RandoEFC

All I ever learn from this forum nowadays is that anyone who points at bad things and says "that's bad" is just virtue signalling/grandstanding/only doing it to make themselves look good.

Well that's not really on, to be fair.

Public opinion is massively in favour of the net zero aims. He's just clinging to it because he thinks it can get him enough of a following to make him relevant again.

Ofcom, you mean. And I don't know where you're getting that from to be honest. BBC Question Time have climate change "sceptics" (a word they use in place of deniers to make themselves sound more credible) on their panels all the time for one. Farage is making a campaign against the net zero emission targets his next grift as well and we know you can't keep him off the box so get ready for that.

I've given you my reasoning, what else do you want? I've not poured all their countries crimes on them but this is a regime that murders journalists they don't like. Any media that's allowed to thrive in a country like that, if they don't have any *direct* links to the government, let's just say that I'm sure they know "how to behave". It's not about them being Saudi either. They could be British expats for all I know. My opinion remains unchanged. So you can park the xenophobic/bigot shouts at the very least. Just because I have a slightly different view to you on this thing that we can both only speculate about doesn't mean that that's called for.

If you genuinely think that being wary of billionaires from countries like Saudi Arabia makes me a bigot then fine. You do you.

What conspiracy theory did I post? Let's be honest. It's a bigger conspiracy theory to believe that the money that comes out of these countries is ever clean. The Saudi regime executed 81 people on Saturday and are also infamous for dismembering and murdering a journalist who said mean things about them. A Media Group that comes out of a country like that is, at best, silent on the crimes of said regime, else they wouldn't be allowed to exist in that state and they certainly wouldn't have accrued enough money to buy a football club. If you choose to believe that these guys are likely to be legit then fine, but you're the one doing the mental gymnastics here. As for the Abramovich thing. If you've already chosen your position on it then fair enough. I have nothing to add to whatever has already been said and left you unconvinced so I'm not going to waste my time going over old ground.

More Saudis. Good to see the Premier League learning it's lesson from the Abramovich embarrassment huh.

If you think this would be worse than the actual board then you haven't been paying much attention!

What? The fans bit? Not really. If it's debatable then go ahead and debate me. Explain how the fans are more culpable than the board, staff and players for the current malaise.

It's not about being above someone like him. It's about the club's stated ambition being to move toward the European spots, even if the current situation makes a mockery of that ambition. Dyche doesn't play the type of football that's typically successful at the top end of modern football. That's why we wouldn't want him and it's the main reason we never wanted Benitez (as much as you lot wanted to convince yourselves otherwise). Ancelotti's style of play was found out for the same reasons. The organisation, discipline and determination Dyche needs from his players is cripplingly absent from our squad as well. I get why people would call it a good fit because he's got similarities to Moyes but things have changed a lot since then. You can stop chatting shit about our fans as well as if them not wanting Dyche for very easily explainable reasons has anything to do with whether or not Everton would actually go for him though. The fans don't decide the manager. Although we're probably the only club in world football who would be better off if the owner made all of his decisions based off Twitter polls of fans than off his own "expertise". The fanbase is the last thing that needs criticising about Everton.

Please stop posting unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Thanks. You can keep the links.

It's not about whether I want or don't want Dyche or anyone else. I'm sick of evaluating potential managers. I'm sick of Everton, frankly.

Dyche can get fucked. I'm not having any more managerial changes. If you could guarantee me safety right now in exchange for giving Lampard the boot already then I'd choose The Championship. This squad has become absolutely unmanageable because of how many different managers and directors of football have had their input into it without being able to see the job through for more than a couple of years. Half of the reason Benitez and Lampard were the options available to us this season is because the decisions the club's owner makes aren't just ridiculously bad, they're conducted in an unprofessional way. When Ancelotti was appointed, both Rangnick and Moyes were basically told they had the job before Moshiri and his team dicked them around and u-turned. I don't care if we finish 17th this season and try to treat it as a clean slate. This club is heading in one direction as it stands, regardless of who's managing the team. If it doesn't happen this time under Lampard, it'll be next year or the year after.

Some of the dystopian future fan fiction in this thread is quite something.

Arguably the best player in the world at the moment. Age shouldn't really be that much of a factor. He hardly looks like his body's about to fall off a cliff either.

Seen quite a lot of people reveling in the prospect of Chelsea folding as a club or something equally drastic. Fair enough if you want to revel in the downfall of Abramovich or those at the club who actually have a say and have done very well out of his ownership, but the wanton laughter at the fans is a bit much for me, they didn't sell the club to him in the first place and you'd be genuinely gutted if it happened to your club. Don't bother replying with the "plastics" shouts or trying to claim that the fans who sung his name during the silence the other day represent all Chelsea fans either. It just makes you a total bore. People didn't laugh at Bury or Wimbledon fans when their clubs went under. Regardless of Abramovich or the fact that Chelsea have ridden higher than those clubs for a long time, genuine fans hold their football club as a sincere part of their life and in that respect, Chelsea are no different. Maybe I've just gone soft but it seems to have strayed from banter to real nastiness in some quarters (not here from what I've seen).

Seems a bit harsh on Chelsea fans to be barred from football matches if my understanding that that is the case isn't wide of the mark. I'm less sceptical than some about some of these sanctions because I believe any source of pressure on the Russian government that might help reduce the consequences of what they're doing sooner and more effectively. However, I don't know why not selling tickets to Chelsea fans are a part of these sanctions. If they want to punish Abramovich for his links to Putin or try and drive a wedge between them, I mean he's already basically been forced to give up the football club. Why punish the fans as well? I get that they don't want to allow people to put more money in his pocket until he sells the club, but surely they can just seize the profits and make sure the proceeds go to charities affiliated to Chelsea or something.

That's what I mean though. I thought El Professor originally posted those points in relation to the Russian propaganda that is fed to their population and military in order to get the buy-in and political capital they need to initiate this invasion, and that we should bear this in mind before demonising the Russian people, Russian soldiers, Russian athletes competing internationally, etc. I'm all on board with all of that. Where I lose my thread is where people start calling this hypocrisy. I was reading that as "why are we only criticising the Russians when the Ukrainians are just as bad" which I found confusing. Now I've given it another once over, I can see DDW, Spike, 6666, El Prof all agreeing, perhaps, the hypocrisy is on the part of the media and it's more about "why are we only criticising the Russians when we don't criticise the US/Western nations when they did the same thing". When Russia do it, it's war crimes, inhumane, etc., yet when our own 'allies' have perpetrated those acts, it doesn't get reported like that. Perhaps this is the penny dropping for me because I don't disagree with that part. I just feel as if there's a tone with this argument that sort of makes out that those of us on this forum who are horrified by what the Russian military have done and are doing, are somehow guilty of this hypocrisy too, and perhaps we are subconsciously, or more likely by just not having the same information (which goes back to the media) in order to make a consistent judgement when "our side" does it too. Still, I think there's a more productive way of having this conversation and educating each other better than throwing around the "hypocrite" shout toward people who are more "involuntarily unaware". I don't think anyone here is going to offer up a fervent defence of the Bush/Blair/Obama interventions in the Middle East, for example, so perhaps some of us could stop speaking to or about each other as if they would do.

What hypocrisy? Genuine question. Are we talking about the perpetuation of a few urban myths like the ghost of Kiev being as unforgivable as the systematic, state-sponsored propaganda from the Russian government to lay the groundwork for an unprovoked invasion and genocide? Is that the hypocrisy? 1. We do not want war. Russia chose to go to war, Ukraine did not. No hypocrisy. 2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war. Russia invaded Ukraine. Not vice versa. Unless you blame Ukraine for fighting back? No hypocrisy. 3. The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the devil. I'd say Putin alone is pretty close to evil. We’ve already talked about sympathies for the Russian soldiers who have been lied to about their cause. Shut up was the only one who really chose to die on that hill and he's been banned from the forum for what followed so it's not like this is a majority opinion. 4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interests. Again, is it really hypocritical to say Ukraine's cause, defending themselves against an unprovoked invasion, is a bit more noble than Russia's leadership trying to wipe another country off the map? I'm not doing the rest as I have to get back to work. The worst you could level at Ukraine is that they've allowed some of their own falsehoods and propaganda such as the Ghost of Kiev thing to spread. This is not the same level as Russia's propaganda and aggression though. The majority of those falsehoods, Russia could be accused of, many of them without a scintilla of an argument to the contrary. I'm not saying that Ukraine are innocent of every single one but it's a bit easier to forgive when they're a) the weaker of the two parties and b) not the aggressor. I'm open to being convinced otherwise but it does just smack of people trying to show how much cleverer they are by choosing and justifying a position that differs or appears to be more nuanced to the majority. If you genuinely think that Ukraine are just as bad as Russia though and that it's therefore "hypocritical" of Russia to receive the vast majority of criticism for the events of this conflict, then I worry for you.

Isn't this exactly what they're doing? The high speed mobile advances haven't exactly gone to plan admittedly due to logistical problems and Ukrainian resistance but encircling and bombarding the big cities is exactly what's happening right now.

I think he has underestimated the resistance he would meet in Ukraine, but that this isn't really a great thing because it means more aggression, more war, more deaths. I don't see how this could be a part of any plan, and I think that the "mastermind" perception of him is an overplayed trope at this point. He's smarter than the average world leader but because he's got a very different worldview and a very different moral compass to most of us, he is more dangerous and unpredictable, and that makes people more fearful of him. Still, he's just a man though, he makes mistakes, and I think he has made one in believing that this war would be easier than it has been. Of course, we should be questioning what he is trying to achieve. Well not us, but the leaders of our countries. There's no evidence to believe that it's anything other than the subjugation of Ukraine, though. It also isn't news to anyone in the US or Europe that he'll look to China and possibly India for alliance, and action has already been taken to try and drive a wedge between them. Whether that is successful in the long term remains to be seen. I don't want to come across that we should underestimate him, but I don't think anyone is really. But I also don't think the hard evidence of what has happened in this war so far can be countered by "but it's Putin so this must all be deliberate and a part of his grand plan". Evidence of this may emerge, but it hasn't yet, and personally, I don't think it will. I think he's simply a man who has made a misjudgement. It doesn't mean I view him as any less dangerous. But every man that rises eventually falls and he will to. Perhaps this is the beginning of that, it's far too soon to say that with any hint of confidence though. Time will tell but I'm not really concerned that other world leaders are underestimating him.

I'm not going to lie, I don't really have my hackles up over it because it was rumoured a while ago and there isn't really even a scintilla of a genuine argument from any quarter that it's genuinely because he deserves it. Looking at the positives. Those important people between "always Conservative" and "always Labour" don't like Gavin Williamson in the slightest, and if this nudges even a small handful of their political needles away from voting Tory again next time and subjecting us to another term of that mangy scarecrow being in charge then that's sound with me. I absolutely despise the bloke though. An abhorrent failure at every turn, but I posted about him at length when it was going on so I'm not going to go to the effort again.

The refugee angle is also going to be really important going forward. Poland has a population of around 38m, so that many refugees would mark more than a 1% rise in their population. Already many of these refugees are heading on from there to Germany and the rest of Europe, so obviously Poland aren't permanently housing an extra 1-2% of their population, but it's still a strain in the short term and a sizeable operation for Europe going forward to accommodate these refugees as the numbers grow.