
I think Beale offers a very handy warning about trying to run before you can walk: Marti's got a great opportunity here to build an ethos and team alongside a new CEO, and really showcase his abilities in an environment where everyone's bought into his approach and is 100% behind him.
Best case scenario for both us and him is that we get three or four seasons of gradual improvement before he moves on, by which point hopefully we'll be competing more consistently at the top of the table, and he'll have made a serious name for himself. |
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Reply | Are we capable of going up next season.
at 11:56 30 Apr 2024
We're 10th in the form table since Marti took over - it's impossible to know how that'll translate to next season, but there's clearly been a massive improvement since he came in.
I think our target should be to finish in the top half of the table next season, with half an eye on challenging for the playoff spots. Anything more than that feels optimistic. |
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Reply | Marti-His Part in our Victory-match thread vs Weeds
at 21:49 26 Apr 2024
Sam Field you beautiful man. Also *what* a ball from Ilias Chair, absolutely incredible delivery given he's spent the last two years whacking it into the first man every time we've had a corner. |
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Site Scores| Forum Votes: | 821 | | Comment Votes: | 1 | | Prediction League: | 0 | | TOTAL: | 822 |
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