Dr. Gonzo

Henderson’s likely out for the season

Nice, Southgate might not even pick him for the Euros. Hopefully that creates a nice rift between them and if Southgate doesn’t get sacked maybe we stop seeing him play for England for a while. Trent might not like that, but it’s a lot better for us

I think it’s pretty clear they didn’t have a plan, or at least didn’t have a good one

Erm... North Korea?

I mostly use extra virgin olive oil for cooking, but with some food I cook with grapeseed oil (it has a higher smoke point, which can be useful if you've got to cook at higher temperatures).

You can tell the US is closer to recovery as mass shootings start to show up again

I used to think Michael Oliver was our only good ref. Now I think he’s dogshit too, he’s had an awful season as a referee.

It’s much easier to take a referee error or a decision where I can’t agree with the ref when you can at least hear their reasoning.

I agree with this. I still think referees should explain themselves after a match because I’m pretty confident if we got actual truthful answers from them they would be “lol I’m just shite” But VAR’s basically removed all my confidence in the officials entirely.

I think after the original trilogy, they sort of continue on from their "present day" story in a way that can stand alone by itself as a story without too much knowledge of the other games. For me, personally, the main story with the synchronisations/simulations and all that is sort of secondary to the "historical" story of each game though so me not being fully cued in on the lore isn't that big of a deal to me.

Trying to buy a new Xbox Series X (and I imagine a PS5) online is some of the most irritating shit I've ever dealt with. I get a notification they're back in stock, immediately click the link... and click the add to cart button. Then the store tells me "oh our add to cart button only sometimes works if it's an item in high demand, try again" so I try again two more times... and they're fully out of stock. Ridiculously annoying.

I haven't played all of them. I played the Pirate one and the Paris one, but missed the American revolution stuff & the London industrial revolution (I have that downloaded, somehow, though) - or any of the ones in between those and the current one. I used to love the series, but after the Black Flag - the Paris one (I can't even remember the game) sort of wore me out (although I still think it's a good game - it just drags on because there's a lot of repetitive content). So far, Valhalla seems way less stale to me now. Probably because the world is gigantic and there's quite a bit of diversity in the quests it's had me do (so far). A lot of people think Odyssey is better, so I'll probably pick that up at some point after I finish this one. But maybe after I play a few other games so I don't feel burnt out on the series, because they're quite long and they do have a lot of stuff in them.

I’m fine with Southgate never picking any of our players again, tbh. Long may England selections look like this

Enjoy it pal, I'm I think close to halfway (I think, I've got no idea) and I've been loving it.

If any of you play Assassins Creed: Valhala, I don't want to give away any spoilers because I really like the game... ... but I hate the main character's brother.

Best game ever, imo. I've been playing for 5 years off and on. It's timeless - I feel like I'll always come back to it. One of the better competitive multiplayer games out there. The only thing I don't like is now that it's F2P, they're a lot more strict on the amount of shite you can type out to the opposition. Which is probably to stop people from being racist - but getting banned for small while for typing out "if I'm bad you are shit" was a bit shocking, especially because it censored the word "shit" - but it does seem a lot less toxic as a result. My friends and I used to see racial slurs on there CONSTANTLY, so them being more harsh with the word filter is probably for the best.

I think it's weird he's made a comment about him not being picked for not being in form, when he's actually looked like one of our better players in recent matches. Whereas he was picking him earlier in September and Trent was waaaaaay out of form then. But I don't think anyone's ever accused Gareth Southgate of being a smart man Probably would have been better for a player that looks like he's struggling with confidence to not have publicly mentioned his form. Especially having stood by him when he was in the worst form of his career - and he's picked and played other players for England without real consideration for their recent form. But international managers do that pretty frequently for players that have performed for them. I don't think it's particularly good man management from Southgate. I also think he doesn't really like playing Trent for whatever reason, tbh. He's preferred Walker and Trippier even when Trent was in better form than the both of them. It's better for us that he's not selected, I think it's just a bit weird he's brought up the players' form for the reasons I listed above. Especially when he's got an easy and non-controversial answer built in to not selecting any of England's right backs: "we've got a lot of good right backs at the moment and I can't pick all of them all the time."

I would like to ask AlanSimmonsCFC if he thinks the issue or toxicity in the Chelsea squad is something that will pop up again?

Good, maybe he’ll stop picking our players and returning them injured

Southgate’s confirmed he’s been dropped because of his form. Bit weird to publicly say that after calling up Dier and Trippier (how good has his form been serving that match ban?) - could dent Trent’s confidence as he’s actually coming back into form, in a season where I think he’s struggled for confidence. But that’s Southgate for you. But at the end of the day, I prefer to not have him be risked - especially this season.

I’m not so sure they’d feel constrained to Boston just because they’ve got history there. Otherwise they wouldn’t own us. That’s probably John Henry’s ideal side. Not like LeBron’s got any history with them though (although tbh I don’t know if he does, but I don’t think he does). No NBA side is cheap though.

Hope I’m wrong, but I think there’s a lot of indication that he’s wanting to buy a basketball team and teaming up with FSG as a partner probably makes that more likely for him. But on the other hand, Liverpool’s been a sound investment for him. So I’m sure he wants to keep seeing us do well. I just think his priority at FSG is going to primarily be with basketball.

Sad but true. You can also see Boris lean into authoritarian tendencies with this anti-protesting bill. Which, tbh, is a pretty horrific piece of legislation.

That's a fucking incredible return on investment, holy shit. Still pennies for him with all of his endorsement deals I do think much of RedBird Capital's investment into FSG, he's made no secret that he one day wants to own a basketball team when he retires. So I think he'll primarily be focused on expanding FSG to basketball, rather than growing FSG's current sporting investments. I suspect they go in for the Boston Celtics or something soon. I'm not convinced that this means much for Liverpool.

I don't understand what the need is for us to increase our nuclear arsenal by 40% All I can see this doing is encouraging Russia and China to make more nukes. More nuclear weapons in the world is a bad thing. I believe when Trump was still president, he also wanted the US to increase it's nuclear arsenal. I just can't see two allies doing this without other countries outside of that alliance thinking "oh shit, we've got an arms race now." One of my biggest fears, we will see people forget what nuclear war entails as we get further and further removed from the end of WW2 and what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Similar to how before WW1, we saw people forget about the devastation and carnage of war between powers with massive militaries. Because like WW1 and the mass mobilization of Europe's military might - technology has moved on. It made militaries more deadly and dangerous than they were prior to WW1 and shitloads of people firsthand got to experience that sort of carnage. Similarly, the capability of modern militaries to drop bombs has massively moved on from 1945. To the point where I wouldn't be so worried of nukes like the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - because the next country to nuke another in warfare isn't going to be dropping a bomb from a plane. It'll be launched from a missile from miles and miles away. The prospect of an arms race developing while so many countries around the world are seeing a rise in nationalistic politicians and parties (and in a disturbing number of places, the worst kind of nationalism imo, ethno-nationalism)... is a bit frightening if you know what's come before.