Dr. Gonzo

I’m not Muslim

Quite frankly it’s insane to say you can’t criticise Israel’s governments policies or you hate Jews. There’s Jews in Israel who criticise their government. But that’s not what has even been claimed here. It’s been claimed that not wanting the West to continue to escalate tensions, so there’s no Iraq-style invasion of a country with a much larger standing army than Iraq ever had (and that’s expected the US to attack since 1979), has bigger cities that are more populated (remember the Iraqi insurgency and how the West struggled to cope with it... and still does). It’d destroy Iran, kill thousands of US soldiers (and soldiers of any country dumb enough to join them). Not to mention the fact that the last time the US did something like this it sparked a massive refugee crisis. Given that so many of the people that would claim not wanting war with Iran is anti-Jew are the same people who are anti-Muslim... you’d think they’d want to avoid having more Muslims fleeing the Middle East to come west so they don’t have to worry about being blown up.

From a UK perspective, thankfully we've got the government actually coming out and saying a war with Iran is in nobodies interests.

To once again underscore how big of a miscalculation this was... not too long ago you had mass protests of Iranians taking to the streets and denouncing their government. Today we've got them taking to the streets and denouncing America: I'm sure Pompeo, the fucking warhawk, knew he was spouting off bullshit though. Same as Donald Rumsfeld's "I have no doubt we'll be greeted as liberators."

Soleimani's not some new figure - he's been doing this for decades. The US, UK, and Israel have all had the opportunity to kill him at various times - they've all had restraint. Why? Really think long and hard about why even Israel, who've lost far more Israelis to Hezbollah attacks, would opt for restraint rather than go after this guy. Sun-Tsu once said, "if you're going to surround your enemy, leave them an escape route" - because when you've got someone feeling cornered, they'll react dangerously. I'd argue if Iran aren't cornered now, they're very fucking close to being cornered. The US-Iran tensions being ratcheted up like this started a few years back with a move from the US that did absolutely nothing for stability in the Middle East and has been consistently stoked by both sides. Both sides keep escalating, but this is an unprecedented move. And it's an option that other world leaders have had the opportunity to act on... but refrained because the risk of blowback from that move is too great. There's a reason why every world power involved in the Middle East is urging calm from Iran right now, while the orange guy is just saying "DON'T RETALIATE OR WE DO AGAIN" - Iran can't do anything meaningful to hurt the US, but Iran can do a lot to throw the region into even more chaos. Not wanting to go to war with Iran = hating Jews? In any case, this is bad for any Persian in the world who'd have hoped to see Iran open up to the rest of the world. Because what this ultimately does is tell Iran: get nukes ASAP. Iran only has to look at North Korea to see, a nuclear nation will not be bullied easily. The reformers in Iran are so badly politically damaged now, some are probably going to be barred from running for office by the Guardians Council. They're seen as the politicians that hurt Iran by sitting to the table to negotiate with the West, while the other side was saying "you can't trust the west, they'll break the deal." Hardliners are vindicated and political support for a nuclear Iran will be at an all time high. And a nuclear Iran means the Islamic Republic of Iran is here to stay for eternity.

That's managers telling the media to fuck off because they don't want to criticise their players publicly (unless they're Mourinho, in which case they have a bus they'll be pushed in front of when it's not parked).

Both sides have been escalating since Trump stupidly decided to pull out of the nuke deal and reimpose sanctions as a way to get Iran to come back to the negotiating table. To which Iran responded, "fuck off, we're not negotiating with people that don't honour their deals, AGAIN." The issue here is, Iran's government is going to feel like it has to respond. Suleimani was someone people were saying the Guardians Council might pick to be Khameini's successor - this guy wasn't just an important military general to Iran, he was politically popular amongst the Iranian hardliners (who've grown in power after the US backing out of the nuclear deal). They don't want to look weak in the region, they want to remain a power player in the Middle East, and they don't want to look weak to the Iranian public - who've already broken out in massive protests against the government several times in the last few years. But I agree with this statement regarding the UK & getting involved in this shit: We're going to have other issues to sort out and BoJo will want to make the most of that big majority he's just won - I think that's why that stuff with Northern Rail is happening, he'll want to capitalise on winning in areas Tories haven't won so he can count on them again in the future.

I just hope Iran doesn’t immediately escalate. There’s enough internal pressure in the US and enough external pressure from Saudi Arabia and Israel to push for the US invading Iran. So if Iran gives them a reason to invade, I’m not sure there will be enough people to counsel this administration to restraint.

Managers will always bitch about it. Pep and the Wolves boss have also been fairly vocal in recent weeks. It makes the injury risk to players higher. Honesty, it’s much worse for lower league sides that don’t have big squads. But no manager likes it and they’ll always campaign to change it.

The news here was talking about how Iraqis would be happy about this. Yeah maybe the Sunni’s in Iraq. But Iran quite is popular with the Shia population of Iraq... and that’s why Iran’s had such influence in the country - especially after ISIS went through Iraq killing Shias for YouTube videos. So that’s about 60% of the population that liked this guy because he funded and trained militias with the Iranian military. And don’t forget Sunnis were a minority running the show before the US toppled Sadam. Which is why the current Iraqi government is pretty friendly to Iran. Sectarian shit is stupid, for sure, but it’s also an incredibly important part of why that part of the world is so fucking tense. And it’s not really thought about a lot by the west, despite them doing shite in the Middle East forever

Russia’s invaded Georgia (unsuccessful) and Ukraine (annexed Crimea and still at war with Ukraine), committed assassinations in the UK and Turkey and attempted to do it in Germany. They’ve got to be up there. There’s also China secretly-not-so-secretly doing its best to take over the Middle East and Africa, granted not as overtly aggressively with their military in every sense. Saudi Arabia & Iran are pretty bad as well.

I think Trump might invade Iran because no wartime president has ever lost an election tbh.

That's really shit about Chambers. I also think Arteta looks a lot less of a risk now that we've actually seen him manage Arsenal. I think he'll actually do quite well with them - you can see he's already done a lot in terms of imposing a style of play and the Arsenal midfield actually has played a few matches where the players look like they've been given defined roles and they don't look like headless chickens just running around anymore. And them fading in the second half of matches is understandable, given what David Luiz and Sokratis said after the match yesterday - they admitted that currently the Arsenal players don't have the fitness to press with the intensity Arteta wants them playing with for 90 minutes. That's going to come with more time on the training ground and more matches where they play in his playstyle. So for this season with Arsenal at this stage, yeah you hope you can finish as high as possible because that's what all football clubs try to do, but the important thing is that the new man gets his philosophy implemented and the players all reading off the same page. If Arsenal can actually get Xhaka performing like he did before they signed him, because he was actually really good in Germany, they'll be very happy. And considering how it was looking with his Arsenal future not that long ago, that's seriously impressive.

Fixed

Origi’s goal against Everton last season is my goal of the decade

Holy shit have you seen how little he was paid before? I’ve given him shit before, but I think a big pay bump is well deserved considering how little he’d been paid & that he is an important player at the club

Has he missed a load of games? Genuinely don't know - because with that stat and scoring every 140ish minutes you'd think he'd be up there with Rashford, Mane, or Salah with their 150 minutes per goal. He's a weird player though - it seems like he's much more comfortable finishing with his head than his feet... but he doesn't look like that kind of striker when you see him. He's obviously improved since last season where I thought he was total dogshite, because he's almost got 10 league goals this season. I'm assuming this is the best he's done in a half season? Maybe it's a breakout year for him and he'll actually get callups to the England squad like you suggested - because he does seem to offer something a bit different than the other England strikers. Although I think Danny Ings ought to be back in consideration for the England squad. Also if they could get Vardy to unretire... I think he'd be in too.

They did yesterday? In any case, I think the VAR application with offsides has been a bit shite to say the least. People being offside by a pixel or their armpit hair isn't "clear and obvious." Even for our goal after they checked to make sure Lallana didn't handball, they then checked a few different angles to see if Mane was still onside (even though it was pretty... clear and obvious... that he was, given that he made his run from fairly deep). I'm not surprised people are hating VAR for these close offside rules where you've got someone offside by a pixel, like that Wolves player. The technology isn't good enough (or precise enough) to be used in it's current application. And it's not meant to be used to make sure that everything was inch perfect for an offside, it's meant to make sure the officials didn't make a clear or obvious error. 6 years ago Sterling was found to be offside against Manchester City with this: Instances like that are where VAR could be used to reasonably overturn a pretty clearly incorrect decision. He's miles onside and an idiot linesman flagged him off and took a goal away. These really tight decisions where you can't tell what frame the ball leaves a players foot and have to zoom the fuck in to look at the pixels on lines that sometimes seem arbitrarily drawn by idiots like Martin Atkinson... they're causing a lot of controversy because we're relying on technology that isn't good enough to decide things by fine margins. And other leagues aren't having anywhere near the same amount of controversy with VAR. VAR is here to stay. And I'm sure the technology will get better to where you can tell exactly by the frame when someone is offside or not more clearly - considering cameras keep making huge leaps forward, sooner or later we'll get better resolution in our VAR images that'll allow for more precision. But there's a lot wrong with it's implementation in our league - particularly in these decisions with the fine margins that the technology quite frankly is not suited for.

He says it's meant for checking of a clear and obvious error was made, rather than wasting time spending time looking at different angles to decide something marginal... which is literally what we're regularly seeing with these offside decisions.

General secretary of Ifab says that the league is using VAR wrong for offside decisions: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/premier-league-var-wrong-offside-review-ifab-goals-replays-a9264306.html?utm_source=reddit.com

Government is planning massive farming subsidies to counteract the effects of Brexit on our agriculture - so much for less reliance on the state

Not really, that’s less than a goal a game which is pretty impressive I think. I’m more impressed we scored 4 on a defense that had only conceded 14 in 17

I think that means they’re unlikely tbh, don’t think we’d stop a kid’s development suddenly if we were just planning on bringing someone in

That would have been mental. Although, I think you're right that KDB and Salah needed to leave Chelsea for their development.

Nat Phillips is being recalled from loan for cover at CB. Probably means bad news on the Lovren/Matip front tbh.