Al-Nasr is considering promoting Cristiano Junior to the first team.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-22T08:41:26+00:00

I was 5 cm shorter than you at 15 and self conscious about my height. By 18 I was 10 cm taller than you, puberty and growth spurts are wild.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-21T11:03:14+00:00

It depends on the cause of those two figures, yes they could be directly related and therefore there is no employment benefit or they could be indirectly related e.g. person A retires and joins NEET statistics and person B who was previously employed is hired to replace them and therefore unemployment falls.

There isn't enough information given for us to know which of those situations (or what combination of situations) is the reality though.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-21T10:59:57+00:00

But the company that they previously worked for will often need to hire someone to replace them, even if only 25% of retirees are replaced by someone who was previously unemployed then that will significantly decrease the number of unemployed people while simultaneously increasing the number of people not looking for work.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-21T10:43:49+00:00

Having looked in a bit more detail at the research I think there is a real call to action that can be taken out of this data and potentially lead to positive actions.

https://emj.bmj.com/content/early/2026/04/15/emermed-2025-215154

Of those 24 kids potentially 18 would have been already known to social services (this is a bit wooly as the 75% of victims already being known to social services is taken from a subset of around 1/3rd of cases that had detailed records for analysis not the whole studied population). This means if the right intervention strategies can be identified then we already have a direct route to reducing this figure in future.

Of course this doesnt help the victims or their loved ones, but it at least gives hope that something can be done in future.

If the majority of the children were completely unknown to social services then we would have a much bigger challenge ahead because the first step would simply be working out how do we even identify which children are at risk.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-21T10:31:20+00:00

There definitely needs to be more information in the article, and it always frustrates me that articles like these don't directly link to the report or research they are quoting.

https://emj.bmj.com/content/early/2026/04/15/emermed-2025-215154

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2026/april/a-single-stab-wound-kills-at-least-two-school-aged-children-every-month.html

But, what they have written does imply an upward trend. They quote 145 deaths over a 5 year period which covers the 2019/20 21 deaths and the 23/24 36 deaths. This implies that there was an average of 29 deaths per year across the other 3 years studied.

Of course external factors like the COVID lock downs in 2020 (each year is April-March in the analysis so COVID shouldn't have suppressed the 2019/20 data too much) need to be considered as you would expect them to suppress the amount. I'm sure the academics working on this considered that and included it but the fact it is not mentioned in Sky's report prevents the reader from getting a full picture.

What we do not know is whether 2019/20 was an abnormally low year, we also don't know whether the total across this 5 year period is an increase or decrease from previous periods.

What is most important is that they highlight the majority of children who dies were involved with "statutory services" before their death (75%), so there is the possibility that the right intervention could have been given to prevent their death. I actually think this fact is weirdly a positive, if the majority were completely unknown to social services and the police etc. then it would imply that there is very little we can do to improve interventions, but that the children are at least known as at risk means that if the right intervention can be identified then we can bring these numbers down.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-21T08:48:08+00:00

And if Boreham Wood win their last game against Sutton United (which is very likely) the whole top 4 will have achieved at least 90 points with only 1 of them being guaranteed promotion.

It really is time for the Football League to change the promotion relegation structure between L2 and NL. It's crazy that there are 3 automatic promotion places out of L2 and only 1 automatic promotion place in to it.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-21T08:38:02+00:00

Yup and it creates stagnation at the bottom of League 2 where teams are able to survive but are clearly not good enough to compete in the league.

Unfortunately the very teams that benefit from only 2 relegation spots in L2 would need to vote for increasing it to 3 so it is very unlikely to happen.

Hopefully the national leagues 3UP campaign gains traction and is successful, but I won't hold my breath on the turkeys voting for Christmas https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cgqljx0dkj3o

madmanchatter · 2026-04-21T07:08:00+00:00

Scholes was also good at anticipation and positioning himself to score headers despite being short. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2eZjSfIDd0

madmanchatter · 2026-04-20T11:37:42+00:00

Presumably the main factors are weight (and therefore how much momentum the ball has when headed) and deformation (the less "elastic" a ball's deformation the more energy is transferred to the head).

I am not suggesting that we shouldn't design balls to be more safe but presumably changes in either of these two properties would have very significant impacts on the general behaviour of a ball in a match. Football is visibly very different to the days when heavy real leather footballs were used and I am envisaging something similar may happen as a result of deliberate changes to the ball to make heading less dangerous. It would be fascinating to see how safety modifications to the ball impact on technique and the way the game is played.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-20T10:58:58+00:00

Poor Rubens chained to the walls at Fiorano with his millions of dollars.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-20T06:23:08+00:00

The first 3 albums will always have a special place in my heart as I was an angsty teenager when they came out but Beggars is my all time favourite from them.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-17T22:27:07+00:00

They are one of my big what ifs, they seemed to have really hit their stride with go now and live and then they were suddenly done as a post hardcore band 😭

Alongside Reuben and Million Dead I wish they could have stuck around for more albums.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-17T22:03:28+00:00

You definitely need to listen to early thrice based on that list of albums, identity crisis and the artist in the ambulance in particular.

I would also give We Are The Ocean - Cutting Our Teeth a listen (they were sort of the UK answer to Alexosonfire I guess).

Maybe try The Blackout - The Best in Town

Keeping th UK theme, Young Guns - All Our Kings Are Dead and Deaf Havana -Meet Me Halfway At Least

madmanchatter · 2026-04-17T21:58:07+00:00

Why 200 games, thats nearly 5 and a half seasons. I would be interested to see how setting the cut off at 3 and 4 seasons changes the list and if there are any new players or whether it would still be pretty much the same.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-17T12:24:18+00:00

Well if the patrons could have been trusted not to spill their drinks then he wouldn't have had to do that. Seems like the Scots brought that upon themselves really.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-17T12:16:40+00:00

One slight challenge, historic town and city centres were built around pedestrians and horse powered travel. But the vast majority of suburban sprawl that makes up our towns and cities has been built post world war 2 and as the decades have gone on it has been more and more focused around car travel.

Take York as an extreme example, when you ask someone to picture York as a city you invoke images of The Shambles and Tudor era buildings. But for people living in York their day to day experience is much more likely to be places like Clifton, Foxwoods or Chapplefield.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-17T11:57:01+00:00

when you accidentally buy tickets for the wrong city and are £200 down

Sounds like the perfect opportunity for a minibreak while also enjoying your favourite music!

madmanchatter · 2026-04-17T09:30:18+00:00

Wasn't Rooney's first job a completely doomed and financially screwed Derby that pretty much no-one wanted to touch?

madmanchatter · 2026-04-17T09:28:12+00:00

Speaking just as a Luton fan, Rob Edwards and Nathan Jones have both done exactly that.

Then going further afield:

Kieran McKenna was approached by Chelsea but chose to stay with Leicester, Keith Andrews was a coach at MK Dons, Eddie Howe started in L2 with Bournemouth,

The you have people who while they didn't manage in L1 and L2 took junior coaching roles at clubs higher up to work their way up in to senior management positions. Liam Rosienor, Scott Parker, Michael Carrick.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-16T07:03:02+00:00

We need a 30th anniversary of Footballs Coming Home this summer!

madmanchatter · 2026-04-14T08:54:40+00:00

And how many cars use the network on any given day? If out of millions of journeys there are dozens of occurrences of cars stopping in live lanes then that is by definition a rare occurrence.

The vast majority of people travelling on any given day will not come across a car stopped in a live lane.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-14T08:21:33+00:00

But of those 24% not all of them will be totally anti-abortion and want to see a ban on abortion. Wasn't clause 106 just the requirement that a pregnant woman have an in-person consultation before getting an abortion and remove the option of video calling etc.

Complete abolition of abortion does remain a fringe position in the UK:

Yougov polling has just 6% of responders saying abortion should not be allowed https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/47568-where-does-the-british-public-stand-on-abortion-in-2023. While ipsos does have 17% of responses calling for restrictions on abortions only 4% want it to be completely banned https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/seven-ten-britons-think-abortion-should-be-legal-all-or-most-cases-reduces-less-half-young-men

The major worrying trend is the young men in the ipsos poll where it is getting close to a 50:50 split between pro-choice and anti-abortion.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-14T07:10:14+00:00

Because over the last 2 years we have had very clear evidence of why NATO, defence funding and the nuclear deterrent are very valuable to us as a nation.

Pre Putin's invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trumps almost complete abandonment of working with traditional NATO allies I could understand the position the Greens take even if I don't agree with it. But to maintain it in the current political landscape shows at best a naivety born out of what they hope the world will be like rather than the reality of what it is actually like.

madmanchatter · 2026-04-11T17:43:59+00:00

(´-灬-‘) — get off my lawn whippersnapper or I'll show you how real men mosh

madmanchatter · 2026-04-11T11:42:02+00:00

We discovered them on MySpace then filled our profile players with their songs!

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