Burning Gold

If you're just looking at the numbers they posted to say they deserve to be player of the year, then yeah, that is a bit lazy. You need to consider more than that: context, match winning goals and performances, etc.. I know it's an individual award, but it's a team game, so for me you have to consider the team's performance as context. As I've said, that doesn't mean they have to win the league, but there has to be some indiciation the player in question has dragged his team up the table, and with City the opposite has happened. They may have only dropped one place from last year, but they're 20 points short (with one to play) of the points total put up by largely the same team. I don't think you can take any player from a team that's underperformed to that extent and say they've had the best season of anyone in the league.

They're on very close to 2 points a game. I don't think it's controversial to say that's a disappointing season for this City team

For me, yeah. One of the best players in the league, and top of goals + assists (lazy) but he hasn't actually contributed to his team doing well this season (weird). I'm not saying it's an outrageous choice, but is wrong

This feels very harsh on Mane. I think Henderson's very underrated and underappreciated generally, but Mane dragged us, single-handedly at times, into a commanding lead before the turn of the year. He was popping up with big goals/assists and performances all over the place in that September-November period when we put one hand on the trophy, and continued for the rest of the season when the rest of the team wasn't quite at the races. This isn't to say Henderson hasn't had a brilliant season, he has, but Mane's really been the driver of our success for me. It feels like a bit of a compensation award for Henderson as he doesn't get the plaudits others do because of his role On Kevin De Bruyne... there's no question he's a brill, but being a key component in a team that's underperformed to the extent that they have, both in terms of cost of the squad and performance in previous seasons, isn't really something to write home about. I'm not one who thinks it has to be a player from a title winner, but KDB's a weird and lazy choice. Underselling it a bit. He broke the goalscoring record and was generally an absolute revelation

A part of me thinks that's what they're doing at the moment with the current 'lockdown-lite' that they're not really enforcing anyway. As you say, they can't acknowledge it publicly, so they issue conflicting guidance and lift the most stringent restrictions while leaving in relatively meaningless limitations, and then let nature take its course. The big test will be when they decide to reopen pubs, shops, etc. because you have to keep some level of control I hate it. Both in terms of barely speaking to anyone, and in terms of it being that much harder to get things done. I've seen a lot of people saying that a positive of this situation is that maybe we'll all get to work from home by default in future. They can very much get to fuck

It's not exactly rare for footballers from underdeveloped nations to show pride in their heritage, is it?

Ever heard the expression "the lady doth protest too much"'? He's hardly going to come out and say "Yeah, we knew we were safe after the Bolton game ended, so the gaffer asked us to let one in at our end to settle a grudge he had. Obviously we all agreed." Don't forget Onuoha played for City for years as well He may not be the brightest spark, but I can definitely believe that he's the kind of person to whom snidery comes almost instinctively

It wasn't until after he saw red that he started lashing out at everyone. Pretty sure he grew up an Everton fan as well, and QPR were in danger of going down if they lost. All told, I think this is a bit far fetched. That said, I had a mate at uni who was insistent that Mark Hughes (then QPR manager) instructed his players to lose after he learnt they were assured survival by results elsewhere. Apparently he held a grudge over something that'd happened at United

Even then, anything that was on the stuff you bought is still there, and anything that was on the stuff you touched (trolley, checkout touchscreen) is likely on the stuff you bought as well. I can understand why you'd want to use them for public transport, but they're basically only good for doing one very specific thing and before throwing them away. Better not touch your phone for the duration of your journey, by the way. You'd burn through them very quickly if you tried to use them in your daily life. In general, I think you're better off not wearing them and just using the usual precautions

Remember we're not talking about government communication here; it's a tweet from a news presenter. Although that actually reflects most of the problem in my opinion. The guidance has been a lot clearer than it gets credit for (although far from perfect), but the delivery is incredibly confused. What we usually get is a handful of leaks to the press that attract little attention, followed by a detailed announcement and then the press go to work unpicking what the new legislation means for you. What we're getting at the moment is leaks to the press that attract a lot of attention (because it's an incredibly important topic to everyone) followed by a weird, non-comprehensive summary from the PM then more leaks to the press. The detailed announcement will come on Wednesday, but by then the majority of people will have gone off half-cocked based on what they've understood from the various sources over the past few days, and will continue to behave in that manner going forward. To understand the restrictions, you have to wait until the law comes out on Wednesday and basically ignore the press and the PM until then. But how can you? This is about whether I can see my vulnerable dad, whether you can see your girlfriend (fiance?), whether Chris can work. It's about how we're combatting the most serious threat in most of our lifetimes. Of course we're eager to get the news as soon as we can, and any discrepancy between the first reports and the actual restrictions is going to cause confusion and have quite serious consequences. The most disappointing part of all of this is that communication combined with behavioural science and focus groups is meant to be what this government does well. It's how they won the referendum (Take Back Control) and the election (Get Brexit Done), but they can't use it to protect us from the virus. By the way, none of this excuses what some people are doing. Congas and sunbathing in the park and shit. At no point has it been said that you can do whatever you want as long as you stay 2m apart. These people are deliberately and knowingly flouting the rules and should be punished

Surely if you can meet friends in a park you can meet family in a park? I get that the messaging hasn't been entirely clear, but that seems like incredibly common sense to me The new rules feel like a case of misaligned priorities to me. At a basic level, battling the virus is a case of balancing lockdowns and reducing contact with minimising economic destruction. Today, they've allowed people to mix freely without taking any action on the economy beyond encouraging more people to go to work, many of whom likely don't have work to go to. 'encouraging' being the key word

Surely this was inevitable? Lockdown hasn't magically changed the properties of the virus. The only variable that's changed to bring it down is people's interactions, as enforced by the restrictions. As soon as they're lifted and people return to some version of normal, the number goes up again. I can't figure out why anyone is in the least bit surprised by this.

Try this one, or just search her name on Twitter. Suspect her PR team are working to get them taken down Baffling levels of airheadery

I'm guessing because there aren't as many of those people in the general population anyway

Our government. It's more important for us to "flatten the curve" than most other first world countries because of our low-capacity health system, so we should be the ones implementing serious measures to slow it before such a thing is deemed 'necessary'. Or am I missing something? Is it that flattening the curve to ease the burden on the NHS simply isn't feasible, so we're trying this other approach?

You'd think that'd make them more conscious rather than less, surely? Last I heard, they reckon about 10% of cases require ICU admission. The death rate will tend towards that figure as healthcare systems get overloaded

No doubt he's a colossal narcissist, but I do get the impression Cristiano Ronaldo's fundamentally a good bloke Trump on the other hand...

Even with the panic and hysteria, there are still far too many people not taking it seriously. If the Prime Minister's comments put a stop to that (and anecdotally it seems like they are) then it's unequivocally a good thing. I don't agreed that their hand has been forced. It's a perfectly reasonable position to acknowledge events are being cancelled because people involved are testing positive, yet continue with the official policy that it's not necessary or mandatory under normal circumstances.

Yeah, I get it mate, I'm just sick of this complacency that it's not as bad here as it is in Italy. As far as I can tell, it's pure chance that they got hit by it first and we're on exactly the same path they are. I'm not attacking you, that seems to be the prevailing attitude. I think we're in a really bad position as a country when Piers Morgan is one of the ones talking the most sense the loudest. Honestly I'm fucking livid about it. And of all of the coverage I've seen just treated it as if it was any other big game.

So maybe we should make sure we're not?

Where I am they've split the company in half and made one half work from home Tuesday and one Wednesday. A lot of people are suggesting this might make more companies embrace working from home in the long term The general idea is that people become complacent when it starts to slow down, stop taking precautions (or return to normality, whichever way you want to look at it), and make it rise again.

I swear to god, my face has never been as itchy in my life as it has been these last few weeks

That's 168 in a day. The total is over 600 in Italy now Wash your fucking hands, people

Well the idea is that they are good enough, but have been cheated out of it by a team not playing by the rules. In any case, they'd be better than probably half of the other teams in the tournament, so why not? Personally, I don't actually care about the FFP thing. Like Al Capone getting busted for tax fraud, I'm just glad something is being done. Once you acknowledge how vile the City project is, why does it matter whether they managed to funnel blood money into the club legally or not? And at that point also, I think the manager, players, etc. have to shoulder some responsibility? Did they know their employer was flouting UEFA's laws? Maybe not. Did they know their employer was using the club and them personally for something beyond reprehensible (and still are)? Yes