Dr. Gonzo

Tbh after his spell at Bournemouth where he was really good in their promotion run, I was very surprised he didn't get bought by them... or by any clubs of a similar stature. Is he on massive wages or something like that? Honestly, I like him. He's an old school defender and maybe not the best player for a club trying to play "modern football" - but even so, it's not like he's terrible on the ball... he Cruyff turned Ibrahimovich. He'll head away anything that comes near him. I think he'll be very good for Celtic. Reports are we're keen on signing Ryan Gravenberch from Bayern today. So looks like we're going into the season with decent midfield depth. Not really much depth at the back though.

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Or Jordan Beheaderson playing in a fancy league one equivalent

If you want to give your youth and fringe players a pathway into the first team, they've got to be given chances to impress somewhere. The League Cup is ideal for big sides and big squads to try out players that don't get much time on the pitch, tbh. I'm pretty sure you've got one of the biggest squads in the league too, so with the higher pressure higher stakes games... Poch (or any manager) is going to be less inclined to give them a go. But against a League Two side in a cup with the lowest cash payout of all the tournaments you're in... it's a pretty low pressure place to get them some time on the pitch. If you had a smaller squad or hadn't won anything in a decade, I'd probably agree with you. But you've got bigger fish to fry and these players aren't going to get much of a chance in any other matches other than the league cup tbh. If they want to get more chances this season, they've got to prove they're above League Two level in the first place. This is their time to perform and if not, worst case scenario... it's less fixtures for Poch to worry about as he tries to do the best he can in the league and FA Cup with more senior players.

A weakened lineup should be able to beat AFC Wimbledon tbf

Sure it does - I don't think a 2 match ban is justified, a 1 match ban is, a 2 match one isn't. They just want to force players and fans to respect referees. You want extra respect? Earn it. My respect and faith in the referees is at an all time low. I think they've got mic up all top flight officials up at all times & be making yearly financial disclosures to an independent body for me to think they should be treated the way they want to be treated. Oh and punishing referees for violent conduct as though they're players (even though officials demonstrating violent conduct should be subjected to a higher standard, not a lower standard, same as violent police. Because they're authority figures).

Some honesty and transparency goes a long way to fostering the respect they’re demanding. But they want to protect their mates rather than do the jobs properly.

I'll never agree with you until we can have one of our players elbow a ref and only get one match out. But since that'll never happen, the least I could expect from referees is consistency of standards within the same match (because, we'll never get consistent refereeing standards in every match - at least not in our lifetimes with the current state of refereeing). PMGOL can say "well we warned players we'd crack down on dissent" and fair enough, but apply rules consistently. They also said they'd crack down on players waving fake cards around to get players booked - yet in the same match, the ref couldn't be arsed to give Gordon or Joellington yellows. Or Joellington popping off at the officials every chance he got, no caution for that even. I think a 1 match ban for calling someone ridiculously bad at their job a fucking joke, even if it was one instance where he made the right call in the match, is fine. But 2 matches for calling a guy who is a fucking joke a fucking joke... that's mental.

Yes it is. They should release the audio, just for a laugh.

Two matches for calling a ref a fucking joke is a bit ridiculous tbh. If he’d elbowed the ref in the face would it just be one match like the ref that elbowed Robertson?

Lol what's their opinion on Fred?

No, I had no idea. I think that's mental though, I wouldn't swap him for any other keeper in the world tbh. He's absolutely fantastic. Did you see his save against Almiron's shot yesterday? Incredible save and the agility and awareness to handle the rebound was pretty great. He kept us in the game before Darwin won it for us.

Yeah, I said "hypothetical" didn't I? And I was using the example of 2 prominent zealots in US politics. I find their ideology to be quite dangerous and anti-democratic.

Dunno how we ended up with Howard Webb and Mike Riley as the last 2 people in charge of PGMOL. Two refs who's careers were mired with controversy and allegations of shit refereeing... made the top officials in the country. And then we wonder why referees are so dogshit. Has it always been this bad?

Joke

For the record, I don't blame the fans for the toxicity. I blame Kenwright and Moshiri entirely. Kenwright for spending a lot of time managing expectations and gradually winding down all ambition Everton had as a football club, and Moshiri for being an unhinged lunatic that wasted Everton's money with fuck all to show for it. I'm not sure booing DCL for getting injured is particularly helpful, but when the people in charge of a football club have done all they can to create the most unhealthy atmosphere possible at a football club... it's going to happen, players are going to get grief for shit that isn't their fault. It's just the nature of fans being desperate and angry. Like @LFCMike said, Gillett & Hicks got a pretty easy ride for a long time until their goodwill with the media wore off. I think it's a bit tougher for you because Kenwright's made his money in the media - it will be remarkably difficult for his media goodwill to truly wear off. You don't produce theatre, films, and music without building a pretty solid set of media connections. I think it's why so very few people asked questions of why Everton had fallen so far from their peak, despite being one of the biggest sides in the country tbh.

@OrangeKhrush you also bring up a lot of points that aren't anywhere near mentioned in my post I don't mention "tolerance" or "intolerance" a single time in my post. I didn't condemn believers as "evil" either - I didn't push any contentious issues other than saying religious and culture-war norms being forced on a whole wide group of people is antithetical to a free society. I'm not making morality judgments about anyone in making that statement. That's just taking my point, making up shit about it, and then refuting the shit you've made up about what I said and pretending like you've countered what I've said. Even amongst the religious, there's a huge spread of thought on how devout a person needs to be. Islam's a massive religion and pork and booze are forbidden to the devout, yet there's tons of Muslim people who consider themselves Muslim and love beer and having pizza with pepperonis on it. But applying Shariah Law to them imposes the strictest religious standards on them and takes away from their freedom to live how they want. The same thing works in a hypothetical where you get Zealots like Mike Pence and Amy Covid Barrett changing laws for the US. Secular society is meant to protect people from zealotry. Protecting a secular society is just as important as rooting out corruption, like the corruption in Maui that led to the loss of life and historical and cultural sites.

I've got no problem with believers that keep their beliefs out of everyone's politics. Secular society is always better than society that's got faith and politics intertwined. You can't have a free society when zealots are in charge, history's been pretty clear on that.

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Gonna be tough when Kenwright's got so many friends in the media tbh. It's probably how he's had a pretty easy ride whittling down Everton's ambitions over the past few decades with little pushback on how shit he is at running a club from the media.

Shock horror, a bullshit red card was rescinded. It's a joke a red was given in the first place, especially with VAR in use. I doubt these referees feel any sort of consequence for their incompetence, but they absolutely should be removed from next weeks games and given some sort of training. Especially the ones sat in the VAR room, no excuse for video referees to be so bad.

The toxic atmosphere the higher ups at Everton are responsible for creating is probably awful for the players. I can understand being frustrated when you've got a key player that's constantly injured, but I can't understand giving them stick for it at a match. It's not like the player wants to be constantly out injured. And it's not like the other players want to be shit and completely out of confidence. I know it's hard for Everton fans to be positive when they go to a match and they see a bunch of millionaires look lost and completely out of confidence, on the back of a bad season when they haven't seen many changes that indicate they're not going to have another bad season. But it's got to be hard for the players to not hear a lot of positivity from their fans. That's the problem with these miserably toxic situations, if the atmosphere festers you've just got this awful feedback loop of toxicity from the fans to the players and the players back to the fans. And I don't think it can really stop unless the team or the board can give the fans something to have some positivity going forward. It seems pretty miserable from a certain POV. And from other POVs it's kind of entertaining.

Some people are so blessed to have more money than braincells.

It went mostly east of San Diego, then veered back around west to hit LA. So the storm is like me and hates LA but likes San Diego.

Crossing through the war torn hell that is Yemen only to be gunned down en masse is an absolutely horrific experience.