Leaderboard

I would be genuinely lost without football in my life. It's a daily escape from the world that enhances my life in terms of both usually having a game to look forward to and maintaining friendships.

I don't think I've read a post on this thread espousing communism. But feel free to point them out? As regards the broader point, I'd hesitate to go down Mason's road of tarring a couple of generations with the same brush. I think (confess I'm nae sure) that I'm just about a Boomer (born 63?). I think there's a lot of utter cunts in my generation. Equally there's a lot of us who never bought into the short-termism of Thatcherism. I dinna have Mason's global faith in the younger generations. Yes, there's some dinna buy into the reactionary populism but many more do. Far beyond that.....apathy. I think the genie is too far oota the bottle, I think the world is fucked, I think there are people born now who will see the end of the world. Yer Trumps and Farages (as well as all the far-right populists in Europe) are nae the drivers, they're the grifters taking advantage. Capitalism has fucked the economy globally. There's generation on generation disenfranchisement, nae cash to spend on interventionist, societal support and proper re-education so the cycle continues. Each generation another round of cannon fodder. I hope Mason's right but I think we're a' fucked.

We can’t go down there and park the bus. Go at them from the off and if we can get the first goal then Celtic could implode with the fans on their backs.

You can take the boy out of AbMad, but you can’t take a “Swans can’t fly” theory out of the boy…

Iron Maiden - Run to the hills

You’ll notice it’s not airborne

Interesting stuff!

They do have big wings. I was walking my dog by the canal in Inverness a few years back and whilst off balance picking up his business i failed to notice a swan come up the bank about 20 metres down the path. Only realised with it's first hiss and the sensation of the lead being pulled from hand as my dog charged at it. Heart was in my mouth when it spread it's wings as I know they can break bones but, thankfully, Alaskan Malamutes are pretty fucking big themselves and when he got closer to said swan, said swan shat it and got back in the water pronto. It ended up swimming alongside and hissing at us for the next few minutes.

Are we sure we’re not taking Clarkson’s issue with sitting on the bench too literal? My interpretation was “I need to be playing not sitting on the bench” rather than “I refuse to sit on the bench”. Of course, it could just be complete bollocks to begin with.

Stevie Wonder - I’ll be loving you always

Not sure which side of the fence I’m on re our abilities in Europe. Given some of the “diddies ” in the Conference League (recognising they all finished above us) then we weren’t completely out of our depth and with a kind draw might have scraped into the next round. But that’s about it. We were certainly not competitive in any meaningful sense. I guess that places me in the Moog camp I had the absolute fear we might sneak our way into the Europa League. Can you imagine? We’d have been horsed, week in, week out.

14 points should be the minimum from those five games.

Vampire Weekend - Harmony Hall

A bit of all three would be my guess OBI. None are a good look and make him (and the club) just look stupid. As I’ve said before. Pep has A LOT to answer for in modern day fitba…

We don't generally shit the bed under Thelin. We just seem to confidently brush off the glaring errors, before doing exactly the same twenty minutes later. Milne didn't give the ball away for their third last night through panic or having given up. He confidently tried to thread a ball through to a retreating centre half in the name of passing out from the back. A crazy decision drummed into them on the training ground. Ignore the score, just keep doing it until it works seems to be the philosophy. Equally as likely to lead to a 0-6 tanking as shitting the bed like.

2-0 down at half time, storming back to 2-4 after 114 minutes Aouchiche Nisbet Schmeichel (og obvs) Bilalovic

I'm not so sure of that last bit. It's not impossible but there does seem to be a growing resilience in this team, I also think our front line will get a lot of space against their defence if they stick with the back 3. As such I'm really hopeful of a strong performance from Karlsson, he is usually double marked in domestic games and I doubt he will be on Sunday. I am wondering if Jimmy starts Bilalovic. He seemed to slot right in and looks pretty quick to boot.

Think first goal will be vital on Sunday. If we get it their fans will turn on Nancy and atmosphere will be toxic. Lose first goal and we probably shit the bed and concede a few.

To understand the change to this format, you have to understand what they're trying to get to. The final goal is a European league(s). This gets everyone used to the idea by creating the format first, and then slowly increasing the number of games you play within the format. It doesn't make sense now, but in a couple of years, you'll maybe have 8 games in Europe rather than 6. Then 10. The closer you get to the final format, the less pronounced are the differences in fixtures but, paradoxically, the effects become more visible (team X played exactly the same fixtures as team Y, bar one fixture which they lost and finished three points behind them, missing "promotion"). At that point, the calls are then switched to shouting for a full round of fixtures for everyone rather than questioning the tournament itself. It's basically using the sunk cost fallacy to get what you want. Governments, businesses and football cunts do it all the time. The most obvious example is VAR. Your goal is to remove all refereeing errors from football, so you introduce a shite system. You then slowly chip away at each type of decision until you get what you want. At a certain point, people stop questioning the existence of the system itself and they are the ones saying "well we've got this system, why aren't we using it for throw-ins?". Aided and abetted by morons in the media who have discussions about "how we can make VAR better", rather than "how can we organise to get rid of VAR", not realising that the former discussion doesn't mean impartiality, you've already agreed with Thatcher's TINA (there is no alternative). It's not just football. Every single town and city on the planet is setup in the most ridiculous fashion to accommodate car travel, for example. We must bail out banks, and so on. We don't have a say. We all know that the correct answer is to rip it up and go back to knockout tournaments, unseeded. We all know that what makes European football magical is its scarcity.

Theo Katzman - And Yorkshires Kehht Roosbeh(Kate Rusby)

Only to the Young Dudes.