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It states that no defender has made more key passes than Davis (54) in the Premier League this season which is some going in a team often on the defensive and with limited possession.
For those who didn't know (and I was one of them), a key pass is the final pass from a player to their teammate who then attempts a shot on goal without scoring.
This is where the stats appear, and interesting to note that he is 10th out of all players in the Premier League and ahead of Trent-Alexander who is on 51.
Whilst we've clearly been badly impacted by injuries, one thing that has been really disappointing has been our home form, especially in the second half and since Christmas.
Since Christmas, we should have won at Fulham and could have won at Chelsea and Man Utd. We also did credibly at Palace and Villa, and in the cup at Forest. But we have been poor at home.
Indeed, having been at them all, the contrast in the last four games between Bournemouth and Chelsea away and Arsenal and Wolves at home couldn't be greater.
Having spoken to my neighbour, I have it on good authority that Keir Starmer will be imposing martial law to prevent any more general elections and thwart Reform.
And if you are hoping to pass on any thing to your children, you won't be able to because the World Economic Forum will ensure your assets are seized.
There was more in the same vein, but it is par for the course, given the conspiracy theory nonsense he spoke of during Covid.
He and his wife have clearly gone down a rabbit hole, and it is frightening just what people are exposed to, and believe, on the internet.
I might add that he owned his own travel insurance broking company, so at face value he ought to be a bit more savvy than this.
Interesting to hear McKenna interviewed on BBC Suffolk who said something that I had thought, namely, that they had hoped for Enciso to make a real difference when he signed but that his impact had been lessened by injuries/absences.
Despite that he is now second behind Clarke with three assists, as well as a goal to his name.
Sad news. The group formed in Leeds and emerged in the late 70s when I was studying there. They didn't have much commercial success but influenced artists like R.E.M, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Kurt Cobain and Franz Ferdinand..
Sadly, with the UK cutting aid, I rather doubt it will be able to step up to the plate, and many programmes funded by the UK in the World will also be forced to shut.
I heard this on the World Service overnight but it doesn't seem to have been widely reported.
"White House envoy Steve Witkoff has praised Vladimir Putin in glowing terms as trustworthy and said the Russian leader told him he had prayed for his "friend" US President Donald Trump when he was shot.
Witkoff met with Putin over multiple hours last week in Moscow and told US media the talks – which involved discussions about forging a path towards ending Russia's war in Ukraine – were constructive and "solution-based."
In an interview with right-wing podcast host Tucker Carlson, the envoy said he has come to regard Putin as not a "bad guy," and that the Russian president was a "great" leader seeking to end Moscow's deadly three-year conflict with Kyiv.
"I liked him. I thought he was straight up with me," Witkoff said in the interview aired Friday.
"I don't regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war, and all the ingredients that led up to it."
He also described a "personal" element of the discussion in which Putin recalled his reaction to the assassination attempt on Trump in July 2024 as the Republican held a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Putin "told me a story... about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president," Witkoff said.
"Not because... he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend."
During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was "a false country" and asked when the world would recognise occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.
Witkoff is leading the US ceasefire negotiations with both Russia and Ukraine but he was unable to name the five regions of Ukraine either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces.
He said: "The largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea, you know the names and there are two others."
The five regions - or oblasts - are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea. Donbas refers to an industrial region in the east that includes much of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Witkoff made several assertions that are either not true or disputed:
He said Ukrainian troops in Kursk were surrounded, something denied by Ukraine's government and uncorroborated by any open-source data
He said the four partially occupied regions of Ukraine had held "referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule". There were referendums only in some of the occupied parts of Ukraine at different times and the methodology and results were widely discredited and disputed
He said the four partially occupied oblasts were Russian-speaking. There are many Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine but this has never indicated support for Russia.
Witkoff also repeated several Kremlin talking points about the cause of Russia's full-scale invasion. He said it was "correct" that from the Russian perspective the partially occupied territories were now part of Russia: "The elephant in the room is, there are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory. The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?"
He added: "There's a sensibility in Russia that Ukraine is just a false country, that they just patched together in this sort of mosaic, these regions, and that's what is the root cause, in my opinion, of this war, that Russia regards those five regions as rightfully theirs since World War Two, and that's something nobody wants to talk about."
Putin has repeatedly said that the "root causes" of his invasion were the threat posed to Russia by an expanded Nato and the sheer existence of Ukraine as an independent country.
But pity poor Isabel Oakeshot (married to pauper Richard Tice) who had to move to Dubai because of VAT on private school fees. And no doubt the right wing media will continue to bang on about this.
We were on the back row and the seats were described as restricted view but I have never come across a view like that with a TV gantry (with what looked like very few cameras) blocking the view of the entire far side of the pitch.
Of course, people in front standing didn't help, but even at half time with people missing it was only possible sitting to see the far touchline, and certainly not much more than would have been the feet of anyone taking a throw.
We ended up moving slightly down the entrance stairs, with half-hearted efforts by the security guards to keep a gap there.
Having worked in Whitehall for nearly 30 years ago, it always frustrates me when politicians blame civil servants, rather than poor policy or forces outside anyone's control, for our problems. It's a bit like when they say it is not the policy but the communications that are to blame.
Blaming it on the civil service, the article says that McFadden is expected to say working people have not seen improvements in their job opportunities, the safety of their neighbourhoods or the length of time they have to wait for NHS treatment when they are sick.
But to take but three examples when it comes to the NHS, PFI, austerity and the Lansley reforms represent a failure of policy not a failure of the civil service. And Covid, something outside government control, has also had an impact.
And the issue in recent decades is that governments force through policy despite civil service misgivings.
I thought he had a very good game yesterday, with Cajuste not far behind, and we more than held our own in midfield against a physically strong Palace team.
I know he gets a lot of stick (something I don't think he has fully deserved) but he has impressed me every time he has played since Christmas.
But however good our midfield (and I think with Phillps and Cajuste we are probably seeing what McKenna hoped for when we bought them), we won't win games if the attacking players behind Delap don't do the business.
It strikes me that Trump's current approach in relation to Ukraine could be said to be an extreme and rather treacherous continuation/extension of Obama's Pivot to Asia.
This from Wikipedia.
"U.S. President Barack Obama's East Asia Strategy (2009–2017), also known as the Pivot to Asia, represented a significant shift in the foreign policy of the United States since the 2010s. It shifted the country's focus away from the Middle Eastern and European sphere and allowed it to invest heavily and build relationships in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, especially countries which are in close proximity to the People's Republic of China (PRC) either economically, geographically or politically to counter its rise as a rival potential superpower."
I assume this came about in part because of the view that Russia was no longer an economic or military threat to the US. And it may well be that the Russian failure to take over Ukraine, and well as the sanctions imposed on it, have only reinforced this view.
It is perhaps also for consideration as to whether Obama's failure to react to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Syria were in part a consequence of the Pivot.
As it is, there are already far more US military troops and resources based in the Asia and the Pacific than in Europe, and it is clear that the US has for a long time seen China as the main threat to its hegemony.
I have also come across this from an Asian newspaper.
"In 2011, US President Barack Obama announced America's "pivot to Asia"– only for conflicts from Afghanistan to Ukraine to bog him down. In Brussels last week, however, newly installed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth renewed the United States's pledge to refocus on China. It might seem that Uncle Sam has left it a bit late, given the Middle Kingdom's rise in the intervening years. Yet emerging fault lines in China's economic strategy suggest that now might be an opportune moment for the pivot after all.
US Vice President JD Vance's speech at last week's Munich Security Conference hogged the headlines. Yet Hegseth's earlier remarks at NATO's Brussels headquarters contained the more practical pointer to the future of geopolitics. His message was unambiguous: "stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe." Chief amongst those realities is China, which Hegseth called a "peer competitor" with the "capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific".
Town hall leaders condemn ‘ill-thought-out’ plan to merge English councils
Survey reveals senior officials think changes will do little to address local authorities’ dire financial crisis
Ministers’ plans to shake up the structure of English local government by merging councils are “ill-thought-out”, “insane” and a “bizarre diversion” that will fail to deliver savings, according to a survey of town hall leaders.
The depth of unhappiness with the plans is revealed in an annual poll of senior councillors and executives, most of whom said the changes would be costly, time-consuming and do little to address the dire financial crisis facing councils.
Most local authorities are preparing to cut local services from April while increasing council tax, fees and charges, as they battle with cost pressures that could put up to 19 town halls into effective bankruptcy over the next year, the survey found.
I thought he was immense last night with numerous vital interceptions.
If we are to stay up, I think we need to stick with a back three/five, with Woolfy at the centre, which makes us more solid defensively, just as we were when he played that role around Christmas.
It was also significant last night that we played the ball out from the back a lot more last night than recently. Admittedly, doing so may depend on the press, but Woolfy is your man for this type of game, and it means we retain possession when we try to play it.
Morsy and Palmer were a close second to Woolfy in terms of performance but others such as Johnson and Townsend also put in a good shift.
For all Vance's supposed concern for free speech in Europe, exercising it in the Oval Office gets you shouted down, bullied and thrown out of the White House.
As Corporal Jones used to put it, "they don't like it up 'em!"
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