u/forbiddenmemeories

As the Barclays era seems to be regarded as having its own distinct identity that happened to overlap with the Barclays sponsorship, how else should we divide up the history of the league since 1992?

One suggestion I'd have is doing it by players, e.g.

1992-97: The Cantona Era - This one seems to fit fairly well as Cantona's time at Man United coincided with the period where they had no real consistent rival to the league title and won every year barring Blackburn's sole title in 1995

1998-04: The Keane-Vieira Era - Not quite as neat as neither Keane nor Vieira left their clubs until 2005, but seems to typify the duopoly of Man United and Arsenal during that period pre-Mourinho at Chelsea pretty well.

2017-2025: The De Bruyne-Salah Era - Probably put De Bruyne in capital letters here due to Man City's dominance in the league in this time, but Salah's worth inclusion too as the other standout player from this time and with Liverpool being the only other team to win the league from De Bruyne's first title at Man City up to his departure in 2025.

Or are not featured on concept albums, where you wouldn't be surprised to hear the title of the album recur a lot. For example:

• "Stargazer" by Rainbow, from the album Rising, has the line "I see a rainbow rising" several times in there. There is, in fact, no actual title track on the album.
• "Rock You Like a Hurricane" by Scorpions. Again, there is no actual title track on the album Love At First Sting, but the line "love at first sting" does feature multiple times in the track.

Football quotes that get the same treatment as "lies, damned lies and statistics", "insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results", etc.

For one, I've heard the anecdote about a manager back in the day having a concussed player who "doesn't know who he is" and telling the physio to "tell him he's Pelé and get him back on" attributed to various old managers including Shankly, Busby and Clough, but seems to have actually been said originally by Partick Thistle manager John Lambie.

First of all, context:

• r/soccer is, as its name suggests, the biggest subreddit for sharing of association football/soccer media such as news articles, social media posts by clubs/players or footage of matches. This time of year, with most pro leagues in their closed season and their transfer windows open, talk is usually dominated by news about potential upcoming transfers.
• Fabrizio Romano is an Italian football correspondent and social media figure who majors in transfer-related news. He's become an increasingly well-known figure in football media in recent years and both the accuracy and ethics of his reporting and general social media posting have been subject to considerable debate amongst football fans and more traditional media. Several football club subreddits have already banned sharing of Romano's posts, including r/LiverpoolFC in response to the nature of his posts covering the death of Liverpool's Diogo Jota in a car accident in 2025.

Sharing of Romano's posts particularly during transfer season has been almost ubiquitous on r/soccer in recent years, but yesterday the moderators announced that they would be banning posts of Romano's content on the subreddit in the near future:

Announcement: Fabrizio Romano content to be banned on /r/soccer : r/soccer

The OP, which has been pinned, is lengthy and discusses Romano's reporting and controversies as well as the general state of Romano-related content and its reception on the subreddit already and the pros and cons of this ban, but sums itself up in this enlarged quote:

>Our conclusion? Fabrizio Romano content represents little overall benefit to this community, and that he does offer does not sufficiently address the downside of platforming him.

The top commenters see the funny side of proceedings and trot out Romano's own oft-mocked mannerisms:

>Fabrizio only wanted r/football

Here we go!

The mods only wanted Ornstein

Others are more earnest in their support:

>Well deserved. I know banning individual sources is a slippery slope but Romano has long since crossed the line of simply being another voice in the sport.

Yeah, plus it's patently obvious he's a paid mouth piece for some clubs (us [Chelsea FC] included may I add), disseminates information on their behest.

HITLER DEAD

But other others are less impressed by the move, as discussion turns to whether this is proportionate, popularly supported, or if there's a point to it all:

>I’m not a fan of Romano, but saying a football journalist should be banned and one of the reasons being “Romano has close associations with many clubs and agents” is outright insanity from mods. How do you think all journalists get their scoops and exclusives?

People will do anything but reduce their screentime

I get that he's a bit of a knob, but it's hard to argue that he's irrelevant to the sport of soccer. If he were, you wouldn't need a ban.

Some phrases in the OP get singled out for rebuke:

>"with a more vested interest in the values and vision of r /soccer" --- Get over yourselves it's really not that deep lol

No stake in the game and dont care either way, but "This is a response to the ever-growing disquiet from the community, as evidenced by comments in Romano threads" Is hardly an argument, because a thread specifically about someone will only have the people with a strong opinion talking. (REPLY: I look forward to the ban on Arsenal based on that logic lmao)

A bit more scrolling and sorting by controversial brings more in the way of spats, including some long chains of removed comments (one, sitting further down on -129, which strangely seems to have been originally posted by a mod themselves), some comparisons to North Korea and the populist rhetoric of our time, and general disagreement on whether Romano content is indeed bereft of value or if the people who enjoy it are merely 'pathetic'.

Ultimately, the sign-off on the OP itself probably sums it up:

>We know not everyone will be happy - there's 10 million users here, it's an impossible task

And the end of the pros and cons discussion:

>You are just morally grandstanding, get over yourself - yup, we are a bit. We do be like that as r/soccer mods and that's how we shape our community. We accept this as a criticism and you are free to think this of us.

I've noticed that for a long time (like since the early 2000s at least), Heart have pretty much always played 'Alone' live as a slower stripped-down track with Nancy Wilson on acoustic guitar rather than in the original style as a mid-tempo, keyboard-led power ballad. I quite like both versions, although I guess maybe the way they play it live feels a bit more timeless while the studio version felt quintessentially 80s. What are some other notable examples of artists generally performing one of their own songs live in a different style to how they originally recorded it?