RandoEFC

He did well under Allardyce but just doesn't have the pace or mobility to play in Silva's side. Exactly the sort of ways you piss money away by constantly changing managers.

The club have said that Cenk Tosun can leave if the asking price of £20m is met. Would be a £7m loss on his original fee last year which is annoying. Niasse also available for transfer. The club won't be bringing anyone in unless someone leaves.

Yeah so to add to what I said earlier... I was a typical "watch the Wimbledon final" tennis noob for most of my childhood and teenage years. I was always vaguely aware of Henman and then Murray throughout my teenage years, until Murray reached the Wimbledon final in 2012. I remember being in Rome on a family holiday while it was on, hoping he won, but not being that upset when he lost because I wasn't that invested. Fast forward a few weeks to the London 2012 Olympics, which I watched pretty much wall to wall when I was 19. A lot of public opinion had gone Murray's way after his tearful post-match interview having lost the Wimbledon final, and you just thought what an incredible achievement it would be to come back to the same court weeks later and win a gold medal, and he only went and did it. Within weeks he'd gone from the public portrait of "that grumpy Scot who didn't support England in the World Cup that time and always loses the final like Henman anyway" to one of the leading individual heroes of the 2012 British Olympic Team. I was very much hooked on tennis by the time the 2012 US Open came around, with the help of my best friend from university being a massive fan of tennis, and Roger Federer. I watched all of Murray's matches at the US Open that year where he won his first major, and pretty much all of his matches for the next 2-3 years. I'm not going to waffle on about all of his achievements. The main reason I identify with him and respect him more than any other sportsman I can think of is his personality. For years I'd have said that and the response would have been "what personality hur hur hur grumpy Scot hur hur hur". The guy has a better personality than all of the tedious media trained mega stars because he's genuine. He was never particularly comfortable in front of the cameras, though that changed over time as he grew up and felt the love a bit more from the British public, and the first time he made an attempt at something resembling banter in an interview it was about supporting Brazil against England in the World Cup and he got unfairly slated for it, and even disowned by the more heavily retarded sections of the media and the British keyboard warrior army, so it's not a surprise that he was fairly reserved for years after that, because I think, like I would have been, he was never able to show that that hurt him in public, but it probably at least somewhat upset him. Nowadays though, he's had a chance to show his wit and humour, probably more through Instagram and Twitter than his public interviews, though he has his moments there too. He's now very popular across the UK I believe, and across the general tennis-viewing population worldwide. This is what makes me happy more than what he's achieved on the court, even though it would be naive to think that his successes haven't contributed to the change in perception. What I've seen over the past decade is quite a shy but honest guy grow from a fairly reserved young man who appeared to be pretty uncomfortable in the media limelight, to a well-respected athlete and family man who does share his emotions with the world and has become one of the most prominent voices in sport for everything between Instagram banter and important issues like equality for women in sport. The best part is that this has all happened without extensive media training and micro-management, it came from his own personality and growth as a person. Its horrible that his career has to end in this manner. After all of the setbacks he has overcome to succeed throughout his career in finally winning Grand Slam titles and hitting the number one ranking which seemed incredibly unlikely at times, I always just assumed that he'd somehow find a way past this hip injury and return to his old self but it looks like enough's enough. I imagine that if anyone's still reading they're thinking for fucks sake Rando, nobody died here, but I wanted to give a fitting tribute to, in my eyes, certainly the most inspirational sportsman I've seen throughout my early adulthood, and also one of the most inspirational people in general that I can think of. I'll leave it to all of the media outlets to bore you all to death with extensive lists of all of his competitive achievements but I wanted to add my own two cents with respect to the man I see him as off the court.

Gutted about that to be honest. I'm sure I'll add more later but if not for Murray I'd have no interest in tennis. Possibly the most underappreciated sportsman we've had in this generation, especially the way he's always upped his game when represented Great Britain, winning the Olympic Gold twice, and carrying the team to the first Davis Cup win in yonks.

I do think high heels are pretty attractive to be fair.

Demarai Gray is exactly the player that I hope Ademola Lookman doesn't turn out to be but fear he will.

I love how space is refered to as the final frontier. It's like, yeah we've covered all of this one planet now, we're pretty much done, all that's left is the ENTIRE FUCKING REST OF THE UNIVERSE.

You'd think so but the way some teams approach the cup competitions, prioritising the battle for 12th in the league over trying to win the FA Cup, it doesn't go without saying anymore.

People can spend their money how they want. I haven't sacked off Ultimate Team because of that. For me personally it's the realisation that while I enjoy team building, and earning packs through SBCs, playing actual matches was a chore and I was only doing it to get certain rewards in Squad Battles and Division Rivals. I've invested far too much time into Ultimate Team in the last 18 months or so for basically no reason. That's why I've bailed out. However, as much as I say people can spend their money how they want, I stand by being able to see that it's still madness to hear about people paying £50 for the entire game, then going onto spend literal thousands extra on the game just to get one special player which will likely only increase their enjoyment of the game by a little bit.

Moshiri finished by saying that he looks at the league table and it's simply not good enough, and that the club really want to win the FA Cup and it is a priority. Now words are words, and nothing more, but it beats the words from previous years e.g. Walsh: Lukaku didn't even win us that many points last season so we didn't need to replace him. Kenwright: I'd just like to thank Sam on the club's behalf for what he's done for us. [After climbing to 8th in the league table]. Moshiri: some bullshit about Lukaku going to that voodoo tent in Congo or wherever before deciding to leave the club. A positive evening by the sound of it, hopefully the club does actually have some idea what they're doing.

I've just sacked Ultimate Team off, never spent money on it but now that they've been forced to publish the odds for getting special cards in packs, people can calculate how much you have to spend to have a certain chance of getting special cards. During the Champions League team of the group stage promo someone worked out you had to buy about £800 worth of packs to have a FIFTY PERCENT chance of getting one of the team of the group stage cards. Also saw someone tweet today that they'd spent £3000 on packs in the last two years trying to get a Team of the Year card in January, and never got a single one. People are literal fucking idiots. It's a marginally better player on a game that's got a different colour card, and it becomes useless as soon as they release the new game in September. Beyond belief the amount of money people spend just for the adrenaline hit of seeing the blue boards pop up that means they've got a special card. Frightening really. Glad I've never spent money on FIFA points.

Good.

Our AGM tonight. This is pretty indicative of how important an acquisition Brands was this summer, more important than the new manager: Not much expected in the January window: Keith Harris with some big talk about the new stadium. He hasn't got all of the fans convinced though... More stadium talk... CEOs stated ambition: Hopefully not more empty promises as that would be lovely, but will probably merely serve as laughing stock for opposition fans for the foreseeable future... Lol, well it's less embarrassing than the Moshiri Lukaku voodoo speech.

Maybe Wehrlein has some inside knowledge about Mercedes' car, but probably not anymore. Hopefully Renault have a good car this year, for both Ricciardo and Hulkenberg, be interesting to see how they match up too. Bit bummed that Force India are just going to be called Racing Point this year, crap team name.

Is Caulker actually still on Liverpool's books? I imagine they'll play Fabinho alongside Van Dijk rather than Caulker or anyone else from that far down the pecking order.

Why? They're constantly giving team principals 2-3 years then they get sacked if they don't deliver. Since the dream team broke up at the end of 2006, there haven't been many season where more of the ingredients were in place for them to win a championship, than there were in 2018. Obviously Raikkonen won the driver's title in 2007 when McLaren fell over themselves (and some), but Ferrari were far from a disaster last year. They took a wrong turn in development after the mid season break which along with Vettel's constant mistakes, cost them the championship more than their overplayed 'strategy errors'. Its like football clubs. New guy comes in, 2019 is a 'year of transition' for Ferrari, then he'll be expected to deliver the title in 2020 after 12 months' work against a Mercedes team that have been a stable, cohesive unit for the best part of a decade now, and if he doesn't manage it, he gets the boot and the cycle starts all over.

Ferrari chopping and changing again, shock horror.

Started the Accursed Kings series. Apparently very similar to the Song of Ice and Fire books, originally written in French and based on the Hundred Years War. Halfway through the first book The Iron King. Pretty decent so far.

Unfortunate.

One of the Everton podcasts I listen to mentioned that Everton currently have just one point less than Spurs did under Pochettino at the same point in his first season, and Klopp finished 8th with Liverpool in his first season. Now look at those two clubs. Obviously, Everton, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham all have different expectations and the managers involved picked their teams up with different starting points. The point is, if you want to bring someone in to spend £150m and win two trophies in the first season, then sure, you can judge them on it now, but if you've brought someone in as a long term investment to make wholesale changes to not just the team but the club at large, trying to judge them after 20 games is madness.

@LFCMadLad Liverpool were hardly any better yet still managed to get Klopp four years ago. I know you're taking the piss but the long term infrastructure, size and potential of a club matters much more to a manager who values the project than the current level of success and squad ability. That said, I've detailed elsewhere why I don't think it's in Poch's interest to move to United. The risks outweigh the rewards as long as Tottenham haven't yet hit a clear glass ceiling. However, if you were to ask a manager looking for their next career move and wasn't already attached to one club or the other, and gave them the choice between taking over Spurs or Manchester United at the end of this season, you'd expect them to go to Old Trafford.

How can Arsenals conversion rate be over 100%? I guess that includes goals which didn't come from big chances, but you can't have a conversion rate over 100%, they should only be counting the goals scored from big chances if they want a measure of how good a team is at converting big chances. Idiots. Sorry, maths teacher so I get pretty triggered by poor statistical practice.

Another Liverpool fan in the Everton thread criticising the manager for one marquee defeat after giving their manager 2-3 years of patience to sort out the poor defence and still maintaining that he's still under no pressure if he doesn't win a trophy despite apparently having about 4 of the current world XI at his disposal? Well I never...

And that's the first stat to be posted in three different times on this forum in the space of a few hours.

Let us know what you think! Might invest in one myself.