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So this is going to be the week when Mike Ashley can rightly say he is getting the hang of this football lark? So where now? What about the next few years? How can we as a club take advantage of this solid foundation and become a regular top four challenger?

Barnsley winning tonight which leaves the Mackems 8 points from safety Oli Mcburnie, the player that pied them in January, has 6 goals in 8 games for Barnsley. Alanis Morisette would say thats ironic

give it giggsy till the end of the season

It was a trick question! Because it's a combination of Brexit AND Tory mismanagement of the economy.

The role of the opposition is to stand in fucking opposition. When May announces chemical weapons have been used by Russia, that's a real threat and the country does indeed have to stand united. But that doesn't mean we all have to hold hands and sing kumbaya like the Democrats did here after 9/11, and accede to everything the ruling party does in the interest of "national security", or whatever nonsense jargon is used in the UK political realm to justify misdeeds. What better moment could there be to ask about the Tories' connection to Russian political funding than right now - if you think the opposition should actually act as a watchdog for the public interest, rather than a lapdog for the party in power?

On a lighter note:

I think there's a more general point about mean-spiritedness (to borrow PL's phrase) in UK society which I agree with. It's not meant to be a dig at you because I think to a certain extent we're all guilty of it (I know I am) but the all pervasive nature of it engenders an attitude where people don't want other people to do well (which extends to being paid well etc., etc.) just because their life isn't as good as they want it to be. The daft thing is, if your life's a bit shit and you get a kick out of the notion of Carragher getting the sack, how long does the satisfaction last? 5 minutes later you realise nowt's changed for the better and you don't feel any better about yourself (again, I don't mean you specifically as I don't really think you're like that but I bet you know some people who are). We're all victims of it, not least yourself, with your pay having been frozen for over a decade in the public sector and it's that all pervasive attidtude I'm talking about which makes people ok with it and allows a government to get away with austerity (you must have heard people say stuff like "It's about time the public sector got a dose of reality" or "Look at their pensions, they've got nothing to complain about" etc. The gutter press don't help much with their constant blame game (especially seeing as they're almost always blaming the wrong people anyway, whether it be 'scroungers' or immigrants). As another general point I can't believe how outraged some people get about stuff like this. Many of the same people probably shrugged their shoulders when they heard about that old gent dying in hospital the other because of overcrowding.

It's fucking shit with wankers as pundits, cunts as commentators and a very strong bias to the likes of Man United and Liverpool. Happy to help!

Aye. Not sure he carries much influence with their owners, mind.

Well if its any consolation Mark Hughes is the favourite for the southampton job.

No, please don't put your post down. That's an interesting fact tbph and a refreshing change from your usual snide comments and smiley faces. It's nice you can offer something different to J69 the board.

Looking the former up just left me more confused. wtf is an illusionary dancer?

Is it Bernie Winters and Schnorbitz?

Has anyone mentioned that John Redwood (Tory MP) has claimed that austerity was unnecessary in his blog last week? This is the pro-Brexit guy who is also the head of some manner of investment firm which recommended to its clients that they should move their money out of the UK following the referendum - so while he's a cynical bastard, he is at least clued up on finance. His own words: I have not been worried about the state deficit for sometime, ever since Mr Brown found out that the UK state can literally print money to pay its bills. Mr Osborne, originally a critic of this in opposition, then discovered its charms in office as well. It turned out to have no adverse consequences on shop price inflation, though of course it caused massive price inflation in government bonds, because it was accompanied by severe pressure against bank lending to the private sector to avoid an inflationary blow off. I always adjust the outstanding debt by the £435 bn the state has bought up, as this is in no sense a debt we owe. So our government borrowing level (excluding future state pensions which some here worry about and which have always been pay as you go out of taxation) is modest by world standards at around 65% of GDP, and at current interest rates is affordable. Most of the state debt we owe to each other anyway. The government owes it to taxpayers who own the debt in their pension funds and insurance policies. The state can always raise enough money to pay the domestic bills backed by the huge powers to tax, and as we have just seen when credit expansion and inflation are low it can also use liquidity created by the monetary authorities. Austerity was an unnecessary action, a cover merely for stripping back the state to adhere to Thatcherite dogma, and the Tories pursuing it has brought us to the brink of ruin with Brexit (which would never, ever have happened without it), sent the Labour party to the left in a search for answers, and dismantled centrism. So there you go CT. The Tories fucked your newly beloved centrism to within an inch of its life, with something that many of us told you repeatedly, was an outright lie. Article goes on to say, about Redwood: He has admitted there is no need for a government to balance its books. He has admitted QE cancels debt. He has then admitted the whole ‘passing debt to the next generation’ phobia is wrong. And he has admitted as a result that there was no reason for austerity, the imposition of which served no economic purpose. As a result he has, in two paragraphs, shredded the whole economic rationale on which he has been elected to Parliament. And in so doing he has driven coach and horses through all those who still say that austerity must continue, because what he has done is make clear that if this is economically unnecessary then it can only be driven by incompetence, or a hatred of government, or class warfare, or all three. He is right on this. Deficits do not matter if there is less than full employment. And governments can cancel debt, at will. Debt, in fact, only exists as a favour to financial markets, who desperately need it but have no hold over government as a result. What does matter is that people like him do not want to use this knowledge for the good of people in this country and elsewhere. It is time others did. http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/03/06/john-redwood-admits-it-there-never-was-a-reason-for-austerity/

Cat memes are probably the apex of civlisation as far as humanity is concerned, so he's probably right tbh.

It is exactly like the 'guns' situation in the US. Or when Corbyn was calling out the government over Grenfell. If the immediate aftermath of shit like this isn't the time to make a political point, I don't know when is. As Alex says, the only reason people complain that it's 'not the right time' is because they know damn fucking well that this is the -only- time it will be uncomfortable for them to have to deal with the criticism. Indeed the only time anyone will actually care.

It was an absolutely pertinent issue to raise and the only reason you're 'outraged' by it is because some other people have called it political point scoring and the irony is, they've only called it that for that exact same purpose. They're either enemies of Corbyn in his own party who are getting all holier than thou at the first opportunity or Tories who want to deflect attention away from a very uncomfortable proof. No surprise to see you lap it up though

So obscene and disgusting he’s seemingly unable to articulate what it is he actually takes issue with. Must be really bad

Probably goes to work on a penny farthing dressed in tweed, the zany fucking cunt

Isn’t it? It’s usually people who are borderline mongs who spit at people. We had a kid at school who wore a helmet and he used to spit at people

Totally agree, and it's very odd given how much I disliked Neville as a player and dislike him as a person.

My opening gambit would be "Hello, is that TNT? Prepare for an explosion." Then keep inviting them to defuse the situation.