Plissken

Russell Martin's move from Swansea to Southampton has hit a snag. Compensation is due to Swansea of £1.75m if he is taken by a Premier League club or £1.25m if it is a Championship club. The Saints are arguing that they are a Championship club right now, when officially they aren't until the Premier League and EFL AGMs meet this week.

Brendan Hunt did a Reddit AMA.

That “mess” was losing 5 games all season and finishing just 14 points clear of third place and a +49 goal difference. And fine, you had twelve players but it’s not like Celtic didn’t have a pot to piss in. Spent £16m that summer.

Or another way of putting it is Celtic have won 11 of the last twelve titles and 5 of the last seven seasons have been a domestic treble so he’s batting slightly below the average. Celtic don’t buy expensive players because they don’t have to and the vast amount more than they get than anyone else means they are cushioned from any mistakes anyway. He’s a decent manager but you have to really go some to not win with Celtic.

My plan, which worked spectacularly well!

Oh and most of the characters get wonderful closure but when I gasped and the Mrs shouted “yes!”

I knew I shouldn’t have watched that episode while chopping onions in a dusty room inside a tear gas factory.

That’s using the word “game” in the same way that people use the word “golf”. Or “medal”. And when I say “people” I mean “Americans”. Also the word “jank” and its variations can piss right off.

Not forgettable compared to recent years, where City have run up cricket scores.

It's not the resolution, it's similar to that sort of tilt/shift effect that was all the rage a while back, but where the mid-ground is incredibly sharp focus.

There is a new camera filter (?) that they started in the World Cup. Basically copying the FIFA in-game cut scene style.

Lovely comment from elsewhere - "So telegraphed that even Jermaine Jenas saw it coming".

He's lucky he's in one piece. #PRAY4JACK

It moved towards the ball and made contact though. By the letter of the law, it's the correct decision. It's the Ashley Barnes vs Spurs last season scenario. No-one saw it and it didn't affect anything until some twat with a monitor and a replay button got involved.

Because it works. The next ref that has to do a game with a Mourinho team will have this in the back of his mind. And it's not just Mourinho, it's the Big Clubs who do this because they benefit from it. The system is set up for them to benefit from it because the TV and press chase viewers and clicks, which means putting Man Utd/Arsenal/Liverpool cheerleaders in positions where they don't even pretend to analyse a match from a neutral position. Everyone is dependent on these people for access so they write down whatever ref whinge there is this week. (After all, the moment Ferguson threw a hack out of a press conference for asking a question he didn't like - and the rest of them stayed - was the moment he knew he could say and so whatever he wanted. And who can blame him?) And the referees do not have any backup from the authorities. FIFA, UEFA, the PL and FA could all crack down on this kind of thing if they wanted to but they themselves are too in thrall to the Big Clubs (because that is where the money comes from) to do anything about it. After the QPR game I did a thing about how Ainsworths tactics are designed to overwhelm the officials and actually stop the game from even happening - Mourinho did/does exactly the same thing. The goal is similar to Boris Johnson - be so brazenly corrupt and overwhelming with misbehaviour that 99% of things are gotten away with and by the time you even catalogue it all, it is far too late. The authorities need to grow a pair and actually properly clamp down on it, with proper punishments, including retrospective ones. My feeling is that if it disrupts the TV product too much - meaning if Wednesday night becomes the norm - then that is the point things will change. No-one tunes in to watch the game effectively stop, which is what happened in extra time. Also, I can thoroughly recommend this referees blog - http://refereetales.blogspot.com/2023/05/ref-why-wont-you-talk-to-me.html - he's a semi-pro ref in the lower levels in Germany and also a long term writer for When Saturday Comes. It's a fantastic weekly read.

On a similar note, trying to decipher what Seb Bach is singing on any Skid Row song is an exercise in patience, but according to Apple Music, the line in "18 And Life" is "your crime is time". I've always heard it as "Your crown is time" and I prefer my version as it absolutely fits the song.

Mourinho is going to go down in football history as the modern Don Revie. Successful, but football made an effort to largely forget him due to the way he won.

Christ, watching this lot, who the hell would want to be a ref?

Me too. You can hear the worlds biggest bus reversing into position.

I was in the IoM at the start of the month - parts of the mountain road were closed in preparation. Seeing lampposts and walls covered in crash padding is something you don't forget, especially when it doesn't look like anywhere near enough. The course itself is a great thing to drive, the drop down from The Bungalow to the finish line is fantastic in even the crappiest of cars, I can't imagine what an adrenaline rush it must be on a racing bike.

Bring him home, Vincent! He'll not come our way, but wherever he does go he'll be an asset. Villa I think would be a good fit as a club and a style.

Oh, and they pulled off possible the longest setup for a joke that I've seen for ages.

I totally get that this was a little syrupy and all that, but I don't care because this show has earned it. Some spoilery comments

Iheanacho has spent his entire career being the next player to break through, hasn't he? Looking up his stats, he's been at Leicester for six seasons and scored one goal every five games.

What are the numbers for 18th though - that’s more significant. The one time my lot finished 17th I think they were 10 clear.