Ne Moe Imya

Out of curiosity, a friend checked, and with 538's numbers (usually pretty close to the bookies) we actually still have a 21% chance of winning the league if we win both our games. Might sound unlikely, but this is Liverpool we're talking about! We always seem to have our biggest successes from unlikely positions.

I think this is probably what Russia is hoping for at this point. That's why they're throwing entire BTGs of equipment at river crossings that are, in the big picture, not hugely significant and certainly not worth the cost. But if you are trying to look at this like Putin (who doesn't value the lives of his soldiers at all), then you would pay almost any military price to be able to encircle Severodonetsk and then push the line back to the official borders of the Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts. Then politically you can say "well, we did it, we liberated the Donbas" and though everyone knows it's made up, you can at least sort of claim victory and try to go home. The problem is twofold: 1) the Russian propaganda machine has been steadily increasing in its stridency and call for the death/deportation/imprisonment of pretty much any Ukrainian who doesn't accept Russian rule, and 2) the Ukrainian forces are certainly not going to just accept that result. The first one is possible to overcome, not least because Putin totally controls that propaganda machine, so if he tells them to announce that he's the victor and got everything he wants, they'll have no choice but to instantly change their tune and say what he wants them to. People will get psychological whiplash, but they've done it before and will do it again. The second is a much bigger problem. The long-term economic prospects for Russia are absolutely terrifying to the regime, and the military outlook can't be much better. It's so, so short-term thinking, throwing 100 tanks/APCs away to get one river crossing. Crazy. They simply don't have the military forces to be wasting them for political ends instead of military ones. With Ukraine's military becoming better- and better-equipped as time goes on, with NATO training and equipment, and Russia's facing the opposite, the decision to push for the Donetsk/Luhansk Oblast borders is going to look pretty foolish in 6 months.

I actually think it's very difficult to tell how good he is. We're so used to defining a "good" midfielder by whether or not he scores/assists goals (attacking midfielders) or lots of tackles/interceptions (defensive midfielders), but Liverpool's #8's really don't play that way. Wijnaldum was a great example - virtually invisible in most major statistical categories, but hugely important to the way we play and you could see a visible difference in our results when he wasn't in the side. Keita is similar - except for Virgil, he has the highest winning percentage of any player in our side, meaning he's clearly vital to us playing well and getting results. However, he himself doesn't seem to be doing anything, at least not on first watch, or given a glance at the stat sheet. But he's clearly doing something, or Klopp wouldn't keep picking him and we wouldn't keep winning games with him in the midfield.

This is an absolutely amazing piece of logic right here. I'm just imagining someone in 1942 saying "I want the war to stop as quickly as possible because that's the way Jewish lives will be saved."

Salah has been really odd about his demands. He keeps saying things like "it's not only about money," but, like, what else could it possibly be? We're the best team in the world, we have the best manager in the world, great fans, we're in the race for the quadruple ...? There's not a better bet in terms of overall "sporting project" on earth! It's almost as if it really is all about the money, he just doesn't want to admit it.

I wish someone would translate more of what's being said on Russian state TV, which as a reminder is fully scripted by the Kremlin, for the English-speaking world. Every time I watch it I am struck by how the "Ukraine should give in and give Russia part of their country to make peace" crowd doesn't understand Russia's point of view at all!

Au contraire, Salah has shown that the best way to ride those donkeys is in a red shirt!

Don't know why, but this is the one game on our calendar when looking at the last 8 games that I thought we could drop points. I know we're better than they are, but it just has that feeling of a game that could be determined by a lucky bounce or a contentious penalty or something. But who knows? For some reason I have a feeling we will draw, but City will too and it'll be as you were going into next weekend.

Nothing will ever top the time when he was asked by a journalist for a Christian newspaper what he asked God for forgiveness for and Trump replied that he didn't ask for forgiveness because he didn't really need to. Which is basically the exact opposite of Christianity, the religion that is famously built entirely on the idea that all people are sinners and in need of salvation, which you can't earn by being a good person but only by repenting of your sins and asking for them to be paid for by Jesus.

One minor bit of optimism is that in Europe at least, a lot of the far right has been underwritten financially by Russia. Which, given the economic situation there and the fact that sanctions are going to start to really bite in a few months when they run out of foreign currency, is probably not going to continue in the future, at least not at the same level.

Absolutely GUTTED that Everton managed to get their pass completion up over 50% in the closing minutes of the match. At halftime they were at 41% and I thought we'd finally get a team completing less than half their passes. Doesn't happen often.

Up to 19.8% chance that Liverpool win the title AND Everton are relegated after today!

If his statue isn't that moment of him collapsing to the pitch on his knees, I will burn Anfield to the ground.

Still think this is going to end 2-0. Matip 54, Diaz 88.

Just updating my previous post: Odds that Liverpool win the title AND Everton are relegated: 11% And a bonus: Odds that Liverpool win the quadruple AND Everton are relegated: 3% Yes, you read that right. As of right now, there is a 3% chance you are living in a universe where Liverpool win the quadruple and Everton are relegated in the same season!

What a backwards country! Where on earth can you still find a shopping mall in this day and age?

I'll concede that this is certainly more extreme than the average rhetoric on there (and to Jack's point above, there are subtitles at the bottom in English). However, the concerning thing is the direction it's going. I can't imagine anything like this on Solovev's show (he's the Nigel Farage/Tucker Carlson of Russia, shows up at 0:15) a year ago. The "Ukrainians are just misguided and insubordinate Russians" thing has moved from subtext to text in very short order. We've seemingly gone from "Ukraine is under the spell of Nazis and we have to set the poor Ukrainians free from their Western masters" to "the idea that Ukraine is a separate nation/race to us is heresy and they must be forcibly re-educated for a generation to stamp it out." I know every online argument jumps to this comparison way too quickly, but in this case, it really is very reminiscent of Hitler's rhetoric about Jews in the 30's.

Fair enough, and I apologise if I came across as lecturing you. I re-read my post and I can see that it comes across that way and that wasn't what I was intending.

I don't think you understand Russia's goals. You're right that they're not doing very well in the war overall, but the reason they chose apartment blocks is that they want to cripple Ukraine in the long-term. Hitting an industrial factory that makes weapons might help you win a war, but hitting an apartment complex means that you kill dozens of people and immediately make hundreds of people homeless. In essence, the Russian war goal is not only military victory, but to cripple the Ukrainian economy and morale for a generation. How long will it take to rebuild from the rubble? And will the West have the patience and sacrifice required, knowing that everything they rebuild could be destroyed in the next attack? History shows that destruction is much easier and cheaper than rebuilding - Russia is betting that they can destroy enough that the Ukrainians who don't just flee to Poland/Germany/wherever will be so busy rebuilding that they won't have enough left over to stand up to the next wave of attacks, whether that be in a year, five years, or whenever. I think they're probably wrong, because they underestimated the national unity that would come about from being attacked (and, importantly, from putting up a significant defense). But just because they're wrong doesn't mean there's no logic to it at all.

Genuine question - at what point does the "but they have nukes" defense end? If Putin sets up concentration camps and starts gassing rooms full of Ukrainians, do we have to stand by and trust to economic sanctions and nothing else, because "if we do anything more, they will use nuclear weapons?" Because I know none of you can speak Russian and watch Russian news, but they are literally laying the groundwork for that or something not much more subtle than that right now on state television on a daily basis. I am not exaggerating, they are not saying quite that, obviously (or at least not yet), but the idea that we should exterminate anyone who insists that Ukrainians can define their own identity and path is regularly discussed. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about:

Ha! Reminds me of the time we invited our new neighbors over, and my missus, knowing full well that they were observant Jews, served ... roasted pork ribs! Then after realising her mistake and apologising profusely (which they accepted with tremendous grace), she brought out some leftover chicken and we carried on with the meal. Which was going much better than you would have expected until, answering a question about "what is the secret ingredient that makes this homemade macaroni and cheese so delicious" she turned beet red and said, very quietly, after a long delay, that she adds bacon grease to the mixture for flavour.

Also, in case anyone here has friends in the Russian MOD, I'm not entirely convinced that their defense makes that much sense. "So I hear the Ukrainians managed to get a few hits on your cruiser with anti-ship missiles." "Oh, no, that's preposterous. What actually happened was that we accidentally set fire to the ammunition on our 3 billion dollar warship!"

This is the clincher that it was a Ukrainian attack, for me. You don't bomb the factory that makes Neptune anti-ship missiles in retaliation for ... er, accidentally igniting your own magazine?

Yeah, I agree that midfield is the priority. The only exception would be if we sold Mane or Salah this summer, which I could see happening. In that case, forget Nunes or any other big-money moves, the one we need is Nkunku. His statistics are pretty much in line with Salah's from his last year at Roma, and he's just turned 24. Going to be a star.

Reports coming out now that Ukraine has sunk the Russian Black Sea flagship, the missile cruiser "Moskva." You wouldn't want to be the guy who has to tell Putin that a nation without a real navy has somehow managed to sink a ship that analysts say would take 10 years and $3-4 billion to replace, would you? Bonus note: this is the famous warship from the Snake Island event earlier in the war, the one that Ukrainians told to "go fuck yourself."