Leeds Ram

I think football would have a much healthier future if we put aside history and rivalry and supported any club in a desperate plight. 
Yeah there were Reading fans that took the piss, but there would have been plenty that were supportive. And I’d rather support them with their struggles, which are looking just as bad as ours were, so we don’t lose another football club.
There are far too many rich elites running and ruining the game for us peasants to be fighting amongst ourselves. 

So the Wycombe money for this is being pumped in by a Georgian billionaire with links to sanctioned Russians. 
Wycombe are simply disgusting. Extorted us during admin when we had no means to defend ourselves and now this? Utterly revolting. If they ever find themselves in trouble I'll have no sympathy for them.

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.

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. 

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. 

Must admit that I didn’t hear any ‘party’ chants from my spot in the East Stand (quite close to the away fans).  I did hear one telling them to “pay their effing bills” which made me laugh (I’m not going to get upset about any hypocrisy in that chant, it was funny!). 

It's really no justification though. Guess all it does it's highlights that all fanbases have their own idiots.
The only people worthy of such vitriol are the people that played a part in or actively tried to destroy our club, namely Mel Morris, Steve Gibson, the ambulance chaser from Wycombe and any employee of the EFL. 

Haven't read through the thread to see if this was mentioned anywhere, apologies if it's been raised here or elsewhere.
Was anyone else really disappointed with our fans singing the "we're all having a party" chant. Hoped we might be more sympathetic given recent history. Back when blackpool had issues with their owners I remember us showing some solidarity with their fans, yet last night our loud minority seemed to want to act like d********. During our rough period, there was a lot of posts by fans slating the likes of birmingham, cardiff and other fans who chanted about our club dying. Yet last night the exact same shitty song was used by our fans against another team. 
Maybe its because I have some family in reading a close friend who supports them but it all left a bad taste for me. I was a bit embarrassed by those chants...

Very happy with result & pretty happy with performance. Tore into them early on & were by far the better side throughout...thought tempo was good & caused them problems both wide & through the middle. Main gripes were a) conceding from their first effort on target & b) continued inability to keep the ball/slow the tempo late on which gave them ascendancy they didnt deserve. Thought Adams was excellent & another strong display from Barkhuizen. He absolutely rinsed their left back with about 15 mins left for a chance that Waggy missed & unusually for TB, stayed on for full 90+ mins. Coming into form at just the right time.
Had to laugh at the plastic away fans for whingeing the ref was biased against them. They got exactly what they deserved for their anti-football & penalty was beyond dispute. And singing 'f*** the EFL'  after the constant soft treatment they've had from that repulsive organisation compared to us is proper spoilt brat behaviour. They are an odious little club who hopefully will disappear to League Two to keep fellow plastics MK Franchise company.
Best atmosphere for a midweek game I can remember for a long time. It does make a difference. Bring on Bolton 💪

Long journey to fill and Mr CBR doesnt talk when driving 🙄
- Dwight just adds that touch of class and he works so hard around their defenders. Really noticed energy reduction up top when he came off
- Also listen to his post match interview on rad derby if you get chance. Extremely complimentary about everything at Derby and the environment PW has created. Seems to be just loving it and it shows
- Barks is like a player reborn - the change in him is immense. Always thought seemed not bothered. Loving him and Gayle together at the moment and takes pressure off Nat
- Robbie Savage singing away to steve bloomer's watching but then moaning away. Scruffy git also. Loved Savage junior's foul throw in front of him
- moment their goalie was signalling for VAR check on penalty was hilarious
- great atmosphere - wasnt expecting such feistiness tonight 

Fully deserved win and pretty comfortable except for one ball into the final third we allowed to drop.
No controversy in the win for me. Reading played into the ref’s hands with so many cynical and brainless fouls. On another day, they would have had a man sent off in the first half. The keeper also charged out needlessly, giving the referee a decision to make.
Adams was imperious, but Gayle was the difference. His intelligent runs and movement and clever touches scared the life out of Reading’s defence. He also took his goal very nicely.
If we can keep him fit for the next eight games, we have a very real chance of promotion.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself or allow myself to be excited, but.. I feel like something has finally clicked.
Best performance we’ve ever had under Warne, in my opinion. We’ve fell on to a workable system, the main reason was the recruitment staff doing their job and finding a gem in Ebou Adams and very recently I think it’s not in any small part to having to change the dynamic with Gayle upfront. I believe these two signings in particular have changed our fortunes, similarly to how Nyambe did earlier in the season.
Sibley and Ward are excelling. The defence are well balanced, the cohesion between the midfield and defence is significantly better, gaps aren’t as freely available for the other team and we are now working well going forward. I think we actually look like a team now, which for the majority of the season has definitely been missing something. The last two performances, the dynamic of the team, I’m finally hopeful. 

What a huge result, but it’s probably wise to take it one game at a time bearing in mind how tight things are. There could be two points separating four teams all things being equal.
Reading will be another tough game in midweek where we’ll have to be professional and switched on to get the job done. They’ll be looking and thinking they could do a number on us like Charlton did.
It’s hard not to be positive at the moment though. We are in such a good place. Those back to back defeats could have been terminal but we have bounced back in style. Warne and the players are showing great character.
Adams and Gayle have given us some post January oomph that we missed last year. The whole squad are playing their part - see Bradley, Ward, Smith, Barkhuizen and Sibley all making important contributions to the cause over recent weeks.
Losing to Bird to injury will be a blow but it gives others in the squad a chance to shine. Hourihane and Thompson will be raring to go.
All we need is CBT to arrive at the party and it could be a really really fun end to the season!

Here we go again, @Archied - agreeing again.
In the last few days, I have first  Niemöllered the thread then Santayanaed it. Going for a hat-trick now:
"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" - Louis Fischer (Gandhi's biographer, attributing the philosophy or message, if not the actual words, to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi)

Of home games I managed to only miss.... Newcastle... *sigh* you couldn't make it up. When we went into the next season, I remember it dawning on me that despite being an ST holder that I hadn't seen us win in well over a year. Jesus wept, what a time that was to endure being a Derby fan ! I climbed out of the East Stand at the final whistle on the final day and watched some lads unfurl a banner with 'Thank f*** that's over' written on it. Quality ! Summed it up perfectly!

They were leaving after 15 mins.
We only booed after the final whistle on the last game of the season. Once it was all over. Before that, the team had our full support. They were just awful players at that level, not really their own fault. Just put in a situation where they were massively out of their depth. And that's why we supported them.
It really was, weirdly, one of the most fun seasons I remember.

Sheffield United are truly horrific, and their fans are a complete disgrace.
During THAT season I believe our fans were voted Player of the Season. Every game was a sell out, and bizarrely, the longer the season went on, and the more we fell behind the rest of the league, the better the support was at Pride Park. We took the piss out of ourselves, and every set of away fans that turned up. It seems some of our best times as fans have been when we face adversity. Strange bunch us Rams fans.
Last night Brammel Lane was half empty by half time. Tin pot club, with tin pot fans.

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

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 🙂 

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 🙂 

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?

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. 

COYR!!!

COYR!!!

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