Inverted

Markus Anfang? More like Markus... Ende.

If Poch only has a 2-year deal with PSG then it seems quite plausible that United could get him mid-season with a long-term, 4 or 5 year deal which at least matches his wages. Meanwhile, PSG can get Zidane, who walks into the exact kind of job he likes.

Its funny thinking back to a time when I was actually envious of Ireland internationally. I was even genuinely annoyed that Scottish players like James McCarthy chose to play for them, because I thought that around 2015 he would easily improve our midfield. These days, we are struggling to accommodate Gilmour, McGregor, McTominay, McGinn and Armstrong in that position. Not to mention young players like Lewis Ferguson and David Turnbull who could easily develop into quality internationals.

It depends on how active an issue independence remained after a hypothetical split. The SNP is an ideological mess because so many people who are personally to it’s left and right hold their nose and support it purely to achieve Indy. Likewise, the Tory vote includes a lot of people who vote Tory purely to try and keep the SNP out. I think if the pro-Indy conservative Alba party types and the right-wing of the Conservative party could perhaps coalesce, then you would have a proper Scottish right-wing party. But I also think there would be a larger move to the left. Many left-leaning people who support the SNP for tactical reasons would probably move to other, less centrist parties once Indy was achieved.

I think for a lot of young people, there is an acknowledgement of the fact that there will be an immediate economic hit. But I think this is largely outweighed by a really sincere fear that the future of the UK is going to be a long, slow slide away from democracy and a constant worsening of social conditions. It's a difficult question because fundamentally different questions are at play. People tend to talk past each other because their priorities are just completely different. Is an overall hit to living standards worth a more engaged democracy and safer rule of law? Could the economic hit be made-up for within our lifetimes? Is there any hope of the UK turning course and developing in a direction which Scottish people can accept? Not to mention that depending on the economic policies pursued, actual living standards for many people could be improved even while indicators such as GDP growth falter. GDP growth doesn't always mean things are improving for normal people, and vice-versa. One issue is that the SNP seems like they would pursue the route of austerity and fiscal conservatism, which I think would exacerbate the economic hit. But I think most young people aren't overly supportive of the SNP in terms of its actual economic policies, but just accept them as a tool for achieving independence.

It really baffles me that Gary Neville is (and was) also absolutely insistent that Mourinho was one of the top few managers in the world when he was at United. Which is just nonsense. Even if some people genuinely thought he was at a time, because you could maybe turn a blind eye to his Chelsea implosion, then at the very least you can say in hindsight that Mourinho was distinctly not world class anymore. I mean, for a lot of people it isn't hindsight - because they could see that Mourinho's way of playing was already becoming outdated even when he was still getting away with it at Chelsea. Neville looks back at that, and how United played in those seasons after he was signed, and still somehow thinks Mourinho was world class in 2016. He has completely bought-into the hype of that era. The real lesson should be "We thought we got a world class manager, but he actually wasn't anymore. Ergo, we should go look harder for a world class manager, or a potentially world class manager on the way up". Neville ends up with "He really was a world class manager, and he didn't work for some mystical reason. Ergo, we should purposefully stick with bad managers, because Manchester United is cursed for good managers, or something".

Waking up to see the fallout from giving my half-asleep thoughts on the merits of a semi-circular penalty area.

I haven't needed to work this out since high school, but I think if you draw a straight diagonal line from the goal to the corner of the penalty box, it is more than 18 yards. The diagonals are longer than the sides in squares. I think. An actual 18-yard area would be roughly semi-circular. It would cut-off the corners, essentially.

I think there is a fundamental problem with penalties in that a lot of the penalty box isn't actually a super-dangerous position, attacking-wise. The corners of the box especially are pretty harmless areas. I'm not good enough at trigonometry to work it out, but the corners of the 18-yard box must be a good bit further than 18 yards away, because it's box-shaped. A semi-circular 18-yard area with the whole area being at most 18 yards away would probably be a more logical penalty area. But it would be too radical a change.

I don't see why they didn't just sell him. Bayern were obviously a lot more convinced about his quality than Chelsea are, and Chelsea are stacked enough in the forward/attacking midfield positions.

I’ve been really curious to read Graeber’s “Bullshit Jobs”. He wrote an introduction for the edition of Kropotkin’s “Mutual Aid” I have, which was really interesting, and I’ve been meaning to read more of him since.

Maybe Texas should teach both sides of their own independence story? Namely, that the founding Texans were slavedriving outlaws and traitors, and Santa Anna was the good guy.

Can't believe the guy who coaches the team every day and picks the line-ups has been made the fall guy for the team playing like shit all the time.

To me, the fundamental issue is that getting CL has become too important. Ideally, there would be a group of clubs challenging for top-4 every season, and it becomes normal to occasionally miss-out and bounce back in. But the thing is that the importance of the CL has shifted from being at least partly a matter of prestige and attractiveness to being purely financial in its importance. The self-reinforcing effect of getting to the Group Stage is just too powerful. Planning for many clubs is so dependent on the CL money that to hold onto it is no big feat, but to lose it has a huge impact. I actually think that qualifying for the CL has went from being a positive aspiration to a negative one, in how the involved clubs view it. It's not really thought of as something you achieve, but rather something you miss-out on.

A Christmas gift I haven’t got round to reading until now.

I know a couple of people who have each had an elderly relative (88 and 92years old) catch Covid in the last few months, and both pulled through ok. It's anecdotal but I suppose it illustrates what the vaccines do best. I would have imagined if either of them had been infected in the initial wave when there was no vaccine, one or both of them likely wouldn't have pulled through.

There's something that makes me think Conte would weirdly like taking over a club which is almost starting from scratch and is ready to revamp the whole squad. Normally the put-off is that there are too many players at a club who don't fit his system, and almost nobody wants to rebuild their entire squad to the whim of an uncompromising, hyper-competitive psycho who plays 3-5-2.

I think Ferguson had an instinctive tactical understanding which was very effective but which was basically unteachable. He wasn't a great theoritician and teacher of the game like a Cruyff or Bielsa.

I think the issue with United is that they think they can build an Ajax or Bayern type management culture around the legacy of Ferguson's time. But Alex Ferguson was arguably the greatest pragmatist in history and an extremely adaptable manager. He also micromanaged the entire club, essentially. There was no "United Way" apart from Ferguson trying various things, making personal judgement calls, and generally being very successful with them. I don't think there is a "Ferguson Philosophy" of any type. It seems to me fundamentally that United need to accept that the way they did things in the 90s, 00s, and early 10s was a freak state of affairs that would not have worked without him, and will never work again. There's nothing anyone can necessarily learn from that time apart from "Jesus, what a manager he was". The best illustration is the fact that you cannot really find any manager, who was primarily inspired by Ferguson, who was particularly good. Who is in the Ferguson "school" of managers? Steve Bruce, Bryan Robson, Roy Keane, and Ole?

I think the climate change activism in this country has a serious problem with well-off hippies alienating a large swathe of the population. But while it is valid to call them arseholes, it also seems like quite a pointless argument when many people are just already looking for an excuse to be dismissive about climate change. Look at Greta Thunberg for example, more than anyone she has probably put herself through an incredible amount of inconvenience in order to live according to her ideals - but if someone within 10ft of her is spotted with a plastic bottle, a lot of people will just instantly dismiss her as a hypocrite. Such people never really cared about what she does or doesn't do personally. They're just not interested in the issue, and they're mad at her for making them think about it.

Donnarumma on a free is still likley to be an extremely expensive acquisition. Raiola would want him on stupendous wages and would probably want additional up-front payments that are almost the size of a major transfer fee. He probably turns out to be worth it in a whole span of a career, but getting Donnarumma probably means they don't also get Varane, Sancho, and Ronaldo in the same summer. Plus, having two keepers on >£300,000 a week would be slightly extreme, even for United. I don't see how you get rid of De Gea.

It’s written in a kind of Aberdeenshire dialect which makes it a bit slow for the first 20 or so pages, but I’m getting used to it.