Moctezuma

Agreed, but United have always been wealthy and commercially savy. In addition they benefited from a country wide support post the Busby babes tragedy and were successful during a period where the game was rehabilitated and repackaged on mass to the middle classes, whilst one could claim this was luck they were also operating from the basis of being one of the two biggest sides in the country (the year they were relegated to the second division they had the highest average attendance in England). I don't know whether that can be seen as doping per se or making the the most of your commercial work/success as Liverpool have done recently.

I think there is an over reliance on the notion of the 'cycle' in football and that there are multiple competitions available to the larger clubs in England, I think those things hide to a certain extent monopolistic or duopolistic issues in England (this less the case in Germany, Italy and France).

3 financially doped sportswashing operations making up the 4 semi final places along with a legacy club that has relied on significant benevolent state support in the past. Football has always been dominated by money, but I can't remember it being so egregious and rubbed in your face in the highest echelon of the game. City's continuing dominance of the domestic game hardly seems to raise an eyebrow anymore either, if they were to win the league at a canter again and a domestic Cup next year would anyone talk about what is happening? Everyone in the media held that they were poor last year as they amassed 81 points, won the league Cup and charity shield, made the semi finals of the FA Cup and Quater finals of the champions league. I think in retrospect what Liverpool achieved during 19/20 was absolutely incredible as was keeping pace with Dynamo Abu Dhabi the year before and that over time that achievement will only grow as the monopoly/duopoly of the financially doped clubs with an occasional appearance from United or ourselves sets in.

I think there is definitely a distinction with 'Scousers, Manc's and Geordies' not seen as negatively as those from 'Englandshire' (that later word often dripping with a level of xenophobia that is hard to communicate). As is well known a decent chunk of the population have a baseline level of dislike for the 'English' which gets exacerbated by the Scotland voting in a completely separate way from England (see Brexit and numerous recent General Elections), it's difficult to disentangle this as I find in general people aren't that into thinking about their prejudices, but mentions of the large northern towns with identifiable cultural characteristics are usually met with some modicum of acknowledgement that they are in a similar boat.

I've always wondered about this, has anyone ever written an article or recorded audio/a podcast on why this didn't occur? Was it the fact Everton were from a Methodist route with Liverpool being formed as after a board/commercial dispute, thus not having the straight antagonism the two Glasgow club would have derived from oppositional community links? I vaguely remember relatives indicating Everton were loosely seen as the team Catholics were more likely to support back in the 50's/60's, but that eroded with Liverpool's success, the high number of Irish players and the bonds through the Celtic connections.

Now careful that kind of chat will result in a job offer from Reach

Won't it just mean that you'll go past more doors with one hundred companies listed on their directories, but with no actual office staff on site as it's all run out of London/Caymans/Jersey/Panama/Ireland tax dodging axis.

With regards the lock down lifting at this point it's a hard numbers calculation, I do fear running a considerable background rate will still; gum up the NHS, result in more variants, increase excess deaths for other conditions as services are still under a heavy strain. About 2 weeks ago we had a horrible run of 30 somethings hitting ITU having had a very quick escalation of the virus post initially being picked up, thankfully that seems to have calmed down and was just an anomaly produced by people in that age group being more exposed in workplaces as the ID work didn't confirm a variant we are unaware of. I note among neighbours and some staff the lack of understanding of large data sets and statistics is linked to lockdown scepticism/susceptibility to media and PR narratives around quicker opening of society and the economy. One of the issues in the UK is the poor levels of Maths within the population at large and the ability to convey risks associated through graphical form. The vaccine clinic work is going well, good to be firing through the ICU staff and high risk renal and haem patients with second doses. One thing that has been observable is the number of people coming to be vaccinated who are staffing food banks and other voluntary outreach organisations seems to be pretty considerable when compared with local government staff in social care, perhaps if the government were to invest a bit more in the latter they might not need as much of the former.

Really sad news. Perhaps the BBC and other outlets that were promulgating the use of terms like 'cracking up' in relation to him should have a look at themselves, particularly when we are meant to be more aware of mental health within our society.

Buy a centre half you twirps Ron Yeats, Alan Hansen or Van Dyke level please, easy this transfer lark.

Completely agree with this. It's the constant smoke blown up their backside by the toadys in the press and fan media while leaving the squad massively short in certain areas which is grating, the centre back thing has basically not been acknowledged at all. Hahaha was going to post the above in the summer, but never got round to it.

I don't think he'll walk, but if I was in his position I'd be very tempted, I get the impression they have pulled this stuff with him on multiple occasions. I think we may end up looking back on this period of time as a huge missed opportunity not to have accrued more titles, which has certainly been a factor when Klopp has looked at this bench in the various finals he has been involved in with the club.

I think in Scotland they are really trying to target the care homes due to the stick Nicola got first time round for that, I hope your dad gets it soon. My folks haven't heard yet while my aunt in the North West had it today. I'm sorry to hear people have relatives and friends in hospital I hope they get better. We managed to vaccinate 700+ yesterday including a decent chunk of the high risk renal patients. We had load of community care workers too the relief was palpable on some peoples faces. Ended up working 19 hours yesterday with that and the national data updates for the patient group I'm involved with. To be fair yesterday while busy was infinitely better than the day beforehand when we scrapping the barrel running around the hospital trying to get the scared and the refuseniks from the staff to have theirs. It's mad how group think works, I was on one step down ward where two of the nursing staff are ardent antivaxxers* and it's just spread to the rest of them, I and a SpR went to each of them individually managed to get one domestic cleaner, one nurse and one caterer to come. There was a HCA (healthcare assistant) who I spoke to who said she didn't want it as she wanted to see how the other staff felt afterwards, we were standing all of 2 meters away from a woman of her age who had just been moved from ICU and was on oxygen support, baffling... the forces personnel who were there at the time couldn't get their head around it I think the general disinformation in the population is having a deleterious impact on the staff given comments I've heard (even regarding family members). I challenged a couple of lads on the bus this morning about it when they were gassing loudly about not getting the lockdowns (of course with their masks around their chins). One of them said "they show us bodies all the time on the news of war zones why don't they show us what's happening". *The stuff they were quoting at me was the usual shite in the population, but the thing they kept returning to was they didn't 'believe' in the vaccines, I'm not really sure where you can go at that point other than to leave the door open i.e. that they can speak to the lead pharmacist/ ID/ microbiology consultants.

Just want to note that Simon the lead consultant in this is one of the nicest most decent human beings I've ever worked with, it's pish his team are having to go through this. The same is true of Melanie the nurse interviewed on the BBC's piece last night. Managed to process and round-up 326 for the vaccine clinic today. Hopefully can get more done next week and start eating into the high risk patients. I hadn't seen the sky report when I asked about the NHS question earlier, good to see some of the issues on the paediatric side being highlighted to the public.

Just to check what is people's view of where the NHS is up to in the effected areas? Had a call yesterday with a number of senior professors that at the end descended into idle speculation as to the way the pandemic is being reported. Might not be the best group to ask as most of you are politically engaged.