Panto_Villan

Please no

I don't see how the Russians can still be taking territory if their attacks have apparently culminated? Either they still have sufficient combat power to force Ukraine to retreat or they don't. Clearly they do.

You're shifting your argument. Someone pointed out that Russia had taken a fair bit of ground this week, and you claimed they were wrong and actually they had culminated. They clearly have not. They're steadily pushing the Ukrainians back in the areas they've heavily committed troops. The Ukrainians would happily hold those piles of rubble if they thought they could safely do so, but they don't and so they're ceding territory. Therefore you're incorrect to tell LondonLax above that the Russians hadn't had a good week and their attacks had already culminated. Sure, there's still plenty of readings that the war favours the Ukrainians overall. But you could also point out that despite the massive losses already inflicted on the Russians and all the Western hardware we've sent over, they're continuing to take territory from the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians have had to stop all counter-offensives to focus on defending the Donbas and yet they're still losing territory. They haven't been able to push the Russians out of the area above Kharkiv, there's been absolutely no progress towards reclaiming Kherson, Mauripol has fallen and the Donbas is slowly falling to the Russians. Zelensky et al are sounding a lot less optimistic than they were a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps the tsunami of NATO weapons and fresh troops is going to decisively turn the war in the favour of the Ukrainians and allow them to reclaim their territory in the coming weeks - although we've been hearing that for a while. Alternatively, perhaps the Ukrainians are going to find that large-scale counter-attacks against an enemy with greater air power is going to be extremely difficult and perhaps impossible, especially now they've had time to dig in. And then the Russians will end up keeping a chunk of Ukraine when the war is over. Personally I think the war does still favour Ukraine in the longer term but I think the events of this week are still a handy dose of realism. The Russians certainly aren't beaten yet, and this war isn't going to be one-way traffic.

That doesn’t really change the facts though. The prior assumptions were that the Kharkiv front for the Russians was collapsing, and they had culminated in the Donbas. Instead Russia reinforced north of Kharkiv and the Ukrainians couldn’t push them back over the border, let alone threaten the Russian supply lines in the east, and new attacks in the Donbas continue to take towns and villages from Ukraine. Sure, you can argue about the overall strategic significance of that but you can’t deny the Russians are the ones taking ground at the moment, which some people seem to be doing. I think we’ll need to wait another week or two to see trends emerge fully, but if the present situation continues it won’t bode well for Ukraine.

I mean the recent update seems to disagree. Russians making progress in the Donbas, albeit slow progress, Ukraine making no further progress around Kharkiv. That’s been the situation for the last 3-4 days. Whether it’s a blip or a sign of something greater is up for discussion but the Russians are certainly the ones taking ground right now. Source: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-26 High level summary “Russian forces have made steady, incremental gains in heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine in the past several days, though Ukrainian defenses remain effective overall”

I feel like Villalad has been playing the long con on us. Who knew he had so many accounts?

Indeed, I really hadn't appreciated quite what a strategic advantage it was for Turkey before I read the wiki article. You learn something new every day.

Actually reading on wikipedia what the convention actually says, there's some very strict limits on warships being sent through for any purpose at a time of war (which Turkey have declared is happening). So NATO flat-out can't get a task force through even if it wanted to. I had no idea it was that restricted to be honest. I guess we could send some unarmed merchant ships through and declare them under NATO protection but anything resembling a warship won't be getting anywhere near Ukraine.

Jeez. There's not going to be too much dead weight in our team at the rate we're going. £25m+ players everywhere! Except Coutinho obviously. Better upgrade him ASAP.

I think if they're travelling specifically as part of a humanitarian escort for civilian ships then I think they probably would be allowed, right? Because they're not warships that are party to the conflict. Whether Turkey would choose to allow it is another matter entirely.

Yeah, I think that's a possibility.

My own perspective is a bit different - the Ukrainians are fighting to protect and reclaim their country. I think high losses are more acceptable to them than they are for Russia. Currently there's plenty of support for the war in Russia but there's always a "rally around the flag" effect at the start of a war and we've only been going three months. If thousands and thousands of Russians keep coming home in bodybags every month while the economy falls apart due to sanctions, I think Russians will become disillusioned with the war - particularly if the casualties suffered necessitate a more general mobilisation where people who don't particularly want to fight are getting called up to die in a war that they have no hope of winning. Which will be happening soon if current trends continue. So while I appreciate it's not easy to reclaim territory I suspect what'll happen is the level of casualties being taken is going to cripple Russia before it does Ukraine, and it'll lead to the Russians desperately trying to negotiate for peace when they realise this war is bleeding them dry for no gain.

One nice thing about Leon being in terrible form is that we've not had to hear from his dad in a while.

I think their best chance of getting way with it would be Boris going, and I don't know why anyone wants that to happen. He's a dead man walking going into the election among all but the most hardcore Tory voters so I think the best outcome (both for country and even the Tory party) is he keeps weathering scandal after scandal and then proceeds to gets annihilated in the election.

That depends on your definition of a victory, really. Ukraine isn't going to win a decisive victory where they invade Moscow but if the war degenerates into a stalemate with both sides suffering huge casualties with minimal gains I know which side I think is likely to cave first. And I think the Ukrainians do too. Given how much the US spent on trying to keep Afghanistan going, I think they'll be pretty happy to keep bankrolling the utter destruction of Russia's military / economy.

It was kind of inevitable given the circumstances, and I think it makes sense. It's not something that should be done lightly but prices have gone up so much the normal rules shouldn't apply at this point. Also the good news is that apparently the price of gas has collapsed in the UK because so much LNG has reached our shores recently. It'll take some time for this reduction in prices to work through the system because energy companies hedge their prices X months in advance, but it does mean that the upward trend reversing is locked in at this point.

As to it being impossible to deal with the sheer number of firearms in the US via legislation - it's far from impossible if there's the political will to do it. If ownership of a certain class of weapons was made illegal and a buyback scheme was established, I guarantee you 90% of those weapons would be voluntarily returned within a few years. Not many people want to own something that is actively illegal. And it'd be perfectly possible to maintain use of high-powered rifles for hunting purposes even under such a system. You'd just need a permit for it with appropriate background checks, and probably membership of a hunting club. I think the UK has similar rules for people in shooting clubs being able to own shotguns. You don't need high-capacity magazines to go hunting anyway. If anything above a 5-round magazine is illegal, shooting up a school with your dad's AR-15 is going to kill a lot less people.

I genuinely feel like the best way to ensure gun control laws get implemented in the US is to ensure that ethnic minorities buy as many military-grade assault rifles as possible - and it should be obvious as to why that is. Apparently, that's is actually happening. Left-leaning people and ethnic minorities are responsible for a lot of the growth in firearms sales in recent years (although whether or not they are buying assault rifles the article didn't say).

My problem with Suarez from a purely footballing perspective is that the club already has a bunch of strikers who all have good aspects to their game but just aren't quite doing the business overall - Watkins, Ings, Davis, etc. If we're going on past form then I don't really see *that* much difference between Ings and Suarez. Both are proven goalscorers (depite Ings missing a bunch of chances recently) but Gerrard seems to prefer Watkins to Ings due to his athleticism. Is Suarez going to be the best of both worlds? I doubt it. Feels like we'll just have two poacher-style strikers sat on the bench not playing that much while we watch Watkins stumble around like a drunkard week in week out. And the age thing is a concern. Best case scenario is we get a couple of years out of him - but it's quite possible he arrives here and is deeply average while on big wages for a couple of years. The problem with that is that we've actually got quite a strong squad on paper these days (especially since we signed Kamara) so I feel like we should be throwing money at a marquee signing in the positions we're still lacking. I'm no scout but I can't believe 35 year old Suarez is literally the best striker available to us in the market.

He’s about 700 years old. No thanks.

Thing is if we’d got beat 3-0 we’d also have “done a Villa”, just a different kind of Villa.

In all seriousness this is a very exciting signing as far as I’m concerned. It’s an area we really need strengthening in and he’s a player I expected to go to one of the good CL clubs (in fact I thought he’d already agreed to sign for one). Im sure we’ve offered him crazy wages but the last number 1 player we went all out for and got early was Buendia and after a shaky start he’s been pure class. Great way to start the summer imo.

Always disappointing when you finally see Boubs in the flesh. Never delivers on the anticipation.

We were winning against City when I heard about this transfer happening, so frankly he’s been nothing but bad luck since he signed.

If only they'd read the instructions...