Dr. Gonzo

It may have had an influence, but that doesn't mean Karius shouldn't have looked first before doing anything. Youthful inexperience maybe, but still very stupid.

It's all circumstantial. If we lose in a cup final or 2 against a good side and miss out on the title by a point or 2... that's devestating and I will probably be raging. But calling for his head after that would be silly I think. Someone building a side strong enough to compete shouldn't be ousted if they compete and come close. It would be his work that's improved us. And he's done that each year, gradual improvement. I wouldn't want to end that just to punish him for coming very close. If we're out of the title race early and are shit in the cups only playing for top 4, or not competing for the top 4 and competing in a cup... that's more of a cause for concern. But sacking someone who's done a good job and had one bad setback is also risky. Sacking Rafa after Aquilani was too injured to really replace Alonso, who was probably our most important player the season prior, because Rafa had a bad year for the first year was something that never sat well with me. He was a man who took us from Ged's stagnation and made constant improvement season after season until his last season, where there were many issues not even in his control. I'd argue it's taken until Klopp's appointment to really steady the ship since that decision. We're not Chelsea, we can't afford to abandon our long term projects unless we really really have to - at least imo. I think any sort of rebuild means setting us back a few years.

Oblak or Allison are our targets. Klopp seems to not be fucking around.

I don't think playing attacking football means your keeper will necessarily throw the ball right at the striker right next to him to have it bounce off him into the goal. You can take a horse to water, but you can't make that horse not retarded.

I imagine your mum wakes up every day and curses the fact she didn't get an abortion.

Moderately entertaining.

Yeah. Other than Joe Cole, I quite like the other lads we've signed who've been dubbed "Chelsea rejects." Apparently we'd taken him on trial prior to signing him, so it seems to be a pretty well informed signing on our part, even though I know fuck all about youth football. The path to first team football with us is more straightforward than at Chelsea though, and Chelsea have a surprisingly good academy (that they hate using to improve their first team for some reason)... so this could be win win for both the player, us... and even Chelsea because as @Cicero said they've got more kids to push through.

What do you lads know about Isaac Christie-Davis?

Yeah, I'm not sure that objective morality's existence has anything to do with religion other than the fact that for some people to get other people to not do fucked up things they had to invent a god and impart morality on some people through that way. I entirely believe that it's just humans telling other humans how to act. Rules and social norms that govern how people live their lives and what they believe were, in my opinion, most likely invented to get people to act and behave pleasantly. As well as the fact that religion can/could explain things that are/weren't explainable. It's also just as possible that there really is some higher being that created objective morality. But then, which higher being is correct? Or are they all the same... and people coming up with different organised systems are all just misinterpreting the spiritual feelings imparted to them? Are people that lived a good life according to multiple religious texts, including the "correct one" barred from heaven (or whatever) if they didn't believe in the "true religion." And I don't think you or I or anybody can answer where objective morality stems from. We'll either find out when we die and it turns out some religious people were right and there's some sort of higher being that created everything. Or we won't ever know ever, we'll just die never knowing it. Anyone can believe whatever they want to believe, true or not. But to me it all just seems like a waste to believe in any of that or worry about any of that, when there's so much that's actually worth expending energy thinking about in life.

I mean, if you're on a team then there's a good chance that when you die you're going to be wrong. Even atheists might be wrong as fuck. But there's certain things in religion that I understand the purpose for - explaining things that just couldn't be explained at the time & keeping a form of social order and morality. Nowadays, a lot of what couldn't be explained can be explained. And if you need stories and fables to explain to you what is good and bad... that's pretty concerning. And yeah there's a lot of stuff that still remains unexplained still. And a lot of it is interesting stuff to think about. And it can lead to interesting thoughts and discussion. But when you're considering things like: why are we here? how did we get here? what's our purpose in life? what happens when we die? ... they're all interesting thoughts. And they can lead to existential crises to some people if there aren't any answers. And I can certainly see the reason why people would want these answers and have certain beliefs... because it's comforting. But at the end of the day, we're not going to know any of the answers to any of this stuff either ever... or until we kick the bucket and see what the next stage is. Why are we here? I don't know... but also who cares? We are here, and we're going to keep being here until we stop being here. People don't need religion to be good people. And people would probably be better to each other if they didn't have to worry about people having religious differences. Life is short. For all we know, we've only got one life (and if we don't, we've only got one of this life) - so we should be making the most of this one life we have. Especially because life can be fucking shit a lot of the time. Religion gets in the way of people making the most of their lives and creates more shit times for a lot of people. And I think that's especially clear in Iran and the Middle East largely.

Yeah no incest as far as I know I'd prefer more people going the route of not being fucking religious in Iran (and the Middle East in general).

Not that I know of, other than the link between ancient Persia and modern day Persians. Things like Nowruuz (the Perisan new year) and traditions like Chaharshanbe Suri (which is celebrated on the Wednesday before the Persian new year) are old Zoroastrian traditions that Persians have kept in our culture despite the Arab conquest of Persia & Islam becoming the main religion in the area. With Chaharshanbe Suri it's particularly easy to see the connection with Zoroastrianism because it involves jumping over flames for rebirth. But that's not really a personal link my family has with the religion at all. It's sort of just something all Persians have with that being part of the history of Persians. I've got a historical interest in Zoroastrianism because of it's historical ties to the Iran and the three Abrahamic religions. My family is pretty secular though, my grandparents were a bit more traditional "Muslims" but my Iranian granddad drank and ate pork all the fucking time when he was still alive. And I've seen my granny have wine. So they weren't at all particularly devout with those types of restrictions or anything like that. I wouldn't say that any member of my family is especially religious in any way though - the closest on either side would be my grandparents. But I know that in Iran there's something of a Zoroastrian "revival" - sort of based in politics (well not sort of, it's rooted in politics), they're embracing ethnic Iranian history and politically rejecting the Islamic Republic. I suspect it's either tied to people who've been brought up to be religious but want to rebel, or it's mainly symbolic rather than an actual rebirth of the old religion... but that's just speculation tbh.

You'd think so, but English refs are so shit that I assume having a much dirtier player will somehow give us more penalties somehow, even though that doesn't make sense. That's just how dogshit our refs are.

Yeah that makes me think much less of Ozil.

The Ox is out until November. Big blow, he's been pretty damned good for us since joining.

@Blue said Salah was African, not Egyptian. Hilarity ensues.

That reminds me I need to jump back onto the playthrough of Skyrim I started around the end of last year. I made a Khajit and gave him the same name/appearance as my cat, makes it a bit more personal I started Far Cry 5, but I got a bit busy with work and I totally forgot I owned it. It's a fun game though (at least so far, I'm not very far into it). Something I can't really get over, though, is how an entire county in a US state is apparently cut off from the world... and no state police/national guard or whatever thinks to at least fly by and see what's going on. Like seriously, I know America's fond of guns and whatnot... but having it deteriorate into an actual warzone is pretty tough to believe for me.

Ali Daei is probably the most universally loved Iranian to have ever existed.

Meme police, arrest this man! Improper meme usage is a serious offense: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/xzibit-yo-dawg

Has anyone ever mentioned that Brian isn't a very Peruvian sounding name? Then again neither is Nobby. Also lol wtf @Blue why the shit would you fake your own death? Also wtf @Dr. Gonzo how did you miss this bit of hilarity?

Lol who the fuck faked their own death?