Rayvin

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

Gemmill is a full on Yoga evangelist these days.

I'm going to tentatively suggest that Parky may have meant our chances under Pardew...? At least that's where I was in agreement with him.

Very true. Although we wouldn't even need someone as expensive as Lukaku - Remy himself would have been £13m cheaper and more effective (had we signed him when QPR did).

Yeah I wouldn't argue with that, but teams the size of RM and Chelsea have three or four world class strikers. Wouldn't it make sense if one of those was a Lukaku - a player who could be brought out for the counterattacking games? I think my point is that it's hard to judge him when playing in a system that isn't well suited to him. Weirdly, I think he'd do better playing for us, given our systems. If he went to a team that played good counterattacking football, he'd probably get picked up by an elite team in order to allow them the option of employing a similar system. Or he could just be pants. On the wider point, I agree that they're an interesting case. The thing is though, they could still feasibly do very well in the Europa League this year, and a 12th place finish plus an EL trophy wouldn't be a bad result for them. Wouldn't that also give them CL quals?

Real Madrid counter attack don't they? As do Chelsea when playing anyone half decent. Or they did at least... Same for Dortmund.

Yep, seems like a fair assessment. I'd just add though that they've had Pienaar and Osman out injured for a while, and they're supposed to be the guys who link defence with attack - could be missing their presence (although you'd think Barkley, with all the hype, should be capable). Does Martinez play to Lukaku's strengths though? He's one of those players who wants to be running onto the ball isn't he? That's more of a hallmark of counterattacking sides, and Martinez's possession game won't fit that particularly. He'll be being expected to work himself into space in the box instead.

Their forum (Everton are my second team) seem to feel that he is both guilty of being out of form, and also suffering from starvation of service. Either way, not a great situation for the club.

I feel like a "This is why we can't have nice things" would be appropriate here.

As an aside this place is very quiet today, I think we're missing all the quizzes... have these been discontinued?

I think people would definitely make those assumptions if the media reported that the killers were Muslims - I just don't know how often reports of non-religiously motivated killings by Muslims ever make reference to their religion. Ultimately, how would anyone even know they were Muslim unless this was something that they were broadcasting. I suppose I could be convinced of this if I could see some evidence of murders that specifically make mention of the religion of the killers without it being the actual justification for the attack (as described by the killers themselves).

If they're all in one column, can you just set it up so that the cell next to them has the formula: =A1(or whatever the cell you're trying to divide is)/1000 Then you just copy that down for all of the cells beneath.

well, that's you told TheRollingStones

Higher as in us? He's still relatively unproven though is the thing. No guarantee he'll actually be much cop.

Clement is apparently QPR's summer target. Not sure how good he is but certain he'd be better than Carver.

I'm not sure if that's true. I do take your wider point here, and fully agree that there is a double standard, but in random killings/rapes etc, the papers will quite often refer to 'five men', 'the attacker' etc rather than noting ethnicity or cultural factors. I can't recall seeing any murders in the papers that were carried out by Muslims who didn't have a religious motive that they were attempting to draw attention to.

The missus was right...that's the worst possible eventuality.

We're miles off getting relegated. I reckon Burnley and Leicester will go down, with any of QPR, Villa or Hull going with them. Hopefully Villa.

If this has been posted already then apologies, I don't know if you guys follow David Squires on the Guardian (and it happened while I was away). Highly amusing though, especially the final two panes http://www.theguardian.com/football/picture/2015/jan/26/david-squires-on-the-fa-cup-fourth-round-shocks

That's probably true to be honest.

Heh, so maybe they're thinking we'll be so grateful to be rid of Carver in the summer that it won't matter who they hire.

WTF is he actually doing there... It looks like he's holding his hand up for some instruction to the team, but that he has to keep staring at it in order to be sure his hand is doing what he thinks it is. FFS...