dockers_strike

Gooners bleating about VAR getting it wrong for Brentford's equaliser yesterday and the implications a draw might have in their battle with city for the title.

Ha, they can fucking do one as far as Im concerned. The number of gooners willing us to lose the title to city, null and void or not winning a title for 30+ years in 19/20 never mind last season or even 18/19, they can crash and fucking burn and go 20 years themselves without winning it for all I care.

I really dont think anything substantial will come of the city invetsigation, certainly not expelled from the PL. Just the sniff of that in any judgement and they'll go to the High Court to erase that.

Sorry to keep repeating this but, in my opinion, the reasons why our team is now poor are, the players have won and lost all the club trophies available. When you're on £100k+ a week and won and lost them all, win, lose or draw a game, I guess losing isnt the bitter pill to swallow to many of them.

The players are going on the pitch and the oppos want the win more, simple as that. It's not even fine margins now when teams like Wolves are putting 3 past you with no reply.

Finally, the biggie for me, too many of the players have gone stale on Jurgen's motivation and what he tells them to do. You see it frequently now, Trent shaking his head at being subbed, Jurgen's shouting 'Unbelievable!' at the players when they arent doing what he says.

Last major lift apparently.

32 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

There was a post I think on here from that skyscraper website. Someone there who's clearly been involved said there is a plan to expand the kop but for a reason I can't rember it could be 10 years before we start. I'm sure it said the club have agreements with the church and the park pub. And the biggest difficulty is moving the road as it's an A road or something. 

Yes and it's all bollocks Im afraid. There was someone else on You tube who did a presentation how Anfield could be expanded to 90,000 seats within the current footprint.

The trouble was the terracing was at an impossible angle, all the stands had no roof and the view would have been shit.

14 minutes ago, Trumo said:

 

The thing to consider is that each additional tier (or even extending an existing tier further back) needs to be at a steeper angle than the tier below (or towards the front), because views get more and more compromised the further back you go. The SKD upper is 34 degrees, and the Green Guide stipulated maximum is 35 degrees.

 

With the SKD, if Skerries Road is going to be an issue, I would hope that at the very least something can be done with the properties backing onto the SKD car park. For the stand, maybe the best way forward would be to first remove the existing lower tier but keep the executive boxes, and build a new lower tier at a shallower angle (similar to the ARE lower and Kop) so the boxes overhang slightly, while also setting the front of the lower tier a little further back than it currently is. You can then add a couple of rows in front of the boxes to overhang (think similar to the Emirates) the new lower tier.

 

Then completely dismantle the SKD roof and 'goalpost' support, which is almost exactly the length of the (already short) pitch. Extend the SKD upper by first widening it to match the Main, then extending that tier further (increasing the steepness by a degree).

 

Then the stand will have a new roof and facade to match the 2 newer developments. With the above, you've dealt with compromised nearside views, added a more comfortable lower tier, built corporate hospitality/VIP space, most likely improved disabled facilities, improved views for the folks in the upper, added capacity, and made it all look well-thought-out within the available footprint.

Wont happen due to cost. Moores should have had the Skerries demolished along with the Kemlyn even if he could not afford to underwrite a huge stand at the time.

Ive said before, it may be possible to jack up the SKD roof and stick another 10 rows on the back and retain the current footprint. That would only add roughly 2450 seats as there's approximately 245 seats per row in the Upper.

The only way to get rid of the Kemlyn knee is to reprofile the lower with fewer rows. Probably 10 rows would need to be removed to get rid of it. But that means overall, the stand capacity would roughly stay the same at massive cost ie 10 more rows in the upper, 10 less rows in the lower.

Until or unless the club buys the Skerries, I personally dont see the SKD being extended. I dont see the Kop being extended ever despite what people say on Skyscraper City or YT.

On 08/02/2023 at 21:00, Poor Scouser T said:

Can't believe there is not an architectural solution to it. Probably prohibitively expensive or light issue for houses I guess.

Neither mate, there's simply no space for wholesale rebuilds.

As has been said many times, The Skerries has to be knocked down to substantially increase the SKD and \ or, the whole of Walton Breck behind the Kop needs to be flattened and the road re routed for any major development.

17 minutes ago, navbasi said:

Which is what we found out in 2010… loads of cunts were “interested” but only NESV showed up with the cash…

 

I’d love Broughton and his consortium that he had got together to bid for Chelsea to bid for us, he knows his stuff and knows the club but probably too far from his pad in London so won’t be involved. Shame. 

This isnt correct.

In 2010, there were a number of interested parties in buying the club for different reasons. Clearly, what is now FSG were in the bidding, so too was Peter Lim who actually bid £10m more than FSG. If you want to know how the club would be now if Lim's bid had been accepted, check out the toxicity of Valencia now then thank your lucky stars he didnt buy us.

There was also Gilletts financiers who were looking to recover the money he owed. If they'd have bought us, there would have been a real fire sale at Anfield.

It was the High Court who determined FSG's offer was best for the club. The others had the money but were deemed not suitable.

The 'Are we alone?' question is fascinating. Some people frequently say the galaxy \ universe is so big, the sheer number of stars and planets means it is inevitable that we are not.

But, just because there are so many stars and planets, that might not be the case. This first vid uses the Drake Equation and what we know about star and planetary formation etc to be able do realistic number crunching. The result might surprise you.

The 2nd vid takes a different approach and theorises why complex life such as us, is a virtual one off in the whole universe!

37 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Not if you lived in a slum,as a hell of a lot of us did back then. Being a kid and having a loving and caring family shielded you from the shit that was actually going on and having a bit of disposable income after covering the necessities helped. As did the community spirit back then. We had more when we actually had less!

Well my nan's house didnt have a bathroom and ours didnt have an inside bog until me arl fella got a grant to change part of the house and install one in the very early 70s. We had lino on the bedroom floors and a coal fire in the main room. Other than that, it was a leccie fire to keep warm. But I never considered either house a slum. today, some may say they were looking back.

2 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

I thought sky had said tonight Qatar have bid? 

Not 2 hours ago when I posted they hadnt.

1 hour ago, Section_31 said:

Can't see why people wouldn't, it's no less of a win. It's like coming second in the tour de France then finding out the winner was on a motorbike.

Or doped like Lance Armstrong was!

23 minutes ago, Clem H Fandango said:

 

I forgot to add the religion bollox. we all re-incarnate yeah?

Dunno mate, Im not religeous. Being a child of the mid 1950s Ive seen big improvements in people's circumstances, from housing to improved pay and conditions, everyone running around in cars now, advances in technology, everyone has a computer driven device,, the internet, colour 4k tvs that are so big they take up a living room wall, man walking on the Moon several times.

Sure, the things you mention are a fucking distraction but just plough your own furrow.

1 hour ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Looks like he's back in full training. Are we going to find out whether he's any good? 

 

He couldn't possibly not be an improvement on what we've seen in our midfield, could he?

Well he's brasilian so he should settle in with Alli and Fabinho. Fair play to the lad, he was working hard to get fit when he got injured and it makes you wonder whether the medical team were monitoring him properly if at all.

If he brings some improvement to the team and midfield, all the better now he's working his way back.

8 minutes ago, Clem H Fandango said:

Snowflakes, transgenderism, politics, internet, energy prices, cost of living.

 

One thread to encompass all.

Still beats being dead though and you're dead for a long, long time!

38 minutes ago, Dave D said:

 

I cant fathom it in my mind- the Earth is a round sphere. We launch out of it rising above it.

 

Surely you could then change course and go underneath it?  As you say, a quick google explains in some depth (that I dont fully comprehend) that its not possible as we only get our "up and down" sense from Gravity with Earth being central.

 

But with that in mind- how do you land on the moon? At some point you have to lower yourself onto it- which in itself is a very definite change of direction. Or even reach it in the first place? Is it, that as long as you are central with Earth you could pretty much fly in any direction and reach the moon?

 

My head hurts     

A lot of it is because as humans, we're conditioned to ups and downs, edges and borders and something being finite. I think it helps if you ignore that conditioning when you talk about space.

As regards launching a rocket upwards if you're in the northern hemisphere and a rocket is launched from say Australia in the Southern hemisphere, rising or underneath becomes relevant to your perspective only. It can only be one to you but to someone in the southern hemisphere, that would be different.

The only common thing is a rocket launches away from the planet's centre of gravity or mass. Similarly when landing on the Moon, the landing is towards its centre of gravity or mass.

It's not wrong to think of launches as up and landings as down, but those terms are only really relevant to the centre of gravity or mass for those objects. Once freed from them in space, every direction is up, down and sideways at the same time.

Not saying all this is definitive, just the way I try and reconcile myself with it all!

34 minutes ago, Megadrive Person said:

 

United have set a deadline of the 17th of February for bids.

 

Seems like there's plenty of interest in them so far. 

 

From Twitter,

 

"It looks like Goldman Sachs are willing to bankroll Sir Jim Ratcliffe's INEOS bid for Manchester United, and specifically it says money to include covering the debt on United's books (800m) and potentially a lot more. The structure of it will be key, if it moves forward"

So far, only Ratcliffe has 'expressed his interest' in buying them and even then, he hasnt actually made a bid. Other reports say he has asked GS to guide him in the matter. All the rest is twateratti chatter which I think personally, people put too much emphasis on.

As for them setting a deadline, we'll see if it draws any other confirmed interest and whether they extend the deadline. Im not a betting man but I think I know where Id place my money on.

No pressure on the boy for this game after a long time out. Ahem!

1 minute ago, Bjornebye said:

 

Fuck the helicopter off mate. 

They're ok, just dont ride in a Robinson R22 \ 44 or an Airbus Super Puma!

Electricity MegaWatthour production current at 1:30pm just under £47 according to National Grid Live. Now about £96 per MWh.

On 24/01/2023 at 16:29, Dave D said:

Ive puzzled over this- it cant have a defined edge/barrier?? 

 

Ive also pondered, if Space is infinite, how we decide what route to take. In my infantile assumption, you get yourself into Space, then go left or right?

 

What happens if we just go up? Or indeed, down? 

 

Most images of the Solar system suggest it broadly level, orbiting the Sun- any craft that has left the solar system is adjudged to have done so by getting to the edge, somewhere around Pluto. 

Missing a trick there, just go up or down 

Bit late, I know but:

If the Universe is infinte, it has no boundary or edge. By definition, infinite means never ending so even if the stars and galaxies get fewer and fewer the further away from Earth you go, that doesnt mean those fewer stars and galaxies are at the' edge' of the Universe, just that there's what we call 'nothing' beyond them. That makes people thing there's an edge. Reality would be there's still be some atoms of gas etc and emptyness that goes on and on and on.

As for what route do we take, the answer is depends where you want to go. It's like the perenial question where is the centre of the Universe? The answer is, because it may be infinite, the centre is wherever you are at the time of asking. This would mean if you were an alien civilisation in Andromeda, the centre of the Universe would be where you \ they are compared to anyone in the Milky Way Galaxy.

There's no up or down in space and this goes back to the where is the centre of the Universe. Again, if it is infinite, you can go 'up' or 'down' or 'sideways' as much as you want but really, that direction is only relative to Earth and your intended destination because humans are conditioned to travelling in a 'direction.'

The Solar System is only level to your reference point on Earth. It isnt level with the plane of the galaxy or many other galaxies. It in fact rises and falls relative to that plane over a period of about 60 odd million years.

Then again, when you start talking about the 'observable' Universe you can argue from our perspective that there is an edge to it. But again, if someone was 10 billion light years away from us, they'd only 'see' 30 odd billion light years beyond us one way and 40 + 10 billion light years the other way from our perspective.

All fascinating stuff and blows my mind!

4 hours ago, Anubis said:

If I’m a billionaire I can keep my pad in London and have my helicopter fly me to matches at Anfield or Old Trafford.

Yeah but if you buy a club in London on your doorstep, you dont need to bother with the heli flight.

You're either on board with the idea of this league, club self governance in the sense that the clubs stamp on things such as ending self sponsorship, FFP breaches etc, etc and taking away control from UEFA and hopefully FIFA or, you're not.

I think we need a radical change in the way football is run, from ending FIFA's ridiculous organisation of the football calender, effectively stealing players from their clubs to stopping oil states and mega rich owners turning the game into F1 and ending FIFA confederations playing havoc with club football.

The businessman responsible for the Fenway Sports Group era at Anfield has questioned the £4 billion-plus asking prices for Liverpool and Manchester United – because they lack London postcodes.

Sir Martin Broughton, a high-flying executive and former chairman at Liverpool, says his experience bidding for Chelsea last summer proved that many billionaires have a preference for clubs in the capital.

In an interview with Telegraph Sport, Broughton says he toyed with the prospect of helping with investment at Liverpool after FSG enlisted investment bankers to test the market, but added: "I would question whether they'll [United and Liverpool] get the kind of prices they floated."

Liverpool's Boston-based ownership engaged US investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley last year to facilitate the search for outside investment.

Unlike a potential April deadline for the sale of United, Tom Werner, who succeeded Broughton as chairman, says there is "no urgency and no timeframe".

Broughton, a former top executive with British Airways and British American Tobacco, is encouraging FSG to pursue only a minority shareholder because the current owners are "a difficult act to follow". 

"Liverpool will be best off taking in co-investors to ensure the current owners can work alongside them and be satisfied that these are the right people," said the 75-year-old, who has published his memoirs Whenever I Hear That Song. "As I understand it, they [FSG] are interested to see what the market reaction is. They could be willing sellers. They could be willing to have investors, but if they carry on owning it, that's fine too. That's my understanding of their position."

Broughton, who has his own sports investment company, has not been sought out by Werner or JW Henry for his advice around the deal. However, he did weigh up involvement in speaking to investors. "I did say to them at the outset that I might get involved," Broughton added. "I never asked for any financial information. I did one or two inquiries with people that I thought might be interested but it didn't go any further. So now I'm just looking at it with a keen interest."

Broughton, a life-long Chelsea fan, served as an independent Liverpool chairman between April 10 and October 13, 2010. He was appointed with a remit to sell the club as the hated previous owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, had their leveraged investments badly hit by the financial downturn.

Broughton and the rest of the board won the right to sell the club to New England Sports Ventures (NESV) – now FSG – in a High Court case against Hicks and Gillett. The current owners secured the club for a sum of £300 million – less than the asking price – thanks to Broughton's court victory.

Almost 13 years on, he says both Liverpool and United have taken an "opportunistic" approach to testing whether there is now a market. It is unclear exactly how much FSG would sell Liverpool for, but the Glazers are understood to want upwards of £5bn for United. 

"I would question whether they'll get the kind of prices that they floated," Broughton said, after narrowly missing out in the race to buy Chelsea last year. Broughton was many Chelsea fans' choice as a lifelong fan, with support from Lord Coe, who had thrown his weight behind the offer. 

However, he believes his plan to install himself as chairman rather than invite Bruce Buck into the role may have initially counted against him. Buck ultimately stood down as chairman in June last year but he remained a "senior adviser" as he was succeeded by Todd Boehly, who bid successfully to buy the club from Roman Abramovich.

Broughton has doubts that United and Liverpool are attracting the same type of interest that Chelsea did last year. So far only Sir Jim Ratcliffe – another failed Chelsea bidder – has gone public with attempts to buy United, although there is known to be interest in America and the Middle East ahead of formal bids next week.

"With Chelsea – and I think Arsenal and Tottenham would fall into the same category – the people we spoke to tended to be overseas billionaires who had a pad in London and the pad in London was in Knightsbridge or Kensington, Chelsea or something," Broughton explained. "So when they came to London, they went to Chelsea. They were football fans, and they were Chelsea fans... they're not going to be bidders for Liverpool or Manchester United because they've got a pad in London and they're not planning to move their pad to Manchester or Liverpool. So it's a different type of buyer to the ones that we were looking for with our consortium."

The sales of United and Liverpool offer dramatically contrasting legacies, Broughton added. "I personally think John Henry and Tom Werner are not just very good owners, but keen to have a good legacy and want to make sure that we're passing it to good owners.

"In a sense, they had the benefit of taking over from people that the fans hated. So they had everything in their favour as long as they did what they said they were going to do, which the did – they had the following wind. They're a difficult act to follow. To be a better owner than Fenway is quite difficult. At United, it's more like the old Liverpool situation. Fans will be so pleased. Whoever buys it will have the following wind."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2023/02/08/liverpool-manchester-united-sale-clubs-not-worth-4bn-not-london/

1 hour ago, Captain Willard said:

Here a fun fact; the country with the second highest gun ownership per capita in the world is technically part of the UK. 

Technically, they arent part of the UK. They're just a British protectorate. Self governing and independent but depend on the UK to protect them from the likes of the Argies.

2 hours ago, Gnasher said:

Fucking mad this.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/08/moon-dust-moonshot-geoengineering-climate-crisis

 

 

We'd create our own 'Tabby's star' effect for any alien astronomers gazing our way when the Earth \ Moon system passed in front of the Sun!

They'd wonder WTF was going on in that star system?

2 hours ago, aws said:

This will rumble on for months/years before any punishment actually gets imposed. 

One sports lawyer is predicting 4 years!!

34 minutes ago, Ronnie Whelan said:

I don't think they walk out of this unscathed.

 

They have essentially robbed us and the Mancs of six titles. Two of the biggest clubs in the world. If they win the league this year, they could finish ahead of the third biggest club in the country in Arsenal, so add them to the list. Teams robbed of top 4 will smell blood. Teams relegated will smell blood. This year it's highly likely a very big club like Leeds or the Blueshite go down as third bottom club. They will be arguing City get relegated instead. This isn't a simple "these cunts are better than the Scousers (or United)" scenario. This impacts a lot of clubs and big ones at that.

 

This won't get resolved quickly but they are in a big spot of bother. The only light for them is that they have such links with the government, so that will soften their landing.

 

It won't be solved this season but it will get nasty in the coming months.

 

My hope is they do ultimately get relegated and hopefully all the way down. Bellingham ain't going there unless they are stable and they won't be in the summer.

 

Agree with your sentiments Ronnie but what's the point relegating them? At best, they'd be relegated to the Championship. It's open to the EFL accepting them but if they did, they'd only be out of the PL for 1 season as no club in that league is stopping them get automatic promotion. Relegating them to League 1 or 2? Never going to happen.

They need PL titles taking off them. The PL commission is powerless to strips them of FA and EFL Cups because they arent the PL's jurisdiction. Next they PL needs to impose proper financial restrictions on all clubs especially on owner related sponsorship deals.

The PL should be embarassed no one has picked up city having a higher turnover than Real. It's beyond a joke.

And then the PL let Boehly spend more money this last window than that combined for Serie A, Ligue Un and the Bundesliga, possibly La Liga as well for replacing the Russian gangster!