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Change your name to Andrés and we might start listening.

Obi-Wan Peroni

Big day ahead for Trippier, cos you have to assume he's gonna meet Adam Pearson for the first time. Little does he know this kid will feature heavily in his nightmares by the end of the week.

Young Rabin Omar from Stirling Albion, would give us a chance to field Botman and Rabin, that’d be super man!

CT getting absolutely fucking housed by Diego. A long overdue arse kicking.

Similarly, if we keep hold of Clark, we'll have a chance of fielding Botman and bobbins.

"Foster's and McEwan's lager for Caulkin and Hope, Dunston's finest Lose Control Lager for the knight."

In the end I will be hated by the whole forum

Unlike Trippier, when Bridge signed for Sunderland he was on the Wayne. Ifangyu

I wish this was a real club statement.

Hey, he's some boy, Diego. Even bringing the trim to the table now.

Give it a week and @Howmanheymanwill be walking around in one of those "Fresh Ego Kid" caps.

My memories and information? Ok, here goes: My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with a low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds; pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Wilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking. I suggest you try it.

Paging MF

I don’t think it’ll happen but could you imagine the fucking explosion of hatred towards us on Twitter especially if he scored from a Trippier cross against Southampton.

No-Vax Djokovic, more like

He’s certainly been spreading the Rona around the little rat.

I once offered Darren Peacock a pint at a charity do. He said “no thanks”.

You'd be caught between iraq and a hard place. I'll get me coat.

This isn't aimed at anyone in particular but I feel moved to say it. I think it's difficult to have civil discourse these days because the frames of reference for factual information aren't aligned anymore. These days your average guy in the street thinks that his opinion carries as much weight as someone who has researched and specialised in a particular area for many years of their life - we've talked about this before, it comes from the Michael Gove style trashing of experts that was key to getting things like Brexit/Trump over the line. If people don't like facts based on evidence, give them "alternative facts". This notion we've somehow arrived at that all that's in the mix are a series of equally valid opinions is just a nonsense. It's not true. My personal opinion on covid, our response to it, the measures we should take, etc cannot ever stand up on equal footing with someone who works in the field, or has a PhD in a related area, or lives and breathes this stuff day in and day out through their entire lives. My opinion is so far below theirs that it's not even worth mentioning it. And yet that's what so many anti-vaxxers think, they fundamentally believe that their views are equal. It's actually offensive to the entire idea of a knowledge based society. We can't all have equal opinions in everything because we can't all specialise in everything. A big part of the issue, in truth, is that many of these people don't understand how rigorous the academic process is. We're worlds away from "journalistic research" with this stuff, it's unbelievably complex, pored over by peers in the field, repeated ad nauseum and so on, until we get to a stage where we're confident that it's as right as we can say. And then, other people take that data and research and go off and try to replicate it, try to build on it, all the while it's being critiqued over and over by people who have spent literal decades specialising in this. Their opinion is just always, always going to be worth more than mine. That doesn't mean I'm not as smart as them, or that I'm surrendering my own personal agency, it just means I'm recognising reality.

all i wanted to do was talk about my beloved club.

I'd have bet my house on CT being the first one to post a minions meme.

Umtiti and Botman should be the ideal partnership, surely? Something for everyone.

Standing at the airport like a one man Beatlemania

It’s Digne he’s referring to, I want a written apology off this chicken and wine shagging little bitch as I mentioned we were in for Digne on here fucking YONKS ago. He’s getting a second slap if he mentions Diego Carlos.

---I tried to avoid writing an essay, I really did. Sorry.--- It is a fair point though. You must be able to see how by living in France, you are personally 'safe' from the consequences of this (which are very real btw, weekly foodshops alone have gone up considerably in price, and down considerably in options) and yet you're saying you'd vote to inflict these problems on the rest of us all over again if you could. That's before we get to people's livelihoods, relationships and ambitions being ruined. I know that if none of these things have touched you, it'll be hard to think that we're anything other than a group of people who are politically motivated in our bitching - an extension of the Labour/Tory, Left/Right culture war shit. But honestly as far as Brexit goes, we've watched and suffered through all of this together and idk man.. it's real. The consequences of this are very real. They are being felt. Some people may deny that this is the case, but those people are frankly liars or too rich to notice. Or possibly, to be at my most charitable, actively trying to avoid paying attention. So if you'd vote to do it again for some high concept political notion about sovereignty without being part of any rebuild, suffering or pain that the nation goes through, it is sort of difficult to read. I mean it almost seems like you just don't give a fuck about the rest of us and what we have to suffer as long as your political views win out. Are those views really so important to have been worth this? Does any of this improve your life at all? What it looks like to me, and what it has always looked like - and I say this as compassionately as possible because I do understand your reasons, and I even understand where the more racist tones of this at least come from (not from you, from elsewhere) - is that this whole thing has really kind of blown up in the faces of the people who voted for it, but because it became such a toxic argument, because so much of everyone's "pride" was on the line, no one was prepared to back down - and that has continued to this day, although leavers seemed to think that once it was done, they'd won; except now I think they're beginning to realise that there was no victory, there is just perpetual war. Brexit split the country in two, and while the negative consequences of it continue to be felt (and they will), it just isn't going to go away. People are being fucked by Brexit. Every day. How could it possibly go away as a political issue? I even left the Labour party over their new and improved stance on it, which I consider to be an infantilising refusal to state the truth. That truth being, that it was a harmful decision carried out in an even more harmful way. Maybe that's on remainers too, maybe if we'd gone at it less furiously, it would have allowed space for reconciliation - but there was never any indication from your side of the argument that this was going to be anything other than a smash and grab of the hardest Brexit possible - May announced as much almost on day fucking 1, and we resisted as intensely as we did because this is exactly where we knew we'd end up. A country run by a corrupt, incompetent party that does nothing other than enrich itself and its friends, whilst pulling the drawbridge up for the rest of us. They're cutting planned investments on infrastructure into the north, levelling up isn't happening, they don't give a fuck about the people who voted for this. Not a solitary fuck. And they are the ones we've just handed all of this power to, to cut new deals, to regenerate the economy, to paint a new vision for where this country goes. A vision with zero fucks given for ordinary people. And you can say "oh but we can vote them out again" except that 1 - the same lies that they spun to get Brexit to happen continue to work, and I'm quite certain that some people in this country could literally starve to death in the ballot station and their friends would step over their dead bodies and still vote Tory and 2 - it's still a 5 year prison sentence in people's lives, and our lives are not that fucking long. The EU was a fairly benign mess of an organisation which invested a lot in communities up and down the country, and which ensured prosperity for all those within it, to a reasonable degree. I do not on any level understand why anyone, ANYWHERE, can possibly think that Boris fucking Johnson or anyone presently within the front bench ranks of the Tory party is going to lead us to a more prosperous place than we already were. 10-15 years just to recover the damage, and then what, another 10-15 at best to see some sort of improvement? Almost an entire working lifetime. And Rees Mogg said it would be more like 50 years. All for some nebulous, high concept political idea about sovereignty that won't matter a single iota in 10 years time, let alone 30 or 50. The world will be completely different by then anyway. So it 100% feels like pointless suffering to some of us. I'm sorry mate, honestly, I don't at all think you're a bad guy but howay... is this really going to be worth all this misery?

Ciaomanheyman is busy right now so he is, but I'm his Irish cousin, YermanYerman, looks like the deal to get yer man from Linfield might be a step closer as the player has indicated he's prepared to give it a go in England if the club can have a word with the council and move him up the housing list if he moves over and......hang on now......is this the Sunderland forum?

But (seperate post so it doesnt look like im having a go at diego because he is actually lovely) I told all of you about Romano and how he works and Di Marzio just after the take over happened. So I'm going to do my best Luke Edwards impression and have a right old huff

Legit thought that was Lawrence Fox for a second 😬

Some real Jedi/Padawan stuff going on with these journalists in the foreign lands. Our local lads learned their trade drinking beer on the back of the bus.

A few years ago, I was really surprised by a man who did not know anything and who seemed to get absolutely all the signings right. Gianluca Di Marzio. He put breaking news and news on Twitter, with exclusive photos of the players ... And they ended up being fulfilled. The problem? The world of transfers is very complex. There are transfers that are closed, in the absence of only a signature, or a medical examination, and in the end they cannot be finalized. I know of some cases, like Cazorla. When he played for Arsenal, he spent a few days in Madrid. We have a mutual friend, we ate together ... He had undergone a medical examination with the Atletico. And he never signed. Something similar happened to Negredo in 2014 when he already had everything agreed. But Di Marzio seemed to get everything right. At that time I was working at El Mundo (the national newspaper with the most readers in Spain), covering Atlético de Madrid. It was 2014, the year of the World Cup in Brazil. And I remember seeing Di Marzio on the Brazilian beaches with players and former players as if he were everyone's friend. That guy had ties to everyone. The bad thing is that he realized that what he sold the most were simple unsubstantiated rumors. He spent a few years writing absolute garbage and was no longer reliable. Until he came back on the right path. For a couple of years, Fabrizio Romano, who is an apprentice of Di Marzio, has appeared. They worked together. Romano collaborates with clubs and agents. He may fail in signings, but everything he says that he is negotiating is usually true. Regrettably. Or almost everything. His apprentice is Matteo Moretto.

Top that, readers!

Sat next to CT at SJP in the 80s IIRC

I know that sometimes I'm over idealistic and I know at least 35% and more of the people in this country are willing to vote tory but I've been impressed to an extent by the community spirit so far especially the general support for lockdowns. However the stubborn number of selfish toddlers who point blank refuse to give a shit about other people citing freedom, basic lack of scientific knowledge or just plain cuntishness is absolutely maddening. As I've said before when it comes to threats to society on this level I'd have no problem with Chinese and beyond levels of authoritarianism in terms of internment, compulsory enforced isolation and even compulsory vaccination. If you think those measures are too much then I hope you aren't a British exceptionalist war worshipper because all of those are "normal" wartime measures. We're going to struggle with this shit for years now because of pandering to the toddlers by the toddlers in charge all because of the me, me, me generations.

As well as being partially wrong this is classic anti-vaxxer talk. Have you ever been to a Dr and thought this Dr is not very good? Or are all Drs equal? So is it that the handful that say the opposite to the thousands and thousands that are right because they're the only ones who are competent or not corrupt? Or are you listening to those not very good (or worse) Drs? One thing this pandemic has proved to me is how many misguided or logic lacking people are out there. Thankfully the majority of folk are considerate enough to take on the small risk that vastly reduces the much bigger risk for the elderly, immunocompromised or those with significant comorbidities. Hopefully we can move beyond this soon and the selfish, ill-informed can go back into hiding. The above paragraph is not a shot at you Asprilla, as I've only seen part of your opinion.

Isn't an ad hominem when you attack a person instead of addressing their points? We may require a different pseudo-intellectual Latin phrase for addressing someone's points then adding an extra dig just for the hell of it.

stunning. you never fail to deliver masterpieces.

Randomly bored so thought of a new chant. Trippier Do doo be-do-do Trippier Do do-do do Trippier Do doo de-do-do de-do-do de-do-do de-do-do-doodle do do do-doo do!

You going on tour like? Sorry, couldn't resist.

Have you had a competent medical professional diagnose this and advise you not to take the vaccine? Have they also determined that the magical anti-vaxxer vaccine that is always on the horizon is safe for you and your "specific medical reasons" or are you talking absolute horse shit?

The Saudis spent $1bn just to facilitate the £305m deal, yeh I can imagine they’re just going to sack it off now At the end of the day it’s about prestige and that’s what they’ll want to the club to be. They’ll want to improve on what Man City have done because they all pretty much hate each other in that region. All thanks to allied interference post WWII

This is some of the most controversial stuff I’ve ever seen

I'd be very excited to have Digne and Trippier on the flanks. Both create a shit ton of chances, chances that Wilson or Haaland will gobble up.

Aye. It’s mint being the panto villain, though.