feltmonkey

I can’t see England winning this test. They're knackered after a really difficult series with the illness and everything, and they've spent the last week patting themselves on the back for how well they've done. Everyone seems to think they've won the series already.

And the Ambull expansion is both a fantastic miniature in it's own right and a piece of Games Workshop history.

People who are saying they're out, I wouldn't go that far. I'll support the club forever, through thick and thin. It's painful to see what those parasites are doing but as the song says, "love United, hate Glaziers." It's a strange situation. Woodward and the Glaziers are the common factor in this decline, but we have spent eye-watering amounts of money. There's certainly incompetence. Is there a lack of intent? There seems to be little appetite to do what is necessary to fix things, and zero idea how to go about it. One problem seems to be a perception that just spending money is enough, rather than genuinely trying to sign the right players. We miss out on the player that would be right, and end up taking a gamble on someone else, often overpaying without doing the right research. Other clubs (Man City) identify a player and go and get them. We get weird hail mary signings like Di Maria, Falcao, Sanchez, and nearly Dybala which seem to happen without the manager's input. But we do spend the money. It's just that almost every single signing ends in disaster. Our best signing since Ferguson left is arguably Fellaini.

Yep, it works as a one player game.

Our record for the season is played 24, won 9, drawn 7, lost 8. That's appalling. Nowhere near good enough, even taking into account the transitional nature of the season and the fact that we are playing a lot of young players. I still support Ole and think he's generally doing the right things, but he needs help. Why can't we defend set pieces, for example? Nearly half our goals conceded this season have been from set pieces. We're the worst in the league at that. It's the manager's job to sort that out.

We've been so crap tonight.

Fucks sake. We've missed three chances from eight yards out and they've scored with an absolute miskick.

Yep. I was half joking when I was talking about them not buying players this window because they are already thinking about having another new manager next season, but I'm starting to think that it might actually be true.

We've sold a lot of those players we bought, usually because they were rubbish. Perhaps with Rashford out long-term, it's finally time to try to sign Bale. Perhaps Real Madrid would be willing to let him come to us on loan until the end of the season if we pay a percentage of his wages. I dunno. It'd almost certainly be disastrous.

I haven't painted any. I mean, I own some of course. Of course I do. I just haven't painted them.

We're going to get absolutely dicked.

What?

Just to follow that up, it's worth considering that Skaven have a couple of powerful rules that kick in when you run larger units. Overwhelming Mass gives you +1 to melee attack rolls if you have 20 or more models in the unit, and +1 to melee wound rolls if you have 30 or more. There's also Strength In Numbers, which gives you plus 2 to bravery instead of 1 per 10 models in the unit. The upshot is that there's an incentive to running units of 40 clan rats or Stormvermin as your battleline. You also get a "horde discount" for doing this. So for example, a unit of 20 clanrats is 120 points but a unit of 40 is 200. There's a confusing thing about how you build a Skaven army involving which clan you pick and what that unlocks and locks as battleline, but I'm far from on top of that. By the way, the mega powerful Endless Spell is a Warp Lightning Vortex, which traps armies in place and does damage to them.

It's infuriating isn't it? @dizogg absolutely has a point that if you keep paying over the odds you'll get price gouged every time. The problem is that it's hardly a secret that we're a very rich club, and that we are in a desperate situation on the pitch. Add to that the fact that Fernandes is Sporting's best player, their captain, and either scores or assists most of their goals, so they're not exactly keen to sell him. There's also the January window tax. Of course he's going to be a bit more expensive than you might otherwise expect. If he's what you need, you pay the money. Man City drop tens of millions on players they don't even bother playing (Mahrez, Rodri) and we have similar buying power. We just faff around. Woodward caused problems with this approach by trying unsuccessfully to play hardball over Wan-Bissaka and Maguire leaving Ole with limited time in pre-season to work with them, completely against the manager's wishes. The kid from Birmingham looks decent. He's skillful and is good at sending a defender the wrong way.

Malan is so boring to watch. He's scored 3 from 52 balls. There's something quite admirable about it.