Frank Dacey

Everton seem to be suggesting that their problems lie more in the funding of the new stadium and they should be excused as such. If you live in a ramshackle wooden shack and don't have a pot to piss in, how is it either credible or creditable to announce that you've decided to build a 6 bedroom mansion ?

The wreck of a once great club brought this to mind; I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

When that 3 year average hits, along with no Champions League it'll be brilliant. I think FFP, seems like a way to punish Chelsea and City, those "non traditional" successful clubs and leave the "traditional" ones (basically United and Liverpool) in a Barcelona/Real Madrid style monopoly. The big end goal surely being to allow them to sell their own TV rights For a fanbase that's supposed, 'to know your history', they seem remarkably ignorant of it. They ae actually in the top 5 clubs for picking up most top flight points, behind us, Arsenal and United, but certainly ahead of City and Chelsea. I'm old enough to remember the time in the early 60s when they were called the Bank of England club, due to their spending, which bought them a league title in 1963. I can remember the vibrant young Everton which won the League in 1970 and which, I feared, would go on to dominate the next few years. They were one of the 'big 5' which set up the Premier League. Their current state is entirely of their own making and nothing to do with FFP.

I seem to recall reading that if you were injured in a challenge that results in a booking then you don't have to go off after treatment.

Beale had a good reputation as a coach at Villa, but struggled at Rangers badly, with suggestions that he was believing his own headlines. Will be interested to see how he gets on at Sunderland. I really enjoyed watching them under Mowbray, a very brave, young team. Too young to get promotion, I fear.

Think Bellingham took several millions off his valuation today.

Apparently we're wearing the purple kit on Sunday.

The irony is that both goals at Burnley came from Tierney playing good advantages. He must have been absolutely gutted afterwards. As for VAR, it seems to have worked quite well in the major tournaments, when you have competent people in charge, but if you've the likes of Tierney, Coote, England and Attwell involved then all you can expect is poor decisions.

The other thing about Harvey's 'goal' is that Trafford was moving to his right just as Elliot was placing it to his left. Even with completly clear sight he could shift his feet quickly enough to make a save. That much should have been clear and obvious to Hooper.

I seem to recall it was Cormack who got the first and Keegan who added a second in the last 10 minutes. Nothing quiet about the ground after that went in. There's a documentary just out on that season on LFC TV called 'Shankly's second coming'. Highly nostalgic!

I'm old enough to remember people in the late 60s saying the atmosphere at Anfield was not as i used to be and the same stuff has been said periodically over the next 50 years. Yet over that time we can all remember games when we've come out and the stadium's been rocking. Noise isn't everything; I remember a game against Leeds in 1973 which was effectively a title decider. We were 1-0 up with 10 minutes or so left and I remember thinking how quiet the ground was, not because people were bored but because they were totally wrapped up in the game and the tension of the moment. As you said, Dave, you really don't want to be singing at a time like that.

I read somewhere that Jarred Gillet is studying at Liverpool University, so I suspect it's a case of the Arsenal fans putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5.

Springsteen's 'Youngstown' mentions the Monongahela Valley

And if they did go down, I don't suppose they'd turn their noses up at the PL parachute payments.

Some things never change at United. When I was a student in Manchester in the early 70s I went to Old Trafford a few times at a time when they were really terrible, a couple of seasons before they actually got relegated. Their best player was Alan Gowling, the McTominay of his days. He used to get dogs abuse for not being a 'United player', as if every United player had to be Best, Law and Charlton rolled into one. You'd think that cuurent United fans have seen enough good teams to realise the truth of what Shankly said, that great teams are like a piano, you need three people who can play it and 8 who can move it around.

If City are found guilty, then surely the owners must automatically fail the 'fit and proper' test as they will have systematically cheated on a major scale. You couldn't trust that ownership to behave again. In my view, the first thing would be an enforced sale of the club and then get stuck into relegations, expulsions etc.

He did only score one goal, but it was enough to win the game in question. If they'd only drawn that game they would have been relegated.

Strange then that they've celebrated so wildly staying in this den of corruption the past two seasons. Equally strange that for a fanbase who loudly proclaim that 'they know their history', that they've forgotten that they were one of the leading movers in the formation of the PL, back in the day when they were one of the Big 5 (don't laugh).

You' re right about Leicester, of course, but they are a complete outlier in the PL era. I think you'd agree that something like Forest and Ipswich won't happen again and that the days when the likes of Burnley, Wolves, Derby and Leeds won titles are over

Back in the old days of 2 points for a win and a 42 game season, the saying used to be win at home and draw away and you'd win the league. In fact league champions got less than that and one season in the 70s someone won the league with 55 points, far less than 75% of those available. Try winning the league now on significantly less than 75% of the points. In the 3 points points for a win era, Arsenal won the league with 76 points in 1989, the number of points dropped would suggest a much more competitive league. The days of a team like Forest winning the League directly after promotion or Ipswich winning it in their first season in the top flight or us winning it in the second season after promotion are long gone.

And about Clive Thomas, and that's almost half a century ago!

Good one, Dave. Just to enlighten you, Brentford's ground is the GTech Community Stadium. It's a shame that you have to spend so much time on refereeing rather than talking about good football and great goals. Both the Spurs and Newcastle games were influenced by refs not 'reading' the game and enforcing their authority early on. Spurs v Chelsea is historically spicy and Newcastle Arsenal games the previous season were marked by bad blood on and off the pitch, so both refs should have looking to take a firm line early on. It's no surprise that the terminally useless Attwell didn't but more of a surprise that Michael Oliver did.

Not sure it can be right. The Var was Madley, who's a Yorkshireman and the ref was Attwell, who's a Brummie. Neither sounded right.

Not sure it can be right. The Var was Madley, who's a Yorkshireman and the ref was Attwell, who's a Brummie. Neither sounded right.

Pretty much of the whole Nebraska album would qualify for this thread. This is about a cop whose brother is up to no good, but who lets him escape across the border after a nasty assault.