Dr. Gonzo

@Spike, @Mel81x & myself say otherwise

Did Janes make the Commanche games? I fucking loved those games when I was a kid. Actually as a kid, I loved all kinds of flight sim games.

Tbh, I'm not sure questioning the standards of the refereeing is all that different to questioning the integrity of the officials. I feel as though PMGOL has not only not done enough to protect their referees from looking like they lack integrity... I honestly think they've left open enough doors for their integrity to be in doubt that they truly have invited people questioning their integrity. I think Forest's tweet was unhinged, I don't truly understand what a "referee analyst" does at a club other than Forest paying Mark Clattenburg to sort of rubber-stamp the unhinged messaging coming from Forest... but at the same time, I do think PMGOL having their integrity directly attacked by a club was bound to happen sooner or later and I'm not surprised by it. At the end of the day, I don't think PMGOL has anyone to blame for public accusations of referees lacking integrity than themselves. And I don't think PMGOL makes any steps to try to restore the illusion of having referees with integrity or generally improving the performances of referees/VAR officials without getting some very public criticism that can't be ignored. Forest's tweet was unhinged, but it can't be ignored and it keeps the integrity of referees in the spotlight. At the end of the day, I don't think that's a bad thing. If PMGOL and referees don't appreciate the heightened scrutiny and having their integrity questioned after this season... I think they've got to take corrective action to improve how they're viewed. In Forest's case with the incidents in question, I don't believe lack of integrity was the cause of the bad decisions. Everton aren't 115 Charges FC or Newcastle. But I don't blame Forest for taking advantage of the fact trust and faith in officials actually having integrity is at an all time low while they make unhinged accusations.

My gripe with Italian food outside of Italy isn't so much the "creative license" with cooking. It's that going to an Italian restaurant outside of Italy means paying a premium for an inferior product, that you're typically being told is authentic (when it isn't). I can understand when a restaurant substitutes something that is harder to find outside of Italy with something easier to find (for instance, using pancetta rather than guanciale - because guanciale is difficult to get outside of Italy and if that's really what you want, you may have to pay a premium). I can understand when places want to put their own "twist" on something traditional, after all - fusion foods are popular for good reason and they do make the culinary world more exciting and interesting. But paying a premium for food that is lower quality than what it's trying to be, because we're told it's fancy and difficult to make... when it isn't - that's something I struggle to justify. Especially when I've eaten very good food in Italy and paid reasonable prices. It blows my mind to pay what I would pay for a 4 course meal in Rome... on a pasta meal that's ok at best. It honestly is infuriating. For me, going out to a restaurant - I'm either looking for: 1.) something I can't make well myself, 2.) something that if I can make it well myself, I want it to be made for me better than I can do it. For Italian food outside of Italy... I think anyone except people who are possibly the most useless people in the kitchen, can cook a better meal than they can get in a restaurant. There's this Italian bloke living in Australia, he's got a great youtube channel (Vincenzo's plate I believe is the name of the channel)... he's been a life saver for me. Because I like cooking, I love Italian food, and eating Italian food at restaurants has been a massive disappointment. Shit he's taught me, aside from traditional recipes, has been so useful at me putting my own twist on certain meals... and it just has completely removed my desire to ever go out and get Italian food here. And that's great for me, because I feel like I'm not getting ripped off if I'm eating Italian food and I'm not in Italy. So I don't think of it so much as "food purity" so much as I think that (most) Italian restaurants outside Italy (and in my personal experience, all of the ones I've had) are just ripping off customers and providing a comparatively low quality meal in the process. I don't think it's being a food purist to think paying over $20 for a carbonara using cheap spaghetti and substituting guanciale with bacon is an absolute ripoff... when you can make the same thing at home for less than half the price using slightly better spaghetti and substituting the guanciale with pancetta. That's just preferring better ingredients and paying a more reasonable price for a better meal. Neither are "traditional" or "autentico" - but the cheaper one not made at a restaurant using better ingredients is going to get you a better result.

Pretty sure Cardiff fans when they came round to Anfield in 2022 got a lot of praise, judging by LFC twitter. So I doubt your fans would have done any poverty chanting to get that praise. Having said that, looking at places like Luton, Leicester, Nottingham, etc... those cities having their own issues with poverty isn't really enough to stop large segments of their support from engaging in mocking poverty if Scouse teams are their opposition. But I don't think Cardiff fans coming to Anfield would be met with lots of praise on social media for their support if Cardiff fans were chanting "feed the scousers" in their thousands like a lot of other clubs do. I think the fans that engage in that sort of behavior are absolute dickheads... but weirdly, it leads to Everton and Liverpool fans directing their anger towards making donations to food banks in those cities. So rather than feed the Scousers, the Scousers feed them. Maybe it's just fucked up reverse psychology to get some extra help with their own poverty issues. But regardless of any accidental positive reactions these chants bring... I can't help but feel like mocking those who can't afford basic necessities - especially now as the UK is suffering through a cost of living crisis - is just a remarkably pathetic thing to do.

Tbh I'm not sure how much his preferred 3-4-3 would translate to our current squad. We've only just gone back to having a functional midfield again after bringing in a load of midfielders - and I'm not sure going back to a midfield 2 is really feasible with the squad we've got built. It's really only Endo and Mac Allister that would fit in to how his midfield would operate, I think. But I don't think there's any point in speculating until our new DoF is actually working for us.

Tbf Ancelotti went from Everton, with a squad that on paper was going to always struggle imo, to Real Madrid with a squad that's used to winning the CL almost every year. And honestly I think people who wrote Ancelotti off probably don't know a whole lot about football, he's been one of the best in the business for a long time. And honestly, he did pretty well with Everton all things considered up until about the tail end of his last season there... when the wheels just came off and honestly never really looked like coming back on until Dyche steadied the ship a bit (and even he has come under pressure this season, despite working with his hands tied behind his back financially and has also been up against point deductions). But realistically, I don't think Gasperini's going to be our next manager. I think @Rick is right, FGS wants someone younger in imo. Idk how Gasperini was backed when he was at Inter, but by all accounts I would assume Inter would (even in their most skint seasons) be bigger spenders than Atalanta... so I don't think him having a history of failing when at a big club is that great despite how much he's been able to do to demonstrate he's a good manager since leaving Inter. I think it's something that has to be considered with a big job like ours: how have you been able to perform at a club with higher expectations than most. I think that's probably why Amorim or Inzaghi are two names that have been given the most serious consideration by our reputable journos now that Alonso is out of the picture. But I also think our reputable journos are also just taking shots in the dark. By all accounts, we've got a pretty long shortlist drawn up with various names of potential managers... but no interviews are going to be conducted until we've got our new DoF in place (which won't be until the summer) and at the moment there's no clear favourites.

Certain sets being: every club from the midlands & every club from London except Palace & Arsenal?

I’m gonna go off the beaten path and say I support Forest being unhinged against referees.

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).