Burning Gold

I must be missing something here because the thickness of the lines makes absolutely no difference. How will this help?

Isn't this basically what Rio Ferdinand suggested?

It's one of those things that's so obviously unacceptable it's hard to express it. Assaulting women at a vigil for a woman allegedly murdered by one of their colleagues. Fucking horrendous They had the perfect opportunity to distance themselves from what happened to Sarah Everard by allowing the vigil to go ahead peacefully (because it's a fucking vigil ffs) and somehow they've ended up siding with the murderer. Had I seen a single policeman do a single thing to stop or disperse mass gatherings over the last year, I'd understand the (still woefully ill-advised) urge to break this one up, but I haven't. Not in the protests over the summer, not at celebrations in Liverpool, Leeds and Glasgow, nothing, not even casual gatherings in the park clearly over whatever the limit was. Just this one

Yeah, agree. Either have the commentator announce it every time, or don't. It's very annoying not knowing whether I'm going to find out by the commentator telling me, by a graphic on screen, or simply by the game kicking off again. And often when I found out by the game kicking off again they're still showing replays when that happens anyway The pandemic was a massive PR opportunity for VAR. The experience at the ground is never going to be as good, but if they could nail the at-home experience they could've won over a lot of fans by the time everyone returns to stadiums so you know things are being handled with competence while you wait to hear the decision. Instead, they've continued to cock it up and left the majority of people with absolutely no confidence that it's being done properly

That's the other thing, if you have a completely separate group of people doing the VAR thing, you can have one outrank the other and make it clear. Either way round is preferable to the current situation And mic them up ffs. I know we're worried about players swearing, but there's no reason you can't mic up the VAR room and then switch the referee's mic on when he goes to look at the screen

Why do we have on-field referees doing VAR duty? Referees have to be fit enough to keep up with play but with the awareness to not get in the way, they have to have the confidence, concentration and presence of mind to make split-second decisions after one viewing, and they have to have the mental fortitude to deal with pressure and abuse from players and (in normal times) partisan crowds. Unburdened by all of those extra requirements, you could have the fattest, sweatiest nerds in the VAR room, but they'd be people who know the rules inside out and have the intelligence to apply them in full.

Completely agree, and I wouldn't limit it to the dying minutes either For me, I can't see any reason a deliberate foul to "take one for the team" at any point shouldn't be a sending off offence. The rule refers to "denying a goalscoring opportunity" but what other reason is there to make a foul of that sort than stopping a goal, wherever you are on the pitch? Unfortunately if we did have that rule we'd inevitably get some absolutely ludicrous sendings off as a referee misinterprets a mistimed tackle, but we all regularly see 'tactical' fouls that are tantamount to cheating

Expecting a Senate vote on the conviction today apparently. They voted something like 56-44 for the trial to even go ahead, and I fully expect them to vote on the same lines, therefore failing to reach the required two-thirds threshold, and rendering the last week a complete waste of time. Really depressing how many Republicans continue to stand alongside Trump. Suggests they'll continue to follow his agenda and potentially run him again in 2024

Yeah, feel for the man, but what was he expecting when he moved to the only place where crime happens?

I always wonder about players upping their game when competition is bought in, especially to this extent. Dead giveaway of a poor attitude, and I think they're liable to return to their "base" level once they feel safe again Agree on Wan-Bissaka. He's wildly inconsistent, veering between rock and liability, often in the same game, but averages out to a good player for me

Southampton just lost 9-0 so not really sure what point you're trying to make here

A charitable reading suggests she meant no one was able predict when/how it would happen and what it would mean, not that it would happen, which is fair. I hope that's what she meant anyway...

Yeah, I don't have a problem with Matip as 4th choice. You can't rely on him for a run of games, but the odd one here and there is no problem and you know he'll put in a good performance as @Dr. Gonzo said. Even third choice I'd be happy with as long as we have a fourth choice as well I do wonder if we'll try and shift someone in the summer though. I maintain 4 is a perfectly normal number of centre backs to have... but 5 is starting to get a bit crowded, and we know Klopp likes to keep a smaller squad. Matip's the obvious one in that regard for me given his age

This is the big one. Preventing serious illness is obviously great, but without preventing infection/transmission it becomes a bit of a slog. One vaccine is one serious illness or death prevented at best. With this, it has the multiplicitive effect that every vaccination is a chain of transmission broken and a boost on our road to re-emergence A lot of people assumed this was the case anyway, which is fair enough as it turns out, but having it confirmed is obviously great news.

Yeah. That makes sense

Fair enough. I agree that's better than the alternative, although I think that linesmen can be too afraid to put their flags up sometimes for clear offsides

I don't like it or really see how it's good for football? I do think it's the best way to deal with it, but it feels a bit crap when they play on for a couple of minutes and then go back and pretend it never happened

Some really concerning things have come out of the protest last week. Images of protesters climbing over seats holding bundles of thick zipties ready-made into handcuffs, reports that panic buttons in Ayanna Pressley's office had been torn out, images of a GOP congresswoman taking protestors on a tour of the capital the previous day (the same congresswoman who tweeted Nancy Pelosi's location during the event). Even the stuff I think you posted in this thread about the lone police officer directing protesters away from the chamber where lawmakers were. This could easily have been a lot more serious than it ended up being (which is still pretty serious). I'm with @RandoEFC though that they've shot their shot and missed. A lot of supposed ringleaders are in police custody, and they've lost the element of surprise for Biden's inauguration

Do you think they'll move the Senate vote forward? I understand the logic behind pushing it, and there is a point to convicting him after he leaves office, but I think it would be quite a powerful statement to remove him from office even at the 11th hour

Has the new legislative session started? Important because, assuming impeachment passes the house, he still has to be convincted in the Senate by two-thirds for it to mean anything.

I am as well. They're looking at having "over 1,000" vaccination sites, which I think we can take to be very close to 1000 because if it was significantly more they'd say so. To do 2.3m a week in 1000 sites, you need each them to be doing an average of 330 a day (ish) or 27.5 an hour with the generous assumption of 12 hour days and 7 day weeks. Some sites will be at hospitals with lots of staff, but others will be attached to GP surgeries and almost certainly fall well below that average. It might be doable for a short while at a hell of a stretch, but can you sustain it for 42 days with no breaks? I'm also led to believe the biggest problem isn't actually logistics, it's supply of the vaccine, and we haven't even considered that. Actually another reason to be optimistic about ramping up is that as you go further down the list of people to be vaccinated, they start to become a lot more mobile and easy to deal with. That could well be a big change from the early days of vaccination, but 2.3m/week still looks difficult and again that's just logistics. Worth noting they've only said the first dose of the vaccine, and we don't know what level of immunity that gives but probably will by mid-Feb. More notable though is that they've already given themselves an out. The first four groups will be "offered" a first dose. What does that mean? It certainly doesn't mean given.

13.5m apparently. That needs about 2.3m a week which is a significant leap from where we are at the moment which I believe is less than 500,000 a week. We have the Oxford/AZ vaccine now which is easier to handle and there's more of it, and vaccination capacity is ramping up every day, but still a massive increase needed.

I'm choosing to take it as a positive that Henderson was at centre back tonight. It's obviously not a sustainable strategy to have two of your best midfielders in defence, and if we were going to continue with Phillips/Williams for the season, one of them should've been in tonight for a vote of confidence and obviously for the continued experience. So either we're getting someone else, or we're continuing with Henderson until Matip's back... and then going again when Matip gets injured again a fortnight later

To be fair, younger footballers tend to be a lot more fluid positionally so that could well be accurate. Classic example is Jamie Carragher moving from centre forward to centre half

Brilliant as always from you. I had suspected as much. My hope is that the decision is being made with that limited trial data and data (e.g. J&J) that isn't public yet but is being passed around the community, but with this government's love for short-term PR boosts, my worry is that the temptation to double the "people vaccinated" number is just too high. I think it's the former in this case because the potential consequences for the latter are too grave, but I'm internally chastising myself for giving them the benefit of the doubt