Smiley Culture

Are they still playing at Leatherhead?

Jamie Cureton (yeah, that one) scored his 350th career goal yesterday as he scored a hat trick for Bishop’s Stortford, the team he’s joint interim manager of, who rose to 6th in the Bostik Premier with a 4-2 win over Whitehawk.

They hope to see you too.

Coffee drinkers have told me McDonalds coffee is much better. They might be tight and that’s why they say it but I wouldn’t know.

Hope the man with two first names, Thomas Frank, gets the job. I don’t know anything about him tbh but I suppose that’s part of the charm of Football, isn’t it? I mean, I’d rather see someone new given a go instead of the same names essentially backpacking around England and Wales being given job after job.

International Mental Health Day today. I wasn’t aware there was a “day” for it but social media is telling me there is. I find it a bit silly that there’s a specified day for it because everyday should be Mental Health Day but I’m digressing from the real reason why I’m posting. We all spend far too much of our lives on here discussing Football with relative strangers. Most of us haven’t met, will probably never meet but have ‘relationships’ with other lads behind a screen, phone or tablet and really we don’t know the first thing about each other. I reckon I’m not alone in saying that my private messages are open should anyone ever decide they want to get something off their chest to a complete stranger. Talking does help and any message sent would be in the strictest confidence. A bit of a soppy post but most of us here are blokes between the ages of 18-40 and suicide is the biggest cause of death for our age group and as blokes, we’re usually terrible at talking about feelings and stuff like that. Speak up lads. Chat to someone. Offload it all on someone. It might save your life. Stay safe lads.

Do Sky still show Eredivisie?

Would love to do the Three Peaks, though the travelling between climbs does put me off. Know a lad that did two out of the three because they managed to lose one of the party on one of the climbs.

Watched about four episodes of this Bodyguard on BBC. Not sure if I like it, not really sure what to make of it but I want to keep watching to see where it does go, so I suppose that’s a positive.

If there's a pain worse than toothache, I hope to never experience it. In absolute agony here.

I’m quite happy with the Ben Chillwell callup. I can’t lie and say I know what his club form is like but he’s come through the age groups with England and I think it’s important that we’ve got players in the first team side who know the system and can be seen as success stories of the England system.

I'm sure I read Jordan Pickford had a knock, something daft like a tight calf, and I presumed Bettinelli was called up as a result of this.

People have to have something to moan about when it comes to England team selection. How people can find something to moan about regarding the inclusion of Alex McCarthy is surprising. What other options are there? Tom Heaton and Nick Pope are injured, Joe Hart is one of the old guard and Gareth Southgate has pretty much ended his International career. After that, who is there? Sam Johnstone is probably the only one I can think of but Alex McCarthy has Premier League experience, which might have tipped it in his favour. As for the shouts on bringing in a wave of young players, that was never going to happen. After England’s best performance at a tournament in twenty-two years, there was never going to be mass changes for the first squad post-tournament.

Can’t have any real disagreements around the team selection. Would I whack in somebody who’s had three good games in his first three Premier League games? Definitely not. Right move from Southgate here.

As expected really. We’re on our arse if Kane gets injured at any point though.

You don’t have to take Kane off to bring Vardy on.

England’s striking options are thin on the ground now. Under normal circumstances (Vardy being available for selection) I would have said Sturridge would have needed to have a phenomenal year to have even been close to selection, now him and Welbeck need to outdo the other to be get the third striking spot. I’m not overly fussed barring a serious Kane injury because all they’ll be used for is picking up the cones in training.

Bit disappointed by the Vardy departure, tbh. I rate him highly and think he’s an real underrated asset to the England team. He’s the “something different” you sometimes need in a difficult game away. He’s direct and has electric pace that would cause no end of problems. I’m not sure who the youth coming in as a replacement would be. We’ve got Harry Kane and Marcus Rashford, but I’m struggling to think of who would now be third in line. Gary Cahill I’m less bothered about. We don’t have great options in that area of the park but he’s not exactly a standout and is replaceable.

Verdict on today @DeadLinesman? My 18th Final today and personally (I’ve only seen the game live and not seen replays) but thought it was a fairly evenly matched, but pretty poor game, in which Catalans did better with the ball than Warrington in attacking positions and probably just about edged. What’s up with Dec Patton? Is he a bellend off the pitch? I can’t work out why he barely gets a game when Roberts and Brown are equally as useful as chocolate teapots.

It’s the haves vs the have nots. The upper class vs chavs. Teenage pregnancy vs University degrees. Aldi vs Waitrose. The unemployed and unable to work vs those in full time employment. It’s the M11 derby between Harlow and Bishop’s Stortford on Monday. The first competitive one in something like twenty years, you going @Storts?

Massive kick-off at work about Christmas shifts. I feel like this really shows the difference between people who are teamwork orientated and those who aren’t.

Yeah, that’s very true. I got into them because a lot of what I do at work doesn’t require much thinking so I can chuck an audiobook on and listen for a while. A poor reader can effect the book, definitely.

Downloaded the audiobook “Pep Confidential” from Audible for free. Only a few chapters in but very good thus far. Such an interesting and deep thinker Guardiola.

I’ve never seen a second of any James Bond film.

A Goal in Each half double of Huddersfield Town v Chelsea and Solihull Moors v Aldershot Town @ 2.11/1. Over 1.5 Goals treble of Middlesbrough v Birmingham City, Chesterfield v Braintree Town and Raith Rovers v Stenhousemuir @ 2.02/1.