Dr. Gonzo

@LFCMike @Rick @LFCMadLad @Mel81x @Burning Gold @Scousermum (and any LFC fans I may have missed, which btw if I've left you off... sorry)... What do you think we'll end up doing with Naby Keita? I think he's certainly a talented player, but his injury record has meant he's constantly in and out of the side... and as a result, I don't know if he's ever really lived up to his pricetag. Same question with the Ox, tbh - for all the same reasons. I know @Burning Gold thinks that we've sort of moved on as a side from needing the Ox as a squad player. And who'd you all want as our Gini Wijnaldum replacement? Because... that's a big void that needs filling. I think he ended up being our midfielder with the most starts and appearances last season - which may have been why he faded pretty badly in the second half of the season. But I think he'll be a big miss, he was a very good player (and PSG are lucky to have him). I think given how Thiago improved over the course of the season, out of the current side... I think we'd probably have our midfield look something like Thiago - Fabinho - Henderson; but considering Thiago & Henderson's own fitness issues, Milner getting on and getting I think the fewest appearances of his career last season (not 100% sure if that's true, but it felt like it) and the Ox/Keita looking pretty injury prone... do we lack depth at central midfield currently? I think ultimately Curtis Jones will replace the Ox/Keita (or both of them) in the squad.

He reminds me of the character from GTA IV who's addicted to bull shark testosterone

wtf did I just watch

Chelsea and City, but especially Chelsea, are very popular in the US. City is really really popular in China. Honestly, though, all the big English sides seem pretty popular in China. The two Spanish giants and the big Italian clubs too. I think with Chelsea, the first and second Mourinho eras were when English football really gained popularity in the US - which is why a lot of the people in the US I know that follow football seem to have picked Chelsea.

Ethno-nationalism can probably be blamed for a lot of things around the world.

The issue with loaning him out to a premier league club is loaning him out to a side that'll play decent football (to get the most out of his talents) but is in a bad enough state to need to loan in a player as a starter to improve that position. Granted, maybe with COVID fucking up so many clubs finances - perhaps it's possible that'd happen. I've heard Brighton mentioned as a possibility for him to go on loan too - but that was months ago and I think it was from a Brighton journo saying they were hoping for a "loan to buy" agreement - which, for as good as the kid looked at Blackburn, I hope we don't sell him. He looks like a player where if he can make the grade here, we'd all fucking love him. Sending him to a club where he'd start, but they're too shit to play football in a way that's going to help him develop as a player might stunt his growth tbh. So in some senses, I think loaning him to a good championship side would be better than loaning him to a lower table top flight side. At the same time, looking at how so many of our options off the bench last season really... failed to change matches for us... I do wonder if maybe throwing him on off the bench instead of Shaqiri or Origi out wide might be the best thing for his development as a Liverpool player. But this is the counterpoint to that.

I think the reality is, the biggest "new normal" in our "post-COVID" world is that there isn't going to be a "post-COVID" world. You look at Singapore, a country that's been an absolute leader in it's COVID response and managing the virus... and they're talking about COVID as something that we'll just have to live with forever. It'll go from being a pandemic to an endemic, like chickenpox, there will probably just always be a baseline level of COVID going around in any given country (and what that baseline is will probably depend on country to country). So I don't really think we'll ever return to a true "pre-COVID normal" tbh. Too many governments of massive countries around the world really botched the intial response to the virus for that to really ever be a possibility. At the same time, I do think countries that have high vaccination rates do need to start dropping restrictions and start letting people have as close to a reasonable return to normalcy as possible. My dad's a small business owner that did his best to adapt to COVID, but dealing with the economic impact of the pandemic + issues with importing and costs of ingredients going up have been a nightmare for him. That's probably the case for many businesses, big and small, all across the UK. And that's the livelihood of millions of people across the country - and internationally as well. The economic cost has been very high and I don't think it's sustainable for much longer unless we want to run all small businesses out of operation and leave everything to by the country/world's richest people. Aside from the economic cost, the emotional and societal cost has been huge. Suicides and arrests for domestic violence have gone way up in a lot of countries as people and families have lived in isolation - in some places for well over a year. Alcoholism is probably skyhigh worldwide too (I haven't looked at the numbers for that though, I'm just making a guess). I'd never heard that myth taken seriously by anyone, tbh. I'm surprised it ever got legs. Kids had COVID pretty early on in Wuhan, so it was easily disprovable. They may have had milder cases than their parents/grandparents, but they could get it and spread it just like anyone else. There's no doubt COVID is serious and that people are right to be worried about new variants. We'll likely be having to need boosters to our current vaccines and be dealing with various COVID outbreaks for the rest of our lives tbh. But I do think countries where a lot of people are vaccinated are right in easing restrictions. Does that mean I don't think goverments should be inflexible and never put restrictions higher ever again? Absolutely not - I think it depends on a case by case basis. But I don't think people and businesses can wait much longer to know there's a light at the end of the tunnel or that we can anticipate things ever being the same as they were before the pandemic. COVID's permanently changed the world and it's highly likely we need to learn how to function as a society with the very high likelihood that there will be baseline levels of COVID even in societies that had an excellent vaccine rollout and/or good early controls for COVID. But I still think places like Peru, Brazil, India, Iran, etc... where we're seeing more and more waves of the virus, they probably need to be kept on extreme lockdowns until the spread is contained better and vaccines are more easily available. And for places like Australia, where they've been very cautious but the vaccine rollout has been slow... they've got to expedite getting jabs into arms. Otherwise @Harry's never going to experience life outside of lockdown again.

https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/first-team/437550-harvey-elliott-signs-new-long-term-liverpool-contract New deal for Harvey Elliot. Do we thinks he gets a squad role this season?

UK to stop requiring people from amber list countries from quarantining if they've been fully vaccinated! Not sure if that's a good idea tbh, but that's good for me - so I think it's a good idea.

I think the swift success of the Taliban has led the US to have no faith/trust that Afghan security forces won't immediately fold once the Taliban turn up. China's announced they're planning heavy investment into Afghanistan as part of the belt and road project. I'll bet they find throwing shitloads of cash at the Taliban makes them more pliable than the threat of decades of war.

It's absolutely insane the number of health professionals that took advantage of people in this scam. Really is absolutely horrible.

It's usually never worth the time and effort to argue with the diehard anti-vaxers nowadays. If you know someone that's starting to get into those kind of theories and bullshit, then it's probably worth the effort... but a lot of people have come to the conclusion that vaccines are bad and they'll distort truths and good faith arguments in favour of vaccines so that they'll ultimately be able to reach that conclusion of "and that's why vaccines are bad for you and you shouldn't get vaccinated."

I'm half English half Iranian - but I think I got the being a cheap arsehole from my very English dad. That's all good to know, thanks - at least the price has gone down significantly. I'd be fine with quarantining... but US companies don't give very much time off a year (which is VERY annoying, tbh) and I don't want to spend most of my time off stuck in a hotel unable to see my family/friends... Probably fucked myself over by not going back home when people were everyone in my office was working from home - I bet I could have pulled that off without too many people noticing I'm in a different country. Although I'd probably be constantly exhausted

Ah shit, I'll probably wait for the US to stop being Amber then - I'm a cheap arsehole and don't really want to pay for the tests

Is there still a mandatory quarantine for people from the US coming to the UK? I really want to go home ASAP

There's a pretty large population of black Iranians in the South of Iran and they've been vocal on Instagram & Twitter this year about how Haji Firooz is offensive to them.

In France people also say "fuck your race" and it's a socially acceptable insult

I don't know if it has the same connotations in France... but I do think most black faced instances in most cultures are racist. Just as one example of an instance of blackface I thought wasn't racist... but turns out it's super racist comes from Persian New Year - there's a Santa-like "character" called Haji Firooz who's in black face. There've been lots of explanations out there on how his depiction of blackface isn't racist (the most common one I've seen is "he's a Zoroastrian holy fire-lighter, so it's not blackface... he's just covered in soot" - which is I think what the Dutch say about Black Pieter too). But if you look into the history of this character, he's actually a fairly modern Persian invention... and he comes from a time where discrimination against Black Persians from the South of Iran was at it's highest and when mistral shows were popular in high society there. I don't want to say all depictions of blackface are racist - but I'd venture to guess the origins of most blackface are incredibly racist. And either way, the man in question doing it was doing it in modern times and while claiming to be a fan of American culture/American basketball... I feel like he should have known better. In any case, I think it's pretty hypocritical of these two players to be making the comments about the hotel staff's race and ethnicity as he's performing a service for them. Makes all of their "knee taking" look like a farce.

Awww... it's much funnier believing Klopp's the landlord

The fucker posted a picture of himself in blackface - the guy's a total dickhead.

https://www.bild.de/sport/fussball/borussia-dortmund/so-versaut-dembele-das-haus-von-klopp-52893436.bild.html I remember seeing the memes about this when it happened

I think it's inevitable the Taliban take over the country again after the West withdraws. Look at how much ground the Taliban gained in recent weeks - and even the taliban were surprised with how quick they were advancing I think it's easy to be worried about what comes next for Afghanistan - because I think we've seen this film before. And yeah, I agree with you - I don't think the lesson was learned the last time with the Soviet withdrawal. Because... think about it - the Taliban are basically an offshoot of the US backing radical militants against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Along with Al Qaeda, who famously became a US enemy after 2001. And now in Syria we see the US (and NATO) is basically acting as Al Qaeda & ISIS's airforce - so we've already come to see the world powers fail to learn from the lessons of Afghanistan in the 80s once before. I'm not sure it's smart to expect them to suddenly learn from past mistakes. But I hope we're wrong.

The landlord was Klopp

They mock his locks, language and the “technological advancement” of where he’s from (because he’s there fixing their internet or tv - I’m not sure which one)

Griezmann and Dembele caught on tape being racist to the Asian hotel worker assisting them…