Panto_Villan

That’s not really true - unless you define pushing Russia out of all the occupied territories as not being a victory, because it’s just reclaiming land they already owned 10 years ago. If Ukraine had cast iron support from Europe and the US in terms of arms and munitions, then that’s a plausible scenario. Ultimately Russia cares less about that territory than Ukraine does, and eventually there comes a point where one side will decide it’s not worth the bloodshed. The problem is there’s a very obvious path to victory on the table for Russia right now - just wait for the Western coalition to fall apart. But that’s something the West could take away. Even Europe could do it alone if it really wanted to - Russia has the GDP of Italy. If that was taken away Ukraine becomes far more likely to win the war than Russia imo.

Indeed. And it’s particularly frustrating because we don’t even need to do any fighting to achieve our goals - just build enough gear for the people who are willing to do it. We’re literally never going to have a better opportunity.

Yeah. The unfortunate truth is that Russia has slowly and inefficiently set up a war economy, whereas the West hasn’t bothered. If the West (and Europe in particular) doesn’t get serious about manufacturing munitions then Ukraine is going to lose eventually.

Dyche is doing a great job there. Exactly what they need. Don’t think there’s any danger of them going down now, even with the deduction.

Claiming you’re a “big club” is just loser talk for me. It’s only ever used to try and explain why it’s actually fine that someone else has done / is doing better than you. It’s like Man City claiming they were the “real” Manchester club in the era of United dominance, or the bluenoses claiming they’re the proper club round here literally any time ever. We should do our talking on the pitch. We’ve not yet matched Leicester’s recent success and once we have, we won’t have to worry about whether people think we’re a big club or not.

I did exactly the same about 15 years ago and the recovery time was 9-12 months. So I’m expecting him back at the start of next season (hopefully getting a full preseason in first). I don’t think the cartilage damage is much of a problem beyond some extra pain / swelling for the first couple of weeks.

Clearly Emery made the right decision sticking with Leon all last season, but I wonder what it was that made him do that. Was it the form he showed in Germany? Was he doing great things in training? Was he just willing to learn? Or was he just the best option from a bad bunch, and eventually managed to play his way into form? Either way the transformation has been incredible. He’s gone from one of our biggest disappointments in recent memory to one of the first names on the teamsheet.

It’s funny really - I wonder how much Emery is being paid? Even if it’s a huge number for a coach, it’s basically nothing compared to the fees / wages for a player. And if we end up having to sell a player like Luiz or McGinn or Watkins in summer we’d probably get double or triple what we’d have got for them previously (to say nothing of Bailey). He’ll have paid for himself ten times over. It throws the last twenty years into sharp focus - there’s been times where we’ve ended up with players that were carrying the rest of the team and clearly too good for us (e.g. Benteke / Grealish) but they’ve never been transformative like having a truly top class manager has been. Clearly we should have been throwing our money at managers instead of players!

Given the other results this weekend it’s extra frustrating that we didn’t win (although I appreciate we were lucky to even get a draw).

Just the weekly injection of admantium into his skeleton.

The great thing about McGinn is he’s probably one of the few players who wouldn’t take offence if you told him he had “old man strength”

It think it’s possible the perception of the media bias against us comes about because people seem intent on taking literally everything as some kind of slight.

After losing to Forest I’m surprised (although obviously delighted) that we’re still in the mix tbh. But we’ve got to take at least some points off the big teams we’ve got coming up if we want to stay serious CL contenders, I think.

Great result, and good to see normal service resume.

I was a little confused as to why Israel was so intent on ensuring fuel didn’t reach Gaza - why did it matter if Hamas stole it? It’s not like they have armoured vehicles. What do they need it for? AK-47s and RPGs don’t run on petrol. Anyway, someone pointed out today that the reason is because of the huge Hamas tunnel network - without fuel to power the generators, there’s no fresh air or light down there and it’ll force Hamas to the surface rather than making Israel clear the tunnels with soldiers (probably obvious in hindsight.) This isn’t an attempt to justify anything, or part of a wider point. Just mentioning it here in case anyone else was in the same boat as me.

I think he’s on record saying he didn’t think he was this good at football before Emery started working his magic. It’s impressive for a player who joined us in the championship to be more than holding his own in a team that’s challenging for the CL places. It’s more than a massive step up, it’s a whole series of them in rapid succession.

I’ll see myself out.

I don’t think anyone is saying he’s in his honeymoon period. We’re just saying you’re not comparing like for like.

True. But almost every manager’s stint at any given club ends with a run of bad form (unless they retire or get poached, which tends to be rare). That run of bad form is baked into everyone else’s numbers already.

They’ll probably buy a few extra managers to make sure there’s enough competition in that position.

I think it’d be fine for us tbh. It’d net out to essentially being a loan where we paid some of the wages. I’m sure we’d be able to sell him again if we wanted to. He won’t suddenly become crap even if he has a bad season in the PL.

Good to see they’re still a banter club.

It’s horses for courses. If I was in charge of one of the massive clubs, like say Real, I’d probably be more interested in Klopp or Pep because they’ve got more experience at the absolute top end of the CL and are probably better placed to deal with big ego players. I don’t think either could do for us what Emery has done though. It’s a different set of skills.

Benteke was still the better player for me (while he was here at least). But Watkins has already been a better servant of the club and by the time he leaves I think he’ll be a club legend.

I can’t believe we’ve got a keeper that good, and fully deserve to keep him.