rocket_scientist

You're spikkin total shite min. I seen a NE mannie cash out a tenner 7-fold on Saturday for £4,915.32 when Man Utd went 2-1 up. It would've have returned £7,400 if he had held on but 490/1, that's awesome in anyone's language. So it can be done. Fish can be shot in a barrel. He had Aberdeen to beat Killie in that line too

12/17 doubles, BB 13/17, rs 16/17, balance +£105.34 Top of the table away double for us tomorrow, Wigan and Blackburn. Will be +92.84 or +125.58 after that.

Salah made it 0-2 in the 72nd minute.

Not watering a pitch at HT does not alter the fact that the surface is the same for both teams. If Klopp was seeking to use this as an excuse then he is wrong to do so. The bigger and more alarming reason isn't that he may or may not have selectively disregarded the fact, it is the suggestion that he is unable to look in the mirror, unable to take responsibility and is seeking to deflect by invoking external factors. I didn't see the second half as I was on my way to the football but from what I saw of the first half, Liverpool were all over them but West Brom hadn't capitulated and given up. At Old Trafford last Sunday, they fought to the very end and so it shouldn't have been a surprise that they would do so again. I wonder how many Liverpool heads turned to Tuesday after the second goal went in? Whatever happened, your team weren't good enough to get all three points and it had fuck all to with the pitch you German spekky cunt so introspect better and get over it.

Last 3 weeks odds against AFC opponents; Hearts 19/5 Motherwell 5/2 Killie 13/5 The bookies rate McInnes' Aberdeen more than I do!

Arsenal fans have not always been shite. At Highbury, they were the same as every old club. They cared about their team, they understood football and they wanted to see them do well. The once I was at the Emirates - we blagged it into the "platinum club" - some "fans" around us were wearing ties, and had some pink in their shirts, presumably coming straight from their offices in the city. They had no idea about football. It was like they had only just started going to games, in their 30's and 40's. Perhaps football was too "rough" for them before, a game attended by lower socioeconomic groups than they're comfortable with, ruffians and barrow boys. But they were total wankers and if this sanitisation is the plan, it's never going to work. A football fan is long-suffering, and he needs to be because only one out of 20, 12, 42 or 92 can be the champion. Or one out of one if we listen to Mourinho. But these corporate wankers don't have the stomach for the long haul. They will drop their new plaything if instant gratification doesn't show itself. It's not fashionable to them anymore. You got to admire Stewrat Milne. He's been a crocodile. He's been sitting and waiting for the opportunity and he learned from his pushing too hard in the 90's. But the end goal? It isn't football. He will walk away with his corrupted interests having been bolstered. We get the heart and soul ripped out of our football club, one that was clearly visible to di Stefano, one that Richard Donald and Ian Taggart worked so hard to foster.

I'd never heard of Arnhall either but your post reminded me of Wenger. They were going on about his achievements and within them was the new stadium. Now I'm not sure how involved he got in that but if he has architectural or planning skills or if he was football manager by day and operating a crane at night - or bricklaying or labouring - then that's news to me. But consider what they ended up with. I went to the Emirates once. I was at Highbury twice. The new stadium has a big modern concourse, elevators like a shopping mall and the amphiteatrical view is quite impressive. But it's soulless. Where Highbury was intimate and atmospheric, it is impossible to get any passion and atmosphere at the Emirates. Even the name is offensive and yet holistic. It was built as a shrine to make money, to exploit the fans, to maximise income. And therefore the objectives have been split and the metaphors mixed. The fans have turned their back on the project. And who could blame them? The same fate awaits AFC.

McInnes and mental strength don't belong in the same sentence. Not even the same paragraph and never the same page.

The wee man thinks he's a big man. Manager determining the chairman doesn't happen. That he wants to manage Rangers makes sense to me too.

Wenger should've been emptied a while ago. He lost the ability to organise and motivate before this decade. Weirdo Wenger being accorded legend status by Merson is so sick and hypocritical. Brenda would be a bad move by the Gooners. So I hope he gets the job.

We were speaking about Cafe Cognito in another thread, in St Swithin Street. On the other side of the road, at the junction with Hartington Road is a new cafe and in my opinion, far superior. Soups, toasties cakes etc. so nuthin funcy but nuthin funcy aboot the prices either. Great space, plenty of room and light. Coppa, it's called. Recommend.

My tattoo is twenty years old. It's on my forehead in red ink. Fuck Off Stewrat Milne It's still topical to this day. I do regret getting it done. People get the wrong idea. They think I'm strange. Presumptuous cunts.

For the record, 2 x £15 doubles this weekend. Wigan away for BB, Marseille for me. Sunday Inter away for BB + my Chelsea. Never seen anyone pick so many aways for nailed on picks but he keeps on delivering. For the purists watching, only reason I've not upped the stakes to a third or half our stash is that I'm anticipating that my 14 consecutive winning streak can't go on for ever. A weird sense of impending failure (at some stage) and realism getting in the way of my usual account management strategy.

After Bobby's Accrington and my Wigan tonight, we will be either £50.68 or £76.23 in profit. My mate and I suffered a £115 drop on Saturday thanks to 10 man Ayr, our heaviest defeat yet. It would have put us over £500 but we still have more than £300 of bookies money to play with in this, the last month of the campaign and usually one of the more volatile betting markets. The reason why the bookies make profits every year is because the average punter is stupid. Ladbrokes even made an ad to target their intellectually-retarded market with their accumulators, that Mr Brightside being a face you could never tire of kicking and the token black guy, the one with the friendly face. The bookies are laffing at us. We will be laffing at them next month, the only remaining question being by how much.

This getting into Europe. For what? So the fans can get pissed in another country? And witness the inevitable humiliation and expulsion at the hands of some no marks? Who are a better team than us? How typically Scottish. Let's celebrate incompetence. Let's go and get beat. Whatever happened to stop and think? When was it that piss poor became tolerable? Where's the critical thinking to identify the reasons for our pisspoorness? And where's the will to change. AFC has given us the club we deserve.

I disagree but if you were right and I was wrong then he should never have been recruited. I think he was threatening to be a competent signing at first. It all went totally pear shaped after he was hung out to dry for one mistake against Celtic in the 3-0 final, which we were already beat in and never had a chance. He has never been the same since and it was shockingly poor management on two counts. First, he reintroduced Ash Taylor after a five week absence. Although he (Ash) didn't have one of his howlers in that final, it was a crazy decision that a) would naturally have had the rest of the team wondering what the fuck was going on, and b) totally altered the balance of the defence that had been doing ok in the run up. Secondly, the damage that McInnes did to AOC's confidence was measurable. We have seen in the months and years since. AOC has turned into a terrible footballer and he's not the first footballer that has gone severely backwards under our midget charlatan piss weak arsehole manager. You can add Reynolds, Logan, Considine, Arnason, Shinnie, McGinn, Christie, Rooney, May, even Lewis to that list. As for the voluminous shite signings he's made - Zola at the start of his tenure and Maynard hopefully in the last year of his management (but it won't be) being signings beyond belief - they were never good to start with. McKenna has also had two very poor games in a row and as he's the only decent asset on our books, he better not succumb to the McInnes malaise. As for giving youth a chance, he doesn't. McKenna had to get a start after the 3-0 drubbing at Fir Park and he played excellent to keep his place. Scott Wright scored a hat trick, got dropped, got another rare chance, put the winner on a plate at Hamilton and then got dropped again. He had FOUR starts in his first four seasons at AFC. When he started at Pittodrie v. Sevco, everyone - including the players - knew was talking to them and was interested in moving and so his poor performance was one of many that day... ...apart from another youngster. Frank Ross came on in the second half, scored an absolute peach which kinda forced his hand to play him the next game at Dens where he got hooked at HT and never seen again. Another young footballer who we'll never know how good he might be given the unimaginably sparse amount of time given and the obvious undermining of his confidence.

Yet another footballer who has gone backwards under McInnes. Whatever hint or suggestion or the promise of competency he once had has long since been extinguished. What did he say about AFC fans?

I think he tried a 4-2-3-1, with Rooney and May interchanging between the forward 3 and the 1. The biggest problem for me yesterday wasn't the formation. It wasn't even the technical limitations of the players. It was our lack of hunger, our lack of desire. They wanted it way more than we did. This is a management failing. Ball fucking up was expected but Kari, an experienced international fucking up twice like that was unfathomable. What was he thinking? Was he not concentrating? What else was going on in his head? Ryan Christie doesn't care. He doesn't want to be there. He's turning into Niall McGinn. Chiedi can't play football. He's as bad a recruitment decision as Maynard. I could go on forever. No point. Our manager is a fucking arse.

https://ashenden.org/2018/04/14/syria-censorship-and-the-t-times/ Syria, Censorship and "The t/Times" Every so often something happens to you which propels you into a different world. It’s not usually a better world, and it is accompanied by a sense of shock. Philosophers have called it a ‘disclosure moment’. We, the public, talk about ‘the penny dropping.’ They come as small pennies, and huge ones. Mine today dropped with a thud that felt ominous. It’s about Syria and the newspapers. I have had a lot of trouble understanding what has been happening in Syria, and it’s been made worse by a deep conviction that I am on the end of a stream of fake news, and a large proportion of it coming from my government and the media I read. I hate this feeling. I don’t think I have ever known it as intensely or remorselessly as over Syria. This is not the moment to look back and ask why so many Western Governments want to overthrow an admittedly unpleasant, heavy handed Syrian regime. But not unlike Iraq, under Assad, as in under Saddam Hussein, there was a careful working balance between Christians and Muslims and others. At this stage of world affairs, that’s no mean achievement. And it was never clear who was going to replace Assad. The crowd of contenders had some very nasty people amongst them indeed. So, paying close attention to the serious matter of intended outcomes, why do it? The chemical attacks have posed a constant conundrum. With Russian help, Assad was winning and will win. Only one thing would jeapordise his political and personal survival and victory; the use of chemical weapons. So why would he use them. What for? With what end in mind? When the chemical attacks started, the absolutely critical element was the question of evidence. Was it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt it was Assad and the regime? Because he was the only party who had no interest in using them and turning the world against him. Each time the evidence has been missing. Each time our Government and the media have qualified the link with ‘supposed’ or ‘assumed’. I have been reading Peter Hitchens carefully, since he shares the same logical caution and knows where to look for evidence that can be relied on. He can’t find any. Peter Ford, a former ambassador to Syria, has gone on record on the BBC, saying he believes the chemical attack was a hoax. On Saturday 14 th of April, the Times newspaper launched a vitriolic attack against half a dozen academics who had put together a working group of concerned academics, who like me were increasingly worried about the way in which both governments and media were moving into the realm of propaganda; political assertions without facts. The Times’ Leader hammered them: “Some of the academics involved disseminated material that is wrong, unscholarly and morally odious…they display an exaggerated willingness to entertain any idea, however improbable, that acquits the regime of Vladimir Putin and its client in Damascus of abominable acts.” The trouble is that this kind of extremist language, without any qualification, reads much more like the partisan propaganda of say, ‘The Morning Star’, than one of our most reputable papers dedicated to looking at both sides of a story. The only example they give is that one of the members says that ‘Russia Today’ offers platform for people who don’t get their voices heard elsewhere. The Times says this list includes “neo-nazis, genocide deniers, fantasists and racists.” The only emotive category of reprobates of total depravity left off, is paedophiles. Then it goes for the jugular: “no reputable university would employ a holocaust deniar in a department of history, or a geocentrist to teach astronomy. The universities who unwittingly provide cover for these agents of disinformation and cheerleaders for despotism have a case to answer.”In other words, through guilt by association with holocaust denial, the Times whips up a lynch mob to attack these academics and get them sacked. This is neo-Macarthyism- verging on neo-inquisition. This doesn’t just smell fishy, this stinks. Why should the Times try to silence and get sacked academics who are asking the same questions and sharing the same concerns as one of our most eminent journalists, Hitchens, and most informed ambassadorial commentators, Ford? And why should it exchange the careful language of testing arguments for the shrill hysteria of denunciation? It’s a good rule of thumb in the psychological, therapeutic and even political sphere, that if you find an exaggerated response, that it out of rational proportion with the matter in hand, then suspect and look for another, as yet hidden, cause. I have no clarity about what that cause is, but it’s aims are clearly to get rid of Assad at all costs, and clear the ground in the Middle East for a different power broker. It doesn’t tax my brain too far to come up with a very short ‘short list’. But what scares me, quite literally, is that in service of this other political interest, our press, perhaps our universities (if the pressure works) and certainly our government, seem willing to give themselves to propaganda and bully and cajole into silence voices that demand hard evidence and want to test the arguments. The historical precedents from whichever side of the political and historical spectrum, Goebbels, Stalin, Macarthy and the Inquisition among them, are not good company. But when once eminent newspapers add their weight to the suppression of speech and truth, the rest of us ought to recognise that we have a serious fight on our hands, and the stakes are very high indeed.

£20 on Real (BB) + Atletico (me). £32.14 back.

Lucky 13 for us today... BB 9/13 picks, rs 12/13. 8/13 winning doubles = £51.03 up. 13 was unlucky for you kitns. Zero picks out of 2 and EIGHT losing doubles in a row. kitns 13/26 picks, 3/13 doubles = £24.64 donated to the bookies. You should give up now. You have no fucking idea.

"equal second"? Who the fuck seeks to offer justification based on that? There is zero justification for AFC this season. We have NO chance of being near 2nd a month from now. For reasons based on realism rather then false hope.

The Ball at RB situation. Imagine this as a Quentin Tarantino dramatisation. Not the Bonnie situation. The Ball situation. Firstly, you never recruit a man with the first name Dominic. His parents are obviously severely fucked up. But if McInnes had witnessed Dominic's performance at RB at Parkhead, he would never have repeated his error. He was predictably shocking. The evidence has always been there. McInnes is a total arse. His biggest advocate, Stewrat Milne is the biggest arse in the whole of NE Scotland.

Abject. The first half performance by Aberdeen was abject. Fucking embarrassing actually. Professional footballers? Utter shite.

15 mins. They've come back into it. Even game.