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Reply | Koki Saito
at 22:26 11 Mar 2026
I think you make a good point about Saito being more comfortable in a possession based team.
It's ironic that we brought him back just before Charlton at home which was the game where we switched away from possession football to a more direct style!
Our recruitment doesn't seem to have adapted to the more direct style we've adopted. I wonder if deep down Nourry still wants to try possession football |
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Thread | Independent Football Regulator - why no socials?
at 15:20 11 Mar 2026
Saw a tweet from Henry Winter yesterday which mentioned he was heading to the Independent Football Regulator for a discussion on football journalism in the modern era.
Intrigued by this I took a look around for the IFR social media accounts.
I couldn't find a thing. Not even on their website.
https://www.footballregulator.
This seems a strange state of affairs when their mission statement says:
"The Independent Football Regulator (IFR) has been established to protect and promote the sustainability of English football, for the benefit of fans and the local
communities that football clubs serve."
They claim to exist for the benefit of fans and communities but don't feel the need to connect with fans and communities to tell us what it is they are doing, or collect any feedback.
Funny that!
[Post edited 11 Mar 15:37]
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Reply | QPR and Birmingham desperate to stop respective rots - Preview
at 13:31 11 Mar 2026
You're probably right.
But then we would have got to the end of this season and Walsh would still only have two dead-rubber Championship games under his belt!
So whichever way you slice it it's still poor planning by the club. |
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Reply | QPR and Birmingham desperate to stop respective rots - Preview
at 13:24 11 Mar 2026
Great piece Clive.
I don't really buy this theory about making Walsh the first choice keeper from the FA Cup game in January onwards.
After we beat Sheffield Wednesday on 4th January we were on 38 points, three off the playoff places.
Would we really shuffle goalkeepers at that point of the season?
Notwithstanding our injury problems he would probably have become the scapegoat for our slide down the table and we would have completely wrecked his confidence.
The whole GK situation has been handled badly.
If we had wanted Walsh to be first choice this season we should have given him a loan last season to get some experience under his belt. Instead we sent Cooper out on loan last season and again this season. There's a clear lack of forward planning. |
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Reply | This Season Almost A Replica of The McLaren Season
at 14:48 9 Mar 2026
We were also sold on the number of top young players Beale had worked with.
Maybe we should change the line to "good with young players from lavishly funded academies at big clubs".
Someone should programme into the algorithm the simple fact that big clubs have kids queueing up to get into their academies. If one doesn't make it they are immediately replaced with another hungry young talent desperate to prove that he has what it takes.
Youngsters at Championship level generally aren't going to be at the same level because if they were they would already have been hoovered up by a bigger club.
Beale couldn't do it for us. Joe Edwards fell flat on his face at the otherwise well run Millwall.
Coaches at Chelsea and Liverpool are working with the cream of the crop. They're not tasked with turning mediocre or slightly above average prospects into very good ones. They're already working with the best and just discard the ones who can't keep progressing! [Post edited 9 Mar 14:50]
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Reply | Steve cook
at 14:01 9 Mar 2026
Last season Cook was fifth for us for most minutes played with 2,617 minutes.
JCS managed 753 minutes last season.
This season Cook has 1.989 minutes.
JCS has 325 minutes.
It's a very strange world where a player who is never fit to play is considered the best in his position for us!
PS - of the four players who played more minutes for us than Cook last season Paal has left, Nardi and Field side-lined, which leaves only Dunne who has been our most ever-present player this season and last - and we were in talks to sell him last season!
With the exception of Nardi those are all players Nourry inherited. When are the new boys going to step up?
https://fbref.com/en/squads/a7
https://fbref.com/en/squads/a7 [Post edited 9 Mar 14:53]
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Reply | All A Hard Watch & Struggle
at 22:27 8 Mar 2026
We can completely forget about the playoffs.
This is starting to look like 2017 under Ian Holloway when we got to 50 points with eight games remaining, thought we were safe only to lose the next six and eventually finish one point above Blackburn who went down with 52.
We need Cook back in the team. At least with him at the back we are hard to score against. If we keep conceding the way we are we will get pulled into the relegation scrap. |
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Reply | Steve cook
at 22:14 8 Mar 2026
Maybe the leadership group at the club were trying to prove that we don't need him!
If that's the case it has rebounded on them very badly.
Our recent poor performances since Cook dropped out of the side are the best argument yet for giving him another contract for next season. |
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Reply | WE WANT NOURRY OUT SAID WE WANT NOURRY OUT
at 22:11 8 Mar 2026
I completely agree with your comment about the workforce being demotivated. That has to be a problem with leadership within the club.
I don't agree with you about Sam Field. He has been on the sidelines all season, filling in here and there when needed. At 27 he needs to be playing regularly. He is about to enter his prime years and I don't blame him for looking after number one.
The fact we have tossed aside such an experienced and capable Championship player should be the bigger concern. And that again comes back to the leadership. |
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Reply | Fabrizio Romano - how he does it (allegedly)
at 20:30 6 Mar 2026
Your comment made me think about the old days before the transfer windows were introduced.
The PL has a page on its website about the origins of the transfer windows. They started in 2002/03 and the Brexiteers among us will be delighted to know it was Europe's fault:
https://www.premierleague.com/
Part of me would like to go back to the old system. But the other part of me thinks it will just put even more power in the hands of the wealthy clubs and for the likes of us we are better off with the transfer windows
Although under the old system we would only need to get JCS fit for five consecutive games to persuade some Redknapp-type to take him off our hands for silly money. |
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Reply | Fake Hoops with an AI first
at 20:17 6 Mar 2026
When I posted this I wasn't expecting some refugees from the Thames Valley to out themselves for having paddled up the river to the promised land.
All I can say is welcome to civilisation and #StopTheBoats :-)
As for the story about Reading using AI.
My first reaction was to roll my eyes. AI is becoming a bit like the dot com boom when everyone suddenly decided they had to have a website even though they didn't know what it was or what they would do with it.
But when I think about it a bit more AI could be a useful tool for coaches and scouts.
In my experience data analysts generally act as a bridge/gatekeeper between the repositories of data and the subject experts. How well or badly that works can often depend on the competence of the individuals involved and how effectively they are able to communicate with each other.
One thing AI is good for is allowing users without IT skills to access and search databases and generate reports.
If AI can be developed to allow coaches and scouts to directly access data themselves without having to go through data nerds who may have little knowledge of the game then it might produce more effective outcomes.
However, something tells me that's not what Reading have in mind and what we might end up with is clubs employing even more professional analysts and paying for this by laying off scouts! |
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Reply | Fabrizio Romano - how he does it (allegedly)
at 15:34 6 Mar 2026
I think a lot of people just enjoy having talking points served up to them. Even if they don't particularly believe in it.
So much of mainstream football coverage is focused on a small elite number of clubs and players. And a lot of that coverage is more like celebrity showbiz reporting than football coverage with endless dross about what Beckham is wearing this week, or who's dating who, who's going into the jungle, who's playing away from home, who's smashed up his third favourite sportscar, who's given the cat a kick.
My mum knows nothing about football but she can't get enough of Frank and Christine or Wazza and Colleen (I know, I know, we've had the doctor in).
The average football fan doesn't care less about that stuff (well, most of the time). They want to know about and talk about their club, and social media and all these ITK herberts fill that need in a way that the mainstream media just doesn't anymore.
They don't have to be right about the news. They just have to be first with it.
Even at QPR where we are lucky to have LFW, WLS, and a wide range of very good blogs and YouTube channels there's still a big appetite for this baseless tittle tattle that social media provides. |
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Reply | Fabrizio Romano - how he does it (allegedly)
at 13:27 6 Mar 2026
The most amazing thing about this bloke is how quickly he has established his brand and cornered the ITK market.
I know people who aren't on any social media who have heard of him and will ask "what does Fabrizio say?" when discussing a transfer rumour.
The allegations that he's not a football journalist at all and is employed directly by agents have been around for at least a couple of years.
If you go through the list of our players and agents and compare that to the names FR has tweeted about it's striking that none of them has the same agent:
https://www.transfermarkt.co.u
I've also looked at the players tweeted about who have left (Paal, Cannon, etc) and again none of them has the same agent.
His influence seems to be incredibly widespread.
The game seems to be riddled with chancers everywhere you look now. |
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Thread | Fabrizio Romano - how he does it (allegedly)
at 10:34 6 Mar 2026
Transfer speculation is always popular in the football world and Fabrizio Romano has steadily established himself as the top boy of the "itk" world.
Nick Harris on his Substack has gone in studs first on Fabrizio.
You can find the link in his tweet. There's some eye-opening stuff in there
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Reply | Playoff positions to be extended to 7 & 8th place
at 00:51 6 Mar 2026
You are probably right.
But from the EFL's perspective this is a change in the governance of the competition and when an organisation that size makes a public statement that important they usually run it past legal first.
So when the public statement is that ambiguous my spidey senses start to tingle, because it's usually kept ambiguous for a reason.
But hey, maybe it was just generated by AI and thrown out there without proper scrutiny. That's how the EFL seems to operate most of the time. |
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