Dr. Gonzo

India’s literally got the highest dollar reserve that it’s ever had lmao. Why are we even talking about BRICS? It’s not relevant to the UK. It’s barely relevant on the global stage, but it’s not relevant to the UK at all. Reform is the party of one of the architects of the cost of living crisis and collapsing social systems. “I love ethnonationalism” - a guy who’s emigrated twice in his life.

Mate BRICS uses the US dollar as its reserve currency. It’s an incredibly weak economic pact where the actual economic powerhouses don’t actually share economic goals. Two of them are even direct competitors who aren’t even friendly in non-economic terms and even have an active border dispute. Erdogan is just courting them because Turkey’s not going to be allowed in the EU & Turkeys economy is so fucked they need some kind of relief, even if it means they make themselves prisoners to the Chinese debt trap. Reform UK poll results probably are being suppressed, but Reform UK voters are just ex-Tory voters that have been pushed to extremes. I wouldn’t say them doing well in an election means anything other than tories are very unpopular and the most diehard believers in inept policy just wanted to vote for someone that wasn’t tory or labour.

Why would that cause panic? BRICS is a joke. In the UK’s case it’s not really a shift due to people voting against inept policy. People ditching tories for Reform UK are only dissatisfied with the way Brexit panned out because they were lied to - and hopping back into bed with Mr. Brexit is just doubling down on their poor choices.

Thought it would be nice if Real Madrid were rejecting this in protest to the increasing number of games players are expected to play a season and do something to protect them from burnout and injury. But no... Real Madrid are just pissed off they're not getting paid enough. To be honest, I can understand Real Madrid's position. FIFA wants people to care about their revamped competition that they've never managed to get Europeans to give a fuck about... but they're willing to pay less than what the prize money is from just participating in the CL group stages. It's not exactly going to be a high priority competition for Real Madrid, or any other club that's a regular in the CL.

This is so accurate that it's painful

Man Utd's money comes from being a big club that saw success after the top flight broke off the football league to start making massive TV deals and fuck over the rest of the football pyramid in the process. I'm not sure that's quite as organic as it sounds at first glance when you actually look at how the premier league was formed. I think there should be rules against the financial doping, but I also think the premier league's generally massively hypocritical in it's approach to financial rules considering the history of the league.

My dad says I’ve never seen a defender anywhere near as good as Hansen was. I’m like you, never saw him as a player, only really know him from MOTD. But sounds like if you remember anything about our golden days there’s no question who the best defender to ever play for us is.

He seems very highly rated in German football. Tbh Brighton have now established a solid track record with bringing in managers, so I suspect he’ll fit in with them well. Very young though.

I think journos that have a track record of being right about LFC said this rumour’s not got anything in it. I’d welcome it though he’s a good player.

Wanker bankers don’t really fit in with the vibe of our city tbh

Gareth Southgate’s tactics and Harry Kane being cursed

I think it'd be 18-2, honestly. Maybe more than 2 if there's other clubs owned by people that also own other football leagues who have put an investment in paying the current refs for "side gigs."

Aren't they going to reintroduce a rule change but make it more specific to what Chelsea's scenario was exactly? I think I'd read that somewhere. I think there should be a general ban on deals between related parties. Clearlake buying non-football assets Chelsea owned is clearly a related party transaction - that should be banned the same way City's sponsored by dozens of UAE owned entities or Newcastle's trying to pump money into it with other PIF related sponsors. They're all FFP loopholes and unless there can be some clear standard of demonstrating these deals have been negotiated as "arms length transactions" - which I'm pretty sure is a standard for other industries relating to related party transactions, they should just generally be blanked banned because it's just skirting the rules.

Dodgy bank doing dodgy bank shit. Standard Chartered are a big bank with a history of doing dodgy shit - laundering money for terrorist organisations is honestly not all that surprising for them. I really wish they weren't our sponsor. A club in a city like Liverpool shouldn't have a massive London bank with a history of doing fucked up shit all over Africa and Asia plastered across the front of it's kit. I think it's mental clubs agreed that alcohol sponsors, like Carlsberg, who make shit beer but... were an iconic sponsor... shouldn't be allowed. But we've got shit like dodgy banks, gambling companies, and cryptocurrency bullshit all seen as morally okay.

The thing is Israel's demonstrated it can carry out very targetted attacks while minimising innocent loss of life, or even avoiding it entirely. When they assassinated the Iranian nuclear scientist, they had their robot machine gun programmed to only fire on him with facial recognition technology. So he was the only casualty. When they targeted the consulate attached to the Iranian embassy, they managed to only kill IRGC members with a missile strike. Israel can hit its enemies with extreme precision. The leaders of Hamas aren't even in Gaza - they're in Turkey now I believe. Israel could be using Mossad to go after them and cut the head off the snake. What Israel has demonstrated it is capable of in terms of precision tactics and what Israel has demonstrated in the way it's been fighting Hamas is they don't have any regard for civilian life if they think they can get away with it. And the current tactics don't do anything in the long term - it just causes short term misery for Palestinians in Gaza who will then be easily radicalised by what they've been through that they continue the cycle of violence for the next generations. The way Israel is fighting the war is sad honestly. At best, it's attempted genocide and several war crimes. People in Gaza are held hostage by Hamas, who have no actual regard for their safety - in fact, they view Israel not giving a shit about the use of human shields as a great thing for them propaganda wise... and it works. And Israeli leadership doesn't give a shit about their safety either - it seems any dead civilian in Israel is viewed as a potential terrorist so no sweat off anyone's back if any civilians die. It's an ugly war. You can't remove Hamas's culpability in the death they've brought to Gaza's doorstep... but you certainly also can't remove Israel's culpability. I also think it's weird too. We see Russia bomb Ukraine's hospitals and schools and they get universal condemnation for it. Quite rightly, too. But when Israel does the same thing, we're told it's not anywhere near as bad as what the Russians have done. Maybe war crimes should just be recognised as war crimes. Hamas are committing them by using civilians as human shields, absolutely. But Israel's also committing them by going ahead and declaring schools and hospitals legitimate targets of war and then having people tell them the blood of the dead kids is certainly not on their hands.

Doesn’t really matter cos Hamas rejected it.

Lol if Ten Hag isn’t sacked the next match against United is the Breaking Bad Derby with Walter White v. Hank.

Send them down to the bottom of the football pyramid

Think voting against increasing it is the only thing they can really do to attempt to control the ridiculous market prices for players.

Does Apple own Ipswich Town? There's a big difference from an unrelated corporate sponsor and a corporate sponsorship that's made by the owners of the club. City just made up companies, didn't bother to even give them a web presence that could have the appearance of legitimacy, and then said "oh yeah they're paying this much to be our sponsor. Even Newcastle getting that airline sponsor, even when that airline hadn't even made a single flight because it was still being set up, while still shady as fuck... has more of an appearance of legitimacy. But an owner creating a company and then making a ridiculously over the top sponsorship deal to get passed certain rules is always going to look shady when you compare it to a corporate sponsor unrelated to the club making any deal.

I’ve already stopped watching the league if it’s not my club playing, but I think if this lawsuit means City get away with their 115 charges and leads to a change in rules so they can financially dope further, I think I’m done with the league altogether. They’ve already diminished the integrity of the league by letting referees take side gigs working for the owners of City and Newcastle. Having the rules changed so they can further ruin our league just kills all possibly interest and excitement I can have.

Lol an absolute monarchy complaining about tyranny.

I think in all likelihood this is going to be bad for gamers who want to play football games. I can see EA and 2K fighting it out for exclusive rights to certain clubs (similar to how EA would fuck over PES with club rights) - so then you'll end up with some clubs or leagues having those shit half-arsed counterfeit teams in each respective game. Taking the immersion out of the game - which I think is already a big problem for EA with EAFC because they don't really do much to improve the actual game and instead just keep churning out the same game year after year which has people jaded.

Arms manufacturers shouldn't be allowed to generally advertise outside of things like weapon trade shows... but I certainly don't think they should have their logo plastered on kits of a football club which is primarily meant to represent a community. Shame on Borussia Dortmund for this, honestly. Has done a lot to tarnish their image with a lot of neutral fans, from what I can tell... and understandably so.