Carl Sagan

18 minutes ago, IlsonDerby said:

I’d be gutted if we were at the homework stage still 😂 surely our homework is done and we’re preparing offers by now. 

That use of words was from memory, but when I looked for it on his Twitter I see it could refer to other clubs rather than us. And, like everything he says, you have to take it with a bit of a "Mystic Meg" pinch of salt.

I did try to post a bona fide transfer rumour on here, but I think there's so little actual news (Nixon describes us as still at the homework stage) that people are drowning out the tiny snippets there are with these bizarre arguments about if you can sign a player or not. 

With players and hopefully management (?) on their hols, I guess it's going to be quiet, and then it's the Euros, and maybe the actual transfer whirligig won't kick in until then. Actually winning automatic promotion meant the season felt as if it finished remarkably early, so now everyone's drumming their fingers like Bree Larson - IYKYK. 

Twelve million euro compo for Kompany will be quite handy for them on top of parachute payments. Hard to see them not going back up - even if it's Lampard at the helm. Steve Cooper also rumoured (and I'd have thought the favourite), but wouldn't surprise me if they went for Rosenior - would be a tremendous job for him.

Perhaps not strong enough for the transfer section, but here a thought that Nathan Jones at Charlton has enquired about bringing his former captain to the Valley:

I'd suggest it would be ideal all round, especially if we could negotiate a fee. Bradley must be on a high wage for someone who's perhaps our 4th choice central defender.

43 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

Answers above.

Aha! So it wasn't simply I couldn't find it in the thread. It seemed for years under Mel we didn't produce great accounts. Hopefully ours when they do come will be more transparent.

Thanks

Quick questions for the "finance" thread as I trawled through all 17 pages but couldn't find it - sorry if I missed it?

1. Do we know what our turnover has been in League One?
2. Do we know what our wage bill is?
3. Do we know what our losses have been (after DC stabilized the club, but not including his one-off payments to do that)?
4. Do we know how much turnover rises next season as a result of being in the Championship?

Thanks!

6 hours ago, maydrakin said:

Jedward in goal?

A defensive masterstroke? Normally, playing two keepers would be better than one, but I'm not convinced in their case. 

In some ways, the quest for the Premier League is like scaling Mount Everest. In the end, you just have to go for it and make your move to reach the summit. The technique being advocated by many, with a lot of merit is to establish a strong base camp to give you the best chance you can of ultimately scaling the mountain. But the longer you work on your base camp, the more you risk other people coming past you and simply leaving you behind while they head straight on up the South Col. And nicking some of your better tents and Sherpas while they go. Clough built the base camp and, with the benefit of all that good preparation, McClaren breezed into camp and took the climbers with him on an attempt for the summit. Most observers would say the best team not to reach the summit and gain promotion.

For some who don't spend so long preparing the base camp, they'll be lucky with the weather and go straight up the mountain all the way to the very top. Others will run into a storm for which they're badly prepared, and will meet with disaster. This coming season I want us to at least flirt with a trip higher up the slopes to develop more of a feel of the rarefied aid, and if there's a break in the clouds it might even be worth trying to go all the way. Even if it's more likely we end up settling a little lower down while we consolidate for the final push the season after.

This is a stretch, but might it be us for the coming season? 

In the unlikely event anyone's setting calendar reminders for Test Flight 4 (though you all should!), SpaceX is now saying "no earlier than June 5th", meaning that's the planned day. And the company has set out the two key objectives, which are to do with landings.

1. As expected, they want to be able to perform a "soft" ocean landing in the Gulf with the SuperHeavy booster.
2. They want to demonstrate controlled reentry of Starship itself.

Although the intention for the Space Shuttle was to be reusable, the technology, engineering and ideas weren't there back then. Brilliant machine though it was, each launch cost billions and it took six months to repair the heatshield after reentry, before it could fly again. In contrast, SpaceX are trying to install a reusable heatshield not needing repaid. The controlled descent will test how far they've come and show what needs to be done.

This means they're no longer going to attempt a deorbit burn when in orbit, as that comes with an element of risk. If the heatshield works, they can fairly easily solve any deorbit problems in future. But if they lost the vehicle because of testing a deorbit burn this time, they still wouldn't have tested the heatshield properly. Everything about this program is to solve the hardest problems first - for instance there's no point working on the ship's life-support systems yet, because there's always the chance it will need a radical redesign before it can fly Humans.

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-4

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5 hours ago, TigerTedd said:

Seems weird that they would even persist with star liner then. Even if they successfully conduct this test, space x are light years ahead and pretty much proven their concept, so what’s the point of star liner. It’s just a massive waste of money at this point. 

Yes, but there are reasons. One is the question of redundancy. At this stage it's unlikely, but should a problem arise with the Dragon, Americans would still have a ride into space, when for ten years their only means of going was on the Russian Soyuz, such was the state of the American space industry before Space X. And in the multi-billion contract NASA commissioned (I think) six flights, so those will probably happen - but after that it's very likely Starliner will be retired. Boeing claims it's lost billions on it, and no one wants to fly Boeing nowadays anyway. And...

There was a third bidder back in the day, and many were disappointed they didn't get a slice of the pie, but now they have. And this is the Dream Chaser spaceplane, a sort of mini space shuttle. But Sierra Space were able to keep working on it, and ever though NASA can't yet give out new Commercial Crew contracts it has recently awarded it a cargo contract which allows some development funds, meaning an uncrewed cargo version will fly to the Space Station later this year (and is already at NASA facilities for testing). As the company continues to develop a crewed version. It looks pretty cool:

3 minutes ago, Rich3478 said:

Just looked and he scored 0 goals in 41 games for Reims in France! That feels impossible?? 

The new Danny Graham!

England U20 squad, as well as Archie Brown. What might have been... 

A possible leader with links to the club who's been released is Jack Cork. Would he still be a good acquisition for us, or do we think that ship has sailed? 

If he doesn't like "stuff", I'd go for the meal out option. Guessing you're Derbyshire (?) there are 8 places in the Michelin Guide: https://guide.michelin.com/gb/en/derbyshire/restaurants

Or, come to London town to see the future of entertainment. You might not know his musical tastes (and who doesn't like Suede?) but surely everyone loves ABBA? Their show ABBA Voyage is a miracle unlike anything else. Stay central, say the Tower Hotel by Tower Bridge is impressive and (relatively) inexpensive, and then it's a short trip out east to the arena.

Musk's SpaceX is what is known as a "New Space" company, completely disrupting and revolutionizing the industry, while Boeing is the epitome of "Old Space". Back in 2014 NASA made history with the award of its first Commercial Crew Contracts when, for the first time ever, private companies and not national space agencies would send astronauts into space, all the way to the International Space Station. They awarded $4.2bn to Boeing to build a spaceship called Starliner, and $2.6bn to an upstart company called SpaceX to build a spaceship called Dragon. Both were to take four astronauts at a time to the ISS. Boeing were seething. They said it was ridiculous for NASA to give money to SpaceX, and all of the pot should have gone to them.

Ten years on, Dragon is the first 21st-century spaceship, with touchscreens and ethernet, lots of space for its astronauts and a large cargo capacity to boot. Nowadays there are four Dragons in operation which, between them, have so far taken 50 astronauts into space, mostly to the Space Station. Ten years on the Boeing Starliner still hasn't flown anyone into space. It is much more like the 1960s Soyuz capsule, or what the Americans did with their early space programme, with rather cramped conditions and lots of knobs and levers. And the reason I am writing about it here, is in honour of our very own B4/Daniel - because it has a flange. And a flange that has gone wrong.

The latest attempt to try to fly test pilots aboard Starliner went wrong with this leak, and the date for it has gone back and back. And today it was announced the will try to fly it on June 1st, the very same day that SpaceX are attempting their next Starship test! It's an  amazing juxtaposition of old vs new space. Get your scraves and flanges out to celebrate!

1 hour ago, Sparkle said:

Goal scorers cost money in fees and wages but you have to play them in their most productive positions 

we currently don’t play with an attacking central midfielder and I don’t see that changing with Warne as the current manager but he may well play Sibley at left wing back where he has performed decently - managers don’t last half a season in the championship on average so being patient has its merits

It's a good point, but even if we're struggling I don't think Clowes will get rid of Warne. Even if we're going down, he could well say Warne's the most likely manager to bring us straight back. 

If Sibley wants to play in midfield, or as a 10, I think he has to move. 

On 09/04/2024 at 19:09, NottsRam77 said:

Its 1.35 now… went up 2nd of april 

iv run a post office for nearly 20 years, have had my share of random transaction corrections from the horizon system but expect f*** all back from them 

Hope a lot of the senior staff go to jail for what they've done. Crocodile tears again at the hearing today. Of course it will never happen but I would love to see it, and for it to be a sign that we will not put up with this as a country any longer. Heads of the water boards should come next.

It's time for Test Flight 4. Road closures have been approved for June 1st. The main goal will be to improve on Flight 3. Hopefully that means:

SuperHeavy booster "soft lands" in the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Starship performs a deorbit burn while in orbit. 

Starship makes it through the bulk of the atmosphere, ideally all the way to sea level. 

Here's a real video (not a render) of Starship being "stacked" by the "chopsticks" above SuperHeavy to test all the systems in the Wet Dress Rehearsal earlier in the week. 

If they meet these objectives, Flight 5 will likely see the chopsticks try to catch SuperHeavy on the launch tower as it returns from space (which would be wild!). In case that destroys the launch tower, they're quite far advanced in building a backup elsewhere on the Starbase site. 

5 hours ago, WarCatDCFC said:

Sam Nombe

25 age Rotherham United F.C.

He Had a bad season but I don't think it because of him.I put it down to the team he was playing for

41 Matches

3 Goals

3 Assists

3 Yellow cards

would he be a good as backup striker?

Please tell me your thoughts on this one

Hi Paul - good of you to post, but if I'm honest I think a lot of people would prefer you to cast the net a bit wider than Rotherham for your transfer incomings over the summer. 

It's like signing someone on the back of a couple of half-decent World Cup games - something that should never be done. All the EFL saw Murphy have a decent game at the weekend. We need to be way cleverer about where we're looking for our players. 

23 minutes ago, Srg said:

If Sibley was on £X but no one is offering that anymore, then he will have to accept £Y. To me, the equation is two fold for him. How many minutes does he wants and in what position.

I could be totally wrong, but isn't it the case that if he's on £X and we offer him less than £X, he leaves on a free? While if we offer at least £X, then we collect a transfer fee? 

My expectation is there will end up being a bit of an auction for Louie, and he'll move to a top m Championship or low end Premier League club. As Warne won't play him where he wants to play. He won't go to League One. 

England should win the tournament. Here's a squad that would do just that:

At least half of Championship sides will change manager this season. Rosenior will likely be in the running for maybe three of those. You do have to be careful not to be out of the game too long, or the moment passes, so I'd suggest he takes one of those, or tries to ply his trade somewhere like Spain.

1 hour ago, Ambitious said:

Nathan Trott has an extraordinary record in Denmark, it took me a while to find the numbers but I can see why he’s so highly regarded, especially on the back of this season. 

XGOT - expected goal on target. 

He had a XGOT of 51.2 goals and he conceded 35. 75% save percentage. 

The numbers may even be the close to being the best in Europe, I’ve never seen a disparity like that personally. 

Intriguingly it seems Trott's been on our radar before (tweet from 2020):

Been in the England U20 and U21 squads, as well as playing youth footy for his native Bermuda. Where he was once in a team called the North Village RAMS! All signs pointing to Derby 🤣🤣🤣