He was less than 4m away

Put a guess in on Horc’s comp

We obviously need to shell out in the Summer.

Hopefully Gelhardt doesn’t get poached. I think there may be a scramble for him.

I agree with most you say there, Dave.

I have mulled over my response, giving myself time to avoid a kneejerk reaction.

Let’s deal first with the Naismith thing. From my perspective and position people were not booing Naismith himself. They were booing Cook’s decision to make a substitution at that point and bringing on Naismith. Subtle difference. People don’t feel at teh moment that Naismith is the instant change-all solution. That’s not the same as saying we would boo him. But people can and did boo Cook’s choice, not Naismith himself. To say otherwise deflects the issue from people being unhappy with Cook, to scapegoating a player.

Horc I think has asked a question that I have exactly been asking. Why on 60 minutes do we HAVE to make changes? Yesterday we were in the lead, reasonably comfortably albeit scrappily so, so it was for Reading to initiate the first change to alter the dynamics of the game. When they play those cards then we should consider whether we needed to respond. But the timings of our substitutions is poor, the thinking behind them is unclear, the effect is destructive rather than constructive. I’m afraid the subs do seem to be made on the basis of the guys with the iPads monitoring output levels rather than actually looking at the players out on the pitch. After an hour players will flag a little, but if they are good enough, and encouraged they may produce that extra burst for 30 seconds or so that can lead to a goal.

We had Keiffer Moore and Gelhardt on the bench yesterday. I have regularly said that I see Moore as Heskey-esque – hit the ball to him, and let him nod it down to a predator, someone exactly like Gelhardt. But it was difficult, if not impossible, to see what our plan was yesterday overall, and certainly what changes the substitutions were meant to achieve.

As for Cook’s future? I think his position is now untenable.

For those expecting a sacking last night is to ignore a fairly simple point. It would need approval from Hong Kong. When the match finished last night at 5pm, in HK it was 1 am. A phone call on such a major issue for us, but one of an operational decision that would have a Stock Market impact needs time. I am sure though that phone calls are being made. Not least lining up potential replacements. As a listed company IEC cannot sack a key operational manager without being able to announce a replacement that would give shareholders confidence. We are in a different ball-game now.

Similarly we also have to consider the effect of all the political unrest in HK. Things we never had to bother about in teh past, but all of which feed into the pot.
Cook is a “dead man walking” I’m afraid.
When? We will see,
Till then, keep the faith.

Two asides:
I had a great footballing trip this week – I went on Tuesday to watch Real Madrid play PSG, and on Wednesday Barcelona v Borussia. Four goals in each game. So it was odds-on there were going to be four goals. Sadly we were never going to win 4-0.
However I was able to compare and contrast Leo Messi in front of 90,000, with Michael Jacobs in front of 9,000. Hard call ;)

And secondly – to be fair what chance did we have against Puscas and Pele?

My understanding is that we are waiting to be able to send him back to Wolves in January.
He has no place in the team. His attitude and work ethic is poor.
I am told by unnamed sources.

Every team needs a scapegoat. It would have been Naismith’s fault even if he hadn’t come on.[/quote]

I blame Jordi Gomez

The dangled carrot of a referendum by the toerags was part of their manifest to win the general election and I’m pretty sure they didn’t expect it to go so spectacularly wrong but it did. Cant see how any vote can be advisory egg. You cant have an election without a definite result or what’s the point of holding it.[/quote]

It was an advisory referendum not an election.
Our constitution has no provision for a binding referendum.
“what’s the point of holding it”?
It was basically an opinion poll. To see if there was a clear majority one way or the other, which would silence the critics from the losing side. Then it could really have been described as the Will of the People.
However it was a split vote – and my comments would apply whichever had won.
Large amounts of work should then have been done on why a large number of people were unhappy with the EU, and possibly take action to remedy that before just spitting the dummy.
I don’t understand though why people in favour of Brexit fear a second referendum.
If Leave truly is the Will of the People, then Leave will win and that would be an end of it.
But if the vote alters then that surely shows that people have changed their minds (as Egg has said they are entitled to) and Leave is no longer the Will of the People. So that claim cannot continue to be made.
Is it a fear that leaving is no longer the majority will?

Oh – and here’s the stuff about it being advisory

Warnock has left Cardiff

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50380702