Ohh Tommy Johnson

Another pick me up, in anticipation of today's news!! Wordle 929 3/6* ???????????? ???????????????? ????????????????????

A good waffle today! Brightening up a potentially downbeat sort of day. #waffle713 5/5 ???????????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ???????????? ???????????????????? ???? streak: 6 wafflegame.net

I haven't seen him play other than the videos on here. He looked OK for the standard he was playing at, but there are no guarantees he would be any good for us and there are plenty of others who could do a similar job who we are following, I'm sure. So it's not like we have missed out on the likes of John Stones, or Van Dyke, so I'm not too disappointed.

I don't think I need add anything else - it's an obvious choice I guess. Win, lose or draw I feel good. .. if only I could add the video!!

A bit late to this - like Brindley covering a break down the right.. but Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2024 is a successful one, promotion or not.

I have The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Carpenters, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Bjork on at the moment ... all Christmas pressies, all great LPs. As you can imagine, my LP collection is a bit of a jumble of stuff, but I have found that if I approach an album with the intention of enjoying it, I generally do, where as in the past if it wasn't the Cure or the Sisters of Mercy, I wasn't really interested. It's interesting what mindset does for you! I also enjoy the various History Hit podcasts when I'm running and 'The Rest is Politics' whilst I am at work.

For some reason my company has unblocked this website... not that I do it at work, clearly, that would be naughty! Anyway, I managed it! #waffle712 1/5 ???????????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ???????????? ???????????????????? ???? streak: 5 wafflegame.net

After a couple of weeks away from most social media stuff.. I'm back! With a 4... what else!!? Wordle 928 4/6* ???? ???????? ???????????????? ????????????????????

@liampie They are great goals. I hope you achieve them all. Italy is a wonderful country. I have been there for work a lot and on holiday a couple of times. Milan is great (but probably not my No1 favourite), Florence amazing, Rome incredible, Naples, scar (but outside is pretty cool - the drive along the coast is unbelievable), and Venice and Verona are must visits! Good luck with a weekend - I suspect you will return. I joined a gym in October, and the Christmas break has done loads of damage. I need to get back there!!

@Robbie__64 I agree that we should think about playing differently away. In the NL we were so much better and took so many fans (comparatively) that we could make away games feel like home games. I don't think we can do that in L2, also the teams have better intelligence on us and adapt more quickly, and we don't have that aura of invincibility that we (and Wrexham) had in the NL. I think we will just see an adaptation of what we do already rather than resorting to a long ball game.

This - unless you know what a 'correct decision' is, the numbers are meaningless. For example - if Jones is pulled back constantly and nothing given, is that simply 'no decision', are some decisions and others not, or are they all decisions. If the play is allowed to go on and no action taken retrospectively, what is the decision - the 'play on' or the taking no action? Is a decision only when a foul is given or the game interrupted? All these would give wildly different results. Also, 85% is an average - is that average pulled up by a few very very good officials? How many games (and officials) have less than 85% correct decisions? What is the spread across all the refs? How many decisions do the refs make per game? 15 per game is a lot of bad decisions, but if they only make 20 overall then 3 isn't too bad? Do they weight how bad a decision is - a wrong decision on a penalty is more impactful than a foul in the centre circle. I could go on, but the long and short is that 85% says nothing, other than overall the officials make a number of bad calls per game (which you would expect and we all knew anyway). I wish pundits would learn the rules themselves and stop the 'he got a touch on the ball so it isn't a foul' nonsense. It can be both a foul and a touch on the ball. They create a lot of the culture around criticising every decision, and it is interesting that VAR is criticised as much as refs used to be. If the campaign to get rid of VAR succeeds it will only be a matter if time before there are calls to 'use technology' to avoid officiating mistakes. The issue isn't VAR, it's how they communicate to those in the stadium... but that is a whole different topic!!

When you see the bonkers stuff at the likes of Birmingham and, to an extent Forest, you realise that we have really good owners. Luckily for us I think there are more of the Forest / Birmingham owners than the Reedz, which has got to help us prosper.

The trouble we have is that the whole defensive unit is lacking confidence and the way we play highlights mistakes. I don't think it is fair to single out any player as they are so interdependent. A back 3 / 4 with no confidence in the keeper will take risks when they don't need to, a keeper without confidence in the backline won't be confident in their positioning and try to compensate. Also, because we avoid putting the ball in row z at almost all costs the defence as a unit take chances other defences don't take on. Finally, our defensive unit is much more exposed than others because they are involved in so much more than defending and that extra time on the ball also brings pressure (which we see when teams press effectively). None of this helps confidence, because I don't think our defenders are used to playing like this, and I wonder if they feel they are good enough to play like this. I bet we would see very different performances all round if we did just stick it in the stands more, but I can't see that happening. The downside is that we depend on possession and passing it back to the opposition means our attacking play is disrupted. I think there is a happy medium somewhere, but we haven't found it and I am not sure we are looking for it at the moment. My other suspicion is our defence will look better the higher up the leagues we go. I hope we find out.

That is appalling.

Wow - murmurations are so awesome. We get big flocks of waders at Pegwell Bay and Stodmarsh / Grove Ferry. They are always spectacular (except when your dog gets loose and tears across the bay chasing them, then it is just embarrassing. Not that she got anywhere near them)

I don't have any New Years Resolutions per se, largely because I set out my goals a while before Christmas. This didn't stop them becoming derailed though! Weight is my biggest enemy and Christmas saw a difficult and ultimately futile battle to not put (a lot of) weight on. Still, we go again starting this week. So, my goal is basically to get back to running a Half Marathon on less than 1hr 40. Still pretty pedestrian, but it's the first step to getting back to where I was. Likewise my 10km aim is sub 45m and 5km sub 21:30. In an ideal world, I would like to get back to where I was 5 years ago before injury, but age is against me so I am aiming for the above and then see where that leaves me for next year. M first race is 3rd March, City of Newport Half, then the Hampton Court Half at the end of March. Then we will see where things are for an autumn half and some 10kms. Here go!!

I got 1 star today. My work laptop has blocked the game now though. Boo.

A bit disappointing as I was almost there after the first guess. Wordle 907 5/6* ???????????????? ???????????????? ???????????????? ???????????????? ????????????????????

@Fan of Big ToneWow...how is that possible??? Well done. I only made one wrong swap... #waffle691 2/5 ???????????????????? ???????????? ???????????????????? ???????????? ???????????????????? ???? streak: 3 wafflegame.net

This is an interesting one. Have we had a game where we have been a bit meh? Neither good, nor bad? It seems to me that we are like a well tuned machine, when it works it is fabulous, but if one component goes wrong the whole thing stops. It also makes it difficult for someone to just slot in - hence it took a while for Bostock to find his feet and form a partnership with Palmer. Now Palmer is injured, Bostock's role changes and this is taking time to bed in, especially as we have tried Austin next to him, and O'Brian. At this time we need some consistency which we can't have right now. Add to that Dan Gosling who is trying to fit into the system whilst not being match fit and we have a big problem in midfield. That then puts more onus on Jones and Nemane and on the back 3. I love our system, and would hate us to try lumping it forwards as some fans seem to want... it won't work as we don't have the players to get into a physical scrap or fight an aerial battle. What we probably do need is another plan that can take the pressure off certain areas of the pitch. For example, we seem to lack a coordinator who can tell people where to be in defence. Maybe we should think about one of the CBs dropping a bit deeper so they have a better view of how things develop and can tell the others where to be? I don't know, I'm no tactician, but I think we need to change things a bit from time to time to take the pressure off from time to time. Against Wrexham we seemed to go side to side all the time and never tried an incisive run into the box. It sounds like when the confidence goes we stop doing the things that make us successful.

I remember the name. I saw him play a couple of times... but I was only 5 so I couldn't comment on how he played, but I thought he had a cool name! I liked Eric McManus too so maybe it was an Eric thing!

@Chris Stick with it. The idea of Pilates is that it builds the muscle structures that support the core and spine, so it is a long process. It took me months to get there, so stick with it and hopefully those benefits will last longer and longer.

It must be so frustrating to watch your business go under due to the greed of a few right wingers who were prepared to hobble the country for their personal gain, and the jingoism of a large portion of the population (I'll stop short of racism for now) that they were able to exploit.

Steady Eddie 4 again. Wordle 906 4/6* ???????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????????????????????

G Good going. I clicked one swap by mistake so lost a star.. but still. #waffle690 1/5 ???????????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ???????????? ???????????????????? ???? streak: 2 wafflegame.net