Dr. Gonzo

I think this kills his England career chances, which is a bit of a shame because his brief appearances in the Euros made him look like he could make a difference for us internationally.

Right... and it wasn't accepted by Palestinians or the Arab League because of the reasonable belief that it was violating the principles of national self-determination under the UN Charter. The fact it was an undemocratic process that was forced on Palestinians doesn't change that. If Israel wants Palestinians to be okay with the partition, step 1 is treating them like they're humans. That means: Israelis actually learning the history of the Nakba and instead of coming up with excuses for why it was justifiable, come to terms with this very dark chapter of it's history; ending the policy of illegal settlements into the West Bank; showing the same kind of restraint and precision that is shown to foreign enemies like Iran when dealing with Palestinian terror threats. And say what you will but: raping POWs and bombing refugee camps where hundreds are injured and killed to target 1 or 2 militants (and they know this will be the collateral damage) are certainly war crimes. Hamas obviously commits war crimes - they are a heinous terror group. Israel must be held to a higher standard than a terror group as a sovereign nation, a democracy, and a close western partner. Israelis and pro-Israel supporters should welcome being held to a higher standard and they themselves should do what they can to ensure that Israel's government and the IDF maintain higher standards. You can't seriously point to the horrible things a heinous terror group does and say "well we're not as bad as them" and expect it to be okay. The world expects Israel to operate at a higher standard than a vile terror group, not to point at their disgusting enemy and say "well this justifies my own war crimes." Nothing justifies war crimes. Shit like this is why the international community needs to be involved, imo, and the peace should be kept by UN Peacekeepers. Too many Palestinians and Israelis are too far gone, the rhetoric of their diehard supporters online indicates how far gone they truly are, they're not interested in any longstanding peace. They're interested in one side having a total victory.

Doak also going out on loan to Middlesbrough. Kaide Gordon also gone out on loan to Norwich.

Incredible It's even funnier considering that he is legitimately terrible.

Honestly as far as signings go... it's about as safe as it comes. He was tipped for a big future and if he comes anywhere near around what his best was... he's an absolute bargain. If he ends up being a sicknote or a flop... he barely cost anything in the 2024 market - so it's not a massive loss to us. He's on the same wages he was on at Juve, so not low wages... but also he's not on super massive wages. According to a lot of Juve fans, he's still good - he just doesn't have the same explosive pace he had before the ACL injury & the new manager wants something else from his wingers. I think as a backup winger, which is most likely what he'll be this season, having someone two footed and a confident dribbler even if he's not the fastest gives us an option off the bench that we've not really had since Shaqiri (not including the threat Shaqiri gave us from set pieces because he's a bit of a set piece specialist)... even if he's not quite as good as he was before the ACL.

From their perspective though they've got big boys coming to play them at home but they've got relatively easy away games - so decent chance of going through to the next round while also playing against some big sides early.

I don't like our draw very much

Why the fuck did they have to change the format?

Sounds like he’s going to see how good of a season he’s going to have and keep his options open rather than think about committing to us or anyone else. I hope we get him to stay… but at least if he goes, I hope it’s not to someone like City or anyone else in England.

Lol we paid more for El Hadji Diouf in 2002

I wonder if the club are planning his exit for him

He’s said he doesn’t want to go there though. And I think most sane and ambitious players wouldn’t want to go there.

I can't believe this guy, who's one of the highest rated keepers around at the moment, would be keen to sit on the bench once Kelleher leaves though. Guess I shouldn't complain 2 top quality keepers is better than 1.

The League of Nations? No. The UN, which was newly formed. I strongly urge you to actually learn the history of this conflict - it is nowhere near as black and white as you think it is. Follow the lesson of the Germans post-WW2. You can only truly move on from the worst parts of your history when you recognise them, accept them, and try to atone for the crimes of the past by better actions in the future. Don't get me wrong, Palestinians and Arabs also need to learn this lesson. But it's insane to pretend Israel have been innocent little angels the whole time. They very clearly haven't been. Your first paragraph is an absolutely wild revision of history. 29/11/1947 is when the General Assembly passed the UN Partition Plan for Palestine. At the time, Arabs made up 2/3 of the population of the territory - owning 90% of the land. Jews made up 1/4-1/3 of the population (because you can't forget there are Christians who've been there for centuries & Druze who've been there as well). They owned 7% of the land. The UN partition allocated the Jewish population 55% of the land. Jerusalem and Bethlehem were meant to be internationally governed with a population of 100,000 Arabs and 100,000 Jews. The partition was rejected by the Arab League. Why did the Arab league reject the UN's partition? Interestingly enough, because the UN partition plan, pretty reasonably, was viewed as violating the principles of national self-determination in the UN Charter. We are talking about a territory where the majority of the population are Palestinian Arabs, who owned 90% of the land of that territory. Why is Israeli sovereignty meant to be inherently respected - but Palestinian sovereignty prior to Israel's creation is flatly rejected. It again begs the question, why were Arab Palestinians the ones who were chosen by the international community to pay for the centuries of crimes Europeans commit against Jews, ultimately ending with the Holocaust? Furthermore the 1948 Palestine War was not started by Arab invaders of Israel. First there was a "civil war" running from 1947-1948, while the UK was still in power - this began on 30/11/1979 (if you're still paying attention, this is the day after the partition plan vote). In this war there's skirmishes of both Palestinian and Zionist gangs I think we'd best describe as terrorists, with the UK occassionally getting involved to calm things down the violence between both extremist sides. In April of 1948, the Zionist forces went on the offensive - if you want to read more about it, google: Plan Dalet. Arab armies did invade in 1948 - when British rule over Palestine ended and the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel, which again... was reasonably viewed as a violation of Palestinian self-determination. The Nakba followed. But just to make things clear: Arab countries invading DOES NOT IN ANY WAY JUSTIFY THE VIOLENT EXPULSION OF 80% OF THE ARAB CIVILIAN POPULATION IN THE REGION. While Israel defended itself from Arab invaders, the Nakba marks their war on Palestinian civilians. Villages were massacred. FURTHERMORE THE NAKBA CONTINUED AFTER THE END OF THE WAR. Most famously when the IDF conducted Operation Shoshana, a unit led by Ariel Sharon, conducted the Qibya massacre in the West Bank. Ariel Sharon wrote that he ordered "maximal killing and damage to property." They deliberately targeted a civilian population, and Israel framed it as a response to an attack where 3 people died - as though that somehow justified killing 69 civilians, 2/3 of them being women and children. This was years after the war had ended. I am someone who thinks Israel does have the right to exist in 2024 - especially as an British-Iranian. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that stands with the Iranian people against the Iranian government - and has done so since the Iran-Iraq war (where they thought if they armed Khomeini's forces, Iran and Israel could still have good relations... naively)... but having historic ties to a land thousands of years ago does not give you the right to take away sovereignty for the people who'd been living there in between when your ancestors left and today. It doesn't justify horrific human rights abuses. Those of us on here who are English can't just roll up to Denmark and say "we've got ties to this land because our ancestors came from Denmark" and then brutally suppress the Danes, then if Sweden and Finland try to help their fellow norsemen out we just use this as further justification to take things out on the Danish population. If you are done kidding that "Israel just should accept what Hamas wants" - then learn the fucking history of this conflict. It is so far from a black and white scenario. The history of Israel's creation is shocking and ultimately was rooted in Europe's guilt for how centuries of crimes against Jews had led to the Holocaust... with a dash of antisemitism (give European Jews a home... but make sure it's not in Europe and away from us), with a bit of optimistic hopefulness of a sort of final crusade. And again, at the end of the day, trying to look at this through the optics of: these are good guys, these are bad guys... it's just stupid as fuck. Once again: they are both bad. Hamas are unequivocally terrorists. But let's not pretend Israel's foundation wasn't marked with Israeli terrorists like Ariel Sharon - who has a past where he's done the same fucking things as the 7/10/23 attackers did. And once again... he was elected to be Israel's PM. Hamas wants to exterminate Jews. Israel is exterminating Palestinians and has a history of doing so since 1948.

Honestly mental if they are considering it's not that long ago they won 9 titles in a row.

I think it's psycho to pretend either side in this are "the good guys" - it's a bunch of horrific people with a load of innocent people put in harms way because they're horrific. I don't think this is true, by the way. They'd have to get it from Iran and Iran only got it in 2022 - it's probably the best air defense system Iran has, so they'll be needing that to protect from invasion (even though their air defenses are terrible). Hezbollah's got some of Iran's more sophisticated offensive weaponry in their rockets, which is Iran's real strong point in terms of their military industry complex, but I imagine their air defenses would mostly be very out of date shit. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth by Iran for offensive capabilities, because that is Iran's main way of deterring outright war with Israel - keeping the threat of a serious offensive force on Israel's border - but defensively in terms of modern military capability... they're very vulnerable. I don't know how anybody can defend Israeli settlers actions in the West Bank and the Israeli government deserves so much condemnation for their support in these illegal settlements that do nothing for making Israel any safer (if anything, it increases hostility towards Israelis)... it is just stealing land from Palestinians in violation of international law in the name of Judaism. This analogy falls flat on it's face though when you remember this conflict didn't start last year. In 1948, Palestinians were violently ethnically cleansed and forcibly removed from land they had called home for centuries. World powers either knew and supported this or sat by and did nothing - despite what recent history in Europe had taught world powers about ethnic cleansing. A closer analogy would probably be the US's treatment of natives in America of the 1800s. In modern times, that sort of behavior is rightly condemned. Particularly after 1945. And I think one of the most disturbing things about the Nakba is the Holocaust should have been very fresh in every Israelis mind... so what does it say about the lessons Israel learned from the holocaust? I think saying "never forget" in relation to the holocaust is a very important thing - it's not something anyone should ever forget, regardless of their religion or ethnicity. So why is the Nakba so easily forgotten by Israel? Israelis need to reconcile the darkness in their history, rather than pretend they are simply just responding to Palestinian/Arab/Islamic oppression. They need to realise that Netanyahu is a liar only concerned with personal power and that his disregard for Palestinian life for the last several decades has only served to make Israel less safe for Israelis - and has done more to damage Israel's standing in the west... and they need to look back to the prime minister that Netanyahu encouraged a deranged lunatic to assassinate. They need to look back to a time when Israel had leadership that was actually interested in making peace with the neighbors they fucked over when they moved back into the neighborhood. Israelis and Palestinians both generally have low opinions of any two-state solution... and I think the international community really ought to tell both of them "fuck you both, come up with a two state solution or we'll come up with one for you." But Israelis live in a democracy, they have the close ties with the international community... they aren't living under murderous dictators or their thuggish gangs. The onus is on the Israeli people to start demanding more of their government if they don't want to be treated like international pariahs. They are the ones with the power to make demands of the Israeli government and get results. Israel has the position of power and agency, that is more that can be said of your average Palestinian civilian. If Israelis truly want peace and security, they've got to demand a better government. One that doesn't have power craven murderers like Netanyahu anywhere near power, one that doesn't have a hateful and unrepentant racist in charge of its security apparatus... but instead one that is genuinely serious about peace and security.

I still think this is weird, if Alisson's being truthful about wanting to stay here for many more years to come.

Wasn’t Mane in the last year of his contract when we sold him for about 3 times the price? Granted we sold Mane on the back of a really good season

I saw that, that’s pretty decent. Why do Juve want barely any money for him?

He was brilliant a few years ago in that one tournament, one bad injury and a couple smaller ones and it's a bit mental to see how far his stock has fallen. I wonder if he's now too injury prone to have that bright future it looked like he would have. For £15m though... he's worth a punt. Can probably have a bit of a Shaqiri effect for us off the bench and gives us a bit of cover for Salah.

I was going to say "really, isn't he fucking shit?" and then I realised I'd confused Neto with Jose Sa

I think a lot of clubs have switched to taking trains when it's convenient too so they can claim they're "going green" and having "minimal carbon footprint" - but I think coaches are still used when there's not a convenient way by train. There's other clubs, though, who don't give a fuck about the optics of sustainability and just fly private to every match lol.

I really liked Sven and I think the media was way too harsh on him in the final days. And what he achieved in Italy before being the England manager is legendary tbh. I didn’t realise he’d die so soon after releasing his “goodbye” video last week… but I guess with hindsight, that’s probably why he made it. Rest in peace.

I just think it’s funny that coked out 40something thinks that doing that’ll make them play any better. Moshiri’s era of Everton has led to their fan base defaulting to toxic as fuck 90% of the time, which to an extent is understandable because Moshiri’s run the club so hilariously poorly that it’s reasonable to question if he’s a Liverpool fan. Weirdly, the thing that sort of snapped the toxicity and got the fans united with the players was points deductions. Everton need Moshiri gone and you’ll stop seeing the fans be so fucking angry all the time. But no sense in being super toxic to these players and the management: Everton are probably going to be shit for as long as Moshiri owns them. The squad is crap & you’ve got a manager who’s specialty is ugly football with the hopes of staying up. Dyche and the blueshite players aren’t the blueshites enemy, the owners are.

I think with FSG you have to take the good with the bad. The good is: they do actually care about us being competitive generally. The bad is: they are very complacent and if we’ve had what can be considered a pretty decent season, they’re not too motivated to reinforce the first team. In previous seasons though, I think that’s led to us wasting seasons where we’ve had a genuinely world class manager with a couple genuinely world class players. My big fear with us having Salah, Trent, and Virgil all on expiring contracts is… they might just let all 3 walk. It’s been a HUGE complaint Boston Red Sox fans have had about FSG - letting top players leave. FSG aren’t too popular with them because FSG’s ambition doesn’t seem to be consistent year-in-year-out. For them it’s just business. For us it’s more important than that. It is what it is. It’d obviously be easier to take if we weren’t competing against a gulf state’s board of tourism budget. But we are.