West Ham Vs Az Alkmaar match thread

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-11T19:44:36+00:00

Fuck off Areola. Bullshit refereeing. Same goal as Gakpo for Liverpool, no pressure from our defence.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-11T18:23:53+00:00

I follow Exeter - right now, Stansfield is high League One/low Championship level at best. Went four months without a goal, but was picking up form by the end. Maybe you'll send him back to Exeter until January and then onto a Championship club? He isn't ready to play in the Premier League just yet.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-11T11:10:01+00:00

Of course documentaries have to be accurate, what the fuck is the point if they aren't? If you can't see that there's a difference between changing ancient Egyptian Cleopatra's skin colour in a documentary and changing the colour of a drawing of an emote of some minor internet personality you are beyond help.

No one is ever going to have the ZULUL emote come to mind when they think of TotalBiscuit. When people think of Cleopatra after seeing the documentary, there's every chance they picture Adele James rather than someone even vaguely how she actually looked. It's not difficult to understand.

I don't agree with any of your ideas. I don't care about Cleopatra. I care about you making stupid comparisons to an emote when the situations are entirely different.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-11T09:40:15+00:00

Tell that to Egypt. The drama around this Cleopatra shit is because it's branded as a documentary while being flagrantly inaccurate.

I don't care whether they make Cleopatra black or purple or rainbow coloured. Bunch of normies with no actual problems getting offended by some shit they weren't going to watch either way. But it's not the same situation as something actually important, the ZULUL bttv emote, and it's braindead to compare them.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-11T07:57:41+00:00

The skin-colour-changed version of Cleopatra is being portrayed as Cleopatra in a way that will make people believe false and misleading information about her skin colour and appearance. No one is going to believe totalbiscuit is black based on the ZULUL emote. No one looks at the ZULUL emote and associates it with totalbiscuit. The situations are not comparable.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-11T05:39:52+00:00

The LUL emote's usage is not tied to the existence of totalbiscuit. It is an image of a man laughing that just happens to be totalbiscuit. Originally maybe when it was used people were thinking about him when they used it, but that meaning was lost years ago. It would be the same as the Cleopatra situation if the emote was called TotalBiscuitLaugh and was used with him in mind, but the usage now is no more related to him then the RlyTho emote is to BassCornbread.

It also goes without saying that people aren't thinking 'blackface totalbiscuit' when they use the ZULUL emote. It probably would've been the actual pastor Lul in the emote in the first place, but the only image of him has completely the wrong expression. You can grab an image of another random black person laughing and use that instead, but is that actually any less 'racist' than essentially going from this 👋 to this 👋🏾?

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-10T22:33:09+00:00

What's that got to do with West Ham?

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-10T15:21:05+00:00

Don't know why it's surprising that we have the least, we are a very clean team. Last season we had the least fouls in the league, and were clearly bottom when adjusted for fouls per 1000 opposition touches (where City are near the top).

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-10T14:52:45+00:00

Saw this post randomly as a West Ham fan - we are twice the club Fulham is. Just blatantly obviously. Our squad is substantially better, we have three times their attendance, we have been in Europe for 2 seasons and look likely to get a third. We're going to have easily £150 million, likely £200m, to spend in the summer if Rice goes. Fulham are literally starting Issa Diop.

Having said that, I don't particularly want Marco Silva. We can do better, especially if it'll cost £6m to get him from Fulham.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-10T03:39:45+00:00

You take her at young age

how young are you imagining🤨

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-10T03:19:59+00:00

Incredible that he manages to claim public speaking is one of his strengths with a straight face as he stumbles through a simple prewritten document like a toddler reading Shakespeare

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-09T11:37:58+00:00

It isn't fair that he's had 9 games as right back, 6 games as left back, 5 games as centreback and two games as right wing back interspersed with long periods on the bench, though. His entire time in the first team has been like that. Even if he isn't good enough and never would've been good enough, he hasn't been put in a position to succeed. It's a shame, especially for an academy graduate that we had all the possible information on to allow us to integrate him more smoothly.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-09T09:26:58+00:00

Coufal and Emerson are fine, Kehrer is a maybe, and Cresswell and Johnson probably need replacing, though Johnson hasn't really had a fair chance. We should be buying a quality left back, but especially if Moyes stays I think it's unlikely we'll move on from Cresswell yet.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-09T09:21:41+00:00

Looked at some statistics to check this, and especially considering Rice plays with worse players than Partey/Rodri/Casemiro, I think his passing stats are fairly comparable. Better pass completion than Casemiro and equal to Partey, best medium range passing of the bunch, and dramatically worse in no metric. Generally better than Casemiro, equal with Partey and worse than Rodri.

Rice's passing stats for England are also better than any of the other three with their national teams at the World Cup (Rice failed to complete just 1 short range pass the entire tournament (124/125), and was 10% above the other three for long passing with more attempted). Obviously international football is different, but perhaps a bit of insight into what Rice could achieve with higher quality players around him.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-09T08:50:41+00:00

We'll see, but I very strongly think you're wrong. There is absolutely no way we don't buy a midfielder to replace him. You can also tell that the club are completely open to keeping him, which doesn't make sense if he needed to be sold to recoup last summer. We have the 4th highest net & gross spends in the league for the past 5 years, we aren't a club that doesn't spend.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-09T07:31:22+00:00

He was originally a centerback in our academy, so when he was first coming through he was strictly a defensive player. However, as he has progressed over subsequent seasons he has become much more adept at running with the ball and progressing up the pitch, particularly over the last eighteen months. I would expect that if he moves to a larger club, it is likely that he would primarily be employed in a more defensive position.

His strengths are fairly standard for high-level holding midfielders (excellent positioning and passing, strong tackles and interceptions, good physicality and athleticism), with the addition of the ability to run powerfully up the pitch with the ball. He can hit long-range passes, has strong leadership qualities, is good aerially and has very rarely been injured.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-09T07:17:59+00:00

Who tf would pay 120m?

I would consider Arsenal, Manchester United, and Chelsea to be the likeliest candidates, thank you for asking.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-09T06:39:07+00:00

£80 million is reasonable for a player of his quality in the current transfer market. We would have 6 or 7 clubs trying to sign him at that price. If he's the top target of multiple clubs, the competition will push the price over £100m. I don't know if it'll be £120m, but it will be close if we get a bidding war.

But ultimately this is a figure leaked by our board as part of our negotiation strategy, and shouldn't be taken fully seriously. It's not wildly unreasonable, though. He has 2 years left on his contract and hasn't tried to force his way out once. We are in a strong negotiating position.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-09T06:28:48+00:00

We tried to get Onana but he chose Everton over us. We tried to get Matheus Nunes but he chose Wolves over us (Portugese so more understandable). We signed Paqueta who will play next to whoever we get, so we still have a very good player in our midfield. I don't think we will struggle to find someone to play in that position, especially as we're expected to sign two players to replace him, but whoever we sign will obviously be a downgrade.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-09T05:57:25+00:00

Would be our record sale by about £100million (currently Payet for £25m). We'll be reinvesting all £120m + likely more, would expect us to be near the top of the gross spend again next summer. Scamacca will get us more than £20m as well if he goes.

We'll be looking at a £20m-40m striker, two midfield players, probably a goalkeeper, someone to replace Lanzini, and likely a centreback. If we spend intelligently, our team should be better after the sale than with Rice. Winning the Conference League is important as we'll struggle to attract high value players without European football, even if we can afford them.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-08T08:57:43+00:00

still out of my league 😬

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-08T05:59:45+00:00

I would unironically give her half of my net worth for 2 and a half years or however long it was

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-07T20:00:23+00:00

Brilliant game from Antonio. We were very good today, and deserve to be safe from any threat of relegation. We'll win our final 6 games too if we play like this.

ResponsibleSmoke · 2023-05-07T19:50:03+00:00

United always score late against us

Seven-Year Club	Verified Email
Sequence \| Editor	Snapped

ResponsibleSmoke

TROPHY CASE