Rayvin

They're 12th and 8 points clear. I mean, I'm not saying it can't happen but I think there's a few other teams I'd give the nod to before them. I still think Watford along with Burnley and Norwich.

They're not going down man They never were.

I mean you shouldn't laugh really, this is our society fucking imploding around us, but even so it is kind of amusing.

What the fuck is going on there Also what's the deal with Arcuri now being one of those conservative elite paedo hunters?

Clearly I didn't appreciate how culturally significant 'singles' were, back in the 1800s or whenever they were mainstream

You'd be waiting a long fucking time given the speed of this industry

While I appreciate the sentiment, publishing is currently up to its eyeballs in ebooks and AI assisted workflows At least in academia which is my focus area anyway. You are quite right though, touché indeed.

In fairness, if I'm representative of publishing as an industry he's 100% right. I'm yet to meet a Brexiteer publisher and if his book had been submitted to me it would have been right in the bin on principle.

"The cat was screaming for its life"

What a complete waste of resources 'singles' were mind I thought that even when I was 10 years old, just waited for the album.

He's with Reading now is he..? Is it working out or just the normal? EDIT - normal being: injured and useless.

Agreed - this is one of the most winnable games we have, and we should aim for all points. And if we manage it, we'll suddenly be looking a lot happier.

Just having a browse through RTG and the usual fighting is going on between people who are outraged at where the club is, and those who just don't want to hear it. The thing that it got me thinking about was just how similar all 4 of their seasons in L1 have been - iirc they've always been in positions 3-6, always with a game or two in hand that would potentially put them in the automatic slots, and always somehow incapable of capitalising on it. They've had multiple different managers who have all more or less achieved the same outcome. Maybe it's just not going to happen. I mean if they did go up, on this evidence they'd be struggling at the bottom of the championship. I'm not totally sure of how much overlap there is between lower champ and upper L1, but I'm assuming it's not more than a couple of teams either way. Eventually you would think they won't be able to sustain the current placing in L1 - and it that happens and they sink to midtable, how long before they build the next team that's going to be capable of pushing out? And how long then in the championship recalibrating, consolidating, and pushing up? They could be out of the top flight for 20 years based on how this is going, it's incredible.

They do, but then in January they've got Burnley and Villa at home, which could be a fairly routine 4 points, maybe 6.

Kinda bored so I just used one of those table predictor things to see how December will look based on at least what I think some of the results will be. I have us bottom of the league on 11 points by mid-Jan which is the earliest we can probably expect transfers to come in. 4 points behind 17th and a further 4 points behind 16th. So IMO it becomes a 4 way fight between ourselves, Norwich, Burnley and Watford. While it remains a 4 way deal, I think it's possible we survive. Only 4 points back by mid-Jan wouldn't be too bad - and I've pretty much assumed the worst throughout, I mean we may well shithouse a point or 3 here and there anyway. EDIT - a better way of looking at it perhaps might be that if we get a single win between now and mid-January, I don't think we'll go down

All fair, this in particular I'll agree with vehemently.

Could it not be a relevant asset in terms of advertising for other parts of the portfolio? i.e. the same thing Ashley was doing. I'm just saying I'm wary of getting carried away until we've seen them walk the walk. Granted it's far too early to expect them to have done that so far, but on the other hand it's far too early to assume we'll be a superclub, especially since they haven't outright said it (and yes, I do appreciate your suggested reasons on why they could have done that, but while that stance would indeed be sensible, it doesn't prove anything). I would be very encouraged by the signings you've mentioned there. Equally though, I wouldn't write the superclub vision off even if we did hardly anything in January and went down. We just don't know what this will look like in the end.

I would have agreed a few weeks back but I'm now starting to wonder if this is a lot less about sportwashing and a lot more about PIF diversifying its holdings. If it's the latter then who knows what their angle is longer term - but given how things have gone so far I actually believe it's quite possible that they didn't really give due consideration to how much work would be required of them to turn us into a competitive club. The fact that they've come in with no one on board who is really abreast of the football side of things continues to bother me on this front. The fact that we're kind of making it up as we go along doesn't suggest 'future global heavyweight'. I do want to make clear that if they turn us into a vaguely competitive club that stands a chance of winning literally any trophy in my lifetime, I'll be more than happy, Delighted even. But I'm going to stop assuming that we're going to be a superclub until we actually start looking like one. Until the money is spent and the plans firm up, I'm reserving judgment.

Liverpool and City challenge each year, and sometimes they win it. It would be quite possible for them to challenge each year without winning it though - see us in the 90s as a reference. All I'm saying is that there is a clearly defined semantic difference between saying we're challenging for honours and that we intend to win them. Maybe that difference is too much for this guy. I would imagine West Ham see their goal as challenging for the title btw. Doesn't mean they're ever going to win it.

Challenging for the title means being in the conversation - I think that puts you top 3. I mean fair enough, but challenging isn't winning, is all I'm saying.

I don't think we should entirely dismiss the idea that we may not be intending to become the superclub that we have all assumed we're aiming to be though. No one has outright said we're aiming for total dominance in the style of City or PSG.

Maybe he wanted heavy spending in January to keep us up and the owners are resigned to relegation if it comes. I could see a year in the championship putting him off.

Fucking Stevenage Our lower league nemesis. Although I guess Sunderland deserve an honourable mention there.

Delighted Thank fuck for that.

It's in the bag lads, Uri has us covered.