Not Hard to see progress for the forseeable future

[CMRoyal]

Bah beaten by the real historians.

The point is not that history and a football match is different, but that the analytical approach to history, which is required by not being able to actually be there allows one to form a reasonable opinion of a match, based on secondary evidence like reviews, internet discussion and live commentary.

Being at a game doesn't make you a good analyst, it gives you A extremely good source. Listening to the commentary and reading reviews doesn't make you a bad analyst, it gives you several passable sources. Reading a review of the game in a paper doesn't make you a bad analyst, it provides you with A possibly passable source.

In the end the analysis relies on the abilities of the person making it, and whether they have taken into account the reliability of their source(s)

Don't analysts tend to deal in facts whereas we are talking here about opinions.

If you are going to analyise what actually happened then, no you don't necessarily have to be there but if you are going to voice an opinion on whether xxxx played well or the defence sat too deep or someone didn't put the work in off the ball, then you certainly do have to be there otherwise the opinions you are giving are those of the commentator/journalist/other fan rather than your own.

Yeah, I think there's a subtle difference here - the historians are dealing with "conclusions" based on opinion, facts, eyewitness accounts yada yada, as opposed to individual opinions based on a first-person account. However, taking all reports/marks out of ten/internet postings and forming a conclusion is miles better than just trusting your own initially-formed opinion, in my view. We all change our opinions slightly when discussing incidents or reading the writes-up, don't we? Sometime they change completely
(when the facts change, I change my opinion and all that), sometimes they firm up, and occasionally sometimes they don't change at all.

When I get back from a match, if someone's listened to the commentary, read all the newspaper reports, browsed x-thousand HNA posts and concluded that James Harper played better than the impression I initially formed, I would certainly not dismiss that view just because they hadn't been there - I particularly wouldn't trump that view with some of the crazy individual comments of people that were supposedly at the match!

[bcubed]

Have we replaced them with equal ability?

You think Hunt is a good a player as Kitson?
Armstrong as good as Shorey?
Cisse as good as Sidwell?
Duberry as good as Sonko?

The only one close for me is Duberry being as good as the Sonko that left, he's better. As good as the Sonko we saw before his injury? No way

Is Bikey or Duberry the repalcement for Sonko ? Bikey is certainly a better player

Armstrong or Shorey ? Defensively I think Armstrong is better. He doesn't add as much to the attack as Shorey but since Shorey left Hunt has taken on the role of supplier from the left.

Hunt or Kitson ? Very different players. Our attack as a whole has looked better this season than last - but then it should do ! Hunt does not have the touch that Kitson had but works harder and probably fits the team better.

Cisse and Sidwell ? Well i did say 3 out of 4 !!!

None are clear cut from the 3, but I don't think it is outrageous to say that the 3 incoming players are performing just as well as the 3 who left would have done.

Agreed

Leaving Bikey out of it,
Duberry is a significant improvement on the Sonko that left
Armstrong is certainly a lot better than the Shorey that left - reliable in defence match after match
And the Kitson that left was on the wane and a bad influence, as he himself has admitted
And we haven't adequalety replaced Sidwell yet, with anyone

[bcubed]

Bah beaten by the real historians.

The point is not that history and a football match is different, but that the analytical approach to history, which is required by not being able to actually be there allows one to form a reasonable opinion of a match, based on secondary evidence like reviews, internet discussion and live commentary.

Being at a game doesn't make you a good analyst, it gives you A extremely good source. Listening to the commentary and reading reviews doesn't make you a bad analyst, it gives you several passable sources. Reading a review of the game in a paper doesn't make you a bad analyst, it provides you with A possibly passable source.

In the end the analysis relies on the abilities of the person making it, and whether they have taken into account the reliability of their source(s)

Don't analysts tend to deal in facts whereas we are talking here about opinions.

If you are going to analyise what actually happened then, no you don't necessarily have to be there but if you are going to voice an opinion on whether xxxx played well or the defence sat too deep or someone didn't put the work in off the ball, then you certainly do have to be there otherwise the opinions you are giving are those of the commentator/journalist/other fan rather than your own.

Yeah, I think there's a subtle difference here - the historians are dealing with "conclusions" based on opinion, facts, eyewitness accounts yada yada, as opposed to individual opinions based on a first-person account. However, taking all reports/marks out of ten/internet postings and forming a conclusion is miles better than just trusting your own initially-formed opinion, in my view. We all change our opinions slightly when discussing incidents or reading the writes-up, don't we? Sometime they change completely
(when the facts change, I change my opinion and all that), sometimes they firm up, and occasionally sometimes they don't change at all.

When I get back from a match, if someone's listened to the commentary, read all the newspaper reports, browsed x-thousand HNA posts and concluded that James Harper played better than the impression I initially formed, I would certainly not dismiss that view just because they hadn't been there - I particularly wouldn't trump that view with some of the crazy individual comments of people that were supposedly at the match!

This perhaps explains some of the views expressed on here

Reports/Marks out of tens/internet postings are not facts -they are someone else's views

Why would you change your own views based on these? Don't you believe what you saw at the game? Do you not have the courage of your convictions?

[CMRoyal]

Yeah, I think there's a subtle difference here - the historians are dealing with "conclusions" based on opinion, facts, eyewitness accounts yada yada, as opposed to individual opinions based on a first-person account. However, taking all reports/marks out of ten/internet postings and forming a conclusion is miles better than just trusting your own initially-formed opinion, in my view. We all change our opinions slightly when discussing incidents or reading the writes-up, don't we? Sometime they change completely
(when the facts change, I change my opinion and all that), sometimes they firm up, and occasionally sometimes they don't change at all.

When I get back from a match, if someone's listened to the commentary, read all the newspaper reports, browsed x-thousand HNA posts and concluded that James Harper played better than the impression I initially formed, I would certainly not dismiss that view just because they hadn't been there - I particularly wouldn't trump that view with some of the crazy individual comments of people that were supposedly at the match!

This perhaps explains some of the views expressed on here

Reports/Marks out of tens/internet postings are not facts -they are someone else's views

Why would you change your own views based on these? Don't you believe what you saw at the game? Do you not have the courage of your convictions?

We're getting a wee bit into sematics here, but in the underlined bit I did say "forming a conclusion" rather than "changing views" - it's implicit in what I'm saying that your own view forms a big part of that conclusion, and if your conviction is strong enough about something, of course that view doesn't change.

I then went on to say that reading a wide range of reports could and does often (but not always) make one change one's opinion. Again, if my conviction is strong enough about something, of course it won't change. But to decide that your own as-it-happened initial impression trumps all other opinion? Seems to negate the whole point of a discussion forum for a start. Why exchange views at all, if all you are ever doing is seeing how wrong everybody else is?

[M U R T Y]

I can't be bothered to get involved to the same extent as some others but my observations are as follows:

1. Reading are playing a different style this season, which isn't as pretty on the eye as 05/06-06/07 seasons
2. I have not missed Nicky Shorey this season.
3. Nor Sonko
4. I've missed Kits a bit
5. I still miss Sidwell
6. I wish Marek would play more
7. Never argue with a woman - they don't make sense and you never win
8. This Shards fella has a right cob on
9. We are clearly the 2nd best team in the championship
10. If we do go up, and we don't strengthen this summer, another relegation battle will ensue

[Platypuss]

Why would you change your own views based on these? Don't you believe what you saw at the game? Do you not have the courage of your convictions?

Why should anyone assume that they had a perfect view of every incident?

[Hampshire Royal]

I studied history at Uni. One of the first things I learned is that there are very few things which we can call 'fact'. What we think of as the facts of history are simply the views of one or more people. The skill of history lies in the ability to look (with an open mind) at information from a variety of sources. If you can do this effectively, the opinion you form will be more valid than if you watched the game (with your own prejudiced opinions - for example, I very rarely see the good things done by the opposition, but put it down to mistakes made by my team).

My dissertation was about resistance within Germany against the NAZI regime. I interviewed a number of people (I had to do a bit of research to find out who to interview) and obtained a surprising variey of opinions. From these sources, as well as books I read, I was able to come up with a reasonably well researched which, in my opinion, got fairly close to the truth (whatever that is).

[Don Finch]

...observations 1-10

....are spot on, can't say I disagree with any of them. Can you bullet point some more threads please.

[rabidbee]

There's no such thing as historical truth, there's no such thing as objectivity, and facts are generally pretty dull and insignificant. It's all about opinions.

[Sun Tzu]

...observations 1-10

....are spot on, can't say I disagree with any of them. Can you bullet point some more threads please.

9 is debateable.....

I'm reserving judgement on that as the evidence is contradictory so far.

[Rex]

Don't be swayed by what you want to hear and are fed by others. TBH in the domain of RFC, it is pretty much impossible to remain impartial as we all have a natural leaning. Negativity is only the frustration of wanting the team to do better. Being positive is the release mechanism and relief that the result and performance went our way.

[Don Finch]

...observations 1-10

....are spot on, can't say I disagree with any of them. Can you bullet point some more threads please.

9 is debateable.....

I'm reserving judgement on that as the evidence is contradictory so far.

Ok, agreed, I would plump for us being possibly the best team in the league. I haven't been to enough away games this season but the only two teams I've seen play better football than us in a one off game are Saints and Cardiff at the Mad Stad. Wolves are obviously good but we've turned them over twice! Ha ha! scummers

[Gus the teenage cow]

I can' be bothered reading through the whole thread, i just have one query:

has Schards admitted he got it wrong yet or is he stubbornly and steadfastly digging the greatest foulest multi-thread conversing hole in HNA history?

[Scylla]

"... knowing without seeing can know anything"

[Sun Tzu]

"... knowing without seeing can know anything"

A phrase from a very wise man I believe

[Hampshire Royal]

Depends on how you define 'seeing'.

[Ian Royal]

To bcubed, I'd just say that reading someone else's impression and opinion of a game allows one to re-evaluate one's own impression. We all have different initial reactions to different events, especially if seen (read about or heard) from a different perspective/viewpoint.

For example in the Wolves game a number of people were asking why the ref originally gave a free kick to us, then gave it the other way against Gunnarsson when the Wolves player stayed on the ground clutching his head.

I can say that I can follow why he did it, because from my angle I saw Gunnarsson smash him (probably unintentionally) in the face with his elbow/arm.

my instant reaction was Gunnar would be sent off. Another person next to me with the same view, may have been watching with a different perspective thinking it was a foul on Gunnar and the arm was irrelevant because of the way the Wolves player jumped in.

Now if the majority view was against my view, or his. It would be perfectly sensible to revise you're opinion as it was made in an instant.

Speaking personally, I won't usually comment on individual events in a match if I didn't see it, because I'm only going on description, which is based on perception and therefore not so reliable as seeing it. What I can do, is take the games as a whole and form an opinion of it. Using aspects which are difficult to dispute, for example a shot hitting the post, to help back that up.

I'm not going to tell someone that they didn't see Federici slice the ball with his left foot leading to a goal. I might argue that from the general impression of the game I picked up that if didn't mean we or Fed were awful, despite losing 1-0 because of it. Commentators mentioning saves, claims or distribution Fed makes in the rest of the game, may have an impact though.

[Victor Meldrew]

As there has been much digression (as ever) from the original topic could I stay there for a moment and ask one of you history boffins if Anne Boleyn really did have a stunning sister like Scarlett Johanssen (spelling?)?-obviously an opinion not a fact.
BTW HR does it still count as "history" if you were living at the time of the events that you studied?
I remeber my daughter coming home from school one day to say that she was "doing Kennedy in history" and it took me a while to appreciate that one person's lifetime events were another person's study of history.

I feel able to comment on Reading through the ages more than most of you because of seeing (and reading reports of) so many more games than you lot.
However I don't claim to be able to comment better on recent games than anybody else but I am very much with the "after the game" topic from those that were there because it does give others a feeling about the game (with all of our prejudices) which I feel can never be captured by a media report-TV for example gives you no idea of how many unsuccessful runs a forward may make because the main camera follows the ball.

As for the merits of those players earlier on in this topic nobody seems to have taken into account that they are judging the newer players within Championship football and so for anybody to suggest that N Hunt is better than Kitson for example takes no account of what Kitson did in the first part of last season at Premiership level.

On the general topic I don't see that we are making progress compared to the team that got relegated when equal 3rd bottom of The Premiership (if that is the benchmark).
A couple of younger players have shown that they are fairly comfortable at Championship level but our more experienced players are showing signs of wear and tear and ageing and the two about whom there has been much transfer speculation have (for whatever reason) IMHO have regressed.
I doubt it but the two new signings might just turn out to be Premiership stars if we go up however assuming they are better than what we have got I would argue that we are still weaker than at the end of last season and appreciably weaker than at the end of the previous season.

Finally regarding matters off the pitch I feel that our ground (10 years on) is now nothing special and is of the size of a mid-to-lower Championship side so I feel in that area we have also regressed and (if you listen to the club) we are in a much poorer position financially than a couple of years ago so again (who knows with an unlisted limited company?) have we progressed or regressed financially?
I am happy with our CURRENT league position but,based on what I have seen this season and the fact that our transfer activity in this window has been minimal whereas Wolves,Birmingham and Cardiff appear to have improved their squads(as our boffins remind us,opinion not fact) I fear that we will run out of steam as we did last season and if we don't go up and don't increase the ground capacity I would consider it to have been a season with no net progress.

[papereyes]

I remeber my daughter coming home from school one day to say that she was "doing Kennedy in history"

That man really did get around, didn't he?

[Victor Meldrew]

I remeber my daughter coming home from school one day to say that she was "doing Kennedy in history"

That man really did get around, didn't he?

My daughter is no Marilyn Monroe though.