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Ipswich Town have effectively secured at least a Play Off spot with 7 (SEVEN)* games to go. Coventry have 8 games remaining, and are 24 points behind us in 7th, but with a Goal Difference of +16, versus +32 for Ipswich.
It's an incredible achievement, particularly against parachute money teams.
I am just wondering what the mood is on this question, which for years would have been practically unthinkable:
What do you think are the chances of a deliberate Russian (or Belarusian or Wagner Group etc) military strike on a target in NATO territory within the next 12 months?
Please give your answer as a percentage, ranged from 0.1 to 99.9%.
If I get a few answers it will give us a Hive Mind average.
I am fortunate to have a big enough home to allow me to house a family of three from the Ukraine. It's a quirk of my circumstances.
I was on holiday when I saw a piece on Newsnight about a Polish teacher who went to the station with a sign saying "Ukrainian families are welcome to live with me" painted on a piece of cardboard. She found a young mum and a couple of children, and took them back to her flat.
The punchline was that she had moved her own children into her bedroom and had already housed two other Ukrainian families.
At that moment I knew that I had a moral obligation to turn an unheated "attic" second floor into accommodation for a family from Ukraine.
If she could do that in her flat, what excuse did I have to keep an entire floor storing my son's old Lego and Match Attax cards?
So work began to put in heating and convert the top floor so that it had a kitchen and bathroom and two bedrooms, and for the last 13.months we have hosted a wonderful family from Ukraine.
We are so lucky. The family who live with us have been incredibly unobtrusive. There is a door to the staircase to "their floor". I haven't so much as stepped onto their landing since they moved in. It is their space. We can go a couple of days without seeing each other
Tomorrow we are going with them to a photographic exhibition at Edinburgh Anglican Cathedral, followed by a concert by Ukrainian and Scottish musicians, to celebrate the resilience of Ukraine and the support of the people of Scotland for them.
Because of their unique circumstances they are only 13 months into the Homes for Ukraine scheme, hosted by us.
But others who came soon after the invasion are just over a month away from completing the two year Homes for Ukraine sponsorship with their hosts.
And they aren't stupid. They know that their hosts are making a big sacrifice letting them into their personal space. And they know that fuel costs, and the general cost of living have gone up hugely, in large part directly due to the war in Ukraine. And they know that the £350 a month, in the first year, and £500 a month, in the second year, payment from the state helps to balance all of those things.
And they know that there is no agreement as to whether these payments will continue into the third year. And, like the Mum and daughter in the linked article, they don't want to be a burden on their hosts, who they appreciate, and not do they want to scrounge and leech from UK taxpayers. So many are making this decision in advance of their two year anniversary with their hosts, to save their hosts from the embarrassment of having to say "I can't afford to keep you."
The shocking thing here is that it is way more cost effective for the Government to announce that the scheme will continue into a third year, than to risk hosting placements coming to an end and families and couples and individuals declaring themselves homeless and adding to the burden of critically over-stretched local authorities, who will have a duty of care to them.
It's so simple.
Just extend the scheme.
Or more people like Svitlana and Hanna will choose to go back to the possibility of death in a war zone rather than become dependent on means tested benefits in a country which they are grateful to, or become a disproportionate burden to a family, couple or individual who welcomed them when they were most in need.
Obviously we were all really excited with our start, especially as it built on an amazing second half to the previous season to give us an incredible 2023.
I guess many of us had started to believe that it would continue. I always believed that we could come back when behind. I kind of laugh to myself when we inevitably concede an early goal, because, you know, we keep making it hard for ourselves, but we keep on overcoming.
But the injury to George Hirst, and, to an extent to Leif Davis and Morsy's two game suspension, showed how we might have a good team, but there are three or four players who we simply couldn't afford to lose.
We didn't have the squad for an automatic promotion challenge.
Maybe we do now. If Morsy and Davis stay injury free, and with Moore being a very good replacement for Hirst, and Al Hamadi showing signs of being a real handful in conjunction with him, we might be able to push for automatic promotion right to the end of the season.
But if we do lose one of our irreplaceable players then that isn't likely. Lose two and it is almost impossible.
So here's the gentle reminder:
George Burley's wonderful team didn't achieve automatic promotion.
Joe Royle, with Bent and Kuqi and Counago at his disposal, only made Play Off Semi Finals.
Mick McCarthy made the Play Offs once.
It's a bloody hard League to get out of. For a newly promoted team to make the Play Offs is an incredible achievement.
We are looking very good to do that. If that is what we end up doing this season, we will have had a great season, even though it may not feel like that.
As good as McCarthy's best, with Didsy and Murphy.
As good as Royle's best, with Bent and Counago and Kuqi.
As good over the regular season as Burley's best, with Stewart and Johnson and Holland.
Do better than that and it will be an absolutely incredible season.
An interesting article with Hannah Cockcroft lifting the lid on the lack of support for British Paralympians.
She is the World Record Holder at 5 distances, and will go into the next season at a disadvantage against her opposition, because they will be using a new racing chair designed by Sauber and she won't because she doesn't have the "spare 40 grand" she would need.
Imagine being exiled in Edinburgh, and your only realistic contact with ITFC is games on TV, or taking lots of trips abroad so that you can avail yourself of TownTV...
And your wife books in some friends months ago to meet up for a meal in a pub 5.30pm, because they will be passing through, and your wife thinks "the match will be over by then."
And then, you know, effing Sky n'all.
But you book the meal at your local, and they have two Sky boxes, and they kindly agree to put box 2 on Ipswich, rather than Man City v Riyadh United. And they give you the table right under the box 2 screen.
But, against the run of play, Sunderland take the lead.
And you, with bravado more than confidence, state to your friends who you see twice a year: "We always start slow. McKenna always wins the battle of Half Time!"
You know how every newspaper fills out it's pages with "written in advance so we can all have a holiday" Quizzes for their Christmas and New Year editions?
How about we write our own ITFC Christmas/New Year Quiz?
Write the Question as unambiguously as possible, and don't put the answer. Instead DM the answer to me (along with the question that it relates to). I will then post the questions all together in one thread, with the answers all together in another thread.
Hopefully we will get to 40 or so good questions which can then "entertain" Town fans at intergenerational gatherings over the festive period.
Please post your questions below, and DM me the answer, together with the question that it relates to.
PLEASE DON'T ANSWER OTHER PEOPLE'S QUESTIONS BELOW!!!
Put this alongside the comments from Ashton about any new stand development needing to generate 24/7 income.
And comments made by Gamechanger representatives at the time of the takeover about redeveloping the whole area.
A few posters seem to believe that the Pension Fund will sell up as soon as they can realise a quick profit. This article suggests a longer term model is now dominating US Sports. It just might be that the generally run down nature of some of the units close to FPR were precisely what attracted their interest.
A caveat: At least one of the Three Lions part of the Gamechanger coalition is currently involved in legal "complications" over a similar scheme in Rhode Island, so it is possible that that will cause Gamechanger to pivot away from the massive development model.
I think this is "Football thread" friendly, right? Even though it is just about Sports Finance?
And all the other Tory MPs who have used hate filled and inflammatory language, voted for budget cuts, privatised immigration services and deliberately turned the process of arrest and removal of immigrants into a failing, never-ending, clogged up nightmare.
So sad.
You can contact the Samaritans at any time of the day or night:
But how many degrees of "out of touch" do you need to be to claim, as Rebecca Pow, the Water Minister did, in response to a question from a Tory MP:
"I think a lot of people have wells on their properties."
The MP had raised concerns that some of his constituents were being told they would be charged £100 each just to be given a quote for connection to the Mains water supply, and that they were living off a private supply that they had to boil and that sometimes had tadpoles in it.
Vote Tory for chemicals in our rivers, sh1t on our beaches, and tadpoles in our drinking water.
Ex Sunderland and Fulham player, did very well in France last season, 16 in 37 for Bordeaux last year. British citizen.
Now a Free Agent.
Birmingham and Rangers are rumoured to be interested, but it is the one deal that Town have been working on so quietly that the usual suspect Twitter rumour mongers haven't connected us with him, yet.
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