Swampy

My wife is exceptionally mild-mannered and friendly but one of the very few times I've seen her legitimately frustrated and upset was after a lengthy telephone call with our USPS, who contrived to misplace the three weeks of mail they'd been "saving" for us while we had our mailbox "replaced" (that is, removed, then not replaced.) Eventually it showed up but it was such a mission to get it. On one occasion I was delivered a 'we missed you' package slip with the address of one of the downtown Dallas post offices on it. I knew for a fact it wouldn't be there - it would be in the one around the corner from our place - but I also knew that if I walked to the one around the corner they'd tell me to go downtown. So I went downtown, where the package wasn't, got them to scrawl something on the slip for me, then took it to the one around the corner from me, where I was given the package. The USPS is an astonishingly poor service. Even the much-derided Royal Mail is miles better. Unless it's a simple letter or check or similar I now FedEx anything I need to send.

Have to second 14Mile here - WTF?

Don't think it's true that all kippers are (economically) to the right of the Tories. Lots of disaffected northern working class voters went UKIP and they probably mistrust neoliberalism (and with it the EU.) Certainly the leadership is almost pathologically pro-big business but the voters, not so much.

In the James Watt in Greenock on a Friday night you used to see people still wearing their T-Mobile IDs. Harrowing.

Grasshoppers have been underachieving for years, it feels like. They used to be European fixtures and now they're nowhere. Not quite Servette levels of collapse, mind. It's true what you're saying, without some level of sponsorship or subsidy (Basel, Sheriff Tiraspol) smaller countries' teams aren't going to go anywhere fast. For Midtjylland, last 16 in the EL would be a great achievement and although that's a glass ceiling it's a hell of a ride to get there. The trick will be if they can keep it up when the novelty wears off and the fans slowly start to disperse (as seems to have happened with FCK, who now often get lower gates than the older, more-established, but pretty guff neighbors of Brondby.)

I go to the gym five days a week and I drive there. (And back, come to think of it.)

Without reading the stories it's hard to say, but really, a half-hour walk to school is nowhere near as productive as a half-hour of serious cardio (assuming they're doing cardio and focusing on a calorie deficit.) Most people could stand to introduce more walking into their routine, sure, but if they're following a programme and they have limited hours in the day then driving to the gym makes perfect sense.

Everton would crawl over hot coals to be Sevilla. Sevilla have to be a selling club, they have low merchandise sales and a poor TV deal, yet they outperform Everton by every footballing measure you can think of. Really the Spanish Everton would be a team like Real Sociedad or Espanyol. Actually Espanyol won a trophy a few years ago and got to the UEFA Cup final so let's go with Celta Vigo.

One from Ayr a couple of years back, one from Glasgow more recently, those are two that stick out. My lips are sealed otherwise.

Yep, makes sense - what I'm getting at is that clubs of that size can't be European fixtures forever, and if they scrape into the CL they are highly unlikely to repeat the feat anytime soon. You can even extend this to successful clubs from smaller leagues. Rosenborg and FC Copenhagen were both CL regulars (both even got the knockouts IIRC?) but what goes up must come down. Midtjylland, while an extremely well-run club and a real model for teams from smaller countries, will eventually go the same way.

I don't think I've ever met or spoken to VikingTon. Then again there are quite a few middle-aged guys on here who know more about my personal life than I do. Every six months or so I have to knock one of them back on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Are you actually laughing out loud at this?

^^^^^ not enjoying the journey

I've often wondered - do people turn into raging messes because they support Dundee, or do they support Dundee because they were raging messes? Given the club's proud legacy of beetroot-faced sectarianism I'm "plumping" for the latter.

You've got a brass neck accusing anyone else of crying. This post of yours came with so many tears my monitor's got rising damp.

You've got a brass neck accusing anyone else of crying. This post of yours came with so many tears my monitor's got rising damp.

DeeGas is still here, clear alias. Reynard would need to make the first move and ask to come back and I don't think he'd do that. I have no pride/shame so I was fine with it.

Maybe I'm missing something but if MK are giving away so many tickets what's the motivation for people to pay for them? Is it only for certain games? Either way I actually like their stadium. Meanwhile, Valencia have put a hugely optimistic date of 2017 on the Nou Mestalla. No chance.

Aye, not bad, cheers!

Thank you! Very good to be back. Misc Football is genuinely an excellent source for European football discussion.

In all honesty it's a pretty shoddy display of parenting to place bets over how raging you get off a TV show that a good 80% of the time comprises mainstream British politicians.

Is Supras back? Oh well. #undece

This is exactly right. FC Thun are a prime example of that. Got to the CL then disappeared into the Swiss second tier, only semi-recently to return. The same thing also happens at Europa League level. Getafe are a good example. Alaves an even better one. On the final paragraph, I couldn't agree more with people calling it a 'joke' without justification. There was scope for calling the EL a joke when it first transitioned from the UEFA Cup but there are some serious teams in it these days, and the path to the CL, coupled with the (slightly) better prize money, mean that ignoring it is a bit daft. As for the diddy teams getting in - yes, there are many, but are we really going to pretend that BATE Borisov and Zilina and Mitjylland are why we're watching the Champions League? Smaller teams getting in is a great bonus for them (and to a lesser extent their league) and should be applauded. Anyway, I can see the financial reasons for English clubs treating the million-or-two pounds you get for an EL campaign as small potatoes when they get almost nine figures for playing domestically (still hard to believe that) but the level of contempt for the competition is quite out of proportion to the amount of 'bother' it really is.

Just came on to post the Valcke thing too. You know what's pretty shameful? It took the United States Department of Justice to start cleaning up football. The Swiss are just following their lead.