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They'll need special accommodation and place an extra strain on the NHS. This farcical Rwandan scheme is going to cost an absolute fortune. To think, the French offered to let the UK have a processing centre for asylum seekers on the French coast and our government turned it down because they thought a 'stop the boats' campaign would win them votes.
Saints had the worst goalkeeper in the PL last season in Bazunu and Leeds had the 2nd worst, Meslier. Sticking with them has cost us both automatic promotion.
What we both really needed was to replace these youngsters with proven goalkeepers in their 30s. That doesn't include McCarthy, of course, who is just a proven failure.
A win would be a morale booster. But, our games v Stoke are often dour 0-0 affairs, although with McCarthy in goal that's only going to happen again if Stoke don't get a shot on target. Maybe Stoke won't bother today and we'll win 2-0, which will still require at least 20 attempts at goal from us or a couple of own goals.
To win 7-0 we'd require a world record breaking number of attempts at goals - 70+ - or, alternatively, a world record number of own goals and, of course, we'd still need Stoke not to have a single shot on target.
Does that mean we'll just be swapping our asylum seekers for theirs or does it mean they will send us an equivalent number of Rwandans they want to get rid of?
The genuine solution to the problem was EU membership. Before Brexit, we were returning up to 15,000 illegal immigrants a year to the EU countries where they first entered. As we're no longer EU members, we can't do that any more. Even though the number of arrivals is much greater now, we'll never send anywhere near that many to Rwanda or anywhere else.
On top of that, of course, illegal immigration has increased massively since Brexit because as one migrant said on the TV news, if he sought asylum in an EU country, he'd be returned to the first country where he entered the EU and as that was in Eastern Europe, they'd just push him over the border out of the EU altogether.
He's one of those 'make up the numbers' players who does little to help us win against decent opposition but occasionally - about 1 game in 10 - looks OK when we are winning easily against poor opposition. His performance in our 3-0 win over a Preston team that wasn't really trying, will be used to justify all of his poor games.
With a decent Championship goalkeeper we'd have won the league. If we'd also had a striker who could put away a reasonable percentage of the enormous number of chances we create, we'd have won it by a very big points margin.
I think it's a false economy not to get the key players in just because so much money was wasted on Bazunu, McCarthy and Stewart, as promotion would reap huge financial rewards and more than cover the cost.
I'm no expert on these X stats but I guess that, based on the expected percentage of shots on target our goalkeepers should have saved and the expected goals our strikers should have scored from the number of chances they've had, if they were equal to the Championship average standard, we'd be top now, as we always seem to create more chances than the teams we play against.
I always thought McCarthy was terrible but even he isn't as bad as Bazunu and doesn't do this tippy tappy stuff in front of his goal to create goals for the opposition, although he is equally afraid of getting hit by the ball.
"Front foot feel is old an adage but a fair one. Last time we had a knock everyone pulled together. The badge is more important than anything. The restart is Chelsea, a positive reaction to the news is important. "
This 'front footedness' never seems to go well, does it?
When you're in the Northam/Kingsland corner, it sounds good. The problem is that because it's a corner it has the worst acoustics in the stadium, the sound gets directed inwards and doesn't travel well to the rest of the stadium or out across the pitch. It's been known by football fans for years, and acoustic tests have proved it, that if you want to be heard around the stadium and, more importantly, on the pitch, the best position is directly behind the goal. This is why many clubs stick the away fans in a corner. At the moment at St Mary's, we've got it the wrong way round and that's why the Club wants to change the setup.
I know some people are unhappy that they may have to change seats but when we moved from the Dell to St Mary's, everybody changed seats and we got over it. As for needing to be next to the away fans to make a noise, that's a pretty pathetic excuse. Go to the stadiums with the best home atmospheres all over the world and the noisiest fans have their own home end while the away fans are stuck in a corner or up in a higher tier at the other end. The last thing they want is away fans in a prominent position.
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