Ne Moe Imya

You have to look at opportunity cost as a real cost. Having Salah on the books only to leave for free costs us around 72m - 60m that we could have had as a fee plus 12m in wages. By comparison, our most expensive player in our history, Virgil, costs us 25m/season in fee amortisation + wages. There is no way we are going to keep Salah for his final year for 72m, unless there is just absolutely no option at all. We either are convinced he will eventually sign a new deal or he'll be sold, that'd be my guess, at any rate. Your point about the loss of continuity is well taken but if we really don't think he'll sign a new deal, then it's a huge risk to bring him back.

Putin is dropping the mask a bit lately, with his admission that the war had nothing to do with NATO and was just a naked land grab, and now this threat against Germany on his main state TV programme:

It was always pretty comical when he made that statement. What else could it possibly have been about? "Better sporting project?" Er, where? "Better fans?" Where? "More money?" Oh, yeah, that one makes sense, I'm sure PSG or Real will pay you more than Liverpool.

None of that, by the way, applies to his war analysis, which I think is naive almost to the point of being laughable. Russia will never stop oppressing/murdering Ukrainians until she is defeated on the field of battle - any talk of negotiated settlements, etc. is just delaying their next attack for a year or two so they can learn from their mistakes, retool and rearm. No amount of compromise is going to deter Putin from his course because he personally will suffer zero consequences from it, and he cares absolutely nothing for the poor Russians who will.

I think RP is arguing in good faith, I just think he's displaying a flaw in human nature that makes it difficult for us to compare complex issues well. There has never been, and will never be a perfect society. So we look around at our society and see lots of flaws, and think "we should change this to be better." Which is a good and noble instinct, and has brought humanity from the depths of oppressive regimes to where we are today (in a significantly less oppressive regime). It is this very instinct that also makes us a bit blind to much, much bigger problems in other societies. We see that their nations stands against ours, ours has flaws, ergo there is a part of us that wants them to defeat our flawed country so we can replace it with something better. The problem is that often, the other side is much, MUCH worse. A fact I'm sure RP would agree with, by the way. I am certain that his fixation with the problems of Europe and the West are just down to his genuine desire to see those problems fixed, and not a belief that we should be more like Russia. It's just that this fixation leads to a constant distortion of reality when it comes to the way he describes the problems of the world today, because if you're convinced your society should change, then it's awfully hard to celebrate it as the most just one in the world (even if that is patently obvious to be true).

I can personally assure you that this ruble rate is a complete fabrication. I left a power of attorney for a friend to complete the paperwork on the sale of my flat when I left Russia a couple of years back. Then the pandemic happened and ... well, let's just say I have a huge pile of rubles sitting in a Russian bank account there, waiting for the day I can return and somehow figure out a way to get the money out to the West. So, with the near-miraculous recovery of the ruble over the past month or so, I told my friend with the POA to go down to my bank and exchange the money into dollars for me, lock in the exchange rate, so to speak. He just laughed. Banks aren't allowing anyone to transfer rubles into dollars, haven't for about a month, he says. You can find a grey-market broker to do it, cash-for-cash, if you're feeling risky, but you're going to get about 80 rub/$, worse than it was when the war started. So yeah, 55 rubles to the dollar is a complete and total fiction. If it weren't, I'd be a slightly less poor man than I am right now.

I find the hysteria about Severodonetsk to be puzzling. It's a bad thing, sure, but in the broader picture I'm not sure it really matters that much. Except as propaganda for both sides, I guess? I mean, Russia is going to make a huge deal out of taking all of Luhansk province, they are going to claim that the Ukrainians are at the point of collapse, etc. Ukraine is going to use it as a story for the West, how they need more weapons, etc (which at least is true). But in the big picture of the war it just means that the line moves a few kilometers to the West. It's not some strategic key point that then points to the inability of the Ukrainians to hold more territory. The Russians are getting chewed up, the Ukrainians are getting chewed up, and it all seems to be in service to both countries' hype machine more than the actual battle. The Russians have already lost the war, for all intents and purposes. They lost when they had to retreat from Kyiv and it became clear Ukraine was going to continue to exist. The only question now is how much of Ukrainian territory are they going to have to reconquer once they've been fully armed by the West (or, in a darker timeline, where the line is going to be drawn once the West gets bored and stops supporting them). But either way, one or two cities more or less isn't really that crucial, except of course for the poor Ukrainians who will suffer under the occupation in those cities.

Yes, I have friends that are from those countries, and many of their relatives depend on those remittances. But I also know that those countries are under oppressive regimes largely because of their dependence on Russia, and this war, and especially the sanctions are gradually undermining that system. Look at Kazakhstan - a few months ago, they were inviting the Russian army in to keep the peace after protests. Now this week their president, wary of the way his country is exposed to the same kind of military adventurism that is going on in Ukraine, stood up on the same stage as Putin and said that Kazakhstan wouldn't recognise the so-called DNR/LNR republics. Sanctions are a long-term policy. Russia will continue on for months, possibly even a year or two before they really start to bite, but they are already having a material effect on Putin's ability to supply his war machine.

Why on earth would we lift the sanctions? So that we can have cheaper computer chips? Some of you truly are the kind of people who would unplug a stranger's ventilator so you could charge your phone.

I mean, I suppose it's not the exact literal words you said. What I was responding to was this statement by you: ... which, I have to be honest, is splitting hairs pretty finely if you don't think that refers to "long-term injuries." Should I have said "medium-term injuries"?

Seems weird to say this, but I think people are giving Putin too much credit when they say things like this. Putin is aging, there are rumours that he's seriously ill, and he believes his own propaganda. I can almost promise you, if you gave Putin a die to roll and told him there was a 10% chance the world ended in a nuclear fireball and humanity went extinct, but a 90% chance he could restore the Russian empire to its peak and leave a legacy as a great leader of Russia, he'd take that chance in a second. Wouldn't even think twice.

The idea that any team should suffer no significant decline in quality if two of their best midfielders suffer long-term injuries is pretty fanciful, I'd say. Of course we'd look threadbare if Fabinho and Henderson went down for any length of time! Just like we looked threadbare when VVD, Matip, and Gomez were all injured at the same time. We should absolutely have contingencies for injury, but there is a limit to how far you can go with that. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to adding another midfielder, maybe even just a 10m backup-level player (a Taki-level signing, but for centre mid), but I don't think any team, ever, is completely perfect, and if our main weakness is that we only have 5 top CMs, I think we'll survive.

Imagine being far and away the best right back in world football at age 23, and people are still talking about moving you to another position just because you played there as a youth.

£75m (minus the trophy/goal bonuses, which you'd imagine we'll be happy to pay) and £7m/season wages is actually very reasonable, on a 6-year deal. Comes to £12.5m/season amortisation of the fee, and £7m/season in wages takes it to a total player cost of £19.5m/season. If you add in the trophy and goal bonuses it's a total of £21.2m/season. Our most expensive player ever was Virgil at £25m/season total cost, and for comparison Alisson was £18.5/season. So Nunez isn't cheap, but it's not exactly insane, either. The fact that it's 6 years helps a lot, and also means that the overall commitment to him is higher (as is risk) in case he doesn't pan out or has a major injury. Of course the media only reports fees and not total player cost, so it'll look to the less-informed as if he costs similar to Haaland, but in reality it's probably closer to half of Haaland's total cost/season.

You ... you don't think that the sanctions are having an effect? I'm genuinely amazed anyone could think that. All of the major arms manufacturers in Russia are shut down right now, and you don't think that matters to the war? The tank factory in the Urals, the maintenance of all their Sukhoi fighters, all of it, stopped, because they can't get Western parts for their machinery.

Not saying he hasn't been a disappointment but I think Keita still has the highest percentage of wins/games played of any of our players, bar Virgil, so he's not exactly been the steaming pile of shite people pretend.

I would personally be quite surprised if another midfielder didn't come in. I agree with Mega that the level of interest we had in Tchouameni would definitely indicate that we are planning to buy a midfielder. It could be the case that we had budgeted something like 130m in fees and another 300k/week in wages to spend on these two positions, and that one option was to buy Tchouameni and then spend the remaining 45m and 100k/week on a striker. But once Tchouameni wasn't on the table, I could easily imagine a scenario where Ward thought "right, let's just flip it around in terms of who we go after, and spend the big money on Nunez and then get a cheaper midfielder instead." I would imagine that we have a list of potential targets at every position at every price point that would provide good value, and if there was a good target in the 40m range that would sign for 100k/week, that's probably what will happen now. Wouldn't like to really guess who it might be, though. Konrad Laimer would be cheaper than that, I would think? Ibrahima Sangare as well. Not sure who else we've really been linked to, it will probably be one of those out-of-the-blue deals that we've been working on behind closed doors (Ndidi? Vitinha? Or Gavi, if we get really lucky and can take advantage of Barca's financial weakness?).

I'd move it two slots to the left, personally. The people in central Asia where we lived for many years enjoy horse, although I didn't care much for it. But rabbit is quite delicious. My German relatives raise a bunch of them in their barn just for meat. Seemed quite odd the first time we visited, but then they made a spaetzle with rabbit meat and once I tasted it I decided they were definitely on the right side of that line.

Agreed. We would be perfect for him, too. Barca is going to be a MESS for the next 2-3 seasons, he can come here, win a bunch of trophies, and then if he wants he can always move back there in his prime anyway.

I'm sure it's more than that, but I'm also sure it's less than any usual 80m+ signing would have been on. He's a good player, potentially a very good one, but I'm amazed that we haven't just held fire and looked around a bit. There are players with lower risk levels that we could have signed instead - you can bet that we would have insisted that he be willing to take a lower wage to mitigate the risks. If we pay 80m (and again, I'm still expecting it to be significantly lower than that), that's 16m/season on amortisation of the fee over 5 years. So if we pay him 5m/season (100k/week), that comes to 21m/season total cost. Right now Virgil is our highest total cost/season player at 25m/season, so if we think Darwin is potentially a very good player, that would seem to be just about in the realm of reason. If he expected 200k/week it takes his total cost to 31m/season, probably too high for a player who hasn't proven himself at the highest level just yet. If he comes and scores 20/season, I'm sure that he'll get a raise to 200k/week, but I doubt we'd start him that high with that big of a fee.

There is no path to peace in that situation, surely you can understand that? Imagine asking in 1942 "if Allied forces are unable to stop the Nazis from gassing millions of Jews to death, what is the path to peace?"

We already bought one of their replacements in Diaz. You could argue Jota was the replacement for the other one, actually. Even when Mane goes, Diaz Jota Salah is good enough to win you the league. The problem is that you either need Harvey or Carvalho to be absolutely brilliant next season as 4th choice (unlikely) or zero medium- or long-term injuries in that front 3 for the whole season (also unlikely). I think it's clear we'll buy another attacking player when Mane is sold, but it won't be his "replacement." It'll be another young player with the potential to be the next Mane in 2-3 years when he reaches his peak. That player will then be expected to be 4th choice and to play a lot of minutes, but not to be depended on to the extent Mane is in our current team. And then you've still got Firmino and the younger lads to come in and give those four a rest now and then.

Chilling. Terrifying, even. Everyone who even suggests any kind of peace deal with Putin needs to watch that. It's not some offshoot crazy saying that, either. The vice-chair of the Defense Committee for their version of Parliament! This is just as bad, and this is the kind of thing that is regularly on Russian state TV these days. Threats of nuclear war, talking about how we have to "totally eliminate" 2 million Ukrainians ...

The saddest part of all of this is that the DNR army is basically forced service. There were many, many stories of the DNR "government" going around before the war and immediately after it started and hunting for any young man and forcing them to the front. You can virtually guarantee that most of them do not want to be there at all, and they are suffering the worst of the casualties. The Ukrainians have been releasing the recorded phone calls made in/out of their territories (remember, many soldiers are using their regular cell phones on regular Ukrainian networks) by these men, and it is very, very sad to listen to. One I heard yesterday was basically a man crying, talking with his wife - I hate it here, I don't want to be here, but what am I supposed to do? I would run away, but if I'm caught, they'll shoot me. I can't go to the Ukrainians, they'll see me as the enemy. I can't run to Russia, they'll send me back here. What am I supposed to do? Depressing stuff.

Zero chance we'd sell Salah for under £100m. I reckon Mane we'd probably take £75m, maybe, but not Salah.