RandoEFC

They're only putting this out to make it seem more sensible when they push on to 24 or 25.

I can attest to this. When a football club is broken and toxic, you can bring in whatever individuals you want and even if they're actually good, they'll be infected with the disease within weeks of arriving. I'm obviously not just referring to Man Utd but I'll leave the rest unsaid and focus on them. They might bring in a manager who is a brilliant operator on paper, the best in the world if you want, but expecting one man to turn things around in the midst of a very clear cultural problem in the organisation is like dropping an ice cube into a tub full of boiling water and expecting it to cool down enough for you to climb in and enjoy a nice bath.

People really have no idea what "the economy" is do they? They think it's men in suits, rich CEOs, GDP and employment statistics when it's actually their employment status, what they get paid and how that stacks up against how much it costs them to live their lives.

Just open this thread, give the results a quick read through, and see if you find it as contradictory as me.

Yeah sometimes people share the wages that our first-team squad are on on social media. Obviously nobody knows the exact numbers but you can get within a few thousand pretty reliably I'm sure. The only way some of those players will leave is if we get relegated to the Championship and they either turn their nose up at it even if they have to take a pay cut to leave, or the club eventually reaches the point where they can't pay those wages. And only when they leave will we have the wriggle room to have any sort of hard reset.

I still take regular flow tests but yeah one of my friends had it recently and never tested positive off a flow test, but she was symptomatic and it showed up on a PCR test. Others have thought they had it and tested negative on LFTs for a few days before it finally showed up too.

It's nice to see this thread being quiet for 5 days but I'm going to be the cunt that brings it back up. Seems that the slightly different "Omicron B" is giving the virus another little peak. We've got about 1800 active cases over here again which is around 2% of the population. This variant isn't significantly different apparently in terms of risk profile. It's still causing us some trouble as it burns through schools again. One of our secondary school had to send some year groups home again this week because so many teachers have Covid and it's still legally required to self-isolate. Hopefully when that's scrapped and people stop testing and stuff, the symptoms are so mild that even if people go to work and spread the virus around, that they'll barely know or notice that they've got it. I still haven't caught Covid once, incredibly. Starting to feel like one of the last people who is in that boat.

It's always a good measure of a relegation-threatened team to look at how many of them would get snapped up if their team got relegated. Obviously from us, Calvert-Lewin, Richarlison, Pickford wouldn't be short of offers but we aren't flushed with those sorts of players. Mina and Allan could probably quite easily find moves to teams in the top leagues outside of England. Gray probably gets a move too if he pushes for it. Previously, you'd have said Godfrey and Doucoure would get moves but they've both had poor and/or disrupted seasons and now you couldn't guarantee it. Alli seems like he shouldn't be playing as far down as the Championship but then he hasn't distinguished himself from the rest since he arrived. Gordon would deserve a step back up more than most but I couldn't see him leaving immediately. The rest of them - Coleman, Kenny, Keane, Holgate, Mykolenko, Patterson, Davies, Delph, Townsend, Rondon, Gomes, Begovic, Gbamin, Tosun - for various reasons and varying extents, could have absolutely no complaints if they're playing in the Championship next season. There's probably a couple of players I've forgotten about as well.

The headline is a bit misleading. I thought he was only out there to discuss a new supply line to buy the oil from them instead of Russia. I'm not sure it has much impact on the Chelsea situation...

Carlos Sainz is a pretty cool guy.

Not particularly, no. People are already muttering about it though, media, Everton fans, other fans. Someone on here was saying in the last few days about whether the board might pull the plug and go for a typical relegation fire fighter to see out the season, can't remember who and I'm not saying they were calling for his head either but those conversations seem to have started. As for trying to predict whether we'd keep him or not, your guess is as good as mine. Our owner is an absolute lunatic so the usual logical criteria for predicting what decisions he might make simply aren't worth trying to apply. I hope he gives him that time though whether we stay or we drop.

I wasn't referring to you, so apologies if you took it that way, I'll hold my hands up there as I opened the door for you to think that I was. I don't think I need to respond to that retort though.

Correct, FFP situation is very bad as well. I think the FA have already given us some sort of special dispensation due to the extraordinary circumstances around Sigurdsson's absence. Not sure on any of the detail.

I think when athletes who are the best in the world and then wave their national flag around, it incites a sort of national pride if you're from that country, "I'm really proud to be Russian, we've produced the best person in the world for this sport". It's a bit daft but it probably makes you feel less inclined to be against what your country is doing by default if you're able to associate the national flag with great sporting achievements rather than just bombs and invasions.

Amazing the scrutiny Lampard is under. He's been here 5 minutes. Of course we should stick with him if we get relegated, if nothing more than to send a message to these players that you're the ones who are going to get turfed out here after you've seen off 6, 7, 8 managers. People from outside the club really will struggle to apply normal analysis to Everton's situation I'm afraid. Ancelotti is off pissing La Liga and knocking PSG out of the Champions League and even he could only get 10th place out of this lot. Ideally we would have kept him as he had the authority to cut loose all of the players who have been letting us down for years under loads of different managers. Sadly circumstance intervened and we have to try to give that authority to Lampard. I've already referred once to Jamie Carragher's comments about Everton on Monday Night Football. They've had Koeman, Silva, Allardyce, Ancelotti, Benitez, Lampard. At some point you have to stop looking for a new manager to get more out of the same players and tell them it's about fucking time you get some performance out of yourself or you can forget about a new contract at this club. This should have started happening 3-4 managers ago.

I've had a quick read into this, and the words "must" and "will" are a problem, because all I can see is that it's been rumoured, and it's not off the table, but that the Mirror and Express are running with it. It isn't a done deal, they may yet discuss it and decide against it. Again, I don't actually disagree with you. They probably shouldn't be made to express an opinion. I would ask them to stay away if they'd come out in support or Putin, and I'd make sure they played under a 'neutral' flag instead of a Russian one even if they condemn him publicly. Still, I can't really bring myself to get properly mad about a handful of professional tennis players not being able to compete at Wimbledon for (what's hopefully only) one year, especially when it's only hypothetical at this point too. It goes back to my original point that I think this is a valid discussion to have, but as soon as I start thinking about whether that's unfair on those tennis players, all I can then think as a follow-up is to look at the big picture and consider how unfair the war is on all of the ordinary Ukrainians having their homes destroyed and all of the ordinary Russian foot soldiers being sent to their deaths. I just really can't get that angry about a few sportspeople being unable to compete in a few competitions in the grand scheme of things, so it confuses me to see others who seem to be more visibly angry about that than they are about the war itself.

Can you back this up with credible evidence or is this conjecture? Genuine question, I've not seen anything about that though. If Abramovich doesn't fit this criteria I don't know who does...

The position that sport should never have anything to do with political issues is completely unrealistic. Perhaps it should be, I wouldn't necessarily say so because we've seen countless examples throughout history of sport being a force for good and a tool to encourage unity and positive relations, but if that was your view I wouldn't have a major problem with it. The reality, though, is that horse has bolted and it did so a long time before either of us was born. Enough people have laid out the evidence in this thread about why Abramovich has been sanctioned (not persecuted). It's not because he's Russian, it's because he has links to Putin. Alisher Usmanov is another distasteful character linked to Premier League football who has been sanctioned for his links to Putin and he's from Uzbekistan, not Russia. As for Medvedev, I don't see how that fits into your example of persecution. Him coming out and denouncing the war isn't him being persecuted. Again, you betray your own ugly worldview by suggesting that he has to come out "like a puppet" as if he can't make the decision for himself that the mass death and destruction caused by Putin. I'm not in favour of picking on people just for being Russian but the ones who have actually been sanctioned have been done so for good reasons. The sport stuff is a grey area, such as the British motorsport authorities deciding that Russian and Belarusian drivers can't even compete in the UK under a neutral licence, or the Russian teams being banned from European football. I don't necessarily agree with that stuff, I haven't fully made up my mind to be honest because it's wrong to penalise people who aren't at fault but it increases the pressure on the Russian government domestically because those things have happened to their sports teams and their citizens as a result of Putin's actions. Like I said, grey area. I can understand people expressing their opinions on this but I do find it baffling that anyone could manage to get themselves so wound up about these small injustices while seemingly being able to shrug off the absolutely massive injustices being inflicted upon people in Ukraine.

Are some of you more upset with the reaction to Putin's war (tennis players having to disagree with mass murder and Chelsea fans not being able to buy tickets to football matches for a while) than what Putin himself is actually doing (killing thousands of people, mostly those from his own military that he's sending to their deaths to do his bidding)? I'm giving you a chance to say no because that's a pretty horrible conclusion to come to, but for some people, that's where all the evidence points.

Cycling is great and should be strongly encouraged as the default way of getting around large cities like London. Unfortunately the Great British weather doesn't lend itself to people being dead keen for it. Still a decent number of people get around London on their bikes. The rest of the UK aren't so good at doing so.

@Dr. Gonzo good info but very much not good.

Yeah I really feel as if our eyes should be open to this. It's already pissing me off to be honest that people don't really seem arsed by Newcastle's owners. I'm poorly educated on the Saudi-Yemen conflict but it sounds like it's in a similar ball park to what Russia are doing to Ukraine. Like I said, poorly educated so I'm happy to stand corrected if needs be. But the question should be asked, what's the actual difference? For fans, the difference is a large part down to the fact that Newcastle haven't "stolen" any of the success reserved for the "established" teams or given anyone anything to be bitter about quite yet, which is a shame and very cynical of me but I really do think that's a part of it. I don't know whether Saudi Arabia's conflict with Yemen is more legitimate in some way, my understanding is that it isn't but again, I won't pretend to be an expert. I can't imagine any circumstance in which what they're doing is palatable though. Anyway, why aren't we treating Newcastle's owners the same as Chelsea's? Why were they allowed to buy a Premier League club in the first place? Is it because their actions in Yemen aren't as bad as Putin somehow? Is it because we want to buy oil from and sell arms to Saudi Arabia and there isn't enough public outrage about them to override this for our government? As an aside, I'm not necessarily calling for Newcastle to face the same sanctions as Chelsea, I'm not sure about the sanctions reaching as far as the rest of the football club when Abramovich is the only one personally responsible for anything related to Putin. I'd have thought there was a way to transfer ownership of the club without him getting a penny out of it and not having it impact on Chelsea's staff and fans. But I don't know, there's a lot of nitty gritty in there that I'm not overly interested in. What I'm generally interested in is the disparity between outrage and sanctions directed at Abramovich and the lack of outrage and sanctions directed at Newcastle's owners, because I can't find an angle to look at it without seeing some pretty massive double standards and some unpleasant truths about who Putin's victims are compared to who the Saudi regime's victims are.

I'm sure it's absolutely deliberate that Russia are mirroring the flimsy excuses the US used in their own misjudged foreign campaigns. What I don't really get is what they're getting out of it other than basically trolling the US and their allies.

I'm confused. Is Trudeau an authoritarian or an example of "liberal overreach"? Because I've read both in the past week and I'm not even convinced it was from two different posters.