Title "Stroll" 2019-2020

[Norbs]

Anyway, seems Sterling is out for a while.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51408583

He's turned to **** anyway, probably a blessing for Pep as he doesn't have to drop the sulky little ****

[sean_lfc]

You’ve changed Sean

... says the aghast Scottish Please-Don't-Helicopter-Your-Willy-To-Celebrate-Bagpiper

[Buzzo]

... says the aghast Scottish Please-Don't-Helicopter-Your-Willy-To-Celebrate-Bagpiper

I live or die by my standards.

[Red_Polo]

Confirmed LFC transfers summer 2013:

Players IN

Kolo Toure – Free Transfer – Man City
Iago Aspas – £7m – Celta Vigo
Luis Alberto – £6.8m – Sevilla
Simon Mignolet – £9m – Sunderland
Aly Cissokho – Season Loan – Valencia
Mamadou Sakho – £15m – PSG
Tiago Ilori – £7m – Sporting Lisbon
Victor Moses – Loan – Chelsea

LFC Transfers Season 2014/15

Confirmed Liverpool FC Transfers, Season 2014/15

Players IN:

Rickie Lambert – Forward – Southampton – £4m
Emre Can – Midfielder – Bayer Leverkusen – £10m
Adam Lallana – Midfielder – Southampton – £25m
Lazar Markovic – Forward – Benfica – £20m
Dejan Lovren – Defender – Southampton – £20m
Divock Origi – Forward – Lille – £10m
Javier Manquillo – Right-back – Atletico Madrid – Loan
Alberto Moreno – Left-back – Sevilla – £12m
Mario Balotelli – Forward – AC Milan – £16m

If we actually used any information from their database it looks like we did them a favor and they should be paying us.

We had to get Kolo in as he knew the password

[Fredo]

Parade scheduled to be on Monday the 18th of May apparently.

[RedReet]

Is this really ‘the worst’ Premier League season?

By Oliver Kay

(Spoilers for those offended by long articles)

Something came up on on social media recently. It was a clipping from an article from the Football League Review on May 4, 1968 and it featured the thoughts of the late, great Sir Matt Busby.

At the time, Busby’s Manchester United team were locked in a fierce title fight with Leeds United, Liverpool and the eventual champions Manchester City. They were also in the midst of a European Cup semi-final tie with Real Madrid, whom they would overcome before beating Benfica 4-1 in the final, becoming the first English club to win the trophy.

It is remembered as a golden age of English football. It was two years after the national team won the World Cup, a period when the on-pitch excellence of Bobby Moore, George Best, Denis Law, Bobby Charlton, Jimmy Greaves, Billy Bremner and others was supplemented by managerial giants such as Busby, Bill Shankly, Don Revie, Joe Mercer, Harry Catterick and Bill Nicholson.

Not everyone can have been convinced, though, because in the article in question Busby was responding to gripes about the quality of the league. “Today’s first division of the Football League is producing an overall higher standard than any seen anywhere at any time,” he said. “It’s so good that it’s true to say there is hardly ever a bad club in it any season these days. What some people describe as a poor side is only that in comparison with the extremely good ones in whose company it is. In most other leagues in the world, our so-called ‘poor’ First Division sides would flourish. No other league has such strength in depth.”


It is the kind of argument that has become more familiar over the past couple of decades as the Premier League has become a global success story. The greater the hype, the stronger the backlash when our teams fall well short in European competition, as has happened too often, or when the standard on a particular weekend seems so terribly underwhelming for all the money lavished on transfer fees and wages (“Best league in the world? LOL”) or when, as now, one team is so dominant that we have a procession in lieu of a title race.

The Premier League’s first winter break — such as it is — offers a chance to draw breath and to try to make sense of a season which has at times seemed to defy explanation.

At the time of writing, Liverpool have won 24 and drawn one of their first 25 games. It is the strongest start seen not only in the Premier League era but in top-flight history across England, France, Germany, Italy or Spain. With more than a third of the season to go, they have already racked up two more league wins than Manchester United’s treble-winning team of 1999. They may or may not emulate Arsenal’s 2003-04 feat by going unbeaten for an entire Premier League season, but in order to replicate that “Invincibles” campaign perfectly, they would have to slow down considerably, drawing 11 and winning just two of their final 13 games.

This isn’t normal, but recent years have seen a widening chasm between the best and the rest. Of the five highest points totals in the Premier League era, no fewer than four of them (Manchester City’s 100 in 2017-18 and 98 last season, Liverpool’s 97 last term and Chelsea’s 93 in 2016-17) have come in the past four seasons. That, barring a dramatic drop-off by Liverpool, will soon be five out of six. The exception is Chelsea’s total of 95 points in 2004-05.


Sir Alex Ferguson, who used to calculate that his Manchester United team could afford a maximum of six defeats over the course of a season, admitted in 2006 that Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea had “raised the bar” for a title-winning campaign. Over the course of nine seasons between 1995-96 and 2003-04, the Premier League was won with an average of 82.8 points. Over the 15 seasons since, the average winning total has been 89.4 points, with only two champions (Manchester United in 2010-11 and Leicester City in 2015-16) finishing with fewer than 86. Since Leicester’s triumph with 81 points in 2016, the winning totals have been 93, 100 and 98. Liverpool will be expected to relent between now and May, but, at their extraordinary rate, they are on course to take 110 points from a possible 114.

It is an extreme representation of a Europe-wide trend. Twenty years ago, Deportivo La Coruna won La Liga with a total of 69 points, winning 21 and losing no fewer than 11 of their 38 matches. The competition was transformed when Pep Guardiola took over at Barcelona in 2008. Since then, the winning totals have been 87, 99, 96, 100, 100, 90, 94, 91, 93, 93 and 87. And if the dip over recent seasons reflects anything — Real Madrid, the leaders, are on course for 85 points as things stand — many La Liga aficionados would suggest that it is the state of transition at the top three clubs rather than an improvement among the rest.


Roy Makaay scored 22 times for Deportivo as they won La Liga in 1999-2000 with 69 points (Photo: Nuno Correia Mandatory Credit: Allsport UK /Allsport)
Bayern Munich have won the past seven Bundesliga titles with an average of 84.6 points (from 34 games). Their previous seven titles, dating back to 1999-2000, were won with an average of 72.7 points. Juventus have won eight consecutive Serie A titles with an average of 90.9 points over a 38-game season — again, off the scale compared to previous decades in Italian football, when there was a belief that drawing away games for a title-challenging team was fine as long as you made home advantage count. Paris Saint-Germain’s monopoly of Ligue 1, with an average of 88.9 points over the past seven seasons, is barely less stark.

There are some obvious reasons for this, ranging from the continuing clampdown on foul play over recent decades (which inevitably plays into the hands of those teams with more talented players and a more ambitious outlook) to the growing financial disparity between the very richest clubs in European football and the rest. The “super club” era, brought about by the Champions League’s self-perpetuating elitism and by the way the globalisation of the game has coincided with the growth of digital phenomena, means that the rich get much, much richer with every broadcasting rights cycle. When clubs from outside that elite briefly force their way in, like Ajax reaching the Champions League semi-finals last season or Leicester winning the Premier League in 2016, their squads tend to be swiftly picked apart by those at the top of their food chain and normal service is quickly resumed.

In the Premier League, that elite has appeared entrenched over recent years. Last season was the fourth time in five years that the “Big Six” of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham had finished in the top six positions — and, as usual, with quite a sharp drop down to seventh place. With the very notable exception of that 2015-16 season, when Leicester were champions, Southampton came sixth, Liverpool eighth and Chelsea 10th, that glass ceiling has appeared impregnable.

This season is different. Rather than a league of 6+14, it has looked like a league of 1+19. Below Liverpool lies chaos. Chelsea have won four, drawn three and lost six of their last 13 Premier League matches, a run that includes defeats at home to West Ham United, Bournemouth and Southampton, yet they are quite comfortably fourth in the table — four points and one place ahead of a Tottenham team who have won just 10 of 25 league games this season and just 13 of their past 37 stretching back to last February.

Scroll down to sixth, one point behind Tottenham, and you will find a Sheffield United team who have been one of the delights of this season, confounding all those who dismissed them as relegation fodder on their return to the top flight after 12 years, but reaching such a position by scoring only 26 goals in 25 matches is an oddity. Next comes what is statistically and by general consensus the worst Manchester United team in three decades, having won just nine Premier League games this season and just 11 out of 34 since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was appointed on a permanent basis last March.

Still, nine wins is three more than Arsenal, who lie 10th, firmly on course for their worst Premier League campaign since 1994-95. Go back to April and they have won just seven out of their last 30 games in the Premier League. One point further back are Crystal Palace, who have won just one of their last 10 games.

Robert Pires, a key member of Arsenal’s “Invincibles” team in 2003-04, is not alone in suggesting that standards across the Premier League have dropped. “Technically, the league has dipped a little,” he told France Football magazine this week. “When you see the squads of Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham or Arsenal, it’s not as strong as it was a few years ago. The only ones who can trouble (Liverpool) are Manchester City.”


Wenger celebrates winning the title in 2003-04 at White Hart Lane (Photo: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
The same was said last season, when City and Liverpool were streets ahead of the rest. The consensus all season long was that, as mightily impressive as the top two were, standards elsewhere were immensely disappointing.

And yet last season was the one in which, after a decade in La Liga’s shadow, the Premier League’s elite truly reasserted themselves in European competition. Liverpool overcame Tottenham in the Champions League final while both Manchester City and Manchester United made it to the last eight. That meant four Champions League quarter-finalists in one year — as many as the Premier League produced in five seasons between 2012-13 and 2016-17.

There was another show of strength in the Europa League, where Chelsea beat Arsenal in all-English final. Seven Premier League clubs (the usual six, plus Wolverhampton Wanderers) have made it through to the knockout stages of this season’s European competitions.

Over the five seasons from 2012-13 to 2016-17, England trailed a distant third behind Spain and Germany, only just ahead of Italy, in UEFA’s coefficient ranking based on performance in European club competition. In terms of results over the past three seasons, England has reclaimed first place from Spain.

The International Federation for Football History and Statistics announced last month that its calculations put the Premier League as the world’s top league for the first time since 2009. There are many ways to calculate such things. None of them would support the popular view that the standard in the Premier League right now is at a low point, even if, at times, the evidence in front of our eyes tells us that it is.

When was the Premier League at its strongest? Some would say the mid-1990s, when Blackburn Rovers, Newcastle United, Liverpool and Arsenal all threatened Manchester United’s newfound domination. Some would say around the turn of the century, as an influx of high-quality signings from overseas coincided with the emergence of a new wave of young homegrown talent and it felt like every season was a tussle between Ferguson’s Manchester United and Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal, two teams that had silk and steel in abundance.

Some would go for that period in the mid-to-late 2000s when, with Ferguson and Wenger joined by Mourinho, Rafa Benitez and, later, Carlo Ancelotti, the levels of tactical sophistication went up considerably and the “Big Four” at that time were consistently challenging to win the Champions League. Others might pinpoint a particular time over the past decade, when Manchester City have set standards that others have found it hard to match.

Stan Collymore, the former Nottingham Forest, Liverpool and Aston Villa forward, probably spoke for many when he suggested in his Daily Mirror column this week that the league is weaker than it was when he was playing in the 1990s. As an example, he cited Southampton, who are, he said, “the epitome of an average team – and for months they’ve been right in the relegation mire — yet they’ve had a decent run and all of a sudden they’re two wins off the European places, which is utter madness.”

“I played against much better Saints teams than this one back in the 1990s, sides containing Matt Le Tissier and co, and they were nearly relegated with some regularity,” he continued. “If you think the sides lower down are better than they were, go and ask West Ham season-ticket holders of 30 or 40 years whether this lot are as good as the side which contained Tony Cottee, Frank McAvennie and Ian Bishop.”

As a fellow 40-something, I am inclined to share a rose-tinted view of how wonderful it was in the 1980s and 1990s. But of that West Ham team containing Cottee and McAvennie, which almost won the league in 1985-86, the most-capped players were Alvin Martin (17 games for England) and Ray Stewart (10 for Scotland). Ask any West Ham fan from that era whether they preferred that team or the current one and the answer will be unanimous. But while the current team certainly adds up to less than the sum of its expensive parts, it is impossible to imagine that a team containing a handful of players on the fringes of the English and Scottish national squads and a few relative journeymen would be able to compete for the Premier League title now.

The same applies to Collymore’s point about Southampton. Le Tissier spent 16 years at that club in which, as Collymore suggests, they struggled more often than not. Le Tissier was wonderfully talented, an icon of the early Premier League era, but he was also a player who was overlooked by successive England managers in an era when the emphasis on fitness and work rate were nothing like as great as they are now. Some very talented team-mates came and went from Southampton over the course of his time there — Tim Flowers, Alan Shearer and brothers Danny and Rodney Wallace to name but four — but, in terms of pure quality across the team, the club’s supporters are more likely to lament more recent times, under Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman, whatever the nostalgia for the days when Chris Nicholl and Ian Branfoot were in charge.

Globalisation has made it a very different Premier League. As more and more of the best players and coaches have arrived from all over the world, technical, physical and tactical standards have improved. That improvement cannot possibly be constant, because teams will always go through cycles of boom and bust, but, as a long-term trend as the Premier League’s financial advantage over other leagues has grown and grown, it seems irrefutable.

Pires ventures in his France Football interview that winning the toughest matches was “much, much harder in our time”. “Everything has changed today,” the former Arsenal winger said. “As I said before, technically, many teams, particularly the big ones, have gone down a notch. There were no cameras, no VAR. And, above all, when you played away. I remember the matches at Leeds, Blackburn, Bolton… you had to get used to them. When the guys wanted to get stuck in…”


(Photo: David Davies – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
He is right in that respect. Pires and other flair players of that generation had to contend with far rougher physical treatment — and not just at Blackburn and Bolton — than their equivalents in the Premier League today. There was always a feeling within Premier League circles at that time that Pires and his Arsenal team could tear you apart if you allowed them, but not if you dragged them into a physical battle. Even Ferguson’s Manchester United team were not above such devilment.

Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Pires and co frequently made a mockery of that theory, as their unbeaten record in 2003-04 demonstrates, but, broadly speaking, it carried some weight. Wenger hated those bruising physical encounters at Blackburn, Bolton and, in later years, Stoke City. He and his players from that era will remember some resounding victories at those clubs. They will also recall some fairly harrowing defeats.

Sam Allardyce, who managed Bolton and Blackburn during that period, suggested this week that the widespread emphasis on possession-based football has played into the hands of the better teams. “Pep Guardiola has moved us all forward in a direction we’re all happy with,” he told the Daily Mail, “but there’s a dangerous trend towards over-playing and thinking you can only play that one way. It’s fine if you have the best players in the world, because you’re going to do it better than anyone else. But if you don’t, it’s very difficult.”

It is an interesting point and it reflects the way the game has evolved not just over recent years but recent decades. If Pires says that playing away from home against physically robust opponents was “much, much harder in our time”, any player from previous generations would tell him, in the style of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen, that getting pole-axed by Lucas Neill at Blackburn or elbowed by Kevin Davies at Bolton sounds like “luxury”.

Going back to the 1990s, the 1980s, the 1970s and far beyond, every set of players would say they had it tougher, whether in terms of the permissiveness of the laws, the ferocity of the opposition or indeed the quality of the pitches. Many years from now, today’s young players might reminisce those crazy days of the late 2010s when Ashley Barnes and Troy Deeney roamed the land — “and that was before they had something called VAR, never mind the robot refs they have now!”

Just about every change football has witnessed over the past few decades — changes in financial distribution, changes to competitions, changes to the laws of the game, the increased use of technology and analytics, the improvement in the quality of pitches — has served to make football less unpredictable. It has widened the gulf in quality between the mega-rich elite and the rest. The cream has always risen to the top, but these days the financial landscape means that even if, for example, Ajax or Monaco manage to find or develop several of the best young talents in the game, it is only a matter of time before they end up moving to the very biggest, richest clubs.

So many of the best players end up in the Premier League — not the very, very best, perhaps, but, particularly since Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp arrived, there has been an emphasis on turning top-class potential into top-class performance. Guardiola and Klopp have built extraordinary teams. Comparable with the best Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea teams? Certainly comparable. Whether you would ever settle the debate is another question.

The argument against this season’s Liverpool team and indeed the Manchester City of the previous two years would be that they have it easy — that the competition has fallen away because their rivals are in transition and because the standard throughout the league is so disappointing.

The mind tells you it has never been like this before, with so many big teams underperforming at once, but, of course, it has. When Manchester United ended a 26-year wait and won the inaugural Premier League title in 1993, the previous three league champions, Leeds, Arsenal and Liverpool, came 17th, 10th and sixth respectively. Leeds finished two points clear of the relegation zone and Liverpool, though sixth, were only eight points further ahead. Norwich City led the table for much of the season and ended up third, just behind Aston Villa but ahead of Blackburn and Queens Park Rangers.

The mid-1990s evoke a powerful sense of nostalgia, but English teams were still pretty hopeless in European competition, having not recovered the winning habit and tactical know-how lost during the years they were banned following the Heysel Stadium tragedy. Manchester United were taken to the final day in 1995-96 by a Newcastle team who were commonly described as “The Entertainers”. Kevin Keegan’s side played some wonderful stuff, with a flamboyant front four of Keith Gillespie, David Ginola, Peter Beardsley and Les Ferdinand, but their reputation is best appreciated in the context of that era. They scored 82 goals in 1993-94 but only 66 in their fabled title challenge two years later. Manchester City scored 106 two seasons ago.

The turn of the century? Manchester United lost three Premier League games in their treble-winning 1998-99 season: 3-0 away to Arsenal, 3-1 away to Sheffield Wednesday and 3-2 at home to a Middlesbrough side who had the unpredictable Colombian striker Hamilton Ricard up front alongside Brian Deane, served by a midfield of Neil Maddison, Robbie Mustoe and a 35-year-old Andy Townsend. Certainly the competition seemed more intense back then, match by match, week by week, but, if the most damning argument in 2020 is about the meagre standard from fifth place downwards, it is worth noting that Harry Redknapp’s West Ham finished fifth in 1999 with just 57 points and a goal difference of minus seven.

On and on it goes. Were people moaning about the quality of the Premier League during Arsenal’s “Invincibles” season, when Manchester United were in the awkward early stages of a rebuild and when Liverpool stumbled to fourth place with just 60 points (only 16 wins!) from 38 games? Of course they were. The same goes for Chelsea’s record-breaking campaign a year later. Fourth place that season went to an Everton team who scored 45 goals in their 38 games. A year earlier, they had finished 17th.

Even during that golden age of Champions League excellence in the late 2000s — when the Premier League provided three semi-finalists for three years running — you could raise serious questions about the standard below the main challengers. It was a period when the only threats to the “Big Four” were posed by David Moyes’s Everton, Martin O’Neill’s Villa and, briefly, Martin Jol’s Tottenham and Allardyce’s Bolton. Good teams, all of them, but with a certain rudimentary nature.

And that is before we turn to that early-2010s period when, Chelsea’s somewhat freakish 2012 success apart, English performance in the Champions League suffered a spectacular drop-off.

A case in point would be the 2010-11 season. People wonder how Scott Parker could possibly have been voted Footballer of the Year in a league that contained Yaya Toure, David Silva, Wayne Rooney, Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie, Steven Gerrard and Didier Drogba. It was a campaign when it felt like the entire league, other than Manchester United, had a post-World Cup hangover. Parker was the Premier League player of the month in March, which is good timing in terms of the end-of-season awards. Other players of the month that season included Peter Odemwingie (twice), Johan Elmander and David Luiz. Blackpool were unlucky to be relegated with 39 points, with Charlie Adam and DJ Campbell chipping in with 13 goals apiece. It was a very, very strange time.


DJ Campbell in action against Arsenal in 2011, the season Blackpool went down (Photo: Chris Brunskill/Getty Images)
The point is that the truly “vintage” season, when there were two or three top-class teams fighting for the title and there was drama, intrigue and quality from top to bottom, doesn’t really exist, no matter what our sepia-tinged memories or Sky’s Premier League Years show might tell us. There have been teams of the highest quality, fiercely contested title races (nothing like enough of them) and “anyone can beat anyone” unpredictability. All too rarely, though, do you get all three of those things at once.

The standard at the very top this season is, quite evidently, extremely high. Liverpool’s performances last season, in the Champions League as well as the Premier League, offer reassurance that this is not just, as some would have it, a good team in a very bad league.

On the other hand, results among the rest of the “Big Six” have been a long, long way below expectations — lowered expectations in some cases. That Tottenham, Manchester United and Arsenal all, arguably, remain in contention for Champions League qualification, after the way they have performed to date, certainly doesn’t say much for the standard required for, say, a top-six finish this season.

It is a league of 20 teams, though, not six. Subjectively, the standard in the bottom half of the table seems better than in previous years; often there are five or six teams who look ready to be put out of their misery, but Burnley, Bournemouth and Watford have all shown fight over recent weeks and even Norwich, five points adrift at the bottom, have looked capable in a way that the whipping boys of previous campaigns have not. That Busby line about there not being a “bad” team in the division? It seems applicable right now. There are no easy games — unless you are Liverpool, perhaps. And even then, Klopp would tell you there have been precious few of those.

There have been times this season when Liverpool have cruised to victory. But not many. Their finest performance of the campaign so far was when they won 4-0 at Leicester City on Boxing Day, but their defining trait over seven subsequent victories has been their resilience. The trilogy against Tottenham (1-0), Manchester United (2-0) and Wolves (2-1) saw their mettle seriously tested. They were sublime in the second half against Southampton on Saturday, but a 4-0 scoreline seemed harsh on Ralph Hasenhuttl’s team, who, Klopp said, “constantly” caused Liverpool problems in the opening period.

Liverpool are not blowing teams away week after week, routinely winning by huge margins like Manchester City have done at their best under Guardiola. Theirs is a different kind of domination. Their outstanding players over the past few weeks have been the goalkeeper Alisson, the central defenders Joe Gomez and Virgil van Dijk and the midfielders Jordan Henderson and Georginio Wijnaldum. On paper, it looks like a procession. In reality, almost every recent game has been a battle. That is something that the league table doesn’t illustrate – something that reflects better on the league as well as showcasing Liverpool’s powers of endurance.

Mentality is paramount. Far too often in the modern era, players and teams seem to stop striving. Financial dynamics cause a lowering of ambition. For too many clubs, under cynical ownership, that means setting sights on a top-four finish, or on avoiding the bottom three, rather than looking for ways to establish a competitive advantage over rivals with greater resources. For too many managers, that means putting short-term job security before long-term strategy. For too many players, it means landing a big contract or commercial deal and then settling into a comfort zone.

The greatest teams are the ones that push themselves to the limit. Ferguson’s United teams never stopped doing that. The first incarnations of Wenger’s Arsenal and Mourinho’s Chelsea were similarly driven. Guardiola’s City need to put this season’s troubles behind them and keep striving in Europe as well as in the Premier League. Klopp’s Liverpool need to keep doing what they are doing. History says that is easier said than done.

The competition will reintensify. It will ebb and flow, as it always does, as certain clubs get their act together and others lose their way. And people will still claim the quality is awful, the worst ever. They always do.

(Photo: Julian Finney/Getty Images)

[rudedog]

Summary?

[RedAndWhite]

This season is different. Rather than a league of 6+14, it has looked like a league of 1+19.

Didn't read past that bit. **** em

[dom9]

Summary?

Everything goes in cycles

[sean_lfc]

Parade scheduled to be on Monday the 18th of May apparently.

Is that true?? Where‘d you get the info, Fredz?

If it is true... my birthday is on Sunday, the 17th! And I now have wheels (a spanking new Peugeot Rifter), so I would roll on up from the beaches of France and do an epic road trip!

[Mr Pink]

If it is true... my birthday is on Sunday, the 17th!

Huh, when’s your birthday if it isn’t true?? [emoji23][emoji23]

[Mark79]

Summary?

Starts off with Matt Busby defending the quality of the league in 1968.

Points out that people were questioning the quality of the league when Arsenal were Invincibles and when Chelsea got 95 points the following season.

Also highlights how during the late 2000’s, that the top 4 never changed, due to the lack of quality below them.

Finishes with:

"The competition will reintensify. It will ebb and flow, as it always does, as certain clubs get their act together and others lose their way. And people will still claim the quality is awful, the worst ever. They always do."

[baitman]

Summary?

10,000 words of waffles, gets paid.

[Fredo]

Is that true?? Where‘d you get the info, Fredz?

If it is true... my birthday is on Sunday, the 17th! And I now have wheels (a spanking new Peugeot Rifter), so I would roll on up from the beaches of France and do an epic road trip!

I saw this on twitter earlier today. This is not confirmed yet as obviously we’d have to have won something for this to happen but I do believe it’s genuine and these plans have probably been discussed. Best wait closer to the day than making any plans though but to be honest, I did have a look at hotel prices for that weekend and it’s already horribly expensive.

[baitman]

I saw this on twitter earlier today. This is not confirmed yet as obviously we’d have to have won something for this to happen but I do believe it’s genuine and these plans have probably been discussed. Best wait closer to the day than making any plans though but to be honest, I did have a look at hotel prices for that weekend and it’s already horribly expensive.

It went horribly expensive several weeks ago, its unbearable.