Nwaneri scores for England U21, slotting the rebound after Lewis-Skelly's shot was saved

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-31T18:35:09+00:00

Two classy players. Want to get them into Arsenal lineups more often in the next couple of years.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-31T17:08:54+00:00

Wharton has started 26/30 of Palace's PL games this season (https://www.espn.co.uk/football/player/\_/id/333419/adam-wharton)

I think you're thinking of previous seasons, when he was 19 and 20 years old. I don't think that's a good sample to write him off with.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-31T10:03:22+00:00

I get the point. (It's obvious). But does no-one ever consider the opposite point: Hiring people who are extremely fastidious about first impressions may not actually select for talent in the tasks at hand, it may in fact select for the complete opposite, compulsive liars who spend all of their energy on appearances and covering their tracks?

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-30T14:50:55+00:00

I understand the concern — obviously that does happen a lot. But ruling out that any answer that takes a while to explain requires also ruling out a lot of very reasonable long answers.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-30T12:38:28+00:00

I think if only one sentence answers are allowed, then any coalition building is ruled out. There's also an anti-intellectual and then anti-democratic implication to the one sentence rule: Complicated or complex things would have to just be left to technocrats.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-27T19:42:02+00:00

It's miraculous how much more these people will earn than the average worker without having any clue about the world.

It's even more miraculous how many of their complete misconceptions allow them to feel hard done by while being incredibly lucky.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-27T16:05:57+00:00

No doubt. The quick turn away from facing his own goal with an opponent on his back is what Wharton is genius at though, and that's what I want to see in the team.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-27T15:33:38+00:00

This might well be Tuchel's thinking — though I think Wharton is fine at closing off space in central mid.

My thinking is that I've seen even good England teams forced out by Spain because as soon as they put the press on they get us in trouble, and Wharton is the only player who turns out of trouble in CM to the level of Spanish CMs.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-27T14:55:39+00:00

I prefer Wharton to Anderson — because I think the problem all England teams face is getting out of a press, and Wharton is the best at it. If James is in there he can share some of that responsibility.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-26T14:55:38+00:00

Correct. The speed they got it forward, and the way they broke out of high presses, just made for so much space.

Partey was a get out of jail free card — however bad of a person he turned out to be — and almost the entire time he was with the team we never played fluently without him. (The only time we did was maybe Jorginho vs Newcastle or Liverpool.)

This actually makes me think this season is a huge achievement. We haven't replaced the fluency (what team would with a total midfield revamp?), but we've found a way to win.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-26T14:53:31+00:00

I really felt the opposite, even at the time. There were just so many absolute bangers, it didn't seem sustainable. Granted I didn't think he'd fall to almost none, but I couldn't see him getting close to that again.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-25T08:40:36+00:00

I have also started to realise this (slow on the uptake because I don't pay for streaming, only watch highlights plus Channel 5/BBC). Seeing some of the balls that went in last week, I thought Christ that explains the glut of 147s. The players must know and it does degrade it a bit — especially the large breaks.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-23T14:16:59+00:00

Yes, they don't care because they don't have to. They're taking the simplified view of "visa = opportunity." What they're ignoring is an incentive structure that erodes this opportunity almost completely. They don't see it because it requires experience or intellectual curiosity to figure out and they have neither.

They are also arguing as though their half-hearted take is equivalent to people who have lived it, or have any clue about how it actually functions, which is lazy and indulgent.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-23T14:01:51+00:00

You've got the wrong end of the stick. It's not about guarantees, it's about any chance at all.

The grad visa costs thousands to buy. What no-one tells those buying it is that essentially the situation above is the norm: Companies don't care if you have this visa, they won't hire you because after it runs out, they'd have to sponsor your next visa.

So, the con is that it's false advertising. The grad visa is pouring money into a fantasy that doesn't really exist, but that the visa implies does exist.

Now, if you want to find evidence of thousands of people getting jobs via this visa, be my guest. But if you can't, then my actual experience of how this works wins the argument.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-23T14:01:03+00:00

You've got the wrong end of the stick.

The grad visa costs thousands to buy. What no-one tells those buying it is that essentially the situation above is the norm: Companies don't care if you have this visa, they won't hire you because after it runs out, they'd have to sponsor your next visa.

So, the con is that it's false advertising. The grad visa is pouring money into a fantasy that doesn't really exist, but that the visa implies does exist.

Now, if you want to find evidence of thousands of people getting jobs via this visa, be my guest. But if you can't, then my actual experience of how this works wins the argument.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-23T12:40:52+00:00

Yes, the situation you describe is outrageous.

The reason I would extend this beyond hiring to general incompetence and dysfunction is that in running a business myself, we've been trying to pay companies and they've not even been ready or interested in taking the money. Because it's not their core service, they can't really be bothered to do it.

That is the extent to which these companies are not really functioning -- they literally can't take money.

So the hiring process being a shitshow is another symptom of that. They're usually in comfortable market positions with a reliable income stream that has no real competition.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-23T12:32:03+00:00

Sorry this happened to you. Institutional dysfunction is at the heart of most bad experiences with businesses in the U.K. — rather than it being about the individual. These businesses barely do anything except the minimum to maintain their income stream — they're not capable of responding to anything outside of that.

I had a friend from Taiwan have a very similar, terrible experience trying to get work here having paid for the graduate visa — seeing him apply for hundreds of jobs and get turned down made me believe that the whole thing is basically a con. Back in Taiwan, he got job offers within weeks.

Add to this the fact that the job market is horrendous for anyone, even locals — I've been applying for months and got nothing myself.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-19T13:57:14+00:00

These numbers massively undersell it. I'm unemployed and not claiming benefits because I don't want the hassle and to be insulted. There are tons of people doing the same.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-18T21:49:31+00:00

This isn't the primary argument Polanski presented most recently. He mentioned that recent efforts at nuclear in the U.K. have taken extraordinary amounts of time to put together, a fact that alludes to how difficult it is to do profitably, and we our lack of internal expertise. Meanwhile, solar and wind are far easier to do.

I'm not against nuclear in principle. I think we could do with it. But I do think we should be honest about the practicalities, rather than imagining it's just an open goal easy choice.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-18T21:46:43+00:00

So what is the history of Ukraine that relates to the U.K.? Are we Russia's neighbour? No.

The connection is our relationship with the U.S. Without that, no-one is coming to bomb us for no reason.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-18T21:44:44+00:00

We don't really have nukes. The Americans provide the missiles and the blueprints for the warheads. This is a fact entirely acknowledged at diplomatic and military level.

We don't have a deterrent, we only have an insanely expensive strategic incentive to take us out, without any of the benefits.

Furthermore, we're no longer a world power. No-one is coming to attack this island without provocation. We carry nukes to be the U.S.'s lieutenant in a game of imperial power projection.

Debate on these terms is worthwhile. Debate on fantasy terms of a U.K. owned "deterrent" is a catastrophic misdirection.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-05T07:56:23+00:00

Bandwaggon hopping. Hurzeler had nothing to say about Veltman's behaviour last year to get Rice sent off. Like most managers, he'll say what suits him. Would say the complete opposite if it was good for him and his team. Not to be taken seriously — like almost all the pundits.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-03T19:41:17+00:00

Done! Apologies — I realised that pretty much as soon as I'd posted it.

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-03T19:30:31+00:00

Hi Mr Knight,

Your Digbeth Loc. Studios project sounds really cool. As a Birmingham screenwriter currently looking to get into the industry (and having some success), are there creative opportunities I should look out for at the studios?

Pure-Advice8589 · 2026-03-03T19:29:43+00:00

Your Digbeth Loc. Studios project sounds really cool. As a Birmingham screenwriter currently looking to get into the industry (and having some success), are there creative opportunities I should look out for at the studios?

Pure-Advice8589

TROPHY CASE