DangerousSausage

Good question @Fan of Big Tone. The new signings will have been informed about the new structure and might even have known it was Paterson. Although if the latter had been the case, you'd have expected something to leak out. The interviews are interesting. Andy Edwards or whatever his name is seems to be a smart cookie. Maybe he'll be the brains of the operation while Paterson's job will be to kick water bottles around the dressing room 😁

I'm back to normal too. Thanks @Chris! Although I do miss the frisson of danger that came with the warnings...

That would make sense @McPie. Hopefully it's all a fuss over nothing!

It makes sense for the coaching staff to discuss the team and tactics regularly, I'm not sure this is the great innovation it's being billed as though. However, I don't like the owners being involved. I don't understand what they could add in discussions about tactics and selection. In the best case, they'd be silent observers (in which case, what's the point in them being there in the first place? It's the job of the DoF to liaise between the coaching staff and the board anyway). In the worst case, it opens the door to micromanagement and interference. I wouldn't be surprised if this scared off candidates for the HC job. The coaches working as a team behind the team is one thing, explaining selections and substitutions to the owners on a weekly basis is quite another.

For the sake of balance @TheSkipper, Burton finished on 46 points that season, lost on the final day and stayed up due to the teams below them losing. If you finish on 46 points, nine times out of ten you're going down, especially in League One. Focussing on his half-season at Burton doesn't really do him any favours, even when we consider that survival was the only realistic aim. What matters most now is how he performs with our squad and the higher expectations placed on him.

It was 35 degrees here yesterday. I barely went out. I opened the windows early in the morning before it heated up too much, then I closed them and the shutters and hid in the dark. Worst of all, it was still 27 degrees when I went to bed last night!

That's not true. There's a technical panel that will discuss team matters, but the ultimate responsibility for selection, tactics etc. will lie with Paterson. People are quoting the press release but omitting that last bit on purpose to create a bit of outrage. I'm so tired of it. However, the technical panel will also include the owners, which may well have put some candidates off.

The situation with multi-club ownership is a bit of a problem. It feels very unfair on Palace, but UEFA needs to ensure that there's no manipulation or "agreed" results. And that's hard to do when the same people sit on the boards if two clubs that could potentially play each other. However, last season both Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig (who are very obviously controlled by Red Bull despite German club ownership rules) played in the Champions League...

I'll answer that in May! 😉 We can have lots of coaches having lots and lots of meetings, but it will all be for nought if we don't support the new man with some quality signings. We've lost a lot of quality over the last season and now we've got McGoldrick to replace too. If we don't do that, we can forget about promotion regardless of who's in charge.

Given all the talk about Højer, the timing is a really strange coincidence. I wonder if he was originally going to be the main man in our new setup. But chances are nobody knew anything and it's just chance. He was under contract at Huddersfield, so maybe they were angling for compensation. But then what's the point in holding onto him in June, when everyone is on holiday anyway?

Good luck to the new man and welcome back Sam Slocombe - he wasn't gone long was he? I feel pretty underwhelmed with this. While Burton in L1 is a tough gig (and, despite the less than stellar record, he did keep them up), there's nothing in his record that gives me confidence that he'll be successful as HC. But then, the same was true of Luke Williams, who even had a relegation to his name. Hopefully our new DoF has made a good call here. Other thoughts: Given some of the names that were being bandied about online, someof our fans would have been unhappy whoever was appointed. Part of our supporterbasehascompletely lost touch with reality. Given ask the speculation about Steffen Højer, the timing of this announcement, within seconds of Denmark U21s going out, is curious.

Good topic! I would probably stay well away from football to be honest. You have to put in a huge amount of money just to stand still, and spending is no guarantee of success. But if money were no object, I'd buy the franchise and close it down. Then I'd take over Notts, make sure we had competent people running all parts of the club and give them a good budget. Then we could sell cheap season tickets to fill the ground and build our support. Maybe even expand ML if necessary. Apart from having my face on the shirts instead of a sponsor's logo and a giant golden statue of myself on Meadow Lane, I'd keep a low profile.

Wow, looks like i stand corrected then! Good for him. Since he appears to have gone to the trouble of getting a day job, I don't think it's very likely he'll be unveiled as our new HC in the coming days.

I don't think it's him, but it's an uncanny resemblance! His pay-off from Swansea will keep him going for a while (I remember him in an interview saying he had the luxury of choosing his next job rather than being forced to take one). I think he'll be back in the game very soon.

Indeed. But your spelling is atrocious.

Seems very plausible to me. In which case we'll find out next week at the earliest - Denmark are in the quarter finals after winning their group and play France on Sunday evening.

If you mean the Deutschlandticket, I believe you can. Mine was terminated a while back (I didn't agree to the price increase) and I could still use it until the end of the month. Just make sure you terminate it before 10 July, otherwise it'll apply for another month. Information here: https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/regional/deutschland-ticket The easiest way is to get the ticket in the DB Navigator app, then cancelling it is a matter of pressing a button. Also, bear in mind that it's only valid for regional and local services (and not IC, ICE or EC trains). This makes Frankfurt to Stuttgart a long journey, but you're fully flexible.

I had the away shirt from that season (a turquoise number with purple and white blotches on it). Do I get a bonus point too? 😀 The badge and logos from that era were made of a nasty plastic foam material that cracked and peeled off. If they've replaced that with embroidery, all the better!

Notts have released ticket information for the Darmstadt and Stuttgart games here. We've been assigned block A, but there's a standing block directly beneath it along the touchline. Both sections are normally for home fans, but the idea is that we mix (and Darmstadt fans are usually OK to be fair). For those of you who are also attending - are you going in block A? The Stuttgarter Kickers tickets are available tomorrow, we seem to have been put in the normal away block. Tickets for the Stuttgart game do not double as public transport tickets (Kombitickets), you'll have to sort that out separately. I suspect the same will be true of Darmstadt (although I'll check) and Kaiserslautern. Kombitickets are usually reserved for league and cup games unfortunately.

I'd be down for this (although the back is all one colour). More black than brown though 😉 I'd also be happy with wavy or jagged stripes if they're done well. I'm not holding my breath though.

You're probably spot on there @Countyman. I don't remember the stripes being wavy like that, but then I didn't own that one. The thin stripe is also closer to the middle on the original. It looks close enough though.

Surely it's time for the new kit to be unveiled? Several other teams who are with Puma have already unveiled theirs, but we tend to take longer about it... I would like a simple design with black and white stripes on the front and back, black shorts and white socks. Prefer slightly more white than black on the shirt. No yellow or grey please. I'm aware this is a forlorn hope. Just so we don't get our hopes up, here's tlwhat Puma have foisted on teams competing in the club world cup this summer:

It looks good! I saw a match recently where one of the teams was supplied by Matchwinner, I was surprised to see they're still going. It's better to have a shirt made by the actual manufacturer rather than a retro shirts maker if our deal with Puma allows it. The stripes appear to be slightly wavy though. Were they like that on the original?

There must be some fascinating archaeology there that's all but impossible to obtain too. True, having a land border would have made us much more vulnerable to the Nazis. But I was thinking further back than that. Would the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons still have come? Maybe the Britons would have ended up in France rather than Wales and Scotland, making France more Celtic? Maybe Charlemange's empire would have spread into Britain around the year 800? And if it had, would they have deterred the Vikings or would the Vikings have been more successful? Later on, perhaps England (if it even existed) would have expanded south or France north? As perfect agricultural land in a temperate region ideally positioned to benefit from the Enlightenment, maybe Doggerland would have become an empire in its own right. It could have developed its own language and culture and been antagonistic towards Britain, spreading west. Maybe it could have started a world war. Or it could have been an extension to the Netherlands, strengthening that country's empire and making it Britain's chief rival. It's amazing how much a tsunami off the coast of Norway could have influenced geopolitics!

If Doggerland were still somehow above water, our entire history would have been different. We'd quite possibly be writing this in a different language. It's fascinating how much we are influenced by geography.