angieram

On 30/04/2024 at 20:26, Nuwtfly said:

I did a 52 book challenge last year. Essentially it was to read a book a week every week. It was an absolutely brilliant way to force yourself to make reading a habit and explore a variety of genres. Here’s the 52:

War Horse (Michael Morpurgo)

All the Horses of Iceland (Sarah Tolmie)

The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu)

Storm of Steel (Ernst Jünger)

Cosmos (Carl Sagan)

Behold the Man (Michael Moorcock)

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Yukio Mishima)

Coming Up for Air (George Orwell)

This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar)

Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro)

The Man Who Fell to Earth (Walter Tevis)

Leviathan Wakes (James. S. A. Corey)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson) 

The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester) 

Annihilation (Jeff Vandermeer) 

Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein)

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Leo Tolstoy)

Mortal Engines (Stanislaw Lem)

Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? (Harold Schechter)

Moby-Dick (Herman Melville)

The Shadow of the Torturer (Gene Wolfe) 

The Buried Giant (Kazuo Ishiguro)

The Hustler (Walter Tevis)

Why I Write (George Orwell)

The Poppy War (R. F. Kuang) 

Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)

A Psalm for the Wild Built (Becky Chambers) 

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

Earthlings (Sayaka Murata)

Lapvona (Ottessa Moshfegh)

The Chrysalids (John Wyndham) 

The Only Good Indians (Stephen Graham Jones)

The Story of Kullervo (J. R. R. Tolkien)

All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy) 

The Word for World is Forest (Ursula K. Le Guin)

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

South of the Border, West of the Sun (Haruki Murakami)

The City and the Stars (Arthur C. Clarke) 

The Talented Mr Ripley (Patricia Highsmith)

Island (Aldous Huxley)

Tokyo Express (Seicho Matsumoto)

Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice)

The Centauri Device (M. John Harrison)

Where the Wild Ladies Are (Matsuda Aoko)

Stardust (Neil Gaiman)

The Crossing (Cormac McCarthy)

Doomsday Clock (Geoff Johns) 

Blind Owl (Sadeq Hedayat)

The Setting Sun (Osamu Dazai)

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami)

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Gabrielle Zevin)

That's some effort.

I'm in a book group and read one book for that every month, and another for pleasure, so around 24 in the year. 

Very few books on your list that I have read, but we did Klara and the Sun recently and I loved it. 

5 minutes ago, richinspain said:

What, the whole wall? Surely @loweman2 or @Quangy haven't got a whole wall from a house near the BBG in their loft?

Thanks for the links, Rich 

@Ken Tram

49 minutes ago, Ken Tram said:

Would you recommend anyone in particular? I'm rubbish at remembering usernames!

Phil or Paul but I don't know their usernames, sorry. 

3 minutes ago, Ken Tram said:

So, it disappeared before Google Street View began! But after the move to Pride Park. It may have said DLF next to it too.

The Ram was massive: at least half the width of the house as I remember it.

It would be good to find a photo, or the history behind it.

You need to ask one of the heritage guys - they're likely to have it tucked away somewhere. 

The telling thing for me is when one of the current players said that apart from a one-night Christmas party, that the trip to Vegas is the first time the players have really socialised together all season because they have all been focused on getting promotion.

That certainly wasn't the case in the Keogh era, and it certainly was him at the centre of some of the in-season does, leading the singing and  sounding absolutely the worse for wear. 

(Some of the WAGS are a bit indiscreet when it comes to sharing things on their insta pages.)

You can think what you want, @G STAR RAM, but I know what I've seen and also heard.

5 minutes ago, Srg said:

Ooof stand corrected. Is Barkhuizen not there then? I thought I saw him in some pictures previously. 

I thought it was Barks too!

6 minutes ago, Dimmu said:

Bit of a contradiction there Bris. First, you describe a big part of tactics and in the next sentence, you dismiss it. 

To answer the original question:

I'm not sure if talking only about Warne is fair as coaching is strongly a team effort.
 I've seen Warneball being called physical, so why did he have a midfield of Hourihane and Bird for about half of the season? Or that Warneball is putting crosses in? What kind of tactics would you choose if you had Collins upfront? Crosses maybe? Or the other way around, did Didzy score countless goals because we put a lot of crosses in? Nope, we played to his strengths. If I'd describe Warneball to an outsider, I'd call it pragmatic, fluid, and mixable while using our strengths and making the most of our opponent's weaknesses. Attention to detail is a strength when we talk about football management.

Just to highlight how fluid our tactics are: I've seen us defending with 5-3-2, 5-4-1, 4-5-1, 4-4-1-1 all in the same game. Well, we all have because it happened often when Bradley was brought on. 

I think he has only two aims when setting his tactics. Firstly, how to get the most out of the striker (how much Didzy, Waggy, Collins, and Gayle have scored, I think he's got that right). The second aim is how to help our keeper to keep a clean sheet. (The least goals conceded in EFL is some achievement). If these two are not about tactics, then what is? And tactics need coaching. With confidence and some experience, I claim that is not an easy part of coaching. 

So, tactics are a massive part of coaching and they have excelled. Another would be increasing the player's ability and that's tougher to measure. I haven't seen as fit team as the current one is in ages and it's part of improving the player's ability. Yes, it may have caused some injuries, but that's football. Also, they managed to teach Sibley to play as LWB. On the first try, he was horrible at it but played okay as fullback when he had a player in front of him. It's a testament to Sibbo and the coaching team, and during the run-in, his performances as LWB turned out to be one of the developmental highlights.

It'll sure be an interesting summer ahead. Will we build a midfield like Hourihane-Bird or Adams-Smith-Thommo? They don't have much in common, but the question is, will they continue to be the ones who'll be sacrificed when we aim to be at our best in both boxes?

I think Warne has shown to be an excellent manager, who seems to be able to build a bunch of individuals into a cohesive group and I really appreciate that. At the same time, my personal preference would be much sexier, quick short-passing champagne football. Maybe it'll come when we have the players for it.

Great analysis,  Dimmu.

2 hours ago, CBRammette said:

More stuff on players' insta accounts over night inc this on Sibley's

 

Assuming that's the whole gang, I'm interested in who is, and isn't, on holiday.

Ward and Rooney probably have to stay back for treatment (is Rooney even old enough?) Robinson definitely isn't. 

Pretty much the whole first team regulars are there, apart from that. Wildsmith the obvious omission. 

Fornah we know, keeps himself apart. 

Also missing are Washington, Fozzy, Waghorn, Gayle, TJJ, anyone else? 

I love that Adams is there, even though he's a loan player. He's a Ram, for sure.

13 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

Maybe true but I find it quite difficult to come to terms with the idea that a player, and his “clique” chose alienate and isolate another player. I suspect it’s not desperately unusual for a player to struggle to settle in a foreign country but I imagine it’s very rarely down to a senior player at the club orchestrating his isolation. I also don’t think the one incident (which may not have had any malice to it at all) offered by @Gee SCREAMER !! is sufficient evidence. I guess I’m wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Confirmed from those who are/were in and around players pre and post-match at that time, there was a definite in-crowd, with a cruel streak towards those who didn't "fit".

Most thought it was Keogh's way, or the highway. 

Improvement in team morale and togetherness was apparent after he left, although some of this grew out of the tough times we found ourselves in by then. 

4 hours ago, Chesterfield_Ram said:

Would we take Lee Buchanan back if Birmingham go down? He is above league 1 remember. 

No. Louie Sibley is a better left back than Buchanan and he isn't even a left back! 

Ipswich got a trophy for finishing second - did they buy it themselves? 😉😂

CBT wearing the same necklace (two of them, in fact.) 

39 minutes ago, sage said:

Foul. I agree with Brian.

I said foul. He said not. 😂

1 minute ago, simmoram1995 said:

A very obvious Jerome blocking the goalie there. 1-3 

Foul or not? We are 50-50 in our house.

1 minute ago, Tamworthram said:

I thought they'd got pretty much the same allocation last season.

Did they? Serves me right for believing what I read on X! 

Barnsley. 🙈

13 minutes ago, Foreveram said:

I don’t know the details but it looks like a petty tit for tat deal with fans losing out.

Two clubs with away ends holding around 5,000 yet both allocations 2,163🤷🏻‍♂️

Bolton sold their allocation within minutes of going on sale.

Yep, Barnsley fans thought the Bolton fans gave them an unfair advantage last year, lot of pressure on Club to keep numbers down.

Punishes fans of both teams and it hasn't worked, Bolton still outsinging Barnsley! 

Would re-subscribe if the prices were more reasonable, but I don't like how they hook you in on a cheap deal and then double or triple it without telling you.

There's such a lot of good free content out there, I think they rather over-value their product.

2 minutes ago, richinspain said:

Did they take into account your leaving early every game? 🥷

8 minutes ago, Mucker1884 said:

Yep. Had mine.

As a ST holder, It's assuming I turned up to every home game (Which I didn't).
Don't know whether they've included my solitary away game (Lincoln).

49 points for me... 53% of the total.
Over 2070 mins.

 

I like the fact that we've sold 26,053 pies whilst I've been at the games... and I don't believe we ever got down to the last one, at any given game! 😁 

Yes, I'm pleased to say that I didn't buy any of the 26,053! 

Have you had a personalised email from the Club telling you how many minutes of football you've watched, and various other stats from home and away? 

It's a brilliant touch, and a reward for those fans who put in some hard miles.

I won't spoil it for anyone, but read right through to the end! 

Here's a snippet from mine. Not bad for saying I cracked an ankle bone and was in a brace for several weeks mid-season.

I'm bet @Foreveram has a better one though.

Here is the post.

As @jono said, I won't be wishing him well because he's diminished in my eyes, but won't be giving him abuse, either.

He made his choices and has to live with them.

12 hours ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

This one hurts. Tried so hard to get my mates to go but none of them fancied it. Needless to say they received an angry message when the winner went in.

All the fainthearted went home! 

Those of us that stayed were rewarded with a great moment. 

B4 is ours, and we will always hold him close to our hearts.

But when you see the sheer numbers of names on the Rams remembered tribute at Pride Park twice a season, you see the scope of Derby County fans who die each season.

They are each and every one of them someone else's B4.