Dr. Gonzo

Bargain in this market - although it's a pretty big fee considering everyone knew he wasn't going to get a second chance here and just rot in the U23s.

But hockey is probably the most cyclical of American sports. Nuggets & Rams are both super shite. Idk about their MLS sides, I can't listen to American commentators without feeling deeply disturbed so I can't watch it. I suggest reading the Usmanov letter though.

I think Arsenal supporters need to be united on an anti-Kroenke front. "Kroenke out" needs to be the rallying cry, Wenger Out needs to be shelved for another day. Because while I agree that Wenger looks like he's totally lost the plot... I don't think the problems at Arsenal are entirely with the manager (though he's certainly not helping). Kroenke lacks ambition. Look at his track record of ownership with American sides: LA Rams are totally shite. And he fucked off out of their home to move them to LA to tap into that LA viewer market (LA is mostly a Raiders city though) - pretty similar with Arsenal tbh. Not really arsed about how they perform, as long as fans turn up and spend lots of money in the stadium Denver Nuggets - have been shite for years Colorado Avalanche - worst team in the NHL Western Central Division. And worst team in the NHL last year Colorado Rapids - I actually have no idea how good they are for an MLS side. According to wiki they're alright... but in 2015 they were the worst MLS side. He does not give a shit about his team's success. American sports don't have to worry about relegation and there's certain things like draft order that gives sides some parity if they've been shite. It makes American sports more cyclical. But that's now how football works in England - and a few fuckups and you go the way of Leeds (although I think that was overambition rather than lack of ambition that killed them), Nottingham Forest (Brian Clough basically lost the fucking plot and the club never quite recovered), and Newcastle (who never hit the highs of the other two clubs... BUT I'm still astounded by their massive fall from grace - and Mike Ashley certainly gives 0 fucks about success, just cashing in off the club). Usmanov's letter to the Arsenal board in 2012 highlights how shite of an owner Kroenke is. So while I think Wenger is certainly a problem for Arsenal fans, I think Kroenke is similar to Gillett and Hicks (although on the plus side, you lot are not in the financial troubles we were in at the time). Kroenke and his son make up 2 of the board of directors - there needs to be a united front opposing the way they've run the club. People like Usmanov and other board members and shareholders who might care about the history AND future of the club should be leaking as much info as possible that can get the supporters to act. For instance, someone at the club was telling us where G&H were going to get loans for the club - and then there would be a united effort of Liverpool fans to write to banks and give compelling reasons (aka threatening boycotts and stating why the club's fans would boycott) for the loan not to be given. But it will be tough because Arsenal are in good financial shape. And he owns 66.6% (hail satan?) of the shares.

John Henry? He definitely is not the man in Liverpool for transfers in Liverpool. Our new CEO, Peter Moore, has even said he plays a very minimal role in transfers as well. The board of directors contains John Henry (FSG's Principle Owner & our club's as well), Tom Warner (our Chairman), and a few other people like King Kenny. But the real director who's most involved is Mike Gordon. Michael Edwards, our sporting director, is the main man with regards to transfers. Ayre used to handle a lot of the negotiating with agents and shite like that- but that's no longer a part of our CEO's role. Mike Gordon is FSG's point person for Liverpool though. But I'm not sure how much of a role he has in transfers rather than sanctioning how much Klopp and Edwards have to spend. As far as I know, they're the two people with the most influence on who we look to bring in and how we look to bring them in. It's why I can't blame FSG if we don't sign VVD. We certainly had the financial backing to sign him. It's entirely on Edwards and Klopp for arranging direct communications with the player rather than his agent. I'll tell you what though, we're looking a lot more competent this summer with Edwards as our sporting director than we ever looked with that shite French one we had with King Kenny, or for the 4 years of having a transfer committee made up of Edwards (as head of analysis then), a position called "head of recruitment" - which I think was Mike Gordon (which is maybe what you were referencing as being the massive influence on the transfer committee), Brendan Rodgers, and Ian Ayre (as the head of the transfer committee). When Klopp came in, FSG wanted to move back to a sporting director heading our recruitment efforts rather than a transfer committee where the largest voices were people who were businessmen and not football people. Michael Edwards still has to answer to the businessmen involved - our CEO, and our Board - but there's less direct involvement from people like Gordon & Moore on the football aspects of bringing people in. It's more the financial side. Which is the way it absolutely should be if the manager is not going to be the main man bringing players in. Decent write-up on Edwards: https://www.thisisanfield.com/2016/11/michael-edwards-lowdown-liverpool-fcs-new-sporting-director/ - he was a big part of bringing in the more successful players from the transfer committee era. He's clearly got an eye for talent. It's the shite like tapping a player up on accident when there are loopholes around that, which basically every club uses, that made me question him. But overall, I think it's an improvement on the transfer committee considering we've signed in 2 of our top targets this summer (Salah and Keita), even if we've got to wait a year to get one of them. In Other News: We've agreed a fee with Arsenal that is absolutely outrageous (and more than Salah or Mane cost lol) for the Ox... who I think is a good player. But imo we're really just signing him for depth, unless Klopp can work some of that magic he worked on Lallana and push him on as a player.

On paper I don't think gets into our starting XI, but the season is long and he will get plenty of chances to earn a spot. Gini and Can aren't untouchable, Lallana is injured, and Coutinho will probably fake injuries over the season. And while playing out wide for us, he'd be part of our front 3 - which is probably more enjoyable to him than being a wingback which I think he hates. Then again, the last English CM that came here was left back all last year haha. But us having fullback depth and not having a back 3 would likely mean he doesn't play as a wingback. At very least it's better depth than we had last year and that's good.

I think our recruitment under them has been the biggest issue. And if we don't get a CB it's a massive failing on their part. But he club has also been given some serious backing this summer, if we fail to bring people in I blame the people who's job it is to sign players, rather than the people who are trying to pay shitloads for us to bring players in.

Not so much aimed at you tbh. I've got a few friends who fucking hate FSG for anything that ever goes wrong with the club and they don't really give a shit when shit goes well. I think 7 years on from where we were, we've made decent progress. We've had some setbacks with bad signings, management mistakes (at the first team level and in the executive decision making level for us). All things considered, they've taken us from the Hodgson days, made a few pretty massive errors with transfers during King Kenny's 2nd stint - as well as keeping him for more than the season where he steadied the ship post Hodge-podge, kept faith with Brendan a bit too long once it was clear he was out of ideas post-Suarez. And the whole thing with VvD this summer and continually missing out on targets last summer with our low-balling bids are frustrating for sure. But all things considered, we could be having much more major ownership issues. Arsenal, for instance, look to have a real divide between board members who want to see the club ambitious and those who are okay with just getting steady money. Monaco are minted and their new model for their club is to routinely sell off their very best players at huge profits - which is obviously not ideal if you want to win things. We don't have the best financial backing in our league. But those teams in our league that do are: 1.) Man Citeh - oil baron plaything, 2.) Chelsea - oil baron plaything, 3.) Man Utd - the literal embodiment of everything terrible and evil about humanity. I think while FSG are not the richest of owners, they've still given us decent financial backing (compare our net spend to clubs with more similar financial footing than us for the past few years, as opposed to Citeh/Chelsea/the other manc club - it's not like they've been incredibly stingy). But they haven't always had the best decision making - which is understandable considering they've had success with baseball and tried to port that knowledge over even though it is a fundamentally different sport. Shit like the failed Carroll/Downing experiment with a statistically good crosser of the ball and a statistically good header of the ball make sense when you consider what worked for the Boston Red Sox - but when you look at how those signings fundamentally changed how our squad was set up to play, and when you realise stats aren't as important in football (although the data is still useful in some senses) as they are in baseball... it shows they had learning to do. I've had doubts with FSG's ambition in the past as well. But between standing up for not selling Suarez to Arsenal (and then a season later, selling for much more money - more than double if I remember right), bringing in Klopp (rather than persisting with Rodgers), insisting we hang onto Coutinho (who if we do sell this window, we will be getting an insane price for - even though it's not really in our best interests too if we can't land Lemar), and the serious amounts of money we've been looking to drop on individual players this season (the amounts for VVD, Keita, and Lemar are all insane - Salah and Mane look like absolute bargains with the state of this market right now)... I find it hard to argue that FSG haven't demonstrated a significant commitment to improving Liverpool. The moneymen are there to sign the checks. If things aren't working out then, it's on our recruitment team and coaching staff moreso than a board that's giving financial backing. And to be honest, other than the VVD fuckup this summer and Karius... I don't think we got a lot wrong in recruitment last season. This season, I think it was unwise to really be focused on certain players for key areas that need strengthening - it's always a decent idea to have backups... you have to admit, our persistence in trying to land our number one targets shows ambition. Especially for a club that for decades has had problems landing our top targets. But a real major point of my initial post was basically: wow, remember how shit Hodgson & G&H were? Because holy shit it was bad.

One for the FSG Out Crowd: Never forget the dire fucking straights we were in 7 years to the day.

Just discovered this band, pretty good:

Oxlade-Chamberlain is a good signing - and while that price seems a bit high for him - in this market it's actually fairly reasonable. Chelsea need more depth and homegrown players, the Ox is English and versatile as fuck. Useful on multiple levels.

We were playing some of the worst football I've ever seen at Liverpool and with Gillett and Hicks also staring administration right in the face. Things were absolutely dire back then. Arsenal have financial strength. But Wenger has totally lost the plot and Stan Kroenke doesn't care about ambition as long as he has a stadium in a big city where he can charge high prices (see: moving his NFL team to LA & Arsenal's insane ticket prices). I also think a lot of the players are just not good enough - particularly Welbeck and Xhaka. I legitimately can't see how Welbeck went the full 90 yesterday.

Our group would be the group of death... in the Europa League. So on paper it's good for us. Sevilla's obviously the toughest of that lot. And the flight to Moscow isn't a short one, so that's lots of traveling for us, which isn't great. And Maribor are a side we'd all expect us to beat - which generally means they'll play out of their fucking skin against us.

I hadn't played Titanfall 2 in months, but played a bit last night. I really like the multiplayer a lot. It's better than any COD I've played in years, it does the whole wall-running and movement based twitch FPS thing much better than Black Ops 3 (I haven't played the newest COD, but assuming that's similar - it's total crap in comparison to Titanfall 2). The Xbox One population isn't the greatest, but it's still very populated on most gametypes. It's also had a few maps and other shite added on for free since the last time I played, which is nice to see as well. I agree with the release. Sandwiching it between COD and Battlefield was an incredibly stupid idea. Had the game come out in the Spring, this game would have gotten a lot more press and attention. It's an underrated game for sure, and I hope that eventually there is a Titanfall 2. However, now that I'm back into the game and I've convinced a few friends to buy it on sale this week, I'm looking forward to getting to play it more regularly.

Good strategy to not land Di Maria.

Trent Alexander Arnold is now 1 CL goal away from equaling the total number of champions league goals Everton have ever scored.

I liked Breaking Bad immediately. Weird premise, but an intricate plot with very well done character development. The Wire has to be up there though.

Here's some Kreator:

I think Breaking Bad's still the best show ever. But I do love GOT.

There's definitely been some moments where you can see in some characters (although, tbh mostly Tyrion and Jamie) the moral dilemma of dragons and wildfire. I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be symbolism for nuclear weapons - but even more obviously, being burned alive is a horrible death. But then other characters, (mostly Dany and Cersei) genuinely seem to give little fucks of any moral ramification behind using their most devastating weapons. I feel like after Jamie witnessed the dragon attack though, and now thinks Cersei is preggers, he now no longer really cares that she killed a lot of innocent people by destroying the sept... which kind of takes away from that moral concern behind using wildfire. I also think Cersei is lying about being preggers though - so who knows. Not too sure how I'm feeling about this season tbh. I liked the Spoils of War episode best, I think most people did. But between the pacing they've forced on themselves by reducing the number of episodes by season and (at least what seems to me) like so much fan service. Although tbh, it is nice to see a cured Jorah and Gendry back in the fold. Also Sam's storyline is getting pretty interesting.

I'm finding the pacing of this season really weird. There's so much that's happened comparatively this season compared to other seasons - but that's also because there are 2 fewer episodes. And I wouldn't say that this last episode was particularly bad... and maybe it just seems more "meh" because of how good the episode before it was. But there was so much that happened and for the series, everything is unfolding at a much more rapid pace. I understand they're on a time crunch - but it is sort of their own doing. Shit like instant traveling makes me wonder why the fuck shit took so much longer before. Having said that, because the plot is moving much faster this season we did see a lot of interesting things develop in this episode. I will say, however, that this plan they have of capturing a white walker is fucking retarded.

Let's not pretend any actress had anything to do with any of that.

I think if we lose Coutinho without bringing in a top notch attacker, which lets be honest, any alternative that's as good or better is likely not going to be signed by us... I'd call this an awful window. Gaining VVD and losing Coutinho would represent serious regression to me.

Assuming we don't sign VVD (because I don't think we will) - do you think we'll sign another CB? Is another CM likely, we've been linked with a lad from Ajax, but I've got no clue how good of a source it is tbh. As things stand now, Salah looks like a good singing and someone that will help our attack. And Robertson is a left back that's got promise, for sure, but it looks as though Moreno will be the starter for our first match... and Solanke looks good but is only a kid. And we've also really just watched friendlies, which are fairly meaningless other than for the players to find fitness. I'm not sure it looks like a good summer for us if things don't stay the same. Having said all that, keeping things as is is probably better than making panic buys that just hold us back.

Ah, well that's a bit shit for the good guys.

That was the second best episode, the first best being the Battle of the Bastards. Danyrs just attacked the Lannisters transporting the gold. I don't think the Iron Bank is going to be repaid with Tyrell gold - I think the Dothraki and Drogon have given her a big advantage here. Plus it's a story of Fire and Ice... so her and Jon Snow are pretty important characters.