Rayvin

Why can't you use parental controls? Why are they being dismissed? My perception is that the root cause of our problem here is that some parents aren't using them.

We'd very likely stay up on the back of that though

It's not healthy to hold back

Despite this being an illiberal action, and the Guardian professing to be a liberal newspaper, they've put out this article suggesting that the ban is a good thing not just because it "protects" children, but also because it will help to stop men looking at porn. Which needs to be accomplished just because. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/20/porn-warps-culture-credit-card-footprint

Don't have kids so it's the latter for me. I really don't understand why parents can't just be responsible for what their children do, but there we go. Also, this is doomed to fail for all the usual reasons. Proxies being the key one. As a final point, you can get porn on Tumblr. They gonna paywall/ban Tumblr? Reddit?

It's not that we don't need a striker, it's this sense that we should just buy buy buy with reckless abandon and a total failure to acknowledge the realities of our situation. Don't we have too many players full stop? We need to shift some. If we can't, of course we're going to have to make do with what we've got. To be perfectly honest though, I would have fancied the current team to avoid relegation from the prem last year. We'd have been in the thick of it, but I doubt we'd have gone down. We're still a better side than Brighton and Huddersfield, so we really only need to be better than one Prem team. We probably already are.

Which should surely tell you that we are in fact looking to bring someone in, and that the constraint is selling what we have first. If we don't manage to sell Mitro, we won't replace him - but I'm still not convinced that's a huge problem.

This.

Barely arsed at all about pensions. Just another excuse to vacuum up money from the young to give to the old.

Problem with Sturridge for me is that his named was ruined by people who refer to him as Studge. That's now all I see when I read his name

Bas Dost was £60m mind

Not a bad shout that actually. Injury prone but beggars can't be choosers.

Aye, someone will pick him up in January. Not us. Don't really see why we can't persevere with what we have, but there we go. Maybe if we sold Mitro, we'd have enough money to buy someone better than him though. i.e. if they've got £15m kicking around for a striker already, and get another £15m for Mitro, we might get to spend £30m. Not that we'd get anyone amazing for that, but still.

Aye but we had to be on the front foot more last season. We won't be doing that this year, so bursting counter attacks should be more effective.

It's just one season. We consolidate this year then we're on basically an even footing with the bottom 12 next season - which means we can push for top 10. Beyond that who knows, maybe top ten is about as good as it gets under Ashley - but Rafa can certainly get us that far, and in two years it would be a fairly speedy achievement.

As in they've bid for him, or we're just chucking him under the nose of anyone we think might be remotely interested?

The new TV deal came in last summer, and clubs were still spending fairly modestly. It's only this year that we're seeing them spend massive sums. Stands to reason that this is about as early as most clubs could do so - which means we're just going to have to accept that we're a season behind the others. So yeah, we'll be consolidating - but this is where Rafa should be able to make a difference. We'll be a tough to beat side who play on the counter, with an experienced manager who has a good record for taking points off teams who are 'better'. We'll be fine.

Aye, really think people are overstating the quality of the PL...

We have such a rich culture

It really is fucking weird that he does that

Didn't look amazing for Sunderland last season but they were hardly a good team to begin with. Hopefully he does better with us.

Rafa could have come out saying the things he is to set a face saving stance ahead of the season. If he knows it's going to be tough, by doing what he's doing, he'll protect his reputation. Moyes did it at Sunderland last year.

Couldn't you argue then that Ashley is just trying to keep Rafa sweet for as long as possible, knowing that if we can make it to next season, we can have a proper go in the following year? Maybe even Rafa knows that.

And yet, a club policy surrounding the concept of wiping one's own nose is actually a long term, sustainable approach.

Really don't think Rafa has said anything here that we need to be unduly concerned about. He's had the same position all summer.