SouthAussieMag

This is almost off topic, but as a massive Games Workshop and Warhammer fan since the mid 90s it was the greatest pleasure to see Games Workshop enter the ranks of the FTSE100 by kicking Cashley's Fraser Group out.

Fuck me, I thought they made cars in Sunderland not main battle tanks. Did I miss something? did Vickers reform and move up there?

I was just watching the footage with envy from here in Australia and this comment had me rolling on the ground

No one's perfect. Even the best generals make mistakes

I don't think this is his final form. In the post match interview he was asked if he had deliberately played a completely different and ineffective system against Liverpool in the league to mask his actual intentions in the final. He confirmed this and said that even though he wanted to win, he deliberately muddied the waters. This got me wondering if he deliberately played poor and conflicting tactics in the subsequent matches to really throw Slot off. It seems to have worked because the team absolutely played Liverpool off the park and they had absolutely no counter to anything the whole match. This tells me that not only is Eddie a master tactitian for individual matches alongside being a world class man manager and player developer, he is also a master campaign strategist. Leading up to the final with the performances I witnessed, I was feeling demoralised and thinking we were going to get creamed. I imagine that Liverpool thought they were going to stroll to victory. The mind games are real and this guy is a master at them. He's hard to read, stoic and a brilliant tactician. Emotion and agression however are important tactical tools and he weilds them through his number 1 Mad Dog Tindall. It's like the Picard, Riker dynamic where you have the stoic, smart, tactical leader with the brash, charismatic, enforcer first officer. Perfect yin and yang. I think that given support and funding, Howe can give Fergusson a run for his money in success. The guy is a football animal. He lives and breathes it. All he thinks about is the next match and he obsesses over every aspect. He watches losses on repeat to analyse where it went wrong, he refuses to take too much credit or kudos. He has shown that he can take pretty much any player no matter how mediocre and sculpt them like plasticine into a world beating top talent. Joelinton and Murphy being prime examples of his talent. He is amazing, along with his staff at finding transfer targets. Gordon, Isak, Livramento, Tonali.... There hasn't really been much in the way of junk signings. Compare that to other managers with a big budget. The majority of the time you see money spunked up against the wall on big names, rather than team players signed with good attitudes that can be moulded to fit the plan. I could keep waxing lyrical, but I think I've said enough. The guy is class and I definitely think this is just the beginning

Instead of condemning the guy they tried to shift the blame. Everyone condemned the horse puncher. They didn't try to say he was a Mackem. Too right, it must take a special kind of mind to willingly move there. I understand being born there, you have no choice, but to move there out of a conscious decision. Anyone with talent leaves; T-rex Arms, Henderson. The only people who move in are weirdos like that scruffy, scammy, rich energy hobo guy who tricked some formula one team and was ranting on street corners (or twitter, I can't remember) about buying sunderland with the 43p that his company was found to have in the Companies House doucments.

I was just telling my Dad (Australian, has no idea about football) about this thread and the Mackems and I was showing him the pictures from the 2014 FA cup and the Mackems being super duper classy and not being complete degenrates along with the gremlin shitting on the seat in the Stadium of Shite. I then remembered the seagull thing and read an article about it to him and holy shit.... That has to be the grimmest thing I've read in my life. I laughed at the situation at the time it happened but didn't realise the actual full extent of it. I thought it was more of a simulated thing and not a horendous act. I read the court transcript and he didn't just capture a seagull and rodger it, he took a baby seagull and proceeded to pleasure himself over it in an alleyway while watching videos of animal porn, which his phone was full of when they confiscated it..... That is deranged. I hate to derail the thread as this isn't funny, and this is a joke thread, but it actually messed with my head. I had a bit of a further dig and I found Sunderland reddit and forum threads where the only thing they were worried about was how it made them look and that it actually wasn't a Mackem, but a Geordie who had moved there and they were worried about how it was going to be used against them rather than the gravity of the situation. Some condemnation, but mostly deflection and worry about how it could be used against them. Again, sorry to be grim and derail the thread, but this has knocked me a bit knowing the actual context and event.

I'm sensing a new style of Geordie Shandy using this instead of Smirnoff. Sounds like it might be a super angry, resentful and bitter drunk though.

Holy crap, they really cannot catch a break this week can they Losing to Coventry, us winning and now some sad little gathering celebrating some guys who lost a milk trophy or something hosted by Shearers mate who was dancing around like a madman after Burn scored.... It's... so so funny . I was thinking we could bottle their tears and make our own flavoured air cigarette replacement thingy and call it FEWM

Ah yes, such a classy fanbase. They would never actually celebrate in a debauched and deranged way if they won a trophy... Looking at the way they carried on just getting to a final I'd shudder to think what it would be like if they won an actual trophy... So classy, classiest fans in England. lol

To be fair, Animals tend to mark their territory with bodily waste. The ever shrinking territory of this specimen is probably pushing it to become more desperate and overprotective of its shrinking domain. They also tend to void their bladders or bowels in the presence of an animal that is of a higher social status to them as a sign of submission. You may have experienced this with small dogs that pee themselves when you pet them. Additionally, monkeys defecate and then throw their poop as a form of communication, often when they are frustrated, annoyed, or trying to display dominance. This is standard monkey heeded behaviour and a refreshingly honest SMB post. Bearing this in mind this behaviour is indeed a "sane and rational" behaviour in a "primal response to an act of disrespect"

Seems there's No Place he missed... Oh wait, he missed that town too... (Sorry, I couldn't resist)

The "Discussing the Mags Carabao Cup Win" thread on the SMB is fascinating. I think the win has finally broken them. Usually they are united like a hive mind in their hatred and their threads follow a theme and format, but this entire thread seems to be rapidly cycling between all the stages of grief simultaneously. Plenty of Saudi-posting as expected, but there's a disjointed feeling to the thread that for me is uncharacteristic of their usual modus operandi. Shockingly there is a lot of acceptance and even people admitting that the rivalry is gone because we are so far above them.

I think a lot of people get caught up in viewing things through their own cultural lense and biases. You have to remember, to middle eastern countries such as Saudi, they view the practices we see as despicable as just and par for the course. The concept of sports washing would imply that they feel guilty or ashamed of their practices and were trying to cover it up through smoke and mirrors involving sport. In reality they seem to view the west's approach to criminals and dissidents as strange and unusual. I'm not defending the policies of the House of Saud here at all, far from it, but I find when dealing with international cultural understanding and politics it's easy to assess the situation through the lense of your own culture and sensibilities. The Muslim religion has existed since the 7th century and the Arabic and Berber culture even longer, and is very explicit about how to govern the population and how morals and ethics should be adhered to. Unlike Christianity which has been seen as malleable and open to interpretation with major reforms coming through the protestant reformation and later the Vatican 2 reforms, Islam is seen as absolute and unchanging by its scholars. Again I am not defending this and also at the same time I'm also not going to judge. It is what it is and many studies and surveys have shown that an overwhelming majority of Muslims like it as it is (Pew have done multiple exhaustive worldwide surveys with gigantic sample sizes https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/). As an English man (yes I see myself as such, we still live in the empire here, and I was raised by an English mother), I'm cautious about forcing beliefs on to other cultures as it's just perpetuating a colonial mindset and it really hasn't worked out well on our last three forays with the US into Muslim countries over the past 3 decades. If anything it's made them more fundamental and murderey. What I'm getting at here is that the sportswashing label is ridiculous on the face of it. These middle eastern theocracies, caliphates and absolute monarchies don't care about what the west thinks of their behaviours. They do care about prestige and the accumulation of wealth, deeds and status, especially when competing with rival states. As you said people are going to judge us based on how our owners govern and project their power. If you dig slightly under the surface of any of the other owners of other teams you're going to find a sleazy underbelly. US billionaires, Chinese concerns, South East Asian oligarchs, Russians etc etc. Until the Prem adopts a model like the Bundesliga that puts the power into the hands of the fans (lol good luck), it's going to continue to be dominated by unscrupulous types who are inflating their own egos with spare change from their unbelievable fortunes. When it comes down to it people don't like change. They like the established order of top 6 teams and sometimes an outsider like Leicester busting through. When someone like us comes through to upset the apple cart and oust some of the top 6, they will use what they can to delegitimise us. This happens to be easy with a very obviously nefarious power as the owner. However, glass houses and all that. Sorry I've been on the vodka again tonight and I've written another essay.

I can tell I'm going to love it here. Monkeys fist of course I've seen a grown man naked. It's a coming of age ritual and obligation to do an outback walkabout when you turn 18. When this happens you run into a lot of naked cooked men. It's just a matter of avoiding them. Sammynb knows where it's at. South Australia is the only state not founded by convicts. We are sophisticated and nothing like the east coast riff raff.