Ne Moe Imya

Elliott is a weird one. If it's a question of touch, he makes the right one more often than most. But if it's a question of physicality, he loses out more often than most. Just depends on what he's being asked to do in any given moment.

We've been the better team, but the combination of all the changes is what's killing us IMO. Elliott or Gakpo are fine when they're in there with Nunez and Salah, but the two of them together, when the other attacker is Luis Diaz is just lacking a cutting edge. Same in midfield. We are really missing Jones and/or Szobo, the combination of the three in there today just aren't quite up to it. Bradley and Quansah (maybe Virgil?) have been our best players, which is not a great sign.

Sorry to bump an old thread for a player who never came here, obviously, but what a disasterclass this lad's move to Chelsea has been! I know they drew and took points off City, but I kept my eye out for Caicedo yesterday, still trying to see the player we offered over 100m for and ... he is just not there. Endo hasn't set the world alight, but been solid enough (and for the price, has to be seen as a decent buy) but he's been MILES better than Caicedo this season IMO. Still torn between thinking Klopp would have turned him into Fabinho Mk2 and thinking he is just average and we are so, so lucky that Chelsea outbid us.

I take it you favour a different Russian opposition member, RP? One that has acceptable views on every issue, yet is simultaneously popular within the country of Russia itself? I don't think anyone has said that he was perfect in every way or never made a mistake. But in the ways that really mattered, he was one of the very few people willing to stand up to the corrupt regime, call it what it is, and then have the balls to back it up with his life. On the whole, he was an incredible person and anyone familiar with him can't help but admire his courage.

Collectors of high-end basketball shoes are famously a very pro-MAGA group of people.

I totally agree with you about the celebration and lack of spontaneity. But I think it is ridiculously disingenuous to pretend that there weren't FAR more injustices before VAR came into being. If your argument is "yes, we had a crucial match-deciding decision go wrong in an obvious way every other match, but it's worth having that to be able to celebrate goals in the moment more" then I can respect that. I disagree with it, but I can respect it. What I can't countenance is the idea that there are just as many bad calls now as there ever were, so what's the point in VAR? Personally, I think there's a middle ground somewhere, since the VAR genie is not going back in the bottle. There is simply no way the public and the media would tolerate important games being decided by obviously wrong offsides decisions like the one I posted above any more, not when there's a simple solution just waiting to be implemented. I think the best solution is probably that VAR will be used exclusively for handballs and red cards, they will develop an automated offsides technological solution (a la goalline technology) and we won't see VAR used as often any more.

This is spot on. If you live here in the US, you realise pretty quickly that no one cares about foreign policy. Well, a few people in DC and New York care, but the vast majority of Americans have a few foreign policy talking points they can regurgitate and other than that, care very little. Biden is unpopular because he's super old and most people think he is going senile. Has nothing to do with Gaza.

This was the best part, especially in light of the fact that it seems to violate the Russian laws against rehabilitating the Nazis. It was almost comical to see him trying to argue that of all people the POLES were to blame for starting WWII! Of course the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact got nary a mention.

"Some of the Myanmar rebel groups have had enough" is really burying the lede. The truth (which is way down in that article) is that the Chinese are sponsoring them as THEY have had enough, and the rebel groups are just doing the bidding of the people shipping them arms.

The real issue is how social media and both sides being terrified to lose (plus a terrible primary system) has led to an election between two of the least-qualified presidential candidates in history. I saw a poll where Nikki Haley was leading Biden in a hypothetical matchup by 12 points, and one would suspect that even someone as unpopular as Kamala Harris would beat Trump by 7-8. It's almost mindblowing how we've managed to get a repeat of the Biden/Trump matchup, given that reality.

The anti-VAR crowd seem to have completely forgotten how terrible the officiating was in the pre-VAR days. Does VAR get it wrong on occasion? Yes, and we should work to reduce that. Is it anywhere near as bad as it used to be? Not even close. There are millions of examples of egregious calls in extremely important games, but I always remember that but for this absolutely outrageous offsides call, Gerrard would have won the league and lifted the trophy as capitain: That sort of thing used to happen ALL THE TIME.

Tucker must be devastated. If there's one thing he does actually understand, it's how to manipulate dumb people. And the key to that is ... definitely NOT 45 minutes of boring historical minutiae.

Mate, just admit you were wrong and our transfer business last summer didn't come back to bite us - you can be as doom & gloom as you want to, but the purchases we made (and didn't) have obviously borne out to be pretty much all correct. The one thing I do have some questions about (and I was 100% wrong about this as well, to be clear) was Caicedo. Whoever suggested we should offer 105m for him needs sacking. He was always a "pretty good" player that for a host of reasons started to be hyped up as better and better than he actually was, leading to the insanity that happened on the day of his move. Watching him closely the other night was instructive. I know it's Chelsea and they have a number of players who aren't really performing but Caicedo is right at the top of the list for me. Just looks an absolute shell of the player he was at Brighton. If we had paid 105m for him it would have been a COLOSSAL mistake!

The more I think about it, the more I think that the reasons that it doesn't work for Brendan (it exposes him as a charlatan with the charisma of a wet towel) might be the exact reasons that it does work for Klopp (who is the real deal, with genuine charisma to match). Of course, if a few bad bounces or ref decisions or a key injury or two means that we miss out on a decent trophy haul in the end, it's going to be painful no matter what.

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.