Ben Zalin

How is that not a bit?

Yeah, v much if they were bright enough for that, they’d probably not have behaved so consistently stupidly up to now.

Thank you, you’d be v welcome.

I might want reparations.

Ah, to be fair to me, I didn’t go back and read it, because I felt I should join in with committing to the bit rather than get too burdened by what people *actually* said.

Chat, what does “very malign” mean? Is it a way of dodging reparations?

I think the reparations question is interesting but Gordon Brown spearheaded a movement to forgive vast amounts of debt and wouldn’t you want that to be general, not just successor nations of places “we” colonised / exploited?

You .. really don’t appear to know what the word means.

Weren’t you minimising the Welsh element by blaming the Scots more though, eh? I mean, correctly, sure but still, minimising.

No, I mean contextualise. You might need to look both words up.

Or if you’re trolling, decent work, well done.

You appear to have provided a screenshot which entirely supports what twill and I are saying, thank you.

Yes, quite amusing to be told we know nothing of British imperial crimes in a conversation where every single participant is discussing those crimes and contextualising them. We know!

This has the benefit of being really quite funny at times, because they’re such losers but obvs the disadvantage of being really quite bad for society.

You’re still in Spanish, according to Bluesky, by the way. Is this because you want the woke points for speaking the language of the global South?

Well, not always *their* dead, now that you mention it.

Spurs are a poor team by EPL standards and might well get relegated. They finished 4th in the league phase and weren’t even all that lucky to do so!

Chelsea will v likely also go out but kept PSG to under 1xG and got done by brilliant finishing which happens but doesn’t tell you much about the EPL

Knock out is obviously how the tournament gets decided but it’s not a v good way to judge comparative league strength because there’s a large random element. Each of the English teams have played 9 games, except Newcastle (11). The results overall suggest they’re pretty good.

Usually Liverpool’s approach of only moving on players they really want was a good one but it did leave a midfield rebuild at least a season late.

He was certainly reported as having much more control over the squad by then, including deciding to extend Henderson. I mean sure, the injuries that season were bad but not that surprising given previous records.

I think the OP criticism of Slot is fair enough and that Jones has been used surprisingly sparingly. It’s far from impossible that Slot knows things about his injury risk that we don’t but even so, can’t see why he didn’t get on for half an hour yesterday.

Still, all coaches make mistakes.

I do think 22/23 was much more his fault though, albeit still injury related but recruitment was more under his control then and his loyalty to ageing / injury prone midfielders was optimistic, especially given the demands his football placed on them.

This isn’t to say I don’t worship the guy.

20/21 was looking like a perfectly good season until Van Dijk got injured and potentially still okay until Gomez and Matip (think odds on for title after the 7-0 away win at Palace in December). Could only blame Klopp for not recruiting more CBs and Van Dijk had previously been bomb proof.

Bluesky kindly offered me a translation of this (it thinks it was posted in Spanish) but sadly the translation didn’t include any 2010 political meme elucidation at all.

The people voted for HedgehoggyMcHedgehogface, let’s oppose the people and the hedgehogs in one brutal attack on woke.

Never change Kemi (obviously she won’t).

I do, yes.

Seems a big commitment to buy a starting RB, in that context. But we clearly can’t rely on Bradley.

RB is another position where we’ve perhaps got ourselves a bit stuck. Bradley is presumably being paid somewhere between established squad and starter wages but is injured *lots* and even if Frimpong is mostly playing RW, he’s presumably cover, as is Gomez if staying.

You’d want the full backs to hold the width a lot, which wouldn’t be bad for Frimpong or Kerkez, to be fair and it would be demanding on a midfield 3.

I’m not totally opposed.

Not so much that you couldn’t do it but more that it wouldn’t be all that robust and you’d either have to change systems (you’re not playing them both together twice a week) or rotate Gakpo and perhaps Rio in as L forwards, rather than wingers. That could work, perhaps.

Can see them both playing with Wirtz behind but it’s hard to run the sort of disrespect eleven that murdered Frankfurt in the EPL too often (those three, Gakpo LW, Frimpong at RB), I’d have thought.

This is fair but it’s still quite impressive, in a way, not to have got even one.

They’ll have an idea of how many minutes he can play over what sort of time but him coming off after 70 mins and Gakpo playing to 86 leaves the possibility he’ll start pretty live, I’d say.

It’s impressive, in a way, that he’s not managed even one of those, or a header, or even a deflection off his bum at a set piece.