Craig

We've got that scheme at work and I did consider it when I joined, but the monthly costs put me off. For anything half decent you were looking at £600 per month for starters, and that was factory standard with solid white paint. A Tesla, you were looking at starting price of £800pcm. In the end I bought a 18mth old A-Class for half the price.

My kids are all over them, I don't get the fascination tbh. That said the youngest has managed to obtain himself a 'lifetime ban' from the Vapeshop in town for buying them for one of his under age mates

I truly believe their "it's much worse than we thought it would be" rhetoric is completely genuine. I also believe that the Tories, knowing the game was up for them 2 years ago have been utterly reckless in both what they've spent, and promised under the guise that the worse they make it for the incoming Labour government, the worse they'll look / sooner the honeymoon period is over. What is disappointing to observe is that people on all sides of the political spectrum appear to have been sucked into their plan and are being openly critical of the calls the new government have had to make. The one thing I am concerned about is the reluctance of the Treasury to release details of the £22bn black hole. Why would they be unwilling to do that?

Dr Evil in living form.

Is he from Springfield?

How delightful to observe a narcissist being completely eviscerated on live television. Looking forward to seeing the projectfivethreeeight polls being updated.

Government won the vote: 348 - 228 74 abstained.

Aye, Tugenhat seemed relatively reasonable when he was in for it 2 years ago. Mind you that's when he was up against Sunak, Braverman and the bat-shit-crazy lettuce. Hitler would have seemed quite reasonable next to that lot. Demonstrates how fucked that party really is when the most credible candidate they can muster up is James fucking Cleverly.

I doubt whoever gets the gig will be PM. It'll be the same carry on as when they lost in 1997. They'll go through 2, probably 3 leaders before they'll appoint one who's in contention to become PM. Whoever does become leader needs to root out the xenophobic element else they'll never move the party into an electable state. Let's hope they don't.

Headline basically is cunt knocked out, 5 cunts left.

Patel out of the Tory Leadership race. Votes cast: Jenrick - 28 Badenoch - 22 Cleverly - 21 Tugenhat - 17 Stride - 16 Patel - 14

Off to Kalkan in Turkey next month. Will be on the lookout for the 'Genuine Fake' football shirt stores whilst there.

Well this isn't confusing at all.

We've never been anywhere near challenging PSR (or FFP) in the previous 15 years. We'd have needed to have been a club of ambition for that. I strongly suspected we'd have been starting this season without one of Bruno or Isak - probably the former given his release clause was confirmed.

Elanga being rumoured apparently.

As last season ended, I stated that given our PSR challenge, if we managed to hold on to Isak, Bruno & Gordon, I'd consider it a successful transfer window. I still maintain that. I'll be frustrated to fuck if, as is looking likely, we're unable to significantly add to our squad but that frustration is aimed solely at the ridiculous system that has left us hamstrung because of our balance sheet rather than aimed at those in roles within the club. The system fucking stinks ... at it doubles-down by encouraging people to believe that those within the club aren't doing their duty. And that's before you consider the distraction of having to deal with the exits of Ashworth, Staveley & Ghodoussi - all were matters we could have done without. The press were utterly convinced Bruno and/or Isak would be in an Arsenal shirt by the end of today. Well they got that wrong!

Ward-Prowse going to Forest on loan is a bit of a surprise.

Down with this bullshit. Politics and football should be kept separate.

That's alright young padawan, keep up the good work

If the deal comes off, he arrives and proves to be a massive success, i couldn't really give a flying fuck how this experience looked publicly tbh.

There are ... but are they considered the right fit for our requirements - most likely not. Once their demands exceed our valuation of the deal, then we walk away. None of us are in a position to say whether that threshold has been met though.

As others have said, if once the club have made the absolutely maximum offer it's still knocked back then you walk away. We've no idea if we've already played that card though.

So you advocate the powers that be walk away from any deal where the selling club are pushing the price up, but you're going to be massively fucked off if we don't get an incoming transfer?!

People's memories are also still scarred by the Ashley era rhetoric of "we just couldn't get it over the line....". It was pure waving the carrot in front of the donkey stuff and it's imbedded in some people as the way we should conduct ourselves in the market. It's absolutely not because, as you point out, we'll end up with a bunch of average shite that won't move us forward.

I think we're kidding ourselves if we're expecting transfer sagas to not be protracted. We don't have the geographic pull of London (or Manchester / Liverpool for that matter) and the footballing world thinks we've pockets deeper than Scrooge McDuck's swimming pool. Expect clubs to take the piss with 'Newcastle Tax' when we're involved. There's been a lot of noise behind the scenes since January. The situation with Ashworth and subsequent replacement is one we really could have done without and then to compound matters, Staveley & Ghodoussi left. Bound to be unsettling to some degree for Howe given the structure between him and PIF was completely replaced.