Leeds Ram

2 minutes ago, angieram said:

I agree with you. In this electronic age, it would be easy to prioritise in terms of actual attendances (not the "I'm a lifelong fan but I don't go because of....."

If you can't get yourself to Pride Park, then surely the same excuses apply to Wembley?

That tends to be my feeling tbh. This does in part come from a place of self-interest as I regularly attend at least 10 games a season (this year I'll make it to 11, last season was 16 but I lived much closer than I do now) but these are individual tickets as it doesn't make sense currently for me to get a season ticket. I do think ticketing is a thing the club should be looking at next season as a bit of a revamp slightly 🙂 

5 minutes ago, angieram said:

I know of people who bought home memberships in previous seasons just to get priority if we got to Wembley even though they didn't attend a single game all season. Just wrong, imo. Don't know if they are still a thing?

I don't think home memberships are a thing anymore. But that's why i wouldn't predicate it on membership but on actual tickets bought.

tried it a couple of times with lancaster city when I lived up there but really not for me. I regularly play on the pitches next to york city's new stadium but never really fancied going and that's not just because they're rubbish. I'd struggle to justify spending good money to simply watch football as a spectacle and nothing else as a live product. From my experience if there's no stake in it for you it feels quite weird going to a game. That's just me though 🙂

12 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

I would love to go tomorrow but can't. Should I by a ticket anyway and not go, then I might get a higher priority ticket for a potential playoff final? I will be "putting my hand" but not even able to see the game. This makes me much more of a real fan than those cheapskates who actually go to the game. @i-Ram get involved.

There's no perfect system but when we've been to wembley I've known plenty of people who've been once or twice over the course of not just the season but previous seasons who've gotten tickets and those who have been to 10+ games that season miss out. It's clearly not a fair system just to give season ticket holders a seat and then make it a free for all. If you've bought tickets to multiple games that season (I'd have a system of 15+, 10+ and 5+) then you should have some form of priority over others who haven't done that.

37 minutes ago, jimtastic56 said:

Let’s be honest , we all have mates who are “ Massive Rams fans “, with plenty of money - who only turn up to games when there is a free ticket going or watch games on their dodgy stick . If they don’t put their hands in their pockets at some point we will never progress.

Always bugs me as if we slip into the playoffs and get to Wembley they'll be first on the phone for a ticket. I really hope if that happens we have categories for seat distribution based on tickets bought as well as memberships acquired as opposed to merely doing Season Tickets and then a free for all. 

13 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

I remember how supportive they were.  Particularly when we lost Shinnie for 30k and a 40 yr old on 5k a week whilst they changed their management team and brought in 5 loans under embargo.

 

Don't get me wrong I'm not disputing those things. But I think given we know how it feels we all should unite against the club killer that is Couhig. 

19 minutes ago, Crewton said:

I'd happily give the Couhigs some verbal, but when it comes to Reading fans, it's hard to forgive stuff like this (and it's just one example I kept) :

 

Maybe it's just me but I think we should all unite against the club killer that is Couhig tbh.

I was going to say when we go to Wycombe could fans perhaps get a couple of banners and coordinate with reading to show some solidarity? This is Wycombe once again acting as potential club killers.... 

I liked Gayle as a signing and have always liked him as a player. At this level I knew he'd be a cut above tbh. We should give him a 1 year extension as he could probably still muster between 10-12 goals in the championship if he played regularly. 

Couhig is just an amoral scumbag. He's a blight on football and represents everything that we should as fans of the game all despise. Him and his club should be made absolute pariahs in the football pyramid if they go through with this.

On the game we dominated Reading and thoroughly deserved the win. Yes the referee and linesmen made bad calls but we've had those issues for the past 3 years. Eventually we'll get a rub of the green which the play deserved. I don't necessarily blame Reading for what they're doing, after-all, they've got a job to do and if that's how they win games then fair enough. But we really needed that win to at least slightly ease the pressure on the Bolton game. 

I don't think many people who have watched or seen many of these marches really think they're simply calling for peace in a pleasant manner. I've seen marches where I have witnessed speakers valorise Hezbollah and Hamas. The rise in anti-Semitic incidents alone (600% I believe) is staggering and speaks to something darker and more dangerous in politics. Galloway's election in rochdale speaks to the uglyness and hypocrisy of so many who believe in 'freedom for Palestine' tbh too. Willingly voting for a man who sucked up to Saddam Hussein and Bashar Al-Assad just says it all really. 

On the ceasefire there should be one but without a broader strategy for peace it's simply a stop the clock situation. Ocotber 7th has unleashed Israeli public opinion against the idea of a Palestine at all and has opened the floodgates to a maelstrom of violence and destruction. The region is in a disastrous state with authoritarianism surviving the Arab Springs and the regions only real democratic player now certainly guilty of war crimes if not genocide. It's ugly and no-one has an answer beyond trying to make it stop which is no real solution at all.

4 hours ago, uttoxram75 said:

Good points bcn although i would say most conflicts are about money, control of trade routes, fossil fuels, precious metals etc. maybe its dressed up as religious struggles but history tells us its always about money and power.

Tend to think that's equally simplistic overall. Conflicts can have roots in a variety of places- whether that is ideology, identity, revenge, wealth, or a desire for greater territory to name just a few. 

18 hours ago, Crewton said:

I used to think the same, but I read allot about the impact of inter-generational trauma and its effects on the descendants of those who experienced that trauma directly. Sadly, it will most likely be precipitated in the future by current events also and there will always be people who exploit it for their own purposes.

A lot of that literature on inter-generational trauma and epigenetics i think has come into question. I might be wrong and it used to be very popular though.

19 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Confess it sounds somewhat niche, but I have no doubt it will be ace. Happy writing!

Thanks Carl! 🙂

1 minute ago, Carl Sagan said:

Great stuff! As I said when starting the AI thread, I'm also writing a book on that for a different publisher at the moment. And, like you, it's currently hard going haha. What's yours for our future reading pleasure?

Mine is a monograph of my PhD discussing Carl Schmitt's exceptional sovereignty in relation to Iran and Syria 🙂 It's called "Carl Schmitt in the Middle East: Unstable Decisionism and the Failure of Political Orders". I'm trying to make it easily readable and am talking to the publisher to make it reasonably priced so it might shift a few copies 🙂 

YEEESSSS

looking for a northampton ticket as i'm just an away member so they won't get to my category 

GET IN

COYR!!!

1 hour ago, Carl Sagan said:

Creating books is a really slow process. I moved to Penguin a couple of years ago, but first you have to contract an author to write a book, then they must do the hard graft of writing, and we go through numerous drafts together, and then it moves into production and all the stages there. My very first book from start to finish like that publishes on Thursday and it's a great story - proper narrative nonfiction that follows Chris Thorogood's lifelong obsession with Rafflesia, the world's biggest flowers, and his quest to save them. Lovely review in the Guardian to kick things off. Before this book, I was pretty blind to plants. Now I notice them so much more. It's called Pathless Forest if anyone wants to try out a nature adventure story.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/01/pathless-forest-by-chris-thorogood-review-love-letter-to-a-monstrous-flower

Great review! Sounds very interesting 🙂 hope it sells well for you! I feel the pain on writing, writing a book myself, albeit not with such a prestigious publisher and it's definitely hard going haha. 

1 hour ago, B4’s Sister said:

Someone recommended The Bee Sting to me. My reading wish list is growing by the minute today 😂

haha well that's always good! 🙂

got a few on the go atm. Mixing it up between IN ASCENSION by Martin Macinnes, Cold Peace by Michael Doyle and Making the Arab World by Fawaz Gerges. Not long finished The Bee Sting by Paul Murray which I thought was much better than the eventual winner of the Booker Prophet Song which I found very underwhelming. I'd also recommend Wellness by Nathan Hill who has only written one other novel and anything by Brandon Taylor I've really enjoyed recently too.

set up 4-2-3-1 and go at them. They must be fragile confidence wise so high tempo, high press and get men in the box. They're a shambles and we need to take advantage. 

I watched the game last night and I thought first half was fine. We generally kept the ball well but made some terrible decisions once we got into the final third. We had more pace but the way we played didn't really suite Gayle. It will take some adapting to so we can make the most of his qualities i think. 

The second half was poor. We never really got going and didn't look confident. Wildsmith is a keeper I've rarely been sure of. He flatters to deceive by making a great save now and again but in the middle makes a host of blunders. Last season he probably cost us around a dozen points with all his mistakes. I think this season he's going the same way. But that doesn't excuse the lack of shape from the squad. The substitutions did more harm than good and we had so little in the middle of the park. 

We'll get in the playoffs which is an improvement but I can't see us picking up an automatic slot unless something changes. If we spend another year in the division it will be much harder for us to leave it with key players such as Bird leaving. It will require another facelift in terms of personnel. If it is the playoffs there is no one that really scares me as such except for ourselves. When we do play well we can beat anyone in this league but those days are too few and far between at the moment.