I'd be OK if I only had to sit on the bench. We don't pay these pro footballers thousands a week to sit on the bench, we pay them to be up to the task when called upon. Pears isn't.

Didn't say otherwise, just that a WB has less defensive responsibility in a 3/5 than in a 4.

He will be exposed less not more, if it's wingbacks in a back 5, which it likely would be as wingbacks in a 4 is too cavalier. That's the whole point of the 3 CBs, to compensate for the fact the wingbacks are fully expected to spend more time further up the pitch. The WBs defensive attributes become less important and we would mostly judge him on his attacking output, whereas a fullback I'll mostly judge on their defensive contributions. Both still matter for both roles, but the balance shifts.

Him being a young player with minimal appearances doesn't mean he's on a par with Vale.

True but also may be a sign our move isn't either.

He definitely doesn't write well. I was writing better than that by the end of Primary School. The articles are littered with grammatical and other errors that rile me no end. The editor should take some flak for that too though. If you mean his footballing opinions, I think they have merit from time to time and he occasionally writes interesting stuff. I think he is keen and has a good work rate, but his writing is technically shoddy and his sources appear to be highly limited most of the time. Unless he hears loads he doesn't report because the club don't want him to and he's just too soft to be a real journalist about it.

One of his teammates is here now, might help. Hope they get along...

Nobody should ever bother asking Mowbray what position a player plays.

It was also him that scored the winner in the reverse fixture, wasn't it?

True, but City are a bit prone to not caring as much as other clubs what fee they get when a player they don't mind losing wants out.

Definite difference of opinion there...

I'd take that. Lower chunk to Forest too if we are clever about it.

Think I can discuss this a bit without really going onto religion. The structure of things is astonishing and beautiful, and does give me pause for thought at times. However there are experiments that demonstrate how order can arise from chaos, in fact it becomes inevitable after enough time. Richard Dawkins wrote about it in one of his books. As for love and hate, we can't measure them (currently anyway 😛 ) mostly because in the strictest sense, we made them up. We define them ourselves, they're not really a scientific quantity. In a slightly broader sense, they do exist, as we define them, but they are the result of incredibly complex biological interactions, which would likely be calculable if we had sufficiently sophisticated technology and understanding. But taking our current level, just because something can't be measured doesn't mean it's not real, and doesn't mean it can't be explained rationally without the need for...let's call it a supernatural explanation. Love, hate, all other emotions, evolved along with us and our complex brains. They serve survival purposes. Love helps breed unity in communities and just, ya know, breeding and child-rearing, and hate helps us crush our enemies. Both very important as humanity started to rise. I think it's our modern world, so different to the world we inhabited during most of our evolution, that sometimes doesn't mesh with these emotions very well.

Calculating whether complex alien life should or shouldn't exist generally uses something called the Drake Equation. It depends on things like how many stars there are, how many planets are around an average star, how many of those planets could support the conditions for life, how likely life is to emerge when the potential conditions are there, how likely it is to evolve into complex life, and if we're talking about contact with aliens, how likely complex life is to become intelligent life and survive long enough to develop interstellar travel. We know very little about...pretty much all of those. We don't even have an exact count of stars in the Milky Way, and are probably a long way from even that. But the more we know the more we can narrow it down, and we are finding many stars have planets in large numbers, we're not a freak in that sense. Anyway Bazza your two scientists seem to differ from the majority of the scientific community who care about this. Most conclude it's inevitable there is life, and a large study a few years back determined there were likely to be something like 50-60 alien civilisations in the Milky Way at a given time. Most think other life exists in our galaxy, and it existing in one of the other potentially trillions of galaxies becomes almost inevitable with most data you could input to the Drake Equation. You can actually have a play with the Drake Equation yourself, here is one version but you can find others with different factors to input: https://foothillastrosims.github.io/Drake-equation/ Remember on this one you're putting the percentage that applies to the factor above, so when you pick a percent for 'Fraction with habitable planets', you've already eliminated the stars that have no planets in the one above, so it's the percent of stars with a habitable planet from amongst the stars that have any planets at all, rather than the percent of stars that have habitable planets altogether. Hope that makes sense...so on mine just now I decided half the stars which can support life have at least one planet, then decided 1% of THOSE have a planet which is habitable. I just entered: 250 billion stars (the default on this, and a feasible number), 50%, 50%, 3%, 20%, 10%, 2%, 0.1%. Quite small percentages, and I got 'there are 750 high-tech civilisations in our galaxy right now'. Although I'm probably being very generous with that last figure (what percent are still around) due to the massive age of the Milky Way, and probably under-estimating my first percent (how many stars have planets). The question of 'Why, if advanced alien life exists in our galaxy, we haven't met it' is called the Fermi Paradox, and has a ton of valid explanations, of which I reckon a bunch are genuine factors. We probably wouldn't ever meet life from another galaxy btw, as apart from our own satellite galaxies, they're VERY VERY far off. Even Star Trek technology (many times the speed of light) wouldn't be good enough.

That's exactly why it would be odd for Brighton to loan him out again. I expect they'll either keep him around, giving him a new deal if they're impressed, give him a new deal now then loan him out, or sell him.

Don't want any more 40% sell ons thanks. I'd only go for that on a player I didn't think we would actually end up re-selling for much, or if it was shaving a huge amount off the fee. Rather pay 5 mill and drop the sell-on to 15% than pay 4m and 40%.

🤣 It's more that it's a fairly niche thing really. More people should know about it all though really. Logical fallacies are basically types of arguments that are appealing on the surface but don't really prove anything (or deflect from the main point). Good stuff to know to avoid people getting away with talking cockwaffle at you. I see them on a daily basis here (and elsewhere). Waggott probably used some with you, fairly sure I remember noticing some. Just googled a beginner's guide to it for you, you (and others) might find it enlightening: https://fallacyinlogic.com/logical-fallacy-definition-and-examples/ (Not read this one myself but I'm sure it will get it across 😛 )

Yep. It's essentially a form of ad hominem, as well as appeal to authority, both of which are well known logical fallacies used to distract from not having a convincing counter argument. It makes for very poor quality debate, and indeed is often used on here as an attempt to shut down debate entirely.

It was mentioned more than a day or two back I'd say, probably about 4 or 5, then a day or two back it was said it had fallen through. There might have been a hiccup, perhaps that he couldn't start right away and then we decided it was fine. Who (on here) knows?

So far, they've only done it with strikers.

I don't understand why you prefer experience in the national set up to club, especially when he's now working in club football? It means he has never had to care about what a player costs, has had a very limited subset of players he has scouted, hasn't worked within the different architecture of a club setup, players he finds for country can just not be picked again instead of burdening a club financially if they turn out to not be good enough... International football is also less intensive due to the limited fixtures, although this probably doesn't apply to the scouting setup who will likely be watching the players anyway at club level. I do feel like it might still be a little more relaxed and less pressure though, but I could easily be wrong there. Staying with one employer for 20 years isn't an advantage unless you're that employer either, as it means he hasn't faced new challenges and gained a wider range of experiences. Frankly, Park had a far better CV, though I do suspect he may have been heading slightly over the hill. (Again before anyone jumps on, I'm not saying it's the wrong move, just pointing some things out)

True, although it crossed the cynical part of my mind that it might be a bit of a new boys club, as it were. As in, Broughton recognising someone else who is taking a bit of a step into a slightly unfamiliar role. Perhaps just seeing something of himself in him, or (says the cynic) someone who doesn't have the prior reputation in club football to challenge him too much. Again, probably just the cynic chirping up a bit too loudly.

Yes, I just quoted you saying it.

Thanks. That's a positive. Obviously JDT isn't a complete stranger to English football either, just to managing here.

It was mentioned hours ago in the transfer thread, I think I was the first to bring it up. But it does deserve its own thread. Like I said in there, I think we are running a little bit of a risk of senior personnel who are doing something for the first time. DoF that hasn't been one before, manager that has 3 years of management experience but hasn't managed in England before, and now a Head of Recruitment who has only worked the rather different national recruitment scene. None of that is to say any of them won't be perfect for the roles they're in, just it's a bit of a risk having our three most important football non-playing staff be taking a step to something out of their previous history. (There's the Assistant too of course, I don't know his history but I don't think he has worked in England?) May all prove to be strokes of genius though. Sounds like he has a good knowledge of the game.