ariotofmyown

The pundits Xi for Croatia had a 433 with Mount in midfield and grealish/sterling and Rashford /Foden up with kane. 
Mount is probably better a bit deeper tbf. 
What seems a bit late is the development of partnerships with great understanding. Mings /Shaw and Godfrey /White were more brand new combinations and they both got easily carved open. 
Might be that Southgate has to go 3 cbs for that reason - we don't have a 4 that are used to playing together. 

I know. Was due to Algarve in ten days ?

Was just looking at Centre PARC's for 3 nights next weekend.
£2500 for 2 adults, seems like Robin Hood is alive and well in Sherwood Forest.

Just seen that TikTok are the official sponsors of Euro 2020 that's me out then.....

I’m a Johnny Concrete lager swilling lout who likes to watch the scantily clad girls go by..... not sure ? 

Im an advocate of opening up right away.
But...its silly comparing positive case increases with hospitalization/death rate increases on the same day, as there is a lag in the data.
If hospitalizations/deaths are still at the same rates in 2 weeks there can be no excuse for delaying removing all restrictions.

No but I'll happily charge you a tenner for a partially filled sandwich and a bottle of warm water

was due to fly to Faro on 16th. But, due to a non-existent and not-recognised variant of COVID, Portugal was removed from the Greenlist. None of the three of us due to go are allowed to work from home when we return, so 2 weeks quarantine is out of the question.
Annoyingly, the hotel cancellation come with a €175 charge! Trying to get them to waive that.
£92 of parking refunds in the form of vouchers to use within 3 years, which I will.
The worst bit was I researched World Cup 2022 dates to transfer the flights to next June, before actually realising the World Cup next year is in DECEMBER. So we paid an extra £80 each to change flights to July 2022, as it will be dead in June without a football tournament on!

Maybe a bit pedantic on my part, but 9 months ago (about the 1st of September) the message from the government was if you don't go back into the office, then don't be surprised if you lose you job.
Then the message throughout September was that there would be no 2nd wave and no lockdown.
Towards the end of October, the message was Starmer wants to destroy the economy by following scientific advice that a new lockdown is needed.
Then a few days later there was a lockdown for the whole of November announced.
If the lockdown doesn't end at the end of June, then it should spell the end of the government. Travel from Pakistan and Bangladesh stopped, but Indian travel allowed for another 2 weeks or so. Pure coincidence that Johnson was supposed to be going there to attempt some trade deals.
So many screwups, many of them being to a non-existent border policy. People allowed to fly in from Northern Italy in early March without a single restriction or check.
Did you see how on the first day of international travel earlier in the month? We had passport queues mixed with people arriving from red, amber and green countries. They had months of no travel to plan for this.
So much incompetence. So many people who have done nothing worthwhile in charge. Perhaps we should have put the military in charge in March. Or some successful business who had worked their way up, rather than just been educated at some posh school.

Hope you can all still go.
Difficult to understand why so strict on Portugal now but weren't with India when they were had a fast spreading variant.

Maybe a bit pedantic on my part, but 9 months ago (about the 1st of September) the message from the government was if you don't go back into the office, then don't be surprised if you lose you job.
Then the message throughout September was that there would be no 2nd wave and no lockdown.
Towards the end of October, the message was Starmer wants to destroy the economy by following scientific advice that a new lockdown is needed.
Then a few days later there was a lockdown for the whole of November announced.
If the lockdown doesn't end at the end of June, then it should spell the end of the government. Travel from Pakistan and Bangladesh stopped, but Indian travel allowed for another 2 weeks or so. Pure coincidence that Johnson was supposed to be going there to attempt some trade deals.
So many screwups, many of them being to a non-existent border policy. People allowed to fly in from Northern Italy in early March without a single restriction or check.
Did you see how on the first day of international travel earlier in the month? We had passport queues mixed with people arriving from red, amber and green countries. They had months of no travel to plan for this.
So much incompetence. So many people who have done nothing worthwhile in charge. Perhaps we should have put the military in charge in March. Or some successful business who had worked their way up, rather than just been educated at some posh school.

Boris wasn't planning on attending a summit and announcing a trade deal with Portugal?

The rules are confusing but in essence yes. Always a risk that someone tests positive and they won't be able to return.
Booked this 2 years ago for late July, nice villa on the Algarve, whole family going for my 60th. Flights booked separate, so might get buggered there with changing etc. Need to check. 

Always felt like FFP or P&S do nothing to tackle the problem they were set out to achieve.  They were implemented to stop teams overspending, gambling on success but failing and crumbling.  It hasn’t prevented this, it’s just made it more of a gamble. In the Championship, overspend and pull it off and you get promoted and face no punishment, but fail and you’re left in a worse position than you would have been without FFP. Before you’d be in a financial state, now you’re in a financial state, face a fine, transfer embargo and points deduction.  I’m sure these are intended to act as a deterrent so that people stick within the rules, however, they won’t and they’ll constantly try and find loopholes due to the lack of a level playing field. 
 
a fairer way to level things out would be to set a transfer budget that all clubs have to stay within. You can spend more than say £20m on players in a year and every club has an overall wage limit to stick to. That way, even those with parachute payments get no unfair advantage as they have the same wage and transfer budget. That said, they’ll need to ensure contracts given in the prem at suitably structured to include a wage reduction should they get relegated. 
 
I am no expert so feel free to rip the idea to shreds if it’s actually nonsense. 

Top Boy is so good. Totally authentic in the way it depicts London estates and 'the life' and considering Kano has not formal acting training, he's absurdly good. People as talented as he is are quite annoying!
Gomorrah is great and I'm sure you'll love it. It's another show where nothing is sugar-coated nor incidental but it's stylish all the same.
A good few on here have talked about Mare of Easttown too and the hype is entirely justified. It's quite brilliant in almost every way.

Just finished Top Boy on Netflix, both the original 2 seasons, then the newer 3rd one. Top stuff and a new series is being made too.
Seen Gomorrah is on Now TV and feel I really should watch it after all the praise on here. I watched the film about 10 years ago and liked that.

Going off topic.

My mate is coming in from Dubai this week for a £1,750 Ramada city break. Guess he won't be spending much else so otherwise a cheap 10 days!
I'll ask him how it's all operating, surely they must have it sorted by now. 

Stating Mare of Easttown today. Sounded good so waited for all episodes to be available as I'm too impatient to watch something over two months. Booked myself off until next week so a long walk in the sunshine around Boars Hill, the GF's awesome Massaman curry, few ice cold beers and on it goes. Feeling quite chipper today to be fair ?

One of today's NewsThump 'stories'...

Just logged on to here after a long old day, and this has cheered me right up. Thank you @G_Kinkladze, @wixman1884, @Asheville Ram, you've made my day with these.
A couple of notable things - I was worried in the writing that I was painting Nigel accidentally as a villain, so I'm glad it's not come across in that way. Personally I wasn't his biggest fan in truth, but I wanted to make sure it was written as much down the middle as it possibly could be. 
@G_Kinkladze - Brys was fantastic. When I first told him how much of his time I'd like to steal (six hours in the end) he was a bit taken aback, but I think he was pretty glad to get a lot off his chest by the end. That entire side built by Clough and improved by McClaren couldn't have been any more forthcoming and helpful - great squad of people. 
Moneywise - well, I've now found out that authors barely make a jot ? Jeff Bezos though, raking it in! I've at least got some learnings for the next one, which I'll hopefully be able to announce soon!

Bummer.

I mis-read 'annual' as 'anal' the first time!

I have to rely more and more upon lipreading and gauging expressions, especially because it is now more than two years since my last 'annual' audiology test and hearing aid assessment.. I applaud the wearing of visors because they make life so much easier for those who are hard of hearing.

They are the same media who persuaded the population to give the Tories a landslide. Can't have it both ways.
Anyway, this caught my attention earlier...