Uilleam

I didn't say that. I said that this country couldn't qualify for a beetle drive at the Church Hall, a figure of speech, to compare, perhaps unkindly, the success of Portuguese players at recent competitions to that of our National XI, which has failed to qualify for any tournament since the days of yore.

Portuguese players won the last Euros. We, sitting in a country which couldn't qualify for a beetle drive at the Church Hall, should not be so quick to slate players from Portugal.

Did the Portuguese not win the last Euros? (PS Hugo Sanchez)

Gowf sticks? The winner will be a badly dressed millionaire, with expensive dentistry. Perm any one from the field.

Indeed. I said on the other thread, but it might be more appropriate here: This year the team has stagnated. There has been no discernible, sustainable progress on the playing front. A stagnant pool. That is the best description of current circumstances. Therefore, and any way you look at it, PC needs to redd out his playing staff at the end of the season. That much is obvious; what is, but, perhaps, has not been so clear, is the extent of change required to make an acceptable impact; it needs to be significant. Ideally it would be. Realistically, however, constraints on finance, and on available time (Europa Qualifiers will arrive precipitately), will militate against a quick turn around. The process of change will be, perforce, incremental, over this summer, and that of 2018. Unfortunately, it looks like we will have to settle for some moderate change, and consequently modest progress next season. I do hope that I am wrong here.

This year the team has stagnated. There has been no discernible, sustainable progress on the playing front. A stagnant pool. That is the best description of current circumstances. Therefore, and any way you look at it, PC needs to redd out his playing staff at the end of the season. That much is obvious; what is, but, perhaps, has not been so clear, is the extent of change required to make an acceptable impact; it needs to be significant. Ideally it would be. Realistically, however, constraints on finance, and on available time (Europa Qualifiers will arrive precipitately), will militate against a quick turn around. The process of change will be, perforce, incremental, over this summer, and that of 2018. Unfortunately, it looks like we will have to settle for some moderate change, and consequently modest progress next season. I do hope that I am wrong here.

45 minutes of urine. For the avoidance of doubt let the record show, 'Horse Piss'.

Half an hour of urine.

Found the Moyes article here: http://www.skysports.com/football/news/15131/10826006/david-moyes-where-did-it-all-go-wrong-for-the-sunderland-boss The game has moved on; Moyes has not.

By way of contrast to the piece posted on Brentford.... Again from today's Guardian The Premier League Elite Player Performance Plan - ‘not perfect but lessons are being learned’ EPPP was introduced five years ago and while it has been criticised for creating a feeding frenzy for the elite at the expense of those less able to keep up, Swansea are among the clubs who have embraced it Nick Ames @NickAmes82 Wednesday 5 April 2017 14.00 BST Last modified on Wednesday 5 April 2017 14.10 BST It does not take a huge stretch for longer-serving members of the Swansea City staff to remember a time when, with local training facilities at a premium, the club’s youth team had to make do elsewhere. A section of the beach, a short walk from the old Vetch Field ground and just beyond the city’s prison, would be used when a more orthodox surface was unavailable and at certain times of day a reconnaissance mission would be in order to check the tides. Those days will not return and, sitting inside Swansea’s gleaming new Fairwood training ground – a few miles up the road from a dedicated £8.5m Academy facility at Landore – it is hard to believe they ever existed. The club’s structure can reasonably be held up as an exemplar of what the Premier League was targeting when, in 2012, it set up the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP). Swansea started in Category Three of the scheme; this is their first season in Category One and it felt a long way from the sands of Swansea Bay when, last month, their Under-23 team contested a Premier League International Cup semi-final against Porto at the Liberty Stadium. A tour of the divisions would bring a kaleidoscope of opinions about EPPP. It was brought in to raise standards of youth development and smooth the pathway for homegrown players to compete at the highest level; a number of clubs outside the Premier League have felt alienated, with Brentford among those to opt out due to the financial and operational challenges involved, and the most negative readings would suggest it has created a feeding frenzy for the elite at the expense of those less able to keep up. Ged Roddy, the Premier League’s director of football development, is used to such theories but believes the progress at Swansea is evidence that EPPP is having the right effect on clubs that commit appropriately. The difficulty has been, as the first-team has moved up the league, to keep the academy standard aligned “We wanted to try to create a ladder that would allow a club to move up if it prioritised,” he says. “Swansea decided this was a priority for their club and you can see the fruits of their labour. If this is symptomatic of the last five years’ work, then we are in a totally different place from where we started. But if you go to Derby or Brighton, you’ll see two clubs that haven’t been in the Premier League and been able to plug into its riches but have still created incredible infrastructures and developed Category One academies. I don’t think this level is unavailable but I do think it’s a stretch and it has to be. We’re talking about an elite environment and it’s not something everyone will be able to do.” For Swansea, whose development has been “like Saturn Five” in trajectory according to Roddy, there have been compromises – in particular when staffing an Under-23 squad that were runaway champions of this season’s Premier League Two Division Two. While the club’s players in younger age groups are almost entirely locally born some investment was made to make the older side – for which the age threshold was raised nationally from Under-21 this season – competitive. “The difficulty has been, as the first team has moved up the league, to keep the academy standard aligned,” the Swansea chairman, Huw Jenkins, says. “It’s one of the big challenges and I don’t think we have found the exact formula yet. When we reached the Premier League we realised our academy had been recruiting on technical ability and losing sight of the physique and athleticism needed for the top flight. We selected certain players so that we could bring the standard up more quickly but it was done with an aim to gradually upgrade the homegrown talent below that.” In Swansea’s case results such as a 6-0 FA Youth Cup defeat at Chelsea two years ago highlighted the need to bolster the Academy group from the top and allow the younger players to develop without being forced through too early. To an extent the club’s new structure had outstripped its on-pitch resources. Oliver McBurnie, a Scottish centre-forward signed from Bradford, was among those to arrive and the 20-year-old forward has made four Premier League appearances from the bench this season, also scoring seven goals for the Under-23s in the Checkatrade Trophy. He is a talent and the task now is to ensure that clubs can achieve this kind of end product by bringing players all the way through. “What we’ve seen here from our side is an unbelievable commitment to trying to solve this issue of blending between development and full-time squads, whereby you bring players in and purchase them but also develop a sustainable model that nurtures your own,” Roddy says. The “blending” quandary is certainly one that exists across the board and a look across a number of Under-23 squads, particularly those of Champions League clubs, still suggests many are not sufficiently content with the quality or quantity of those coming through their own set-ups not to ship in young recruits from elsewhere. This season the Premier League brought in the Under-23 bracket – raised from Under-21 – in an attempt to extend the development time of players who might, at 19 or 20 and with little first-team experience behind them, quickly fall through the cracks. The theory is laudable; whether in practice it encourages clubs to be more patient remains to be seen. One of the accompanying benefits – to Category One clubs, anyway – is the chance to face lower-division sides in the Checkatrade Trophy and Swansea say their own run to the quarter-finals (they were the only Under-23 side to progress that far) led to far greater interest in loan moves for their players than normal. Jenkins is adamant that Wales will be the focus for Swansea’s future academy recruitment. Other clubs have not been as restrained and the capacity EPPP gives Category One clubs to sign players aged under 18 from outside the previous “90 minute” catchment area has, Roddy admits, been a double-edged sword. “Category One status can trip some clubs up because suddenly it’s like kids in a candy shop: ‘I’ll have one of them and one of them,’” he says. “The most productive clubs tend to use their environment more and recruit principally from around their locality, maybe integrating one or two others after that. There’s a lot to be said for putting some restrictions on yourself, even if you’re not required to by the rules and regulations.” The obvious thought is that perhaps the rules and regulations could be tweaked after half a decade of mixed results. Roddy says there will “always be unintended consequences of things you put in place” and suggests a step towards avoiding misuse of the system will be to ensure that “we’ve got people who really understand how you develop players effectively”. That is one reason why coach education is foremost among the Premier League’s priorities and it is enlightening to hear Jenkins explain that he “couldn’t understand why the same attention on players’ development year on year wasn’t placed on coaching”. Swansea sought to correct that; academy staff turnover has been significant but Cameron Toshack and Gary Richards, who coach the Under-23s, have been brought through to provide a mixture of local expertise and technical acumen. The Premier League’s youth coach education programme, the Elite Coach Apprenticeship Scheme (Ecas), is one of the more obvious successes associated with EPPP and Toshack, who has completed the two-year course, speaks vividly of the kind of environment into which cohorts are pitched. A survival course with former SAS soldiers in the Brecon Beacons – “we were under significant pressure and they kept us up for 36 hours but football coaches are pretty competitive so the feedback was good” – was followed by exercises in voice projection at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. “Tore André Flo was on my course,” Toshack remembers. “He’s a very reserved individual and didn’t enjoy getting up on the stage and having to shout from the rafters. We said ‘It’s fine, we’ll wait for you’ … ‘No, no, you guys go first and I’ll go after.’ It’s all about putting coaches out of their comfort zone and I think the suite of skills it gives you has helped Gary and me coach in a more effective way.” It also helps that Paul Clement, the first-team manager, favours a hands-on connection with the Academy and during his early months at Swansea he has frequently attended Under-23 games. Jenkins admits that the club “may have lost focus in one or two areas in the last 18 months, probably due to the pressures of trying to stay in the Premier League”, but believes they “have got back a bit of our old feeling” since the appointment of the former Chelsea and Fulham academy coach in January. “The pathway is there,” Clement says. “There’s an opportunity for the players and I liaise closely with Cameron and Gary about their development. I take a keen interest in the youngsters and seeing them win the league in the style they have is a good sign.” To Roddy the set-up Swansea have landed on sets a tone for a system that still needs plenty of work. “It feels easy here because they’re naturally interested in it and Huw is immersed, always around the training ground,” he says. “There’s a can-do approach where the noises are backed up by action. That’s not the case at every club. I think the first five years of EPPP have brought a lot of good things but we’ve still got a huge amount of work to do to reach the next level. It’s not perfect and we didn’t get everything right but the lessons are being learned.” https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/apr/05/premier-league-elite-player-performance-plan

An interesting read from today's Guardian on Brentford's B Team, and recruitment policy. Even Second Hand Rose may rise... Why Brentford ditched their academy in favour of developing Premier League outcasts Championship club’s decision to focus on a reserve side playing top opposition in friendlies is paying dividends under head of football operation Robert Rowan Wednesday 5 April 2017 14.03 BST First published on Wednesday 5 April 2017 14.00 BST It is a sunny Tuesday morning in west London and Robert Rowan, Brentford’s head of football operations, is watching Kevin O’Connor putting his B team squad through their paces. “Twenty-five press-ups for the strikers and then we go again,” commands the coach to his group of young players gathered from six European countries. Almost a year on since the Championship club took the decision to close their youth academy as a response to the restrictions imposed on them by the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan, this is the reality for Brentford. It is a radical three-year strategy designed to establish a way of developing players with the aim of “creating the most effective pathway into the first team of all English clubs”. It has already seen O’Connor’s hotchpotch team of former youth team players and recruits play Manchester United, Liverpool and Bayern Munich sides in friendlies this season, with four players having gone on to make their debut for Dean Smith’s first team. “We discussed various different options when we were doing the review and we felt the B-team model was the one that gave us the best chance of producing first-team players,” Rowan says. “It allowed us far more flexibility on how we do that because we are not as restricted by regulation or rules. It was the most sustainable and effective option we thought about. It’s a lot easier to assess something that has got a turnaround of three years than over 10 years. Once that is over we will more than likely review again and see what we need to do differently to achieve our goal.” In other words, at a cost of around £2m a year, Brentford decided it was simply too much of a risk that their academy – with so much competition on its doorstep in London – would produce enough first-team players to make that investment worthwhile. Instead they are focused on recruiting young players between 17 and 20 who have been released by academies in the Premier League, as well as elite talent from “undervalued markets” overseas. “The first year is just the start-up stage but we’ve achieved more in terms of players making debuts than we believed we would, although we have also made mistakes in other areas,” says Rowan, who, at 24, was promoted to his current role when Mark Warburton left to join Rangers in 2015. “In the summer it was a new system and our model wasn’t really attractive to players because it was seen as a bit of a gamble. Now we’ve had one year of a very good games programme and a very efficient pathway which means we can clearly present how we develop players strategically and the opportunities we can provide. The big challenge for us now is the turnover – if we do promote players and there are players out of contract, the next part of the job is bringing that new batch in so the cycle of recruitment is back to the start but the expectations in quality are a lot higher. “We have a good understanding of what kind of player can be successful in England. Part of our recruitment process is identifying different leagues where the physical qualities are often overlooked in favour of the tactical qualities, whereas in England if you are physical you have a good chance of being a good player. The tactical side of things can be taught and we are confident we can provide an environment where they can learn those skills. It’s a lot easier in those undervalued markets to take a player and put him into our environment for the longer term. Our job is improving the understanding of all the markets that are out there and trying to identify potential stars.” So far the youth team products Chris Mepham and Reece Cole, the German midfielder Jan Holldack and the striker Justin Shaibu – signed from the Danish side HB Koge for £40,000 last summer – are the B team players to have featured for the first team, with a further three having been included in a match-day squad. But at a time of year when most Premier League academies are making tough decisions about which young players to retain, Rowan admits it is crucial they get their research correct. “We’ve been following some of these players for a year,” he says gesturing at one of several whiteboards dotted around his portable office at the training ground. “So, for instance, we know everything about every player in the Under-18s at Tottenham. There isn’t much point in us going to scout young talent in lower league clubs as every Premier League club can out-spend and out-resource us. It’s actually a waste of resources/time for us, so instead we want to have in-depth knowledge on the ones who may be released from the big clubs. Brentford’s B team players are instructed by coach Kevin O’Connor at the club’s training ground in west London. Photograph: Ed Aarons for the Guardian “Then it’s about keeping up relationships so as soon as we get that decision [that they are being released], we are the first ones to be tipped off about it. The ideal situation for us is to get this squad complete before the season finishes. German clubs are great at having their recruitment done before the window is even open – they are very organised and efficient in their due diligence so we aim to work as hard as them – we only need to find four more players now before we can go and have a holiday.” Owned by Matthew Benham, whose company, Smartodds, provides statistical research and sports modelling advice to professional gamblers, Brentford’s B team is just the latest innovation to be trialled at Griffin Park as the club attempts to reach the top flight for the first time since the second world war. Yet while Benham has rejected comparisons with the Moneyball approach made famous by the baseball coach Billy Beane at the Oakland As, the use of analytics remains a significant part of their approach. “I can’t really say too much – they’ll probably kill me!” says Rowan, laughing. “A lot of people seem to think this place is full of robots providing the recipe for success but there is no secret formula. The fact that our directors of football have expertise in business means probably we are more process driven than your average football club. “We’re fortunate with our owner’s background that we have access to resources that most clubs won’t have. What’s important is how we use those resources. We’ve spent time trying to understand that but we have got to a point now where we feel far more comfortable over how to use it all correctly. Hopefully we can start to reap some rewards now.” Working under the co-directors of football Rasmus Ankersen and Phil Giles, Rowan has risen rapidly to prominence. Now 26, he was encouraged to pursue a career in football after reading an opposition scouting report compiled by the former Tottenham Hotspur manager, André Villas-Boas, and sending his own version to every professional club in England and Scotland. Only three replied, including the Scottish champions, Celtic, where he was eventually handed his first post scouting while still a teenager. After a spell at the Scottish Football Association where he met Warburton’s long-time assistant David Weir, he was employed by a bank when Benham invited him to join Brentford in 2014. Such has been his progress that Rowan was interviewed by Rangers for their vacant director of football post in February, although he insists his work at Brentford is far from complete. And despite witnessing the fallout from the decision to close the youth academy first hand, O’Connor, who joined the club as a 15-year-old, believes they could be on to something. “The games programme has been brilliant. We couldn’t really ask for much more in terms of the opposition we have faced,” he says. “We’ve played some of the biggest teams in the country, which has also helped to get the fans interested. Now we need to get some players into the first team and they become regulars. The standard will definitely improve next year but it’s so important that we get that first player to come through the system.” Despite the initial opposition to the closure of the youth academy, more than 1,000 supporters were at Griffin Park for the 2-2 draw against Liverpool in September and the 3-2 win over Manchester United in November, with Manchester City scheduled for 15 May as the last of more than 30 B team friendlies. Each draw is resolved with a penalty shootout, while next season Rowan is hoping to introduce enough extra fixtures to replicate the Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday schedule of Smith’s first team. “The development process has to be exciting. It can’t just be training and then a game on Saturday every week,” he says. “For our players it’s like, ‘Bloody hell, we are playing Man City this week.’ When we played against Bayern Munich we spent the next day at their training ground and then allowed them to train at our place after their Champions League game against Arsenal. “That was a brilliant experience and that is more important than just turning up and playing games against the same teams under the same conditions. I think it’s important that we learn from different sectors of society – the education system has developed so much over the last 15 years in areas purely related to the individual learning experience but academy football has never done anything different in the way we deliver the learning experience.” https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/apr/05/brentford-ditched-their-academy-premier-league-outcasts

I note that the 'Smack'ems' lost again last night.

Did I understand correctly, from an interview, that Toral's knees are too dodgy for the plastic fantastic @Killie?

I assume it will be Foderingham in goal? After the weekend, it may be safest to assume nothing!

Sellik reserves.

The booze lobby wins the day. I had thought that government policy was to discourage strong drink and strong drinking. Clearly the administration's message has failed to outweigh the Glasgow publican's greed.

Try such "banter" in another workplace. It is 2017, by the way, so you might want to re read the clause I have highlighted.

I am unconvinced that Moyes' suggestion that he might 'slap' a woman should be treated as mere badinage. The implication that he might 'slap' a man for asking such a probing question is also something of a problem. In the vast majority of workplaces, Moyes would be in deep shit for his remarks, and rightly so. In many he would be very hard pressed to keep his job. To have someone in a position of responsibility, indeed of power, whose first touch (often the most revealing), when irritated, is violence, and/or the threat of violence, is not something that we should gloss over, in any workplace. Perhaps Sunderland will find his behaviour sufficient cause to sack him for misconduct. He will then be free to take over from Strachan, and to join his fellow ex-sellik man and social dinosaur, Malky MacKay, in the corridors of power of the Scottish game.

Interesting piece suggesting that foreign managers/coaches are better, or, rather, will accrue more points for your team over the season. There's a database and a bulging hard drive of statistics to back this up, so it is obviously shite, then. British managers are overrated by English clubs – and the stats back it up Sean Ingle Forget what pundits say: foreign managers do better in across all four divisions of English football – even though clubs seem to hold them to higher standards Sunday 2 April 2017 19.51 BST Last modified on Monday 3 April 2017 08.17 BST “What does he know about the Premier League?” Two decades on from Arsène Wenger’s arrival from Japan it remains a sneer posed as a question whenever an unknown overseas manager comes to England. Paul Merson and Phil Thompson’s visceral reaction to Marco Silva becoming Hull City manager in January was hardly unique. Lawrie McMenemy had the same response when Mauricio Pochettino took over at Southampton. It barely matters that under Silva’s watch Hull have a fighting chance of staying up or that Pochettino rapidly proved himself far superior to the man he replaced, Nigel Adkins. Many in English football cling to the notion that British is instinctively a safer option. Perhaps that is understandable but while we assume that a deep knowledge of the English game matters, new research by John Goddard, a professor of financial economics at Bangor University and a world-leading expert in the economics of professional sport, suggests otherwise. Goddard has a database that records the success, duration and nationality of every managerial appointment from the late 1960s and when I asked him to crunch the numbers from 1992-93 to the end of last season a startling headline figure emerged. The average league points per game for overseas managers in the Premier League is 1.66 – while for their British and Irish equivalents it is only 1.29. The difference equates to a staggering 14 points over a 38-game season. The obvious question is whether this is down to managerial talent or merely the higher propensity of the strongest teams in the Premier League – with Champions League experience and ambitions – to appoint foreign managers. It is not easy to untangle one from another and both certainly are important. Interestingly, however, the overseas-manager effect is also seen lower down the leagues. In the Football League the average points per game works out at 1.36 for British and Irish managers since the 1992-93 season, and 1.49 for foreign managers. In other words, a six-point improvement over a 46-game season. Another thing that is worth stressing is that the preponderance of foreign managers among the top six Premier League clubs is a relatively recent phenomenon – between them Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Spurs were managed by a British or Irish manager for more than half (54.9%) of games from 1992-93 until the end of last season. The success of overseas managers is not purely down to the recent dominance of the Big Six. In his research, Goddard also examined all the instances in which British and Irish managers were replaced at the same club by a foreigner to see whether that was reflected in improved results. Again the results were intriguing. The average league points per game were 1.42 for the home managers – and 1.58 for their overseas successors. Half of that difference is down to Wenger’s better performance over 20 years than that of his predecessor Bruce Rioch, says Goddard. Even so, there is still a notable gap favouring the successors. You might think that would lead to overseas managers lasting longer. However, the opposite seems to be the case. Between 1992-93 and 2015-16, there were 1,170 managerial spells by 544 different British and Irish managers in English football, with the average spell lasting 86.3 matches. Over the same period, 115 spells were completed by 80 foreign managers, with the average duration only 58.2 matches. One potential explanation for this is that English club chairmen tend to set the bar higher for foreign rather than British appointees – and act more quickly and ruthlessly in dispatching a foreign manager whose team are underperforming relative to enhanced expectations. This is not the first time, incidentally, that Goddard has dispelled popular myths. More than a decade ago his research with Stephen Dobson showed the ‘new-manager bounce’ phenomenon is inaccurate because improvements in form after a sacking tend to be just regression to the mean. Why? Well, dismissals usually follow a poor run of results – but those defeats are often down to random bad luck, injuries and a tough run of fixtures, which tend to even out. And when they do, those frustrating defeats and draws suddenly become wins. Despite that research, clubs are more trigger-happy than ever. And Blake Wooster, the co-founder of 21st Club – a football consultancy that works with many of Europe’s leading teams – does not expect Goddard’s latest work to change everyone’s views. “Our minds are programmed to make us feel that familiarity with any task is important,” he says, pointing to one club he worked with recently who put experience of English football as one of their red lines in finding a new manager. “Experience feels safe. Yet the data tells us that, at least in football, having previous knowledge of the league is often overvalued. In other words: football is guilty of what we call ‘experience-bias’.” Of course a manager’s talent, playing style and skill in bringing through young players matter more to most clubs than their nationality. Even so, Goddard’s research is perhaps another reminder of the paucity of talent among the current number of British and Irish managers. And as the eras where Sir Alex Ferguson dominated the Premier League and Terry Venables and Sir Bobby Robson won league titles abroad fade further into history, would it be any surprise if more English clubs looked overseas for their next manager? https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/apr/02/overseas-manager-14-point-difference-premier-league-season

He might end up playing for Moyes:- David Moyes will face no action from Sunderland after threat to 'slap' female reporter Many fans have called for the Scot's head, but the Wearsiders are standing firm Sunderland will take no further action over David Moyes' threatening behaviour towards a female journalist. The under-fire Scot was asked by the BBC's Vicki Sparks if the Black Cats' poor run of form might put him under pressure from chairman Ellis Short. But Moyes batted away the enquiry and then fumed at Sparks off-camera, threatening her with violence if she were to repeat her line of questioning. “It was getting a wee bit naughty at the end there so just watch yourself," he snarled. “You still might get a slap even though you’re a woman. Careful the next time you come in.” The BBC confirmed that Moyes had since apologised to Sparks for his choice of language, and Sunderland declared that "the matter was resolved amicably." But despite shadow sports minister Rosena Allin-Khan's calls for FA action and an outcry from fans calling for the 53-year-old's head on Monday morning, The Independent understands that the Wearsiders consider it a closed matter. Follow Dr Rosena Allin-Khan This is disgraceful. David Moyes cannot get away with these sexist threats - the @FA must take action immediately. Clare Phillipson, director of the domestic abuse charity Wearside Women in Need, was "stunned" when she watched the exchange on video. She said: "I think the FA have to look into it. "It is for the FA to set a clear standard about what they think is acceptable. http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/sunderland-will-take-no-further-action-over-david-moyes-slap-threat-a7664061.html He has since apologised. David Moyes ‘deeply regrets’ telling BBC reporter she ‘might get a slap’ • Shadow sports minister and domestic abuse charity wants FA to take action • Sunderland say manager spoke to Vicki Sparks and resolved matter Monday 3 April 2017 12.28 BST First published on Monday 3 April 2017 10.51 BST The Sunderland manager David Moyes says he “deeply regrets” threatening to slap a female reporter after the match against Burnley on 18 March and saying: “Careful the next time you come in.” The Sunderland manager was addressing BBC Newcastle and Radio 5 Live reporter Vicki Sparks after she interviewed him following the 0-0 draw at home last month. The interview had finished but the exchange was captured on what appears to be a cameraphone. Moyes was unimpressed that Sparks asked whether it put him under greater pressure knowing that Sunderland’s owner, Ellis Short, was in the stands. “No, none at all,” Moyes replied before making his remarks to Sparks thinking they were off-camera. “Just getting a wee bit naughty at the end there so just watch yourself … You still might get a slap even though you’re a woman.” Sparks can be heard and seen laughing and Moyes, who can be seen smiling, adds: “Careful the next time you come in.” The reporter did not make a complaint, although colleagues were unimpressed. It is understood Moyes apologised during a telephone conversation. The BBC confirmed that Moyes and Sparks had spoken since and that the matter was resolved. A spokesman said: “Mr Moyes has apologised to our reporter and she has accepted his apology.” Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Moyes said: “It was in the heat of the moment. I deeply regret the comments I made. That’s certainly not the person I am. I’ve accepted the mistake. I spoke to the BBC reporter, who accepted my apology.” Meanwhile, the shadow sports minister has called on the Football Association to take action against Moyes. Dr Rosena Allin-Khan branded his conduct “disgraceful”, adding on Twitter: “David Moyes cannot get away with these sexist threats – the FA must take action immediately.” Allin-Khan’s comments were echoed by Clare Phillipson, the director of domestic abuse charity Wearside Women in Need. She said she was “stunned” when she watched the exchange. “I think the FA have to look into it. It is for the FA to set a clear standard about what they think is acceptable,” she said. “It was dreadful, absolutely appalling. This is a woman, in a very small minority of sports journalists, trying to go about her job and being threatened. It’s the sort of thing you expect down the local pub, not the kind of thing you get from a professional football manager.” Gary Lineker also condemned Moyes’ behaviour, posting on Twitter: “Moyes incident highlights a tendency for some managers to treat interviewers with utter disdain. Pressured job. Well rewarded. Inexcusable.” https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/apr/03/sunderland-david-moyes-tells-reporter-get-slap-bbc-vicki-sparks There are video links in both the articles. It does seem like he was at least half joking, but it was a really stupid thing to say, whether he meant it or not. One wonders, if the reporter had been a man, whether he might have banjoed him, like Dundee Hibs' Jim McLean did to John Barnes (not that one) in front of the TV cameras. (Shamefully, charges against McLean were not pressed.) It does demonstrate that Moyes thinks that a proper response to awkward questioning is violence, or the threat of violence. You may take the boy out of the piggery, but...... (I know his old BB Lieutenant. She will be less than amused.)

i remember being shown a house, bungalow, that John Lawrence apparently built for Baxter; it is still there, on Dumbreck Road. A home of his own, built by John Lawrence...........

I'm not going to disagree. 15 goals from 28 for M/well seems a more than decent return. Why not?

Catfish? I confess -an age thing, some will snort- that I had to consult something called 'The Urban Dictionary' to clarify your meaning. I found this useful, and in the case of some of the obsessionally neurotic, accurate summation: Catfish A Catfish is a person that is not in touch with reality. They use social media outlets to pretend to be someone they aren't. Using all platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and even Tumblr to pretend to be someone else. Some even go to such lengths as creating an "ask.com" account to ask themselves questions to "appear" more real. They don't know who they truly are, and they are not satisfied with who they are in real life. So they create this false "reality" to feel accepted. A catfish is also a bit sociopathic. They begin to believe they are who they are pretending to be, in pure denial to the point where even when they are found out and caught in their lie, they refuse to admit that they've been lying and they will keep it going. Often times, a Catfish will not Skype, video chat and sometimes they won't even talk on the phone, as that will reveal their true identity so they avoid that at all cost. They will come up with every and any excuse in the book as to why they cannot have a video chat with you. A Catfish lies about who they are, where they are from, they even lie about the family they have. Everything about their entire being is usually always a complete lie. These characteristics can also be diagnosed as "Dissociative Identity Disorder" in which the individual has multiple personalities in which they have developed individual names, personal history and characteristics for their other personality. After all of these years of being online friends, it's hard to cope with the fact that Lloyd is really a catfish. by MJewels86 November 25, 2015 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=catfish&page=2

I have only seen him versus Rangers, albeit always causing problems for the defence. I suspect that you could compile a gey long leet of players who give that back line (the usual suspects, not Saturday's improvisational troupe) some difficulty. He is certainly worth consideration, but signing players because they look good against us, particularly in our current incarnation, is likely to be fraught.

Having a 12th man on the pitch should prove decisive.