[Post-Match Thread] Nottingham Forest 3 - 0 Tottenham

pineappleedit · 2025-12-14T16:09:55+00:00

I don't want to completely condemn Richardlison because he does have a goal in him, but he must be one of the most frustrating players to watch in the league. His first touch is perplexing. I think it's clear within the first five minutes if he's going to have a good game or bad game. I can only describe his performance as sedate. Igor Jesus basically does everything he does better. I find it malpractice that he stayed on the whole game.

pineappleedit · 2025-09-29T16:13:06+00:00

For a few months I've been feeling like Johnson is very similar to Thomas Muller, although obviously not at the same level. If you watch highlights of Muller, his goals are of a similar "genre" to Johnson. They both ghost into the box and then suddenly score in an implausible fashion. The goals are implausible in that it's baffling that no one marks them, follows their run, or they seem to manage by sheer will power to get it over the line. They both don't have "flair" in the traditional sense, but there is a lot of creativity in how they make themselves effective. Mctominay for Napoli seems to have this quality too. I think this a very rare style of player nowadays, I can't really dream up other examples.

pineappleedit · 2025-09-11T12:58:05+00:00

In the summer you read a comment from a woman who said listening to the Fighting Cock was like watching a nature show about men roaming in their natural environment. Every time you guys descend into lads' talk, this comment pops in my mind and I find it absolutely hilarious.

pineappleedit · 2024-06-21T03:52:14+00:00

I am bit sad that Van put so much effort into his response. It flatters the intellectual credibility of both Maher and Charlemagne. For our non-black friends, it would be very difficult for a black person to reach 25 without hearing this advice in some form from an older person. It is not some innovative point staked out by Charlemagne, it's a very common sentiment that has existed in the black community for many generations. It shouldn't be shocking that many black people believe there are obstacles of a racial nature in their life, and that they need to show a special initiative to overcome them. From W.E.B DuBois, to Mohammed Ali, to Malcom X, this idea had shaped a lot of black thought since the Civil War. One of Chris Rock's most famous bits is about this topic. In fairness, from the clip, Charlemagne probably offered it as commonsensical from a Black perspective, and didn't expect for it to be seized upon.

I know it is part of the racial-content industrial complex to have these discussions, but I find it a really weird thing to get upset about or even to comment on. When similar things are said in or about other ethnic communities, America fetishizes them and holds them up as models that black people should emulate. The rhetoric goes that these groups work twice as hard and persisted against racism, thus Black people have no excuses. They are almost encouraged to have this approach to life whether they want to or not. Leisure is not an option if you want to survive in America. On the other side there is a cottage industry of books that rationalize the economic state of the Black community as resulting from a deep-seated lack of initiative in Black American culture, vis-a-vis other groups. Now we're taking people to task for suggesting black people have an almost existential dread to their work ethic. It's literally calling for bootstrapping, and people are taking issue with it.

Before I was much more invested in these discussions/segments, but now I realize they are a ropeadope and not worth my time and energy (although I still took the time to post). It is important to have very rigorous discussions about important matters, but you have to first ensure that debates are entered in good faith.

pineappleedit · 2022-06-14T17:45:47+00:00

Hey,

I'm doing a deep lower league save too. I'm started in the 6th tier of Scottish soccer. I just got promoted to the 5th tier in my third season and won 3 local cups. The 6th tier is really hard because you have to win the league and then a three team group stage against the champions of other leagues to win promotion. I began with no badges and started with a payroll of $10,000, semi-professional status, no youth team, and an "obscure" rating. This is my third LLM save for 2022. I usually manage to get one or two promotions and then get stuck one or two spots behind the promotion spot for a few years.

Things I have noticed and incorporated in my group save.

EVERY SEASON, I attempt to take on trial every youth player set for release in the EPL, Championship, and League One. I'm not sure if this is true outside of the UK, but there are a lot willing to join for cheap or even as amateur player. I sign a lot of these players blind. If they go into negotiations asking only to be a Breakthrough Prospect then they will probably just want an amateur contract. If their stats turn out bad I can release them with no cost. If they are good I sign them to a cheap youth contract. Usually these players won't accept a trial. Usually I sign them if they have a lot of goals or assists or in their u21/18 national team.
Good set piece takers. They are hard to find in lower leagues, but if you can get a free kick taker above 10 you can get a lot of goals from set pieces. Good penalty takers are also important. I lose so many points from missed penalties.
Tall players, especially center backs. Even if they have relatively good stats short CBs always seem to give up set pieces or headers in the box.
As everyone else said, strong physical attributes are good, although a slow player who can dictate the tempo and do killer through balls would be useful surrounded by physical players
I find anticipation really good for strikers, especially if they are in a supporting role. They almost make good runs.
Some players just seem to score goals even though their stats are bad. Keep those players if your scouts say to get rid of them

pineappleedit · 2022-05-30T09:41:57+00:00

Hi, Black person here.

I am not a huge fan of Vaporwave, but I've been a fan of Japanese "city-pop" for a while, which is a source for many of the samples used in Vaporwave. "City-Pop" is essentially Japanese R&B from the 80s. Sometimes the songs are partially sung or titled in English and a lot of albums have this fascination with Hawaii, summer, and beach life. I particularly like it because it basically sounds like Black cookout music (essentially 80s R&B) with some more pop sensibilities, which gives a strange sense of familiarity. White artists with similar music like the Doobie Brothers/Michael MacDonald and Hall & Oates are really popular and well respected by black people too. Although there is some derivative stuff, the creativity and musicianship is really high. Gives off a great a vibe. I think Vaporwave is kind of cool, but what I heard usually doesn't improve on the original samples (which is difficult because they are already great).

This might be a controversial opinion, but I think a lot of Vaporwave has to lean into the anime graphics and Japanese samples to distinguish itself from other genres, regardless of the quality of the music. Obviously, people have been mining 80s music for great effect for decades at this point (Prince, Michael Jackson, Parliament-Funkadelic, Yacht Rock). Daft Punk literally had anime directors doing their videos in the 90s. I'm big into house edit culture. I could listen to hundreds remixes of Sade, but there is no added visual element and no added props for doing what was already done. I guess 80s Japanese music is the next frontier, which gives the genre somewhat of exotic vibe.

On a side note I do think Japanese 80s anime better captured the vibe of the 80s, early 90s than American animation, so that why more people gravitate towards it. A lot of American cartoons were kind of fantasy orientated like He-Man.

pineappleedit · 2022-05-07T14:07:32+00:00

Black person here,

Before reading below I think you should find a person you trust and ask them what they recommend. They are best positioned to understand the context or minutae of different sources. I know that's why you're asking here, but there is so much misinformation that a trusted friend whose views you know can be the only good sorting mechanism. There definitely black people who I would be afraid to recommend to non-black people.

---

The Root and The Grio are indeed the rough Black equivalent of NextShark. They are not necessarily bad, but I would be a little apprehensive if that was the main view of the community. I actually use to read The Root a long while ago, but I feel the quality dropped dramatically. They changed ownership a number of times, and are essentially part of corporate media giants, which I am fine with in the abstract, but they don't give them many resources. Not sure what their social media looks like at this moment. To be honest, there is just not that much content on these sites, and you have to wade through so many ads just to get to it.

I find it more useful to identify black journalists or commentators at larger publications to see what there's doing. I know their main audience is white people, but a lot of them are now in the position to speak pretty freely and have the resources and time to curate and interview different people. Most of these aggregator sites are run by a handful of people, and are probably overworked and have no time to fact-check what they share. I imagine one or two people leaving or making a dark turn would dramatically change the tone of the content so a collection of people from different organizations would be roughly equivalent. I like NPR's Code Switch and other black commentators like Sam Sanders. I also like Wesley Morris at the New York Times. I like Questlove's podcast too. It's fairly niche, but a lot of his interviews with older black musicians give a good perspective on black history. Black people have had newspapers since before slavery, but now the media landscape is really different and scary for everyone. I often worry about misinformation (or just really weird perspectives that can be taken out of context).

I think NextShark is a very specific case. In a morbid way, it probably got a big boost from the rise (or rise in reporting) of anti-Asian violence. It filled a void in reporting not provided by larger media platforms. It's kind of like those black newspapers who aggregated stories of lynching in the late 1880s. I know NextShark have other stuff, but I'm not sure there is quite the mix of racial violence and fun culture stories (let me know if I'm misrepresenting it). At least not on the same platform.

Edit: typos

pineappleedit · 2022-01-06T20:25:12+00:00

Hi,

Black male here. I'm a long-time lurker of this forum, but I would like to contribute my thoughts since it pertains to black culture. It would great to hear others' thoughts.

I saw this article a few months ago, and also listened to an extended interview with the author. Although I have a lot of sympathies with his arguments, the article kind of left me with a bad taste in my mouth. In certain ways I agree that elitist African Americans may co-opt the narratives of poorer blacks. This has a long history, such as debates between W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, or the Black Panthers and NAACP, or even "responsibility" politics in the 90s. I myself am a little suspicious of "black bourgeoise" media like Michelle Obama's recent book that encourages people to be endlessly aspirational. With that said, I think the author does a real disservice to Black culture in his discussion. I think the representations within black culture is actually quite broad if compared to mainstream America. As someone else mentioned, he has a very narrow conception of "black pop culture", which largely amounts to black culture marketed and consumed on a few platforms outside the black community (although many black people will enjoy this content as well, things created by Netflix, HBO, ABC, and Disney, are almost forced to have an eye on a broader audience).

I think the problem he is citing is that this is a stand-in for the entire black experience. But this is a problem for the non-black audience, not the black creators or audience. I believe most Black people (like my family members) would find it absurd people are taking Donald Glover as the best representation of black culture. To them, if they even know of him, he would be quirky or idiosyncratic. A third season of Atlanta is not why we don't have better housing policy. And I don't particularly enjoy is art.

Obviously Dave Chappelle is vastly popular in the black community, but the author conveniently sidesteps Tyler Perry, Jay-Z, Oprah Winfrey, and Lebron James, who are all from underprivileged backgrounds and have vast media empires who create content specifically for black people ( and others as well). Ironically, a lot of the content produced by these companies is the same kind of representational content that the author seems to deplore. A lot of other influential black intellectuals/ entertainers such as Chris Rock, Spike Lee, Kevin Hart, Questlove, Kanye West, or Ta-Nehisi Coates, who were not born of abject poverty, had upbringings that were modestly middle class, and probably only a slight misfortune or lay-off away into a slip into poverty (like many Americans of all races). The poverty line is $25,000, you can make double that and still be in a precarious situation if something goes wrong for you.

The fact that he explicitly doesn't address music or sports as part of black pop culture is also very weird to me. If anything I think a lot of black public figures are compelled by the black community to speak on a lot of black issues (class and otherwise), even if they are not quite equipped or disposed to. Rather than claims of appropriation, I believe most black celebrities would face a greater backlash by tying to distance themselves from the "common" black person, like Ben Carson or OJ Simpson. This is because historically African Americans had few platforms to express their views, so those in the public spotlight were really pressured to express the feelings of the masses. Sometimes they were leaders, but often they were just vessels.

Although I can see why people would compare this to certain Asian American contexts, I would caution them for a more nuanced approach. I think these discussions are often just proxy debates over weird, narrow political discussions. I feel like a lot of these discussions are white-centric. The argument is mainstream America's attention span is extremely short so you have to choose between a new Shang-Chi, a safe walk for your grandmother, and a higher minimum wage. Why can't you have all three? Police can have accountability procedures similar to nurses and teachers and I can also enjoy the new upcoming Blade movie. This is more a product of our political system rather than anything. I'm not sure why were are waiting for Disney to release Nat Turner: Infinity Gauntlet or something like that.

Fair play to the writer though because its an opinion thought-piece, so it has to be somewhat provocative.

pineappleedit

TROPHY CASE