Ne Moe Imya

That is genuinely amazing. I am struggling to believe it isn't a parody. Never seen such a bunch of word salad in all my life! "we introduced and embedded revolutionary new solutions" "when quality improvements were needed across the sector" "we have pushed the sector to reach new heights" Could have just summed it up in 10 seconds by saying "it's probably important to make sure our employees are satisfied with their jobs." Feel free to pass this advice along to them, I can bill them later for my consultancy services.

That Leicester match is the one that came to mind. I think they were second in the league at the time? We absolutely played them off the park and you just knew we were watching something truly special.

I was saying the same thing tonight. I remember that 12/13 season Suarez hit the bar about 10-12 times. The next season is when he went supernova. All I'm saying is, watch out next season, he could score 30.

This is all true, but it's equally true for them. China is just as dependent on the West for economic growth as the West is on China. Not saying war is totally impossible, because obviously the holes in Friedman's theories about economic linkages and war are there for all of us to see at this point. But it does mean that it would take a really, really foolish decision by the Chinese leadership to actually go to war over Taiwan. The economic devastation on both sides would be unprecedented.

The best example of this sort of thing was when Putin played in an exhibition match against professional hockey players and scored 8 goals to lead his team to a 14-7 victory. Some of the defending and goalkeeping is quite comical to watch, you can almost feel the players caught between needing to make it look like they're putting in effort, but not enough to actually stop him.

Probably the biggest potential problem with bringing in Alonso is that he will be linked to Madrid in the press every time they lose a game. And he'll probably go there at some point, too. You'd like to think we'd get 4-5 years out of him first, but if he's successful with Liverpool, then the next time they need a manager you know whom they're going to call.

I don't have a problem with an ex-player being given the job, as long as they aren't given the job because they're an ex-player. If Alonso had never played for Liverpool, or even had never played at all, he'd still be talked about as one of the best young managers out there based on what he's done at Leverkusen. It's not like Gerrard where he did well his first few years at Rangers and then has been mediocre ever since.

So with Klopp leaving, you'd have to think the first priority is to sort out the Sporting Director (or whatever we're calling it) position, and then to have that person help direct the search for a new manager. I humbly suggest that there is only one man for the job. OK, Klopp wanted a bit more power and he resigned as a result. That is no longer going to be the case, and he's not currently working for a different club so there's no negotiation and no feeling of him not seeing out his commitment somewhere. Bring Ian Graham back, give Micky Edwards whatever he wants and get the band back together, I say.

I reckon De Zerbi or Alonso are the obvious choices, though I was listening to a podcast today that made a good case for the Sporting manager, Amorim. Just went and looked it up and he has a 70% win record there, which is pretty good for the 3rd biggest club in the country.

I actually think the tactical question is really important. Alonso looks for all the world like he'll be one of the top managers in the world in a few years if he carries on, and with the Liverpool connection it's an obvious link to make. But his possession-based style is completely different to the identity Klopp has installed and to the actual players on our squad, to be honest. Not to mention that the whole youth setup is driven by that same Klopp-style pressing game. Think of it this way - if you had the chance to bring in Guardiola right now, would you? On the one hand, after he had a chance to change up the players and coach for a season or two, he might bring 5 or 10 straight years of top football. On the other, maybe you want to stick with the identity we have already and find someone more in that mould - it's not like there aren't any other managers out there who play something closer to what Klopp has been doing at Liverpool. I think that the first big hire will be the sporting director position, and then that person will have a lot to say about whether we switch to something like what Alonso is playing at Leverkusen or stick with our current high-tempo football.

Nusa and Olise are fine players, but if we're looking at getting someone who can even halfway reproduce what Salah does we have to aim really, really high. Not that we have to have someone who's immediately going to come in and score 25/season starting next year, but they have to have the potential to do it within 2-3 seasons. Wirtz, maybe, though he usually plays in the centre. The list of players at that level is actually pretty short, especially if you take out the untouchables (Mbappe, Haaland, Vinicius, etc). Musiala, Osimhen, Kvaratskhelia, Simons, maybe? I don't know, it sort of drops off, although I'm sure I'm forgetting a few. And none of them would come cheap. Hopefully our recruitment team has a good plan, because Salah is a really difficult player to replace.

Never underestimate the stupidity of the public, but I still honestly think that Biden gets another 4 years. A lot of independents are currently polling for Trump, but that's only because the news coverage of the race is still him vs. DeSantis and Haley. Once it's all Trump all the time on the networks again, his insanity is going to be brought back to mind. I don't think it'll make it totally uncompetitive but it'll lose him 3-4 points and when things are this tight, that's probably all it would take.

I'm still not sure this is bad for Liverpool at all. He wasn't going to play for us for the next couple of weeks either way, but this way, instead of exhausting himself with all these AFCON games, he's being rehabbed by physios that will have his fitness for the rest of the season as their top priority. Hopefully he'll come back fully fit and rested instead of being plugged back into our lineup with all those extra minutes in his legs.

You just know people like this would be the first ones complaining when inflation reaches 20% due to everything having to travel to Europe all the way around Africa because the Houthis stopped ships going through the Red Sea.

Ha! McNulty has obviously been caught forgetting to switch over to his burner Twitter account. His "I was hacked" excuse is not going to fool anyone with a brain.

The second line here is underrated IMO.

As someone who ran a business in Russia for a decade, let me just say that every single statistic on jobs/economic indicators in the country is more or less completely made up. I kid you not, the way the government determined how many employees I had working for me was for the bureau of statistics to call me every quarter and just ask me "how many people work in your factory?" I could have completely made up any number I wanted to (and sometimes they'd ask me if I didn't have a few more I could count). It was bizarre. Granted, we lived in a very poor part of Siberia, but I know for a fact that unemployment was at least 40%, at least treble what was reported in the official government numbers every year.

2-0 at home, 1-1 away, and then we beat Chelsea 3-0 in the final. Heard it here first.

Is it really Liverpool, Chelsea, Middlesbrough and Fulham in the semi-finals? I know I haven't paid any attention at all to this competition to this point but the early rounds must have been mayhem! Suddenly I'd be disappointed if we don't end up with the trophy. Hard to think of a bad draw tbh. Either we get Chelsea and we can avoid the stress of a final against them, or we get one of the easier teams and you'd have to think we'd be very heavy favourites to make the final. Fulham is probably the worst draw for us, as you might fancy them to give Chelsea a game.

That Trump card video is actually amazing. Biden should record a TV ad where he basically just says "America, I know I haven't been perfect. But are you really going to elect a straight-up scam artist who sells you digital cards for $99?" and then play clips from Trump's own video.

Villa? Who from the Villa squad makes our first XI? One player? Maybe two? I understand it's a frustrating result, but "we are so far behind Villa in quality that it is frightening" is a laughable thing to say.

Too many people on here watched the match with Gary Neville commentating, I see. Honestly, we were unlucky. Yes, we weren't great, but we stifled them completely and we were quite unfortunate not to see one of those chances tucked away. 2-0 wouldn't have flattered us at all.

If we in the West can't find a way to give the Ukrainians what they need to defeat the Russian invasion, then maybe we deserve the civilizational collapse that's coming. It is utterly baffling how the US is actually paying companies huge fees to disassemble tanks and IFVs for scrap at the same time they tell Ukraine that they don't have any to spare. This whole thing could have been over and done with already and everyone in Europe would be so much safer if we had just given them what they needed. Even now, we could still do it and it could be over in 6 months or less. Heaven forbid Trump wins the US election next year. He will try to force the Ukrainians into some sort of settlement where they abandon entire districts to be ethnically cleansed and mass raped by the Russians, the Ukrainians will inevitably refuse, and then we'll see him slowly reveal himself to actually be on the Russian side all along, maybe even to the point of providing the Russians with aid. All in the name of "peace," of course.

Genuinely don't understand how people haven't understood by now that finishing is about 80% pure luck. I mean, granted, every now and again there's a player like Messi who consistently finishes way above their expected goals numbers over the long-term, but those are actually much rarer than you'd think. The truth is that you'd FAR rather have a striker who's "getting into position to miss them" than one who scores every chance but doesn't get that many, because as soon as the finishing fairy gets done with the latter player he turns out to be just Michu or Chamakh or whatever. Even Suarez his first season and a half with us fell victim to this. Hit the post a million times, very patchy finishing. Then he went on to be one of the best strikers in world football for 7 years! Not worried about Nunez. He's scoring or assisting about every 100 minutes even now, and when his finishing returns to the mean he'll be scoring 30/season for us.

Just to clarify, at no point is this shark trying to eat me. I had just shot a fish and he was undoubtedly attracted by the fish thrashing around. You will see me load my speargun in the clip, but not to spear the shark (I don't even pull the bands back), I just needed a sharp-tipped object to poke him in the nose with to scare him away.