bluebruce

I appreciate the principled stance, but apparently the death tolls reported are hugely exagerrated. They're basically the number of total migrant workers who have died in Qatar (from all professions, and for all reasons) between 2010 and 2019. Well, the 15k figure is, the 6.5k figure you've got is the ones from just India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Apparently only 3 have actually died on World Cup construction sites (not counting related projects like new roads, hotels etc), rising to 40 if non-work-related deaths of construction workers are included. Qatar has problems with human rights and treatment of migrant workers, no question, and should never have been awarded this WC, but the figures we've been hearing are highly misleading. If they were really as high as that, I wouldn't watch either. https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-how-many-people-have-died-building-the-qatar-world-cup/a-63763713

On the other hand, our players are knackered because of the fixture congestion caused by the World Cup.

I think this is the most pertinent question of all. I'd almost forgotten that he said this, due to the way we have played since. My only explanation for why this has happened is I think we perhaps play around at the back in an attempt to draw the opposition onto us, leaving space for the counter-attacking that actually suits our game. I've had to miss a lot of games lately due to work commitments, but from those I've seen and heard about, it seems like our success in games hinges almost entirely on whether this works. If teams press us high effectively, it's suicide and we get bummed. If they try to close us down but do it badly, we get to hit them on the counter. Might explain why we either win or lose, as we effectively have a single point of failure.

I don't think it's got anything to do with him knowing how much it means to the fans, whether he does or doesn't. It's not like he's going to have intentionally made the wrong decisions because he thought this game meant less to us than it did. He made the decisions he thought might carry the day, and they absolutely didn't. That's plenty enough for him to be pilloried, we don't need to analyse whether he knows what it means to us.

We tried to have him play like that last season, and he really wasn't very good at it unfortunately.

A bloke that JoeH has worked with before tweeted about getting the job. But I've not seen an official announcement personally.

Neither Wharton brother starting in the derby against the dingles? Not so sure about that.

Six years huh? One more and the dingles would need both hands to count it.

Valid points. It's a tricky one...also worth considering that our second half of the season collapse was a Mowbray staple. We don't know if JDT is prone to the same. I think BBD is also more important to the team than Rothwell was. Without him our goalscoring options are a tad threadbare. I'd back him to be more professional about sticking around for another 6 months too. Whichever choice is made about him, the only way it doesn't come in for criticism is if we get promoted.

What GB would accept and what Venkys would accept may be two entirely different propositions.

Watching the sheer amount of penalties there, with only the last one missed, is just ridiculous.

Yep, I was about to post after JRC scored that I'd been nervous about most of these takers but they'd all delivered...decided not to post it as I knew I'd jinx it!

Yep, you've got to be really good at those to make them work. Think a lot of players believe they're better than they are these days.

The crossbar is going out on the lash with the lads in the big smoke tonight. It won't need to pay for any drinks.

You should have just named the lineup except for Pears.

He is a Danish man, he's better than Zidane (at managing)...

The image in my head is hilarious.

Why, did he transform into a crossbar?

Thank fuck the lad hit the bar, think they could have taken 100 penalties against Pears and notched them all if they were on target! Also thank fuck my radio battery held out until about 3 seconds after the miss!

Wahey! Through!

Hope that gets the other miss out his head at least.

Crazy shootout.

BBD scoring against a Prem side after less than half an hour on the pitch won't do his market value any harm.

Hopefully Hyam is a penalty pro. Fairly sure we still lose this on pens, but it should be morale boosting to finish level with a Prem side. Yeh not a full strength one but neither are we.

Well, I guess now we know why.