Rayvin

One thing I will say - I wish I felt able to be part of the joy around that whole event. I wish they/this basis for running a country represented me, I wish it was something I could feel proud of and join with my fellow citizens in. As it is, it's just a depressing reminder of everything that's wrong with our nation. There is much to be proud of the UK for, but none of this is it.

Were we not getting 50k+ while we were shit and getting relegated..?

Good thread. Explains it better. Also seems to make clear that we're having our "anyone but trump" moment. Fully deserved for the Tories.

Independents seem to be doing quite well.

Think his argument was more that the Labour vote hasn't gone up, but the Tory vote has collapsed - so while the margin of Labour's victory is significant, the actual won votes are not. Maybe all those pensioners forgot their ID. In the end it's another year to run anyway, we might well end up with the second coming of the great fiasco himself before we get to a GE.

So the interpretation of today's results by the BBC's election guru has Labour 20 seats short of a majority come the GE. Honestly I thought Labour were further along than that, wasn't polling north of 40%? If it's not a majority, who do they get into bed with?

Well we weren't going to, but since you asked so nicely we'll see what we can do mate

Arsenal 1 up against Chelsea. Didn't realise they had a midweek, that's fortunate for us.

Sorry, what is going on here? Shoot me the discord link, I'm curious.

Not to labour the point but to put it another way, we have almost as much chance of overtaking Arsenal, as Liverpool do of catching us. And if we win on Sunday, we will actually have a higher chance of the former. Mind you this change to being a successful team has been so sudden that I can see why people are struggling with it

The lowest we can finish at the moment is 8th - that's based on simple maths, not taking into consideration that some teams beneath us will play each other and therefore can't all have perfect runs. At the very least, if we get 3 more points, we've qualified for Europe one way or another. I would have taken that at the start of this season, in fact I think I predicted 7th. But realistically... We are going to get at least 4 points from Leicester and Leeds. That puts us on 69. 13 points ahead of where Liverpool are now, with 5 games remaining for them. So they would have to win all 5 of their remaining games even if we lost to Arsenal, Brighton and Chelsea. And tbh, I would imagine we'll get 6 points from Leicester, Leeds anyway - and 1 point minimum from Chelsea and/or Brighton even if we can't beat Arsenal. So that's the whole final act of this - we get champions league if we beat Leeds, Leicester, and get 1 fucking point from 2 home games and an away game against midtable Chelsea. We're fine.

How did he lose the England gig again? All I remember about that was the pint of wine

Are the Lib Dems back on the left of Labour yet? Must be getting close to that.

Starmer throwing a few more pledges out of the window this morning. Taxes on the top 5% will be unchanged since they're the ones struggling at the moment after all. Also the promise he made on tuition fees has been abandoned because the economic situation has now changed. Spain has made digital nomad visas more accessible by the way, for anyone wanting to abandon ship.

So IMO they're on the 5 stages of grief with this. Somewhere between denial and anger. And they're going to be there forever, which is why they're so hilarious. They could get over this tomorrow by just saying "aye you know what, wish it was us - gonna be great for them, really jealous but nothing I can do about it marra. Just gonna support me own team and crack one out over a seagull" Just own it you fucking losers, it's the denial that makes it so painful for you

Weirdly I find myself very confident about this particular game in amongst the others - Arsenal were destroyed by the atmosphere at SJP last season as much as the football. And as a club, they have form for this. They've always been lacking 'the minerals' for a proper fight and that's still apparent given their capitulation this season with respect of the title. Not only do I think we should win this, I think we'll fucking shred them. I did want them to win the league rather than City tbh, just for variety - but they're getting poleaxed at the weekend.

For what it's worth, I'm very confident. We'd have to go on an absolute howler of a run to fuck this up now. There is not a single game left that I don't think we're at least capable of winning, and a draw with Brighton is as good as a win in terms of our position anyway.

Is it not 8 from the remaining 15 to be certain? Assuming Brighton are 7 points behind us on even games anyway. 2 wins and 2 draws would do it.

Credit to Howe here mind. That's a few games now he's rescued by making good decisions at the right moments. As far as I'm concerned he's world class. A step closer now, a banana skin averted. We've got this.

Gordon will come good once Eddie has managed to get into him a bit but we can't risk the whole team's efforts to indulge that now - good decision from Howe.

Reading this thread, you'd think Gordon was the only one playing for us.

Ah true, forgot we have to play them too. That should do it then, we won't lose to Brighton at SJP.

They have to play Man Utd as well tbf - if they win that, it's a bigger problem for the Mancs than us.

I think if they hadn't lost to Forest the other day Brighton could still be a concern. But let's be real, they only look in any way threatening if we go on the worst run of form we'll have had to have been on all season. Neither them nor Liverpool is clawing back this deficit without some serious upsets on our end.

This is what gets me too. It's almost as if he thinks football clubs evolve organically out of the virtues of the city they're based in, and that we've broken form by getting taken over by a commercially minded entity. Prior to this the premier league was made up of clubs building up from the grassroots only, and players were volunteers! Fucking muppet. No we wouldn't be winning as many games without Saudi ownership, it's true. But without an American billionaire bailing them out, Sunderland wouldn't even fucking exist. So nelford_safc, we'll give up the Saudis if you lot collectively bin yourselves eh? EDIT - actually I take that back, their obsession is that fucking deep I suspect they'd probably take that offer and run with it. Better not to exist in a world where Newcastle don't win things, than to exist in one where we do.