Rayvin

I really think he is though He seems very precious about criticism (as displayed against Southampton last year) and that wasn't even directed at him. I don't think we'll have to worry about him taking over long term since he won't have the mental fortitude to do so anyway.

The fact that this statement was needed suggests to me that Carver is struggling with the negativity. Not all it's cracked up to be this managing lark. He strikes me as the sort of guy who'd just start coming apart at the seams if the fans push it too hard, he's a really emotional guy.

Agreed, this is how it comes across for me as well. I can see what he thinks he was trying to say, but the way he's said it leaves very little room for misinterpretation.

He might well be their best forward though, save for Defoe. I suppose they're hoping he'll come good... I'll reckon he'll end up in the lower leagues, based on what we've seen so far. Probably with Sunderland though.

They managed it much more quickly than Ashley did though, admittedly with the bonus of Gareth Bale. I think he could stand to speculate further while remaining true to his principles.

See, I don't believe in any predetermined natural order of things with respect of football clubs. I think all clubs have the chance to move forward from the positions they find themselves in - look at Spurs who were, for the longest time, around the same level as us. There's absolutely nothing special about the way Spurs are run as a club, no great amount of money backing them, etc. They're just run more ambitiously than we are. Sure, that expenditure only claims 4 or 5 places over our heads each year, but they're really well positioned for opportunistic place grabs in the table. Looking at the table currently in fact, we only really have a top 2. The old top 4 is struggling to assert itself at all. As for Sunderland, they need to be relegated and to follow it up with a purge and reassessment of philosophy. They have too many crap cloggers to be able to transform the team from their current position, and that's why they fail to move on each year, regardless of the manager. I don't think we're in the same position as Sunderland though - we're always, frustratingly, one or two players away from being a team that can challenge in and around the top 4. Although we also now need a philosophy ourselves.

Thing is, how do you go about collapsing your lung? Surely that's the kind of injury that can only come about through some kind of gung ho (I'm looking at you Tiote) training ground challenge. It's not like we all walk around at risk of our lungs collapsing. Which is just unfortunate from the club's point of view. Doesn't sound like it's anything to do with his original injury.

Greece has a long running feud with Turkey of course, but I can't think of any other reasons why they would need military expenditure on that scale. That said, Turkey is well armed and Greece had decades of enslavement, or so I'm (perhaps not reliably) told by Greek people, at the hands of the Turkish, maybe that's contributive. Not saying that there isn't something screwy going on with Germany, but are the Greeks ever militaristically involved in the sorts of things that the rest of Europe gets embroiled in?

I think it makes it more interesting anyway - you get to see some of the smaller teams making a serious go of things. In Bradford's case, if their game is televised in the Quarters, they'll get a serious influx of money which will do them a lot of good. On the other hand, fielding weakened teams diminishes the quality of the competition, but looking at it honestly, the players at the really big clubs don't even bother trying even when they are fit.

If they beat us, they'll stay up. If not, I think they're 50:50 to go down. At the end of the day though, I don't think it makes much difference. Even with our period of stagnation, we can't compare to the lack of success and general crapness that has been on show at Sunderland for the past few years. Whether they're relegated or not, they'll continue to drift on in obscurity.

On a serious note though, who could they possibly get in to replace him now... Sherwood was the last person of any vague amount of credibility (and he's really scraping the bottom of the barrel there).

What is it with Bradford and fucking cup runs? It's actually a bit disconcerting...

Ah I miss Double Dash - it was a really underrated game with my main enjoyment coming from having two vs two where the person in the back is trying to kick the shit out of everything that gets anywhere near the kart I have a Wii (now in the cupboard, admittedly) and Wii U (I'm sticking with Nintendo, they've given me such enjoyable games over the years - although I also play PC and have a PS3) and the Mariokart games on those have many of the older tracks on them anyway. And surely you can get hold of a DS easily enough, they have MK on those as well. I'm hoping they make another F-Zero some day as well.

Believe me mate, I'm entirely sympathetic to your points. I don't know if there's an agenda to downplay anti-muslim killings in the news, is all. On literally everything else you've said there, I'm in agreement. Israel in particular.

Just wondering if anyone on here plays any previous era games, or if you're all just keeping pace with the new releases? I've just redownloaded Freelancer for the PC which was one of my first space age games. Still think as a flight sim/space shooter it hasn't been surpassed by anything that remains on the market. As an aside, I reckon that this thread will live or die by how many similar retro games we've all played. If we're spread out all over the place this isn't going to get very far. Aside from Freelancer, I've also got Majora's Mask lined up for the 3DS when that's available. Truly underrated Zelda game.

Duuude....

WTF you need a shaman for this drug as well??

I don't even know what it is...

I think I'd actually be up for this, possibly only in an observational capacity though...

I'm laughing now but I bet I'm doing yoga by the end of the year...

I bet fucking yoga has something to do with this...

Immigration...?? Surely people can't just be suddenly attempting to live more healthily??

That's actually pretty surprising... wonder what's driving that?