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An update. I'm still here. Any withdrawals should have stopped by now so it's getting my other physical problems sorted. I'm eating fully, food is okay here. My liver problems are reversible. I think I'll be here at least another night. It's my electrolyte levels now that are most concern and the effect that is having on my heart. Seen the alcohol nurse yesterday. Going to get community support including group support. Also been prescribed Camprol. It apparently will change my brain chemistry making it prior to the alcohol phase. And then it will help stop my craving for alcohol. Don't know what else I will be offered. What else. Phoned work to tell them I was in hospital. Was vague about the reaon, for now. They were lovely. They just said we will support you in any way to get back to normal and that I was invaluable to the team. The whole area is focused on recruitment and retention now tbh. My wife we'll see. Ultimately she doesn't have much option other than take me in because otherwise I'm on the streets. My mum has been going around telling everyone who will listen I'm an incurable alcoholic. This includes parents of my children's peers. She has been so unsupportive it's unreal, after everything I have done for her before. Because its my fault, which I guess it is. Years of support, I have a 1 week breakdown and this is what I get. She can do things herself from now on. So I am facing the rest of my life without an alcoholic drink. Knowing the other option, I can do this. Presumably it gets easier over time, a year or so? One last thing. Sincere thanks and love ro all you guys on here. It really helped, especially @Rayvin at the very start before I got admitted. And a call out to the staff here at Cramlington. The parademics, the many nurses, porters, radiologists, phlebotomistists, doctors. They all treated me with the upmost dignity and respect, every last one of them. My God, you all deserve a pay rise.

Stop whinging you menopausal bigot.

Alreet Bonny lads. Apologise for dropping me tampon last week. Well, what a weekend in the Toon. Seeing family and friends. What a glorious weekend for it too. We stayed in the same hotel as the Forest team and my Brother in law closing in on his 40th birthday was like a kid at Christmas. He had one serious hard on Saturday the walk up to the ground, well, you could feel the buzz and this was at 11:00. My in-laws have never been to SJP so thought I would go before it got busy. We approached the Gallowgate and my father in law said 'It's a big un that stand' Fuck me. He nearly passed out when he saw the Milburn Managed to have a chat with John Beresford too who was doing the hospitality. The game. We dominated. Absolutely dominated. Forest were shite, but we also wouldn't let them play at all. Our midfield 3 bossed that and whilst I though Colbak was one of their better players he was out muscled all over the park. If only Miggy had a right foot, it could have been 3 or 4. A special shout out to ASM. I thought he was also fantastic. I am one of his biggest critics and there's nee hiding that. But I thought he was mint. Passing wise, possession wise and everything. It was interesting watching Pope too when we didn't have the ball on how high up the pitch he was standing. He was barking instructions all the time. Great buy. My only question now, after watching City yesterday. Would you unsettle that back 4 and get Botman in for Burn? I don't know because they didn't put a foot wrong. But Haaland looked good. I mean, what nob said he wouldn't score 30+ #HWTL

Basically seems to be that we could spend more but it would impact our ability to do so later. An area we’d need to vastly increase our spending to really compete at the top table would be wages. A big factor in our spending being curtailed is the legacy of Ashley and our revenue streams being so low 15th in the PL. The recent shirt sleeve deal with Noon.com (which seems to have met the market value criteria) raises almost as much p.a. as the actual main deal with Fun88 which shows how poor a deal that is, for example.

Yeah let the dust settle on that one with your Mam, Rents. From experience I've learned parents from that generation appear to be dead against you when I think it's part of their coping mechanism and don't know how to address the issue to hand. Great to hear you're on the mend, and that your organs will recover. By opening up you've done the hard part, and now it's about managing the recovery and ongoing lifestyle. Anyone who is truly a mate will fully support you with that and I think it goes without saying that it'll include everyone on here. Your missus in time will be on side. Like with your Mam, it's a huge thing to deal with and takes time to process. You're dealing with this really well - even though you don't realise you are. Proud of you mate.

I obviously don’t know your mam but I suspect a lot of the reasons for the way she’s reacting is because of the other stuff she’s been through recently. It’s not what you need and it’s not what you want now of course. I’m not defending it but try not to take it too personally is all I mean. I hope you can sort things out with her and your wife. Best wishes as ever. Feel free to pm me any time and the offer to go walking is still there once you’re feeling up to it

I don’t know. All he seems to have is pace, power, movement and the ability to finish. As well as playing in a side that creates lots of chances

Can’t touch this

Mrs Sponge used to work in the music video biz in the 80's and met many a pop star through work. Far and away her proudest moment was bumping into Olivia Newton John in the ladies at her office, going in the cubical and sitting on the seat, still warm from Olivia's arse

The story of your day is heartwarming and all that, but what we really want to know is what caused the tampon disaster.

That's the insight we've come to respect

Well it’s a bit of a collaboration between me and Fist this week, maybe in the manner of Lennon and McCartney, where Lennon has been on the piss for three days, walked in on Macca who was noodling away at his gutair, scribbling down lyric ideas…he looks up and sees Lennon grab his bass from its stand and swing it in a wide arc above Maccas head, smashing it into his temple, breaking the neck of the Gibson semi-acoustic, blood and loose strings everywhere. Lennon then cackles like a deranged banshee, simultaneously taking his weapon out and pissing all over Maccas decade-old lyric note pad.

Ultimately it’s all your fault.

What the fuck is this shite @PaddockLad??? Starting a match thread when Fist is on a one match winning streak? That’s a bannable offence in my book.

WTF has @PaddockLad done

This is an outrage, Wiki has to start the match thread, we then tell him his bum looks big in whatever he’s wearing, he deletes the thread in a fit of pique and then, and only then, Fist starts the lucky match thread.

PpDA is Passes per Defensive Action. In other words, how many passes does Team A allow Team B to play before tackling, pressuring, fouling or otherwise. First game of last season was at home to West Ham. We let West Ham knock the ball around 25 times before we applied pressure. First game of this season was at home to Forest. We let Forest play 6 passes on average, before applying pressure. Even when you compare Eddie's 30th game with Bruce's (Sheff Utd in 2020). We let 10 man Sheff Utd play on average 28 passes before putting them under any kind of pressure. Penultimate game of last season, against CL chasing Arsenal, it was 7. The high, relentless press is proof to me that a) Howe knows his onions, b) the players are on board and c) we're not going to go off and sign some mercenary because they're not going to work hard enough.

You take that sectarian shit elsewhere!

If this gets deleted by over zealous modgoons, I still want this as the first post, capisce?

I can't imagine living anywhere else in the South. It's an oasis of lefties in a sea of shite

Well I suggested in the sub title that Wykiki can come up with something and a mod could edit it but it looks like Fist is taking over thread duties. He probably took his football home if he was losing when he was a kid too

Get this shit deleted before it fucks us up.

Glad we fucking dodged this

Fucking hell, man. You can't see his face but I'm guessing there's sadness in his eyes?

Only they could do this... Taking 'Sunderland Til I Die' to a whole new level.

Don't worry, mate. Your colleagues at Brighton Council are picking up the slack.

Quality shithousery response from Fulham.

I think that's right actually mate. We both need some time.

I rate him as our most important attacking player. I think we probably got him because he’s a bit injury-prone and it was clear we desperately needed a centre forward. The other factor is the bizarre way Ashley operated. A competent manager who was not a yes man and made demands of the owner got scraps to live off. Whereas a fucking hopeless yes man got (comparatively) loads to spend. It was always hard to read Ashley’s actual motivation. But I certainly wouldn’t put it past him to be partly driven by wanting Bruce to do better than his predecessor just to prove he was right and the fans were wrong. He always seemed to want to provoke some reaction even when things were going well. Ashley not having a fucking clue how to run a football club well into his second decade owning one was also a factor

Wilson is a fucking superb striker. He gets injured a fair bit which I think is the only reason he's not considered to be as good as he is, but he's got such an eye for goal and some incredible technique. I don't know how we ended up with him from the Ashley era but it was a real blessing that we did.

There’s also the Glazer’s dimension, they can continue to milk it even when they are shite. Our current approach is spot on IMO (however frustrating it can feel).

Daft thing is, if they'd committed to an overhaul way back when Ferguson first left, they'd likely not be in this mess now, even if they had gone 3-4 seasons outside the title hunt. Instead they've limped on, lurching from one manager to another with all the additional costs that approach brings.

What an absolute bastard

PaddockLad said it first

'You just can't keep a good man down, I always say. Looking forward to starting my new adventure at the City ground and having a right good go at the stationary.'

That’s not helping, anyone just reading the thread title and seeing the thread starter will immediately think PaddockLad is amusing, which is obviously a grave misrepresentation of the truth 🙄

New title - “When Seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think Eddie’s Fishers of Men will be thrown into the sea.” @PaddockLad or an admin has to edit it, fuctifino how. We’re in full-on panic stations here.

My mate went down there when Diame scored his wonder goal and apparently, when Perez scored the winner, he spent a good 4 minutes raving about “tory cunts” and then refused to pay 9 quid for a Jack and Coke later on. Once more, calling the bar a “tory shithole” Sounds like a belter day out

I live about 20 mins away now (and used to live in the centre for years). Depending on where you are coming from id have a pint near Brighton station then jump on the train to Falmer. im going to be in Newcastle this weekend for my mothers birthday. FFS.

That’s better

Hope's argument there seems to be that Bruno can play better than he did, and maybe he can, but is that the metric? So if you stuck me in there and I played the game of my life but barely hitting a 0.5/10 by any normal footballing standard, he'd give me a 9? Whether he had his best game or not, Bruno ties the whole team together.

I know I'll get pelters for this but, every time I play Football Manager, the very first area I strengthen is defence. Sort that out and you're laughing. We've spent £122m on the defence across 2 windows. We've still got money to spend elsewhere and as I've said before, if the right player becomes available at a 'reasonable' price, I'm sure we'll use the fact we've got that wriggle room to take advantage of the opportunity. All the talk from the club is that we're not done, so I'm confident that not only will we sign 1-2 atackers, but they'll be improvements on what we've got.

I think the Brighton game will be a decent yardstick to understand what our level is. It's so difficult to judge when you're up against a newly promoted team - if you lose to them you can argue it's on account of the newly promoted buzz; if you beat them it's because they're shit. If we dominate Brighton in a similar fashion this weekend then I'll be more convinced the Forest performance wasn't on account of them being wank. I'm assuming the Saudi kit will make its debut this weekend? Watch the press going into meltdown

Aye and we're better off saving the money to spend later on better players once we've made a bit of progress - which is why, presumably, they're so determined to find value at the moment. I really don't think we should be worried - we have a good team, we were never going to be assaulting the top spots this season no matter who we brought in, and we're looking hungry and ambitious. And growing the right way, I might add. Lots to be positive about, just need to enjoy the journey.

You prefer your prey untouched, like?