Just need another 8 or 9 to fuck off with them. Although for the record Dacky is one I'd keep.

Nice to see we can still compete when the pressure disappears. Same old story from the same old players.

We're actually going to get Sunderland into the playoffs. I've said it before, but what a fucking cursed season.

A lot of current players who need to be shown the door for us to really progress. Too many without any real guts or heart. Sadly we don't seem have the resources for such a clear out.

Tbf you could argue the same as most games before January too. We just managed to win more of those.

My goodness we would have got utterly embarrassed had we made the playoffs. Merciful for all involved that we've fallen short.

Maybe JDT doesn't want Sunderland to get the last playoff spot either.

It's obvious a lot of people grossly overestimated how good the teams in this division were at the start of the season. Being wrong about expectations because of overestimation isn't a good reason to be thankful we're on the verge of throwing away a playoff spot in an absolutely pathetic manner for the second season running.

Who would have imagined us in this position when we were 4th and just beat Sheff Utd 1-0 on March 4th 🤨

Finding a striker as sole criteria might be as much as we can expect from the current recruitment team, let alone a good one.

Just spent some time trying out Heypi, a conversational AI chatbot. Honestly, it was scarily impressive. Not perfect but in terms of holding a realistic conversation, far superior to ChatGPT. To make a nerdy Star Trek reference, ChatGPT is like talking to Data, whereas Heypi is like talking to Data with the emotion chip installed. Probably the most interesting thing was that it knew when I was making ridiculous comments and reacted accordingly, at one point saying "🤣 you're just taking the piss now", which was unexpected (and correct, as I was). It's designed to be conversational so doesn't have the same usefulness as far as doing things like generating code or writing summaries, but for what it's designed for it seemed to work very well. I remember downloading Billy back in the early 2000s (http://www.leedberg.com/glsoft/billyproject.shtml) and it was mainly just amusing, not something to be taken seriously. Even more recent chatbots like Replika were OK, but not hugely advanced. Heypi feels like a massive step forward. I threw some pretty obscure topics at it, and it was able to converse about all of them with solid knowledge and in a fairly natural way.

It's a good point, but I suppose the main difference between the internet and AI is that, as far as the internet is concerned, it was more like having a massive, almost unlimited library at your disposal. The rules of the game, insofar as essays are concerned, didn't change. Plagarism was still not allowed (unless specified, I had a couple of essays where it was okay to copy and paste certain elements) and whilst it's obviously harder to detect when there's a hugely expansive library of content suddenly available - not all of which would be academically published - it was still somewhat easy to see when a student blatantly copied something that wasn't their own work. The only other major issue really was the rise of citing dubious sources like Wikipedia. That wasn't allowed when I was at uni in the mid-to-late 2000s, again unless specifically confirmed as being okay, and I'm guessing it's still the case today. AI, on the other hand, literally writes the essays for students. Even if students went to the internet and copied and pasted a bunch of stuff, there was still some level of research involved. With AI, not so. Just tell it the basics of what you need and it'll deliver it. Reword as you see fit and there you go, essay written - but without the student having any real knowledge of what they've submitted. In truth this ultimately hurts the student more than anything else, as it would with total plagarism from the internet, but whilst some AI generated work will be easy to spot, a lot won't if the student is clever enough with reworking to suit his or her writing style and general level of knowledge. I certainly wouldn't want to be in an academic position trying to work this out. If traditional plagarism is caught a distinct passage or paragraph can normally be highlighted, and if the person grading the essay is able to find the specific piece copied from then it's basically an open-and-shut case. Going to be a lot harder when accusing a student of submitting AI generated work, as that work will likely be pulled from a high amount of sources and given an original slant depending on the prompt entered. If the student says "nope, I wrote that"... not sure what anyone can do about that. You're right that ultimately academia is going to have to adapt, though. Essays may simply become a thing of the past, as they become too easy to generate from AI and therefore worthless. You wonder if the recent swing from exams to practical work might go back in the other direction, with more focus being put on exams instead, as it's far less likely a student is going to be able to get an AI to write them an essay during a closed exam, or answer questions. If the student doesn't have the knowledge, they simply won't be able to do it. We're then back at the point of it being unfair to students who aren't good in these kinds of pressure situations though, and a high level of reliance on exams could see otherwise good students getting poor grades. Probably too early at this point for the education sector to determine any concrete course of actions, but they're going to have to use some foresight and start tailoring the academic process to better reflect the way AI is going to fundementally change how society works. It's not a question of 'if' anymore, it's already here and it's only going to accelerate from here.

Yep, it's that often quoted 'striker's instinct' that separates the true goalscorers from other attackers. People don't talk too much about anticipation and positioning but you only have to watch the likes of Shearer, Cole, Van Nistelrooy, etc to see how valuable it is. Of course Shearer was also blessed with pace, strength, heading skills and basically every other attribute a striker would want, which is why he was one of the absolute best.

I think he was just addicted to lying tbh. Probably became increasingly emboldened as the local press never pulled him up on his bullshit and the national press (Henry Winter and a couple of others excepted) were more interested in doggedly painting Rovers fans as ungrateful thugs than focusing on Kean's nonsense.

When you watch Shearer's goals you notice how incredible his positioning was. A fair few of his goals were tap-ins or rebounds, but he scored them because he'd anticipated where the ball was going to be if the original shot failed and was always on hand to convert a rebound. It's a trait the likes of Gally and BBD simply don't possess, and probably never will. Dack is the closest we have in the current squad who has that ability to know where the ball is likely to bounce.

One of the big issues developing is students at various levels of education using ChatGTP and other AI variants to write their essays. There are tools which supposedly detect if a piece of work is AI generated, but they are far from perfect. You get the feeling it's going to become a pretty huge issue, and is going to be a real headache for educators.

It's an interesting question to ponder - is Big Sam's ability to get average to below-average players to overachieve and avoid relegation less laudable than Pep and Klopp's ability to lead elite players to winning trophies? We'll never know how Allardyce would have fared at a bigger club, and we'll never know how Pep or Klopp would fare trying to get a Leeds or a Sunderland out of danger.

Loves a bit of a wind up does Big Sam.

Allardyce will target the home games as wins, using whatever means necessary to grind out the three points, and any away points will be a bonus. Will be interesting to see if he can implement his methods successfully in such a short amount of time. He had longer at WBA and didn't get there, so his aura of invincibility has faded a little.

Completely agree. That's why all of our incoming transfers can't be based solely on the criteria of resale value and development. You need some hard-nosed, experienced grafters in there as well. We have literally zero of this in midfield, and defensively we have a relatively young and inexperienced backline. I've said it before, but we desperately need a player like Todd or Nelsen who has the know-how to manage the game on the pitch whilst refusing to allow heads or standards to drop. Players who genuinely seethe at the thought of losing, who can't stand themselves or their team mates putting in anything less than 100%. Players who may rock the boat on occasion, but always demand more from themselves and those around them, including the manager. I can't think of a single player in our team right now who fills that role. They'll have a go at each other occasionally on the pitch, but that isn't the same thing. It's an attitude that can't be coached, it's either in you or it isn't. It doesn't need to be in every player, but it needs to be in a couple of them at least.

In some ways it's impressive how much worse he's made an already poor Chelsea team.

One of the major things that does need to be addressed in the summer is the team's mentality/confidence issue, something that's been a problem for multiple seasons now. Our inability to come from behind to win, and our tendency to go on runs like the one we're on now, simply has to stop if we're going to seriously threaten the top six. It's unlikely we're going to have the budget to replace a significant amount of the squad - or maybe even a small amount of the squad - so this is going to need to be resolved in another way. The club as a whole surely has to understand that this is a major problem, and steps need to be taken to address it, if they aren't already doing so. From memory we're one of, if not the worst team in the top four divisions when it comes to gaining points from a losing position. Yet before our current run started we were excellent at gaining points if we scored the first goal, which very clearly points to an issue with the team's mentality. It doesn't necessarily come down to coaching specifically, and possibly falls more into the realms of sports psychology, but something needs to be done to sort this out. It's been going on for too long to be considered anything other than a deep-rooted problem.

Good post. I won't argue with much of it, other than to say I don't think we're completely consistent with our play - it can be very good, but it can also be laboured and aimless, and we've had some fortune in our passing around the back not being punished at times. You can see the point of what we're trying to do when we get it right though, which wasn't really the case under Mowbray. It just felt like we were having possession for the sake of it all of the time - until he realised it wasn't working and eventually moved away from that style. Tomasson meanwhile clearly has a vision for how he wants this to work, and there are occasions where we've seen that and it has been impressive, but I still think we need some crucial roles filled to fully realise Tomasson's ideas, and if the budget isn't there I'm not sure how that can be achieved. Probably the best example of us playing the way you described was Leicester when we absolutely tore them apart for 60 minutes or so. Huddersfield second half was another. We also had some good spells against Burnley in the first half where we really pinned them back, albeit not creating any real chances. So I don't disagree that the potential is there, and it goes without saying we can't expect full consistency in JDT's first season - particularly with so little decent attacking options available. I obviously hope you're right and next season will see us improve further, but there's a lot riding on the recruitment team to step up, and after January I don't trust them at all to deliver the goods on the attacking front.

It was very much the case under Mowbray, and I don't think it's really changed. That's not to say we're necessarily playing any worse than under Mowbray, I just don't think possession-based football suits these players as we don't fashion a huge amount of good chances - and as you noted, we struggle to score, so it's going to be even more difficult when a team is sat back and asking us to pose them questions. On the other hand, when counter-attacking the opposition team will be stretched when we break, making it easier to find gaps and provide better chances for our attackers to score. I think if the goal is for us to play a possession-based game we need players better suited to that style from an attacking perspective, and I'm not sure the budget is there to replace many of the current squad.

Much like with Mowbray, we're far less effective when we dominate possession and 'control' the game. The current squad of players we have are far better suited for counter attacking. Problem is that teams likely figured that out from the first half of the season, and adapted in the second half to allow us to have the ball and control the game, because evidence shows we struggle to score in that scenario.