Dr. Gonzo

A lot of Liverpool fans have adopted this attitude after seeing so many neutrals desperate for our winning title run to be overturned due to covid and saying if we win the league it's the worst thing ever because we're insufferable. Weirdly tended to be from a lot of London & midlands based clubs too. The attitude is generally: "we fucking hate you too then" and "fuck all of the other English football clubs." Since City are less a football club than a tourism advertisement and sportswashing project, them winning a 4th title in a row is something that's more palatable to the Liverpool fans that have decided they hate the rest of the clubs in the country. They're more of an entity nobody really gives a shit about. For me, personally, though - I would have loved Arsenal to have won over City. I don't think of City as an actual football club either, and I think I have very much adopted a "fuck all of the other English football clubs" attitude - but City represent to me everything that I hate about modern football. So any time they fail to win a trophy they wanted to win, I see that as a victory for football.

EU offering condolences to a human rights abusing government because of the loss of a prominent mass murderer: Josep Borrell deserves all the hate he gets from Iranians.

Chris Bascombe, who's also a club connected journo, saying we're likely to be making contract extension offers to Virgil, Trent, & Mo as they're seen as vital for the transition to playing under Slot.

https://x.com/_pauljoyce/status/1792586251683447203?t=2Knj6ggv8xKEdxl-t3Jk7A&s=19 If it's from Paul Joyce, it's basically from the club - so Darwin's most likely not going anywhere. Unless we get a bid where we just can't say no... but I can't see that happening. Which is a shame because if we're going to sell anyone - I'd imagine it'd at least be one of Diaz/Nunez/Gakpo. And I'm sure we're going to sell someone - my guess is of those 3, Diaz is the most likely to go - and out of those 3, he's the one I think I'd prefer we keep the most. Nunez would be the one I want to see go the most because I'm just tired of watching him miss chances he should be putting away, and then just grinning that grin. He's a polarising player, because I love his workrate and I love the crazy shit he's done which has resulted in goals. But holy fuck is it irritating when he's routinely failing to put the ball into the back of the net from what seem like gilded opportunities.

Would be funny to see him at Barcelona tbh. I think he's done in club football though, but wouldn't be surprised at all if he's a hit at the international level.

Makes a lot of sense, if true.

Imagine winning 4 titles in a row and nobody giving a shit. The fourgettables.

Probably right behind Paisley & Shankley

Al Jazeera immediately blamed Israel because their dicks got hard at the idea of getting Iranians to go to war and die for their Palestinian friends.

Tbh it will actually be hard for that decrepit piece of shit Khamenei to find a worse guy than the butcher of Tehran. The guy was responsible for thousands of dead Iranians in the purges of the 80s, rolled back human rights in Iran in his short time as president, and was considered the heir apparent to Khamenei. There’s not a lot of news to celebrate lately, especially if you’re Iranian. So this is particularly great news. It doesn’t change much in the grand scheme of things. He will be replaced with another hardliner. And even the reformist parties in Iran are insane zealots so even if it’s not another hardliner, it’s not going to change much. But it represents karmic justice to a lot of Iranians. And it has given me a newfound appreciation for helicopters. Particularly the Bell 412, which is now imo the best aircraft ever made.

You surprised?

Raisi’s helicopter was involved in what Iranian state media are calling a “hard landing” and asking the country to pray for him.

Some birds that were on the pitch when we played Brentford (I think) got more time on the pitch this season than Thiago did. Great player, but ultimately a luxury signing that didn't really help us because of how injury prone he is - so not really a great signing. Gutted about Matip though, was one of our best free agent signings of all time despite his own injury woes. Gave us many great moments. Hope they'll be replaced with players that are close to as good as they are (or better, that's obviously more ideal) - but also with players that are nowhere near as close to injury prone as they both are.

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If it were down to me I'd sack the lot of them rather than scrap VAR. At the end of the day, I think most of the problems with PMGOL are institutional - VAR isn't the problem, the referees are the problem and the system where referees go through is failing them. PMGOL's never going to do that though, it's an old boys club.

VAR or no VAR the referees will be shambolic. At least not having VAR makes human error more forgivable.

This

@Stan is right - it’s been like that for a long time. It’s been like that since the early 2000s (and really with the TV money in the game in the 90s, the prem wasn’t that competitive either then - basically just 2 sides won it every year for an era bookended by Blackburn & Chelsea, 2 billionaire playthings at the time). The financial incentive of the CL is a huge motivator - winning the EL doesn’t even pay out as much as just playing in the CL groups. And it’s club football’s best cup competition, which means it’s football’s best cup competition. The best players want to play in it, the best managers want to manage in it. It’s an overall good thing for the health of your club, if you want to be competitive, to qualify for it. I think Villa fans will be absolutely delighted they’re in the CL next season and it’s got to be exciting going into it (is it their first time since it was rebranded the CL?) with a manager that has a good record in Europe.

Errr… didn’t “Are you watching Arsenal” ring out onto the TV speakers? That definitely wasn’t City fans lol. Spurs fan did the Poznan at the end of the 90. Ange was clearly pissed off about it in his post match conference and now if you go on reddit and check out the Spurs subreddit… quite a few of their fans have turned sour on him overnight.

Important words to know to bond with people from Italy that aren't Juve fans: Juve Merda

At least next week I can go back to hoping for what I hope for every week: Everton losing & Manchester clubs stop existing.

lol

I think United should worry about getting their new Director of Football in his role and letting him have a say in who the manager that he'll be working with on a day to day basis is going to be. I know there's that proceeding with Newcastle regarding compensation holding things up, but no sense in trying to get ahead of themselves when there's plenty of foundational work a Director of Football's going to have to do. I think just bringing in someone now before Ashworth's had time to properly vet them doesn't really do them any favours. A lot of United's modern day issues are structural and from failure to develop long term plans to go along with the short term planning. I think bringing in someone without Ashworth being properly involved is just continuing that policy - a manager works under and with a Director of Football, so Ashworth not being properly involved in the selection is just putting together a structure without regard for whether or not the 2 men share the same philosophies on short and long term development. United aren't just disjoint on the pitch, they're disjoint off the pitch. Until you've got the club working on clear long and short term goals simultaneously, with the people behind the scenes as well as the managers and players all pulling in the same direction, I don't see United's struggles really ending any time soon.

I think it's a bit fucked that their human rights abuses get overlooked by the West because they're 1.) paying western politicians - lobbying is just legal bribery; 2.) the West wants to encourage normalised relations between the Saudis and Israelis - so a blind eye to human rights abuses is turned. I think a part of that is because it will likely have some backlash in the Arab world and human rights abuses are what MBS uses to silence dissent. Saudi Arabia's received a lot of praise in the west for "modernisation" of women's rights because they've allowed some things (letting women drive - something that Iran's had for... as long as there's been cars; relaxed restrictions on permissible clothing for women - and to MBS's credit, it's more relaxed than Iran - but they've gone from burkas and niqabs to being able to dress how they want only very recently)... but they've still got similar gender apartheid to Iran. Non-Arab minorities native to the country face systemic and violent oppression. Tribal people are treated like animals & as I recently posted, are getting slaughtered for happening to live where a ridiculous vanity project's proposed site is. Saudis abroad are subject to criminal charges for dissent (or chopped into pieces like that journalist). It is not a good thing that such a wealthy country, with such disregard for human rights and human life, has so much sway over western politics. And the money they spent in cleaning up their image internationally among normal people has done wonders for them. Their involvement with sports entertainment: Newcastle, golf, F1, professional wrestling; their involvement with the general and social media: fox/news corp, Disney, meta, etc. - these all have an impact on how the public perceives them and how the media portrays them, despite these blatant abuses.