Dr. Gonzo

He's done a hell of a lot better than I expected considering the performance at SPAL, but I guess these Roma players are a hell of a lot better than his old squad. Good for him, I loved him as a player - wish him well with his managerial career.

"But if we don't have international friendlies where we charge outrageous ticket prices to foreign fans, how will they know we care about taking their money too?"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/world/middleeast/iran-israel-attack.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lU0.Qh1Z.vo2fz-PMOCWM&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ugrp=m if this is true, the Israeli government are really stupid lol

We'd have a hard time getting our forwards to score in a brothel at the moment, so I'm not too optimistic about anything.

There was violence, vandalism, and the literal point of his protests was civil disturbance. I'm pretty sure the point of any protest is civil disturbance. The big distinction is: black people in the civil rights era were very much being oppressed by a racist and white supremacist establishment. That makes any violence and vandalism seem a whole lot more justified. I think anyone in the west has the right to protest (which again, is inevitably going to be some kind of civil disturbance because that's the fucking point of a protest) - but I'm not sure violence and vandalism can be excused when people are protesting against oppression that the protestors themselves are not experiencing. Nobody in the US is directly in harms way from Hamas or the IDF, it's difficult to justify Americans destroying stuff, threatening violence/committing violence, over something happening millions of miles away from them. We've seen nutjobs in the US, Europe, and Australia literally kill other people over this conflict that they're not actually in any danger from, other than the fact radicalisation has made some people go absolutely mental. It's normal to be disgusted by a music festival being attacked with both murder and rape, or the constant stream of images of dead kids that come out of Gaza. It's not normal to be made rabidly violent and lose all humanity in the wake of a conflict where the two belligerents are routinely committing war crimes. The international community should be pushing for a peace in a region that's constantly looking like it is at the brink of war. People shouldn't be taking sides in a fight where war crimes are the norm and egging on this conflict to keep escalating.

But what is the end goal? Is it just a reverse of the Nakba with the shoe on the other foot? If we were alive at the time of Israel's creation, I would have been against it - punishing Arabs for Europe's centuries of crimes against Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, taking their land and committing atrocities to get that land. But it was created in 1947 - so we're talking about 4 generations (boomers, gen x, millenials, and gen z; 5 if we want to include gen alpha) of Israelis who have been there too. Their ancestors might be guilty of horrible atrocities, but I don't think it's reasonable to paint all Israelis as active and willing participants of all of these atrocities. Beneficiaries of these atrocities? Sure. But if we want to start punishing beneficiaries of all atrocities, the west certainly has a lot to answer for as well. If the ultimate end goal is unlikely to be achieved because it's just righting the wrongs of the past by the other side doing the same thing that's been done to them... it's not going to create any sort of lasting peace. And if it's unlikely because the geopolitical reality of the situation just means it's basically impossible... then it's not an avenue worth pursuing. The end goal should be creating a lasting peace and a situation where Palestinian human rights aren't being trampled on a daily basis. This means not supporting further escalation of the conflict and taking steps to actually create a lasting peace. This was literally inevitable. We both know how Israel fights, and given that the strikes hit Isfahan we should be thankful it's only military sites that have been struck, and not a populated neighborhood or a significant historic and cultural site (which Isfahan is full of).

When you say "the US" you're either making a sweeping generalisation about a massive country, or you're referring to the government. I assumed that, because you were highlighting how US citizens protesting against Israel were being silenced - you'd been referring to the US government. But again - are these instances of shutting down legitimate criticism of Israel? 1.) sacking people for damaging company property and threatening people who work for that company - that really has fuck all to do with why they were protesting and rather the manner they've gone about protesting; 2.) school shutting down protests getting increasingly violent due to the radical idiots on both sides; 3.) the commencements are the only thing I would concede that yeah maybe that's shutting down legitimate protesting. But again, I'm sure wanting to avoid causing division amongst students graduating is a bigger concern for the university than the right to allow them to make political statements that look like they're being endorsed by the university. So, at best, you're talking about 1/3 of these examples being legitimate protesting being shut down. The other 2 were pretty legitimate reasons to sack someone, shut down protests. The Columbia protests could have been legitimate... if they hadn't turned violent. Violence in protest is only legitimate when the protestors are subject to violent oppression for what they're protesting - students living in the US are free from the dangers of being around Hamas/IDF, there's no legitimate reason for them to have made a university campus unsafe. I'm glad you found something laughable, it returns the favour of me laughing at some of the bullshit you came up with last week. But honestly, at what point do the actions of certain protestors you agree with actually cross any sort of line? Violence and threats of violence, from people (and directed at people) that are so fucking far removed from this conflict, are obviously not crossing a line for you. At what point do you draw a line where you can say "I support Palestinian human rights, but I don't support this bullshit." And what exactly do you see as an acceptable resolution to this conflict? I would have thought anything that restores dignity and preservation of Palestinian rights would be seen as a positive step in the right direction for this conflict. But that doesn't seem to be the case, because you've cheered on escalations and been in support of this growing into a wider conflict. Which doesn't really do much for Palestinian human rights or lives generally, other than keep them in the IDF's firing line. So what do you see as the "end goal" for "your side" - I genuinely want to know, to try to understand your perspective.

The substitutions made us worse. It's hard to be hopeful for the future when we've got these attackers looking like they're not sure what to do with a football and knowing Klopp is on his way out and whoever comes in to replace him is going to be a pretty massive downgrade. Shame to see our season fizzle out like this. Maybe we get lucky and City and Arsenal fuck up and we end strongly... but I doubt it.

Those google workers were fired for defacing the google cloud offices and shouting threats at their coworkers, more than they were fired for protesting. Columbia University had to send in riot police because pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protestors were kicking off and the school had to close it's campus because it couldn't guarantee safety of students. The commencement speakers thing is probably the most egregious of those 3 things... but really is a graduation ceremony the appropriate avenue for making highly political statements on an issue that's incredibly divisive? Either way, none of those examples demonstrate anything the US is doing because 1.) google isn't the US government, 2.) Columbia and USC aren't the US government, 3.) even the state funded universities in the US aren't the US government - they're funded by the states they reside in. Is there any limit to the sort of bad behavior the zealots amongst the "globalise the intifada" crowd will tolerate for their cause? Is it not enough to call for perpetual bloodshed in the Middle East?

I'd get Szobo off for Elliott too tbh. Szobo's been up to fucking nothing in the second half of the season and probably deserves to be dropped. I don't have a whole lot of positive things to say about our attackers generally at the moment, so yeah... get Jota on for one of them. Honestly wouldn't mind seeing Danns too since for a while it's looked like he's the closest thing we've got to a striker with that killer instict.

Why did Diaz get booked for an Atalanta player deliberately punching the ball away? Also I'm pretty sure that's denial of a goalscoring opportunity and should have been a red...

He's been dogshit since coming back from injury.

Stop trying to pass the fucking ball into the net and fucking shoot, Atalanta are rattled we just need to be a bit decisive. This shows us how much we've missed Trent in this second half of the season too.

We pull one back! 85 minutes to right the wrongs of last week!

I wonder how long it'll be before this pursuit of constantly chasing cash just has people not giving a fuck about football anymore to the point where they're losing money.