Ne Moe Imya

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.

This is almost exactly the opposite to how I see this. If, in their worst season, they are unlikely to finish lower than 3rd, then all the more reason to take the hit, have a bad season or two (remember, we're still talking about them finishing 3rd, even in those "bad" seasons) and build for the future to challenge on all fronts again. Bring in a few pre-peak players and build around the likes of Gavi and Pedri. If, instead, you sell a quarter of all your future revenues, you need to be talking about a MASSIVE improvement to take that sort of risk. You need to be going from 12-1 long shots to win the CL to favourites. Not adding Christensen, Raphinha and an aging Lewandowski. For that level of risk to be worth taking you need to be locking down a player like Mbappe for the long-term. What does Lewandowski do to their chances of winning La Liga next season? Probably takes it from maybe 20% to 25%? It's hardly a meaningful difference. I mean, it's meaningful, but not in the sense that you'd mortgage your future to see it.

You might think that your country has some serious issues, but then you see Russian state TV covering the deaths of their soldiers like this and realise it could be so much worse. Essentially, the report says "their son died fighting in Ukraine, but his parents were able to buy this Lada with the death benefit. 'We got a white one, just like he'd always dreamed of,' says the father, driving it to the cemetary." If it were a Monty Python sketch you'd say it was too depressing!

I continue to be amazed at how many of that type of post we see. We are easily one of the best 3 well-run clubs in all of football, have assembled perhaps the finest team that LFC has ever had, and STILL people whinge that we need more signings. And then, if we were to make a signing, the whinging would start again as soon as we lose a game. Take a deep breath, Leyton. Liverpool have the best manager and one of the best squads in all of Europe!

Yeah, I too assumed that must have been a typo. Would be shocked if he earns over 50k/week. Probably more like 20-30k.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, so if you are I apologise, but that speech is one of the best summaries I've heard of the situation. It's not "fear-mongering" to say that Russia is brutally murdering people in Ukraine. It's a simple statement of fact.

That is insane. It's not like she shot him with a handgun, either. That bullet is from a full-on hunting rifle, unless I miss my guess. Trying to imagine his wife loading a bolt-action rifle and shooting him in the face only to not even do him in!

I actually think they will try to get the SuperLeague off the ground again. That would make their sale of their future La Liga TV money make sense. Sell 10% of your league TV money, then join a new SuperLeague so that the La Liga contract is much less valuable. No idea what their plan is if that goes as well as it did last time.

That's St Augustine - it's supposed to look like that, basically. The wife convinced me last year to spend hundreds of dollars and a few days of labour ripping out the St Augustine and then she seeded it with something called Zoysia, which looks about 10% better, in exchange for being about twice as much maintenance. No, I'm not bitter about it at all. Why do you ask?

Thought we had a thread on this but I don't see it. What is Laporte doing over at Barca? Football has seen a lot of short-termism and bad decision-making, but he's got it going on at an epic scale over there this summer. Trying to drive one of their best young players, Frenkie De Jong, out of the club, even going so far as to ask him to not take his deferred salary (a move he agreed to in order to help them get their books through La Liga's financial regulations last year). And all the while, buying players like the 34-year old Lewandowski and Raphinha, who are ... good, but hardly going to be superstars in the medium- or longer-term? And even all of this is nothing compared to the salary situation. They have huge debts, negative working capital and now have sold off a significant portion of their future TV income to get enough money to ... get Kessie and Christensen on the books without running afoul of La Liga's finance requirements? Utterly bizarre. I'm not saying I buy the "Barca are going bust in 3 years" panic-mongers on Twitter, but they are certainly making some decisions that might be OK in the very short term but are going to come back to bite them hard within 5 years or so. Really hoping De Jong just tells them "no" when they ask him again to move to United without receiving his deferred wages. Now that they've put pen to paper with Lewandowski they absolutely have to have that deal go through in order to get through La Liga's process this summer. If United were to call them and say "now we want to pay 10m less" they'd basically have to just take it - they'll be that desperate. Otherwise there is no way they'll be able to register some of the players they've just purchased, they've put themselves in a position where they have basically zero leverage over the situation and everyone knows it.

Depends, really. In Russia it's kind of like the reverse of the rule in the West - there the wealthy live in flats and the poor live in houses built on the land. The flats there are only slightly different, in terms of quality and amenities, to those in the West (with the massive exception that the entryways are SHOCKINGLY run down). The standalone houses are about 50-50 in terms of indoor plumbing, at least where I lived. And all of them are heated by starting an actual coal fire in the furnace box, meaning when it gets down to -40 or lower you're getting up at some point during the night to stoke your fire just to avoid freezing.

In an absolute classic of the genre, Putin today announced that he was "very surprised" to see the official statistics that very few schools across the Russian Federation are connected to proper heating. Only been in office for 23 years. I'm sure he'll get a handle on why there's such endemic poverty and turn it all around any day now. (And yes, it's all in Russian, so you'll have to take my word for it that's what he's saying.)

Fair enough. And for what it's worth, I might disagree with you about some things but I appreciate that you are arguing in good faith.

Why? I think it's very likely that Russia will end up with Slovyansk and Kramatorsk before the end of July, but it's also very likely that Ukraine will begin to mop them up afterwards. I simply do not understand the thinking that Russia is guaranteed a piece of Ukraine when all is said and done. It's said as if it's simply obvious, and it would be absurd to think otherwise but Ukraine is going to crush Russia's army in the long term and I simply don't see how you can't see that. Russia is right now about two months past their high water mark in this war, their Wehrmacht-in-Stalingrad, if you will. It's been all retreating and dying since then. I mean sure, when they pulled out of Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy they had some extra troops to throw into the Donbas, but here we are two months later and they've taken ... Severodonetsk? One medium-sized city? Haven't even taken Lysychansk yet (though they surely will in the days to come). As time goes on, the balance of forces is going to move more and more strongly into Ukraine's hands. They have run out of ammo for their pre-war ex-Soviet weapons, and the Western systems are still pouring in and coming online. So yes, this is a bit of a low ebb, at least in the tiny corner of the Donbas they're fighting over right now, but they're still going to win over the longer term (say, by next spring) unless something really unexpected happens. The only way it won't happen is if we get bored or begin an appeasement process to avoid making Russia angry (as if they could do any more than they are already!) and stop shipping them the arms they need to win. It's as simple now as "get the Ukrainians the weapons they need and they will win," period. All we have to do is stay the course.

For context, this is what's going on in Russia at the moment, the level of propaganda they're spouting. They've run out of any reasonable threats so now it's just "give in now so we don't nuke Amsterdam." These people are literally insane, you can't reason with them!

I feel like I'm going insane just reading those posts. As NV says above, escalation to what? You can't "escalate" things when the level they're already at is "I will murder everyone who doesn't bow the knee to my power!" The only thing you can do with such a person is defeat them. Again, the word "escalation" makes absolutely no sense, either by you or whatever journalist you're quoting. You think Russia is holding back? They are the ones who escalated this war to the maximum possible level!

The answer to the question has a lot to do with how they leave, doesn't it? I mean, if Trent plays with us for 12 more years and then retires at 35, I'll be sad he's out of the team, but I won't exactly mourn. Alternatively, if Klopp leaves and then he publicly demands a transfer to Madrid because they're offering to double his wage, well, then I'll walk him to the door myself. So neither of those two scenarios would be that sad. But if he really wants to stay but 2 years from now City offer us 150m and FSG decide to take the money because they calculate he's not worth that much, that would make me really, really sad.

Could you explain what you mean by this? I don't understand how it is possible to escalate full-scale warfare, unless you mean to take it nuclear. Russia is already throwing every conventional force they have into this war - I'm not sure what they are meant to do to respond to the US giving a few HIMARS systems that can shoot missiles a bit further than the ones Ukraine already has?