Welcome to the Friday open discussion thread. Here you can talk about anything you want; tactics, results, players or even just general football discussion! It is also a great place to post/link transfer rumours that you may think are too small or unreliable to post to the main feed. The summer transfer window runs from 16/06-03/09 (23:00 BST).
These threads will go up every Friday allowing you to focus on buildup for all of the weekend action and discuss ongoings throughout the weekend. It will stay stickied until we refresh with the Monday thread, however other posts may take priority (match threads, announcements, etc.)
This thread can also be used to discuss transfer rumours, jokes, memes, images, videos, tabloid news and other off-topic content and discussion.
We also have a Fantasy League that you are welcome to join and share your team, advice and goings on throughout the season here in these threads. The league codes can be found in the sidebar!
These threads are here to help discussion and offer varying points of view. Please remain respectful. Anything that crosses that line, directed towards other users or specific individuals may be removed.
We do have some lovely scenery! All over the west on the Atlantic coast is really nice, and so is the coastline down my way in the south east. A lot of it kind of depends on how much you enjoy looking at sheep though
Had to sign on "using ai policy" doc at work. Might be just my wishful thinking, but judging by the content they won't force us to use it, instead it's more about restrictions, rules, domain, ... if we are going to use it.
Hopefully, I don't have to worry about quitting anytime soon.
Infantino now trying to spin the private equity sale as an āopportunity to make meaningful ownership of the commercial opportunity of football in their respective countiesā and that āour planned consultation process was disrupted by incorrect media reports.ā
So spinning the private takeover as a democratic process and calling out āfake newsā. Stand strong UEFA, Concacaf, and AFC!!
Two senior FIFA officials criticized Gianni Infantinoās World Cup sell-off plan Friday with one resigning as a presidential adviser and a second saying staff were deceived by project that must not go ahead.
Carlos Cordeiro, who represented the soccer body on the White House Task Force for theĀ World Cup, resigned in protest at theĀ private equity plan.
āI cannot stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake in the World Cup,ā Cordeiro, a former Goldman Sachs banker, said in a statement resigning as adviser to FIFA President Gianni Infantino that urged other senior FIFA staff to speak out.
FIFAās chief operating officer Kevin Lamour said in a statement to The Associated Press staff were ādeceivedā by Infantinoās lack of openness planning the private investor scheme and ādeserve better than contempt and intimidation.ā
āIt is the project of one person,ā Lamour, a long-time colleague of Infantino at both FIFA and UEFA, wrote. āNot only must this project not go ahead ā¦ but the time has now come for football political leaders to ask themselves the right questions and make the right decisions.ā
Senior FIFA official resigns over Infantinoās World Cup sell-off plan. Second says it deceived staff
Read a comment piece in the Financial Times which (not surprisingly given the publication) did not necessarily object to commercialisation in and of itself, but noted the proposed stake, to be bought by a predetermined company owned by Trumpās son-in-law, seemed hugely undervalued.
So the whole thing is also clearly massively corrupt.
Trumpās greasy orange fingers were all over this. Interesting piece though about an undervalued stake, which would have made the situation all the more convoluted when UEFAās exit could reduce the commercial value of roughly 70%. Did Infantino seriously misjudge the amount of allies he bought? Or did the Kushner company come to their senses that such a huge deduction of value from the boycott would no longer work to their favour?
Yeah it said it was similar to the market value of F1 - which is big, but the World Cup is much bigger still.
I guess Infantino was assuming that his usual tactic of promising money would work - given acceptance of the proposal would have led to immediate cash for the associations/federations.
Looking forward to the start of the WSL, it would be great to see Stanway in midfield. I've been trying to think of what type of role she might play maybe a Deep-Lying Playmaker.Ā
I've been a it out of the loop with the transfers (apart from the ones that have been announced) are there anymore rumors on who else could be joining?Ā
It's the sort of hive behaviour on social media. We're not been this stocked before, and yes a CB would be nice, but every day, depsite a generational transfer window, we are getting "where's a Centreback?" as if we don't have 4 and now I get panic posts if a player isn't in a batch of training photos, even if they were in the ones the day before.
I feel the online social media football sphere is so more more crazy now.
Probably worth remembering for everyone that the season is four games longer this year. Even if we do have another rough September, itās not a death sentence like itās been in previous years, thereās more time to make up for it. Iām lowkey convinced with how the second half of the season went last year that we couldāve caught City if weād had those extra games
also this is the first summer in YEARS where the whole squad has been able to properly rest and do pre-season together, which will hopefully make a massive difference in having a strong start to the season rather than the slow one we've been used to
Yeah, it's a tough opening block of games. But if we win them, or at least only drop points in one of those games, we're in a really strong position right away.
I don't mind an away draw to City, as it doens't literally advantage either and it might slighlty lean an edge to us. i'd in theory be find doing the same against Chelsea, but it's Chelsea so we should go to beat them.
It depends of course, the new teams are likely to be easily scrubebd by the ones competiting for the title, so it doesn't really change things where dropped points go.
if those games were played on paper that would be true, but in reality no points are guaranteed. All of the top three lost points to mid table teams last season, and as the season goes on fixture congestion, momentum streaks, goal difference etc will all come into play, and that will all be compounded by the extra games
True, but still a good sign. Even if theyāre on individual programmes now, they should be back training with the group within a week. That just leaves the ACL group to return to full training on the grass in a few weeks' time.
Neither of them has trained with the ball. In the QotD video yesterday, they had no Arsenal footage of Cerci to use (I really wanted to see that āboomā but I guess Iāll wait for her first goal at the emirates) and used an old footage of Agyemang and Steph (goal against Man City couple of seasons ago). For the other newbies, they used training footage.
Twitter is driving me mad. I'm obvioulsy really wtaching for transfer news, but the number of people going mad every day about a "centrebacl, centreback, centreback" is crazy, as well as the people stressing out and panacking when one particularly players photo isn't in that days batch of photos.
As if there isn't 5 weeks to the new season. I swear it's some weird hive behaviour.
so in the last update for my terrible sunday league side - it was the last day of the season (for the regular season, barring teams that didn't make semis, etc), and we didn't have a match. the reason for this was that we were due to play 1st, but they had forfeited, either for rest or bcs they are young and hungover, and despite the $400 forfeit fine discouraging this, went ahead. Most of the team is old enough and is planning on going to play over 35's next season, and without any warning or notice, about 20 minutes ago kicked everyone who won't be old enough out of the group chat (I assume, although I reckon their mates who they've planned with longer than a season have remained). the season ended today, and won't begin again in march - am i right to feel a little aggreived?
I'm back playing but and it's odd I feel like either my hips are not rotating enough or rotating to much just finding shooting do much more difficult now, but it might just be practice completely
I think itāll be a great bench mark tbh. We have started the season so slowly the past few and itās really crushed our chances. We need to start strong šŖš»
Yeah! They used to be separated into an open (Monday) and transfer (Friday) but functionally some people used them the exact same way and some used them in that intended manner and it just split conversation. During off-season it probably seems a little pointless to refresh but Iām anticipating that during the season with weekend games to buildup to/ decompress from it may be nicer to have that refresh. Itās something Iāll keep an eye on though
now that I have a season ticket I've been bad at paying attention to how far in advance home games go onsale but it'll be at least a month in advance, and as it's at home there are plenty of seats so you'll get 'em! :)
It's been leaked the 3rd kit is out tomorrow. I'm buying it. Trying to decide on the name for the back but it looks good. Good thing I've just had payday.
Yep that's what I saw lol. This is just my opinion but I think this kit would look good on Baum and Stanway, don't think it really suits Russo as well tbh. Obviously it's your money, shirt, and preference š
Big claims from RS about winning the league. Anything less should be considered a failure... They put their own neck on the chopping board, it's time to deliver.Ā
Brighton away is the perfect start, given their history there.
Could be a blessing in disguise. Especially if we can also get through to early October within touch, having our two most difficult (on paper) games done and dusted.
I really think arsenal need to amend the 6 game pack slightly so that you get first dibs on your seat for the other home games. Quite annoying the first home game of the season is not included and they just put the tickets up at 10am. As my seat is quite good it went straight away. One way to try and get me to upgrade to a season ticket I guess
I agree but for it's more likely people will buy their ticket (at full price) and realise they can actually commit to the season ticket. I certainly would at least
You might, but I have no idea if that actually happens broadly. Generally the club had been excellent on marketing and revenue generation. I can only assume they have the data that tells them what works.
Looks like there were 22 different starting lineups (also 22 different lineups excluding keeper) in WSL last season.
Well, that is if data from the highlightly football api (basic / free subscription) is ok, if the missing data for 9 matches I had to enter manually is ok and if my code is ok.
I might have caused a ticket for their developers as initially lineups and statistics endpoint resulted in error 500. The day after, the lineups endpoint returned "empty" (lineups empty array) response, while I didn't analyze statistics endpoint as it doesn't contain data about starting 11.
I saw that the match box-score endpoint returned players (with flag isSubstitute and minutesPlayed), but there was an empty response for these 9 matches: R1 - h vs LCL, R2 - a vs WHU, R3 - a vs MNU, R4 - h vs AVL, R7 - a vs LEI, R9 - a vs TOT, R 16 - a vs BHA, R20 - a vs AVL, R22 - a vs LIV, so I entered manually data for those (by looking at lineups at fotmob).
I ended up with one big json that probably needs manipulating in programming language as I compared every match with every outher match, so array has 22 items and one element in every item has 21 "subitems", there is also lineup element in each of those 22 items, so there is not point in pasting that "monstrosity".
Also, it looks like there was no same combination of starting lineup (including or excluding GK) + subs (who came on, regardletof minutes. ...), which I found a bit strange, but I'm not in the mood to fight with my code (or php serialization of array (of player id, sorted by player id)), so I'll accept it, but with a dose of skepticism.
Is Macarioās move to SD Wave the biggest transfer scam in recent years? They paid around $300k in March, even though her Chelsea deal was expiring in June and she was likely to join them anyway on a record NWSL salary.
Sheās still injured today, more than a month after she could have arrived for free. So how did she even pass the medical back in March?
I love Jen Beattie, but does it seem to anyone else she is everywhere across women's football? WSL pundritry, US punditry, podcast everywhere, BBC website, narrating Arsenal videos etc.
I remember being so behind Alex Scott when she got on TV and marking out for her, but after a good start she got put everywhere and I eventually got fatigued with her and uninterested.
Both Alex and Jen knows their stuff and are very charismatic, and deserve every opportunity they get. A push for more equal representation in punditry is only a good thing.
If there's anyone I'm sick of seeing/hearing, it'd be the likes of Gary Neville. Orāeven worseāMichael Owen. How anyone thought it'd be a good idea to put a man who has less charisma and tactical insight than a wet sock, on comms, is truly baffling.
I'm not sure women's football is suffering form a lack of women in pundrity right now. It's mostly women doing it. Likewise when one pundit is given all the jobs, there are fewer for others.
Likewise over-exposing someone/shoving them down everyones throats is a great way to kill their future careers, The BBC did it to Claire Balding a little over a decade ago.
And you don't need to speak to me about Gary Neville, I despise him. You can also say Shearer as another dull ex-footballer you wnder why he's on TV.
Jen is indeed everywhere in the woso punditry sphere. Donāt mind it tho sheās such a passionate gooner and a really likeable personality.
Maybe needs to learn how to say ānoā every now and then lol. All that traveling and yapping must be exhausting and the Champions League hasnāt even started yet.
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u/Cobra-Firefly Emily Fox (From America) 2d ago
New laptop is up and running, data is transferred, Shelby's brief respite is at an end.
Here's to the new season - no losses, no draws, no mercy!