Dr. Gonzo

New level of respect for Rangnick. Turns up halfway through the season and gets United to essentially announce they’re giving up on trying to do well this season but it’s alright he’s going to be a consultant. Spends months pissing off the players and fans. Collects his paycheck and leaves. Waste of time and money, should have kept the Norwegian Garth Southgate wannabe or Carrick all season. And they Glazers are giving themselves an £11m dividend despite United having serious losses last season

See and some people think sportswashing doesn’t work

I can’t the delete the @Danny for some reason - sorry for the notification. But… I also wouldn’t listen to this guy and would want him binned off too. How many managers has he “helped” now with his analysis as United have gotten worse. Extend the guys contract though

Didn't he appoint himself manager at Fizzy Drink Leipzig? I think he'd only been out of management for a season or so by the time you'd asked him to take over. Tbh, I dunno anything about Paul Brant or how long he's been at the role - but if he was there during the Solsjaker time (or before)... I'm not sure I necessarily blame Rangnick for disregarding his opinion. Not sure he's been the greatest analyst. Having said that, relying on someone watching the match on TV rather than listening someone at the stadium who's meant to aiding the interpreting of a match for the manager is appallingly bad. If he didn't trust Brant and he didn't get his man in, United should have worked for them to bring in a mutually agreeable person to take that head analyst role. In hindsight it's clear he wasn't a good appointment, I think there's a pretty big step up in stature and expectation from one of the fizzy pop sides to Man Utd... even a shit Man Utd that looks far from the heights the fans got used to in the last few decades. Regardless of whether he was a massive influence on Klopp, Tuchel, etc... it was pretty clear United's squad was not cut out to play that sort of football. I still think the players are a far bigger issue than any manager, tbh. When you've got enough players like Pogba and Maguire that act like they should be treated as world class because they are at United because of huge transfer fees and are on huge wages... rather than their actual performances... it's a problem for any club. No player should be acting like their move to another club is a kudos for how good they are (and I really believe Maguire thinks he plays for United because he is world class and deserves to play for United) - especially at a club that actually has any aspirations of being good.

Maddison's too creative for Southgate to understand how to use imo. Man needs workhorses for his simplistic tactics.

I don't have a kid but I asked some friends here who do... and only one of them has automatically locking doors at their kids' school. Tbh, I'm not surprised though. Education funding has schools running on pretty light budgets in the US - automatic locking doors I imagine would have many schools having to cut funding elsewhere. And frankly, locking doors are only a minor solution to the problem in America. There's all of these mass shootings constantly in a country where people insist they have a "right" to weaponry and where guns outnumber people - of course there's more shootings in the US than anywhere else in the world... there's more guns than anywhere else in the world. I can't imagine what it would take for the US to enact some serious gun control that actually works at stopping all of these mass killings. But given this is now the second time in a decade where very young children were murdered at their schools, and nothing really happened the first time around, I just can't imagine what kind of tragedy it would take for American lawmakers to remove their heads from their arses and actually do something to stop it.

The American right is pro-life right up until the baby comes out the womb. After that, they don't really give a shit about what happens to the baby - weirdly.

Spurs announced investors putting more money in for convertible shares - not their transfer budget.

Fabinho back in training and Thiago expected to train with the first team tomorrow!

It's not really their budget though - some of it is going to go to investing in other areas of the club, rather than just transfer fees. And in any case, it's not like they could keep the information private. It's not a loan to the club, it's the main shareholder putting in that money in exchange for convertible series A shares in Spurs (additional issued shares of a different class of share to "ordinary shares" that can either be converted to ordinary shares or another class of shares). These series A shares probably have additional voting rights that ordinary shares don't have. You can see on here: https://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/the-club/investor-relations/shareholder-information/ Tottenham are quite transparent about their ownership - ENIC owns 85.5% of the club, 14.5% are owned by others, probably a few percentage of the shares are owned by one or two banks or venture capital groups. This sort of capital injection for convertible shares would require shareholder approval & additional investment from investors needs to be reported and there's likely share dilution going on to keep the ownership ratios the same - so that information's going to be 1.) documented in shareholder meeting minutes that venture capital groups and banks will need to have listed (if you invest in a venture capital group that's got shares in Spurs, they'll be pretty keen to tell you one of their investments is getting other investors to put money in); 2.) be reported to relevant football authorities as a capital injection of cash from investors. Making an official statement is just good PR from Spurs. They've got a good record with being transparent and this keeps that up, it's good PR for fans who have been frustrated that billionaire owners didn't even put more money in while a new stadium was built and the first team stagnated even though they'd done something they'd never done in their history before - make it to the CL final. And the transparency is a good thing for other minority investors - it lets them know and trust they've made an investment the majority owners want to get a higher return on.

I think he wants to stay but I can't blame him for wanting to get the most money possible - he'll be 32 when his contract is up, one last big payday for him seems reasonable. He's already solidified himself as a LFC legend (and a league legend being top scorer 3 times - only Henry's done it more with 4) - I hope he ends his career with us and maybe now that PSG are keeping Mbappe for at least 3 more years, I don't think there's another club that can offer him quite what we can in a footballing sense.

Rashford’s been rubbish this season though, deservedly lost his place imo. I also can’t imagine Southgate understanding how to use a false 9

Tbf I haven't seen a player go from that bad to this good in one season before like that. I've seen players take a while to settle, but nothing quite so extreme as looking nothing like the player I thought we were signing... to getting the Thiago I thought we'd be getting last year. I wonder how it would have been after his really bright start had Richarlison not decided to try to remove his shins from his body, because I don't think he'd have looked as bad as he did when he came back from injury into that totally disjoint side.

at least I can admit when I was wrong. He looks a completely different player this season tbf. Was probably tough for him looking great, getting that injury from that dirty blueshite twat, and then coming back into a Liverpool team ravaged by injury and trying to pick up form. Especially in that period where Henderson and Fabinho were both at CB (or injured). Night and day compared to this season where he's just looked excellent the whole way through.

I think it's risky to rush a player into a final based on fitness, even with 5 subs. If he has to come off straight away, that can fuck up any momentum that can be built before he has to come off (which is I guess only a bad thing if we've got the positive momentum, which you could argue if Thiago's not playing well because he's not fit we probably wouldn't have). If he has a bad half because he's carrying the injury still - like Kewell v AC Milan - it could ultimately lead to Madrid having a massive advantage while he's on the pitch; and while it might be solvable with a substitution... we don't have Stevie G anymore so I'm not sure it's worth the risk potentially having Madrid being able to outrun our midfield if he's not fit enough. Because I think that's really one of the bigger advantages we have in the match against Real Madrid. They've got loads of class players with probably the best and most experience in the tournament and can play poorly and still manage to score great goals. We've got loads of class players but I think we need everyone ready to put in the shift of all shifts against Madrid in a final - so a player carrying a knock might be too risky. I'm a bit nervous with Thiago and Fabinho both potentially being rushed back to fitness and both of them hoping to start in the final for that reason tbh.

He did it after the last tournament he was involved in, I think. I think Abraham's the best striker to back up Kane for us. He's had a great year at Roma and... well, look at his goalscoring record. He's not the best striker in the world and there are certainly some flaws in his game... but he gets on the end of chances and he puts them away. I think the lads in Italy deserve maybe more of a chance for England than some of the other players in the squad in their positions. Tomori, imo, should be playing alongside Stones for the time being. Maguire's been in absolute dogshit form... Tomori's been an absolute beast for AC Milan and was a HUGE part for why they won the Serie A. To me that makes him seem like a better choice for a starter than Maguire, Coady, or Guehi. And Abraham's really the only "main striker" we've got if Kane goes down.

Yeah but the conversation with him would’ve been about 5 minutes long Even the low end of his potential wages would have Michael Edwards slamming the phone down. He’s extended his contract with PSG and started talking about his dream to go to Real Madrid again and now talking about other big clubs he could have moved to… he’s definitely trying to keep transfer sagas alive. I don’t blame him, he’s at PSG after all and already has taken advantage of their desperation.

I think it’s bollocks - he’s just working on keeping himself linked with clubs all around Europe for his next contract extension.

Thank fuck that shithead isn't anywhere near power anymore. But America's never going to go back to the politics of the 90s. People are so polarised and the bar for what's considered acceptable from a president has been dropped so low you'd break your back trying to limbo under it.

Wouldn’t his doc be removed from YouTube for copyright violations? Unless you mean from his channel…

Wtf is monkeypox

I don't really believe that independent media stuff because it's attributing Putin's escalation of the situation in Ukraine to Biden. The Ukraine situation appears to have been Putin believing that the US and West would simply appease Russia and allow them to hold Donbas. Let's not forget Ukraine-Russia tensions have been high since 2014 when Russia first invaded their country and annexed part of it. They've got a huge supply of grains - the vast majority of their food production goes towards grains - but they've also found issues with getting the food they're used to due to sanctions. Russia relied on food imports for: fruit and vegetables, pork and pig fat, pig offal, cheese, milk, yogurt, cream, butter, eggs, beef, chicken, fish, "prepared food" (idk wtf this is lol), and nuts. There have been reports of supermarkets in Russia barely having any stock of various food items post-sanction... and that's not surprising. They're going to have to adjust their domestic agriculture economy to not just be primarily focused on grain exports. The Ukraine war was Russia's gamble that the world would put global economic health ahead of the West wanting to defend it's ideals of democracy and that Russia's condemnation would be more moderated, like the international fingerwagging at the United States after the Iraq invasion. And I don't believe Putin expected a strong and united international response to his invasion because... well the first one got some fingerwagging but nobody really did anything. And nobody really gave a shit about Russian war crimes in Syria either. He had quite a few years of things just working out for him on the international stage that it led to a serious miscalculation on his part. And I think he's seriously fucked Russia over in the process, by making them a pariah state. It's weird too, Ukraine could not have joined NATO for a while - because of the active conflict on their borders. Even if they fully conceded Crimea to Russia, there's a period of time between a conflict before a country can join NATO. So they could not have applied. Meanwhile if his fear was Ukraine would join the EU... that's an economic pact and not a military pact - so he can't really claim that Russia was under any serious threat from that other than Ukraine would likely see itself get much richer. So by Putin invading, he's motivated Europe and NATO to want Ukraine & motivated neighboring countries to want to join NATO. And ironically, if Putin had listened to Biden... this escalation that has fucked Russia in the arse could have been avoided. Pro-Russian types like to point to the guy who came before Zelensky being pro-Russia and how he was forced out... so it must have been the west who did it. But that ignores the domestic pressure Zelensky's predecessor faced that doesn't seem to be caused by anything other than a domestic population frustrated with a corrupt government that put Russia's interests before it's own. It wasn't an Iran situation where democracy was removed - it was a democracy deciding it's internal leadership. Russia is the one that wanted to remove the democracy.

I don't think Russia's high military spending means they've got a bigger economy than is being reported - it's just that the military spending is high despite the lack of spending in other sectors of their economy. Natural gas and oil sales and their military is how they project power in Europe. They've also now got to go back to a time when there was little international investment in Russia, due to now being the most sanctioned nation on the planet, after getting a taste of what a globalised economy can do for their population. So they're suffering a huge shock to their economy right now that is unlikely to get better any time soon. China's growing it's military with it's economy, because it has to - they want to be the eastern answer to the US, and unlike Russia but like the US, they're actually a superpower. The US projects it's power through it's economic might and having the strongest military - China has to do the same thing. All countries, especially the superpowers, are playing the long game to win. I think China wants to be the dominant nation on the country like the US has been for decades - but I think they'd like to reach that point through economic dominance rather than military dominance. But they'll need a big military to back their economic weight because... well... if the world responded to economic power alone, the US wouldn't have such a massive military budget. China's got an advantage in long term strategy as they've given Xi power for life basically, while the US is absolutely dogshit at implementing policies long term.

In news of actual radical politics in the US, Gini Thomas - wife of Supreme Court Justice - has been exposed as having pressured AZ election officials to illegally overturn the election, according to her emails. It can’t be good having the wife of an unelected official holding his position for life, who ultimately interprets Americas laws, being implicated in illegally trying to subvert democracy.