Ne Moe Imya

Just sat here imagining Gnasher as one of those Americans in spring 1941 when Churchill was begging America for more aid and Lend Lease was getting off the ground going "why are we spending so much defending these ungrateful Brits?"

Utterly amazed to read this thread and what's been posted here over the past few days. He has 15 shots in 180 minutes of football! He's completely different from the other players we've had in that position recently, as he's basically a black hole when it comes to passing, but what he does offer is just so, so valuable for our team. I have no doubt that we can figure it out, work on blending him with Salah better, etc, but he will come good for sure. The problem in our team right now is that the midfield is just not working. Has nothing to do with Darwin.

Someone on twitter has posted that he would now hold the record in our squad for total transfer fees paid throughout his career. I total it up at 120m euros in transfer fees, between what Barca and then Juventus paid for him (clearly some odd finances about the latter transfer). Would that be the highest in our squad? Van Dijk at about 90m is the highest I can think of, between Celtic, Southampton, and Liverpool. Edit: apparently Benfica paid 24m euros for Nunez, so if you add in all the add-ons to his fee to move here, he might be just higher than Arthur.

This is a really good question but there is more than a hint that he was brought in as part of some financial shenanigans and I wouldn't be surprised if the answer were related to that. As a signing, it's pretty much a "meh." Probably reduces the very small risk of us finishing outside the top 4 but other than that, doesn't do much. Decent passer, retains the ball well, but not much else. I look forward to him being blamed every time we drop points.

Don't get the hostility towards the Arthur deal. Makes sense to me, actually. Especially if the alternative was Douglas Luiz! All everyone's been complaining about is that we need to bring forward the deal for Bellingham, we need someone in immediately, etc. If we absolutely can't do that because the selling club won't do the deal, then it makes much more sense to bring a Plan B (or even C) signing in on loan than to spend 20m on someone we really don't want that much. If it's just "bring in a warm body who is of average PL standard to hold the fort down until next summer" then a loan is logical. Douglas Luiz would have cost 20m + wages for the next 4-5 years, possibly limiting who we can target next summer. The Arthur deal doesn't. He's about as good as Luiz, more or less, which is to say he's about the same level as Oxlade-Chamberlain when he's not crocked. Average league player, more or less. So he's fine to have on the bench or to play 1500 minutes to give Thiago and Keita a rest now and then, and then we have no long-term commitment to him past this season. It reduces our "floor" of potential results and though it doesn't raise our "ceiling" much, that's fine.

Russia is never going to withdraw unless they lose the war. I know you all can't watch the Russian media but I do, and trust me, the rhetoric has gone so far beyond the pale that there is zero chance of Putin ever agreeing to withdraw their troops. Half of Russia believes (and their television tells them every night) that Ukrainians are Nazi war criminals, torturing schoolchildren for speaking Russian and constructing gas chambers for anyone who was born in the Soviet Union. The other half are too terrified to speak out against this obvious nonsense for fear of imprisonment. If you want Putin to withdraw Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, there is only one choice - you have to defeat the Russian army on the battlefield. There is no other alternative. There are certain people in history that you simply can not negotiate with in any way, shape or form. They are too amoral and their grasp on power too certain to make them respect anything other than force. Chamberlain discovered this too late with Hitler, and we have all learned it too late with Putin.

You can make the argument that Luiz is of more use to our squad than Naby because he is healthy enough to play 3000 minutes/season, but there is no chance that he is a better player than him if they're both actually fit to be in the squad. And the comparison to Jota & Gini is crazy as well - those were two players where their numbers popped off the page, even though they were underrated by the fanbases of the clubs we bought them from (I'll give you Robbo, which was a much less obvious signing by the numbers). At best Luiz is of the level of Oxlade-Chamberlain, just available more often. I predict if we sign him the same people who celebrate his signing will be the first ones to scapegoat him for every game he plays in which we drop points. I guess I just don't see the point, looking at the bigger picture. Without Luiz, we probably finish 2nd on 80-85 points this season. Maybe 3rd. With him, we're still not going to win the league, so why bother? It's not like he's going to be a starter for us in 3-4 years, at least if we are playing at the levels we all hope we are by then! Maybe best case scenario he makes us 1-2% more likely to win the CL? Just don't think the deal improves us significantly, I guess. I could be wrong (I certainly was with Robertson, who I felt similarly about).

Douglas Luiz is pretty much a bang-average midfielder the last couple of years. Not garbage, but certainly not one to get excited about. Curtis Jones puts up numbers comfortably better than his, to take one example. I'm not saying I'd say no, exactly, but it's not exactly one to get excited about. Maybe he's better than Bajcetic and we can get our money back in a year or two anyway if his wages aren't too high? I guess that would be the argument to make that deal, if you were looking to make one.

This is a pretty good argument, actually. I wonder if the sports science team was trying to get the players ready for an incredibly intense season (thanks again, FIFA!) and overdid it a bit? If that were to be the case, the argument to maybe target a player we were looking at next season and move it up to this summer, even if it cost an extra 10m or whatever, would make some sense.

Do we? I'm not being flippant, I just don't know that major investment is the issue. Apart from replacing Henderson with a Tchouameni-level player, I can't think of a signing that offers a huge upgrade from our starting XI today, really. If we're just talking about adding someone so we can go from finishing 2nd on 84 points to finishing 2nd with 88 points ... what's the point, really? The thing we have been missing so far this season is intensity, for some reason. And I have no idea why. Apart from Diaz, Harvey, and Carvalho, we are miles off the pace. I don't think the issue is the players - they've shown they can do it before. But why has Salah suddenly started looking like Solanke? Or what is happening with Fabinho being second to every loose ball all of a sudden? I don't think investment/transfers is the solution, at least not for most of the things that have been ailing us to this point in the season.

You've missed off having the poetic chops of the Vogons.

LinkedIn is a traditional hotbed of corporate bellendary, but this particular post is amazing, even for there:

The best part of this whole thing is actually the Hillary email thing. Those emails are the reason that Trump himself was the one to sign a bill into law 6 years ago raising the punishment for possession of classified information from one year to 5. It's going to be pure and utter karma if he's charged with that in the end. Also there's no end of clips of Republican lawmakers and strategists on television saying "law enforcement has to prosecute anyone who keeps classified documents" because at the time it was thought Hillary had some.

The difference in total cost/season is massive. Nunez: £85m fee + £10m agents fees (?)/6 seasons = £15.8m/season + £5.2m/season wages = £21m total player cost/season Haaland: £51m fee + £35m agents' fees/5 seasons = £17.2m/season + £19.5m/season wages = £36.7m total player cost/season Anyone pretending that Nunez cost as much as Haaland doesn't know what they're talking about, and I'm using all the add-ons in that price as well (I'm guessing on the agents' fees for Nunez as they weren't reported but £10m is probably the top end, given he didn't have a release clause and wasn't represented by a superagent). Our most expensive player ever, as measured in total cost/season remains Van Dijk at about £25m/season.

Gonna score 25 of the absolute worst goals you've ever seen this season. Bounces off his arse, deflections, goalkeeper errors, the lot.

This is precisely what I expect to happen. If they can get a Superleague off the ground in the next 5 years without any of the English teams, then it might compete with the Premier League. But I think if the league can hold them off for 10 more years, by then the financial power will be so concentrated in the Premier League that the Premier League will be ensconced in permanent power, at least for the rest of this economic cycle. Fortunately, the last SuperLeague rollout was such a disaster that it staved off any chance of it being revived for a little while. But you can bet that Juve and especially Barca and Real Madrid are watching the Premier League hoover up the TV money around the globe and the idea will rear its ugly head again soon enough.

Russians actually have a saying that translates as "final Chinese warning" that basically means "ridiculously obvious bluff." It goes back to the 50s and 60s when Mao would come out with outrageous bluster any time anyone in the West mentioned Taiwan in any way at all, threatening nuclear holocaust and the like. After a while, it becomes very "boy who cried wolf" and they just look silly.

I'm also going to have a go at predicting the Liverpool forwards and their goal tallies in all comps for the season, just so I can come back and laugh at how wrong I was at the end of it: Salah - 26 Nunes - 23 Jota - 16 Diaz - 15 Firmino - 9

1. Man City 2. Liverpool 3. Tottenham 4. Chelsea 5. Arsenal 6. Man Utd 7. Newcastle 8. Aston Villa 9. West Ham 10. Wolves 11. Brighton 12. Leicester 13. Everton 14. Palace 15. Southampton 16. Leeds 17. Forest 18. Brentford 19. Fulham 20. Bournemouth

Do you know which one she got? I'm quite curious as to whether the sub-1000 models will last me the 2-3 years I'm going to need if it's going to pay for itself in petrol savings.

So, dropping the weird non-argument you two are having, going back to this video - I haven't seen it, but I have been assured that you should definitely NOT watch it if you come across it. Nightmare stuff, apparently. The most depressing thing for me has been watching the response of Russians on social media. Pretty sickening, a lot of "he got what was coming to him" and accusations that all Ukrainians are paedos and the like. A few have condemned it but they're getting pelters from the uber-patriots and then most everyone falls in line when that happens. It's pretty vile.

Funny this popped up today, I was just talking with someone about how I've enjoyed commuting the 7 miles/10 km to my office by bicycle, but in the summer it isn't any fun on the way in. I get to the office all sweaty and then have no way to do anything about it. I have taken to having my wife drive me in and drop me and the bike off, and then I bike home. My friend has recently purchased an e-bike and suggested that could solve my problem. I could ride it in mostly on the little electric motor and then ride it back as a regular bicycle. It would change a few things about the ride, but the main advantage is in getting to work without being soaked in sweat. I have spent the day watching videos about various e-bikes and trying to calculate the money I'd save in petrol. I reckon I'd save roughly $50/month, meaning in a year I could more or less save the price of the bike itself, if I got one of the cheaper options. Any of you have one? Am I daft for considering this? Just like Ron, I'm interested in people who own them and use them, especially as to the longevity of the things (don't want to throw that much money down on something that will irreparably break inside a year or two).

Ooh, are we all making predictions? I'm going to guess that he ends up the 2nd leading scorer on our team. Though I do expect that to be a very close-run competition with Diaz and Jota (behind Mo, obviously). So maybe 25 in all comps for Mo, 20 for Nunez, and 15 each for Jota and Diaz? One of those will be half that, probably, but I'm going to stick with that as my guess as I have no idea which of them it will be.

They just announced Lewandowski. So they sold a quarter of all their TV rights and merchandising for all of time so that they could stiff Frenkie de Jong on his wages and then bring in Kessie, Raphinha, and a 34 year old striker. Probably finish 3rd this season and go out in the quarterfinals of the CL. Then what? I mean, if they had taken the summer off, sold some deadwood, accepted that there were a few lean years ahead, they could have built a squad to challenge on all fronts around Gavi/Pedri/de Jong/Fati by 2024 or 2025. Instead, they've put it all on red, and even if it hits and they win a trophy next season they'll be selling one of those players next summer to afford the next transfer binge. Makes absolutely no sense what they're doing.