Don Balon

Barca didn't do him any favours by paying so much for him. There was no way he could live-up to the hype of paying £142m. Had he cost a sane amount of money then the fans wouldn't be as damning of him. The lesson is there for us though, there are reprecussions when you fork out loads for a player and you should only do so very carefully. Allison and Van Dijk were obviously bought in the knowledge that they had the mental fortitude and application to live with their price tags. However, the Thomas Lemar situation shows the other side of that, where we almost paid £65m for an attacking player who would have had a hiding to nothing unless he scored 30 goals each season. In the end he went to Atletico Madrid for £53m, and has 2 goals in 17 games.

Correct answer. LFC does not accept returns. If someone wants out of this team then they're not quite right, which is basically the policy Klopp has on the matter.

I play this a lot. Cross-platform is a bit dubious because PC players are cunts and liable to be cheating bastards. A few people can build structures in a matter of miliseconds, probably using PC, and then those people on XBOX with £120 pro controllers with paddles, they can also get to fuck. Overall, it's a brilliant game, it's free, it's immersive, you can hide in a bush for 20 minutes if you want. Sometimes I just chop down trees for 10 minutes, it's cathartic somehow. Heavy sniper rifle is the daddy of guns.

Can I remind you that disabled people are people too. And that poor children are born innocent and deserve compassion and help. Can you let me know how many kids burned to death in Grenfell. She's a fucking cunt of the highest order, and her father was a kiddie-fiddler, and she can barely contain her hatred for liberals and the poor and the disadvantaged. Have fun on your fucking football website lads.

Would be hilarious except Keita did replace Mane.

Go full Old Testament on her. "What sort of woman can't have children? A sinner, that's who. Yes my honourable friends, we have a barren bitch among us, the Lord has not seen fit to reward her loins with the lamb of God, instead she had raw mutton dripping between her legs, a cold and scratched stone instead of a womb, this woman doesn't know humanity because she wasn't allowed to create love, only harbour resentment and vile, violent thoughts about children. Yes, I'll give way."

I think Labour need to fight on a level playing field. Appoint a female Leader for the Labour party, and let's see how long this feminist charade lasts then for Mrs May. Mansplain that. Awful set of cunts.

Theresa May is a stupid woman. If it was true, and it probably wasn't, then he should have stood up and gone on a rant about her useless ovaries, and confused unused tits, and that her dad was a fat-handed pervert in the church, and that she continuously sabotaged those investigations into child abuse. One day John Bercow will do this.

Mane last 3 seasons = 40 goals in 91 games = 0.43 goals per game Firmino last 3 seasons = 44 goals in 114 games = 0.38 goals per game

He's incredible. His passing is sublime at times, his vision on a par with the top number 10's this division has known. When you consider that he can drop a shoulder and beat anyone for pace, and is brave as a lion (*shame face*), and gives 100% in every game, and also plays with a smile on his face, and does his defensive work, you have to ask just what sorcery is this, and how much he is actually worth. 40 goals in 91 games, from wide positions, is exceptional, it's Robben-esque numbers. Part of me sometimes thinks that his true calling is through the middle, and that we should be looking for another left-sided player to replace him out there. There's no reason he can't be a brilliant number 9, he's got that Eto'o style about him.

By all accounts, it's not the middle of the park that's misfiring.

Obviously it seems that Klopp sees him as integral, indeed, the front 3 is integral, not so much because of their scoring but because of their pressing and how it impacts the rest of the team's performance. Beggars the question that if Firmino or either of the other two aren't pressing enough, then they're tired and need replacing out for a week or two. I don't see why they necessarily have to be forwards that replace them, IF its the energy and fitness level that are most important to Klopp. Why not bring Lallana in to do Firmino's job for two games? Or why not Moreno for Salah? Or Keita for Mane? We're only talking about a rest here.

I think he's labouring next to Firmino, and he's not getting midfielders coming through to help him make space. I'd be pissed off too. That said, I wish he'd stop trying to recreate the Roma goal every time he gets the ball on the edge of the area. Every defender knows what he's trying to do, bit like Robben, albeit Robben takes a fraction less time to hit the ball.

This should be the Labour or Lib Dem campaign slogan.

But it's patently a bigger issue than whether or not we are EU Members on paper. The implications around security, health, travel etc etc etc, you can't make a decision that will change government policies drastically, as such there needs to be more of a reason to do so than '52% of people said they wanted to leave the EU'. It's like having a referendum on whether or not to go into war. I would expect a government to take the result of a referendum into account, but not base the whole decision on that. It's catastrophic logic.

Her mandate is to serve the people. The referendum is just one aspect of people's interraction with her. Or are we expecting the PM to drop everything and focus on one source of information to dictate what she does from now on?

it's easy to have in-fighting tear a party apart, like with the Tories, when you have no common ethos that unites people in that party, apart from personal ambition. They are an embodiment of the tenets of capitalism, every man for himself, get rich quick. However divided that Labour become, they can still come back to centre by way of they all have the fundamentals of socialism, and wanting to help all corners of society.

Firmino has 3 goals in the league this year. By the way, all of his goals have come away from home. The main strikers for Arsenal, Man City, Spurs, Bournemouth, Brighton, Fulham, Everton, Leicester, Man United, West Ham, Southampton, all have more goals than the main striker for Liverpool. It’s not often that a main striker for a top team does this. At the current rate, he’s on course for an 8 goal season in the league. I look around Europe and the top teams have a top striker doing numbers right now, yet again, as top teams do year on year. Dortmund – Alcacer 10 goals Bayern – Lewandowski 7 goals Arsenal – Aubemayang 10 goals City – Aguero 8 goals Spurs – Kane 8 goals United – Lukaku 5 goals Barca – Messi 9 goals Madrid - Benzema 5 goals Sevilla – Andre Silva 8 goals Juventus – Ronaldo 10 goals Inter – Icardi 8 goals Napoli – Milik 5 goals Milan – Higuain 5 goals PSG – Cavani 9 goals And yes, there are other players in those teams still scoring goals, more than the number 9 in some cases, but the baseline for the number 9 remains high, regardless if Neymar, or MBappe, or Suarez, or Sterling, or Reus, or Insigne, or Mertens, or Dembele, or Coutinho, or Hazard, or Martial, or Lacazette, or Pedro, or Sane, etc are scoring goals as well, which they are.

Labour would stand a chance to win a GE based on domestic problems, such as the fuck-up that is HS2, and the rate at which high-street shops are closing. But any GE for now will not be won or lost on domestic issues, it will be fought on Brexit, and there's really no room for manouvre for Labour without calculated risks in terms of pissing off 40-52% of the voter base and losing their vote for a generation. You can say it's a calculated risk, the Brexit voters will die off steadily over the coming decade, but I could foresee a situation where we have a GE next year, and then another one a year later. Labour need to kill the Tories off, and at present the best way of doing that seems to be to let them kill themselves. But that comes at great cost, people are dying every day because of these tax-dodgers.

Let's be right here, a no deal isn't going to happen. The sort of language being used in documents now is frankly absurd, even comparing us with the USSR in terms of food shortages, which to me suggests that even the people writing the reports are fucking around and writing in a style which suggests the report isn't worth the keystrokes spent on them. This is the death of the Conservative Party right here and now. And while a new party will rise from the ashes, be that a centrist party or Lib Dems, everyday sees another few hundred people come of age, or come to realise just how shite their future looks under conservatism. The resignation of May will happen, but judging by the split in the Tories I don't see how an ERG Member will be the most popular choice for them. They know a crackpot will take us towards some no deal hellscape, and they won't vote for a candidate who wants that. While the referendum raised the mantra of 'the people have spoken', that won't save the jobs of Tory MPs in constituencies who voted Remain, or since the vote have visited their MP in droves to say they made a mistake, and that includes business leaders in their towns and cities. Survival instinct kicks in at this point, they can;'t win a subsequent election in their constituency based on the waning mantra of "i voted in the best interests of the people", because the only people that matter at the end of the day are the voters in that area. So I think we're more likely to end up with some sort of 'moderate' Tory becoming PM, rather than a GE, and at that point a second referendum might happen quite quickly, very quickly.

Klopp knows that a win here would be a statement win and would put to bed the shit we saw in Red Star. Cavani is the danger, in much the same way that lump was the danger for Red Star. He'll try and keep Van Dijk occupied himself and make space for Neymar and Mbappe. I'd like to see Keita have a big game.

No, old Brits aren't basically cunts, they're lucky bastards and society has developed to support them at every turn in their life. It's just a curve that starts from the end of WW2 and continues to this day, more or less. They were born at the right time, it's just that simple, and yes it's easy for me to be very envious of that. The Tory party panders to this. The I'm Alright Jack brigade. In the same way that villagers in Germany were made to help clear out the concentration camps after the war, I think a lot of the older generation could do with a month of visiting facilities and places that the Tories have fucked. They can start with Grenfell, and then they can have a tour of the midlands, and the North, and visit schools, and speak to working class 18-45 year olds who have been mangled-up by the Tories twice.

To make your own mind up based on that, whether or not Labour could change the mindset of millions of people who were massively entrenched in their viewpoints on our growing population and the correlation with what they deem to be a decline in our living standards. For them, not being in the EU seemed to correlate with the times when things were brilliant for them, notably the 1960's. It's a bit like us as Liverpool supporters insisting that times were better before the advent of the premier league, because we won shit and crowds were great, and all that. Nobody in the PL could make a good argument to convince the majority of older Liverpool fans against that entrenched viewpoint. The Tories let the genie out of the bottle by calling the referendum. At that point, there was no stopping the inevitable airing of the older people's viewpoint on modern society, and what they consider to be a contributing factor to that, ie, that we were spending billions on this 'useless thing' (EU) when it could be spent making the country better again, like it was in 1970 just before we joined Europe. We may as well have had a referendum on whether or not to believe in God. It doesn't matter who does what campaigning, there would be a large chunk of people who were not going to listen to 'experts' or common sense. The Tories, notably the nefarious bastards behind the scenes, pushed the issue based on these personal views, this yearning for yesterday, and Cameron was a soft fat shite who caved-in. It's laughable that some people in business claim they voted Leave because they had some insight into the way markets would work and how it would help them and the economy. It's bullshit, and everyday we see further evidence that they were wrong the economy is going to tank. It's rediculous to claim that Labour could have stopped this, it wasn't in their gift to stop it, it was a wild animal that the Tories let out of the cage.

Yes, which is the reason why millions of people voted Leave, so to ignore that facet in discussions would not only be stupid but...well...basically just fucking oafish stupidity, like Chris Farley in Chris Farley films, that level of acumen. The British people have spoken, and the government has to listen. Just because ta subset of the British people said "fuck off spicks and gypsies", doesn't mean the government can turn around to the EU and go "look, they didn't mean that, they were drunk, spirits were high, so here's what they really meant to say..." We have a few million people with deeply questionable ethical foundations. The 65 and overs, imagine what their life has been like: Born 1948, say, what events have shaped their lives and their subsequent world view? A lot of people in this country were brought up in their formative years with the death penalty, and corporal punishment in schools, and wanton prejudice against gays, blacks, asians, disabled people going unchecked by society, and no culture of health and safety , or environmental responsibilities, and very lax attitudes towards how women are treated both in and out of the house. They didn't see the horrors of war, but they lived with the people who had, which must have been tough at times. That said, they were front and centre for when the state, under Labour, gave out free education, raised those standards, built houses, created jobs, and encouraged the arts. I still can't believe that the Tories managed to get away with reducing the voting age from 21 to 18 back in 1970. I also can't believe that people can have lived through the sales of national companies back in 1986, and still consider giving them a vote these days. Start from the beginning, it's post WW2 and we're rebuilding under a Labour government, so there's immense optimism and jobs popping up everywhere, and houses being built at the highest rate in our history. Parents have been shaped by the war, not quite sure it's a good thing or a bad thing. Quite how that affects someone is open to interpretation, but post-war saw a huge amount of divorces for the first time. Bear in mind there's next to no law with regard to how you can treat your other half, or your kids.... School leaving age is 15. First flood of immigrants from the commonwealth from 1948, when the Windrush came in. NHS established in 1948. UK population is 50m in 1951. First scheduled flight by a commercial jet in 1952. The King dies, and Queen Elizabeth II coronated in 1953. Elvis, 1953. Food rationing ends in 1954. Tories lose the Suez Canal in 1956, with Eden resigning. Sputnik 1 launched in 1957. First contraceptive pill in 1957. First part of motorway opens in 1958. Tories win general election in 1959 with the slogan "you've never had it so good". Russia shoots down US aircraft in U-2 incident, East v West tensions rise. 44% of households own a washing machine by 1960. 17 African nations get independence in 1960. Berlin Wall built in 1961. Marilyn Monroe dies in 1962. Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Assassination of JFK in 1963. Martin Luther King has a dream in 1963. The Beatles, from 1963. Britain tries to join EU (ECM) in 1963, vetoed by France who claim we lacked committment to integration. Universities boom and students get state support from 1963. 90% of households own a tv by 1964 First up-close images of Mars in 1964. Comprehensive schools replace the old system. Death penalty abolished in 1965. Churchill dies in 1965. England wins 1966 World Cup. Abortion and Homosexuality are legalised in 1967. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy murdered in 1968. Man on the moon in 1969. Stonewall riots for gay rights in 1969. First flight of the 747 in 1970. School leaving age raised to 16 in 1970. Voting age is lowered from 21 to 18. First British soldier dies in Northern Ireland troubles in 1971. UK population is 55m in 1971. Decimilisation introduced, which is blamed for the increase in inflation, in 1971. North Sea oil rights are auctioned off in 1971. Munich massacre at Olympics in 1972. Bloody Sunday 1972. Britain joins the EU (EEC). Britain borrows from IMF due to crisis in Sterling, first Western state to be forced into this. IMF demand cuts in government spending. Unemployment stands at one million by 1975, the highest since the war ended. Elvis dies 1977. Strikes paralyse Britain in 1978/79 during Winter of Discontent. First test tube baby 1978. Thatcher seizes power in 1979. Recession hits in 1980, unemployment hits 2 million. 1980 Mount St Helens erupts. John Lennon murdered in 1980. MTV launched in 1981. AIDS epidemic begins in 1981. Brixton and Toxteth riots in 1981. Recession in 1982 leads to 3 million out of work, known worldwide as the Volcker Deflation, the deepest post-war global recession. Falklands War 1982. Thatcher wins general election in 1983. Ethopian famine 1983-85 National miners strike in 1984. IRA bomb Tory conference in 1984. Ghandi murdered in 1984. Live Aid 1985 British Gas, British Aerospace, Cable and Wireless, Britoil, National Bus Company, British Airways, Rolls Royce, British Steel, British Telecom, electricity and water companies all sold off and privatised in 1986 under the guise of it cutting government expenditure, and reducing the need for state subsidies. Unemployment rate in 1986 is 14%. Challenger space disaster 1986. Chernobyl disaster 1986. Corporal punishment ends in state schools in 1987. Prozac launched in 1987. Lockerbie 1988. Berlin Wall comes down in 1989. Hillsborough 1989. Climate change first established 1990. First website online 1991. Kuwait War in 1991. End of the Soviet Union in 1991. LA race riots 1992. Channel Tunnel opens in 1992. Sterling removed (by EU) from EU's Exchange Rate Mechanism First woman priest ordained by CofE in 1994. Apartheid ends in 1994. Dolly the sheep is cloned in 1996. Hong Kong returned to China in 1997. Good Friday agreement ends troubles in NI in 1998. Recession in 2000 as dot com bubble bursts. 9/11 Britain joins US to invade Iraq in 2003. London suicide bomber 2005. Same-sex couples legal rights in 2005. UK population is 63m in 2011.

Ferguson built titles on the strength of having a couple of super-subs in recent years. In this day and age it's an amazing weapon to have in your armoury.