joey_big_nose

Agree with this, talented players should get games. The whole team management thing where we play grafters over more mercurial players has hardly worked out for us. King, Cairney etc. were never properly tried. Quality like Chapman should get a regular game. We have enough water carriers like Smallwood, Evans, Bennett etc. to allow at least a couple of more risky ones in the team. Probably Mowbray sees himself as limited to one of either Chapman or Dack but I think we should try both at once. If it doesn't work he can sub one off.

With PAYE income it is straightforward, but with earnings from any other area it is a total nightmare. They essentially rely on self reporting of income backed up with occasional use of auditors Therere isn't a simple way for government to check what is and isn't income outside of PAYE. For example - if you borrowed £200 from your gran, how does the government know that is a loan rather than income? The only way they know it is a loan, short of sending the auditors round, is that you do not declare it as income. It all largely works because by and large people are honest and decent. Though of course there are plenty who aren't.

I have to say this sort of thinking is very selfish, sad and narrow minded. If everyone tried to circumvent the tax system the whole thing would fall apart, it relies on good faith to function. Without that good faith we would have no public services or society. That some scrotes exploit loop holes in the system for their own benefit is wrong, and they deserve to be thought of and treated as utter tossers, including Ferguson.

I don't think they would take a risk on blocking UK banks/billing address as plenty of custom will be from expats who live abroad but will pay via UK bank accounts with a UK billing address.

I sympathise with your point of view, but to limit the internet in the way Tiering suggest would entail effective locking down the technology easily available to people and accepting a massive productivity impact on individuals and businesses. I can't see that happening. The internet is the most radically decentralised network ever created. Any effective regulation of it is doomed to failure. May will have some success in getting Google and Facebook to moderate content, but she we will get nowhere in terms of blanket denial of access.

If I understand it correctly it is virtually impossible to counter a VPN without a total register of all IP addresses. For example - say the government made Wikipedia illegal. They could ask all ISPs to block wikipedia. But the ISPs would not know you were connecting to wikipedia if you are on VPN as the only address the ISP would see is the VPN IP address, not the end website (wikipedia) IP address. Even if they did manage to work a way around that, immediately - due to demand - someone would quickly mirror wikipedia at a new IP address not blocked by the ISPs. Then the government would need to find that new address and block it. Continue ad infinitum. The only effective way to lock it all down would be to somehow register, track and audit all IP addresses as we do - for example - with number plates and cars. The government does not have the resources to do that, and cannot do that for overseas sites, and it would be a huge productivity drain for all businesses and individuals to constantly register websites with the government and sign off on content. In my opinion the government, if it could, would have closed down Torrents, Hate Speech sites, extreme pornography etc years ago. It isn't a lack of will to do it. It's just that it isn't technologically feasible. I recognise you are more technically able than myself, so look forward to being corrected, but that is as I understand it above.

I can't see how they can do anything about the VPN issue. The Chinese government can't do anything effective to stop citizens using VPN, so I think the EFL/club is not going to have much hope.

It will be interesting what happens as the service provider and clubs must know a huge number of fans in the UK will vpn it, plus a flurry of websites will start up and mirror the streams for free. Ultimately they must have decided that its worth the risk. To be honest for circa £10 a month even fans who go to all the home games will probably pay this on top.

Fair point well made.

Well he has experience of saving clubs in our position, and promotion on his CV. Total disaster at Celtic but apart from that he has done okay. Could be worse. What we really need is Venkys out.

Used to be no one left us to be more successful right through to the Hughes era - just Duff I think. Bellamy, Bentley, Samba, Niall etc all went on to the same or lower level. Since then we seem to have let quite a few through our fingertips. Saw Olsson at Swansea have a good game against Liverpool.

Theres no way with either Bowyers squad or the one we have now we should be relegated. Most of the teams in the division would love Evans, Marshall, Conway, certainly Rhodes, Duffy, Hanley now Watt whose come in is coveted. If we get relegated it is managerial incompetence. Its a top half/ mid table unbalanced squad marginally underperforming under Bowyer. PL needs to bring it up two levels.

I think that is the worst contract we have ever handed out. Even worse than Best, Murphy or Grella.33k a week, 4 years, he was thirty and incredibly injury prone. Totally insane.

O'Sullivan is an attacking player but if he's the best of our attacking youth then you can hardly blame Bowyer for not playing them.Since Dunn and Duff came through, fifteen years ago, we've produced three decent attacking players - Derbyshire, Hoilett and Paul Gallagher. Its a really poor return. I suppose you could add Judge to that, not that we made use of him. So four in fifteen years. Not great.

A few points here is 1) Guthrie and Akpan are both new to the club and Evans was coming back from serious injury. To a certain extent Lowe did not have competition for his place. When he returns (which will be a long long time from now) that will have significantly changed. Bowyer signed Guthrie and Evans so he needs to be given credit for finding players who are showing real quality and are a significant improvement over Lowe and Williamson. 2)Olsson was legitimately dropped as he had a poor start to the campaign and previous to this season Spurr has actually been quite good. It was not controversial when he was picked ahead of Olsson. He then played very poorly, arguably should have been dropped before the QPR game then got injured, Olsson came back in 3) Everyone was saying (including me) Hanley should be dropped end of last season. Bowyer stuck by him and he has been very good. It's hardly the most damning set of management decisions is it? You could say Lowe would never get dropped, but if that is the case why have we signed three central mids in the window? That's suggests major changes were forecast in that area. It's a bit of a rubbish argument at the moment. Probably need to wait for Lowe or Spurr to actually come back and be put in the team ahead of better players before really tearing into this one.

Yes, he's playing the best alround football of his time at Rovers in my opinion. Looks stronger back to goal and better in his movement.It really suits him having a physical and mobile striker alongside like Koita. I think Gestede was too stationary for him.

Taylor must have a decent chance of getting in the side ahead of Marshall. How far is he off first team fit?

As phillipl has said goals is the absolute number one problem. No one even looks vaguely like scoring double figures except for Rhodes. Marshall, our second biggest goal threat, has been hopeless. If we do get out of embargo in Jan the owners have to fund enough to get someone who can score around 15 from Jan to May. Or we are sunk. Koita getting a goal would be really really useful.

Yeah I've found them hilarious. Obviously I'm easily pleased but hey...

Yes, it does look the goal posts have moved...

Great post, I agree with it 100%.I saw enough in the Wolves game to think we will be okay this year. Defence is still a total mess but Koita looks a handful, Guthrie is what we need in midfield, while an attacking setup of Rhodes, Conway, Barrow and Marshall in addition to the two names above looks pretty bloody good to be honest. Hardly relegation material. Of course lose Rhodes and take Guthrie out with an injury and its a different story.. If Bowyer pulls it together we will pick up wins. Theres no real reason to doubt he will as he did so the last two years. Certainly not to the point we get relegated. A more likely relegation scenario, in my humble opinion, is if we pot Bowyer and make a really bad appointment as we did with Berg, Ince and Appleton. That's what I worry about. I'd like to know who would pick the replacement.

The appointment of Ince was totally mental, really blotted Williams' copybook.

I can't see us going down unless Rhodes leaves or gets a long term injury. Essentially we have the same squad as last season minus Gestede. His loss isn't enough to put us in the bottom three. I can see us finishing anywhere from 8th to 14th.I do feel a quality manager could get us into the playoffs.

Give Bowyer the perm job so Venkys can focus on selling up and fooking off. if they do stay, god i hope not, then they need to sack shagnew and shabby, find a good football MD and allow him to build a management team.

Wow - surely that has to be some sort of a record?