Cizzler

6 minutes ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Does anyone know how Russia has manipulated the Rubble to pre war value.

This makes no sense and should be impossible to achieve legally I suspect? 

The Ruble rate is not a meaningful reflection of the Russian economy.

The WSJ did a good article on this a few days pack. It’s behind a paywall - but you can find the article here if interested:

https://jnews.uk/how-russias-central-bank-engineered-the-rubles-rebound/

5 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

The problem is they are finding ways to bypass the West in India and China.

It depends what you mean by bypass.

The "West" is over half of the world's GDP. I'm sure they can function by only trading with the East, but their economy will take years to recover. 

5 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

Meanwhile Europe is still buying their biggest asset in huge quantities. 

There's no short-term solution to this. Key countries in Europe are over-reliant on Russian energy. These countries would risk recession if they suddenly stopped buying this energy.

However, long-term Russia has lost the EU energy market permanently.

1 hour ago, LondonLax said:

The Russian rouble has recovered all its losses and is now worth more than it was before the war started. 

Meanwhile Lavrov is currently in India selling them additional weapons and oil. India are giving Russia access to their version of SWIFT to allow the increased trade between the two countries. 

The Ruble exchange rate is not a meaningful reflection of Russia’s economy.

It stopped being so the second Russia’s central bank severely limited anyone being able to sell the Ruble.

Quote

“It is fair to say that the ruble is not a market price,” said Robin Brooks, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance. “If there were a free flow in both directions, we would see a far weaker ruble.”

The WSJ did a good article on this a few days pack. It’s behind a paywall - but you can find the article here if interested:

https://jnews.uk/how-russias-central-bank-engineered-the-rubles-rebound/

1 hour ago, Genie said:

So it seems Abramovic was poisoned whilst part of a negotiating team, is it assumed the Russians poisoned him as its a tactic they like to use? 
It’s interesting if so as I’d assume he’s representing them in these discussions. 

Collateral damage possibly? They were hardly careful with the nerve agent in Salisbury...

I think I read four Ukranian diplomats also displayed symptoms of an attack - so it's unlikely Roman was the main target, but who knows. 

6 hours ago, fruitvilla said:

Are we including Dresden?

Why was Dresden any worse than the bombing of London during WW2?

Just now, El-Reacho said:

You'd be surprised at how quickly players' stock can rise and fall. There's every chance Cash could've jumped above either of the them in the next year or two. Look at Dele Alli, Phil Jones, Ruben Loftus Cheek, even Rashford.

Highly doubt it tbh. Walker and Trippier will be around for the next year or two anyway.

Then you have Wan-Bissaka, Lamptey and Livramento started the season well too. James Justin was about to get a call-up before his ACL tear, so was ahead of Cash in Southgate's thoughts. 

He was nowhere near the England team and never would have been. Scroll back 10 pages and people were saying he was toilet. Amazing what a couple of goals can do to a defender's reputation. 

4 hours ago, Mic09 said:

I said it at the time, but I thought it was a big mistake for the FA to not even talk with him about potentially playing for England. Matty said there was no contact from anyone.

And this is coming from a polish guy!

Realistically, he's never going to start ahead of Trent A-A or Reece James. They're both younger and a lot better than him.

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

They’re holding the good stuff back (people and kit) apparently.

To what end? It's illogical to do that. 

It would only lengthen the damage the Western sanctions are doing to the economy.

15 minutes ago, Awol said:

Assuming it came via an ICBM then no, we couldn’t stop it. Anti-Ballistic Missile systems are a bit of a blag.

If there’s any nuclear nonsense I’d expect it to be the Russians staging some kind of an event in Ukraine, either to justify their idiocy to date or further madness to come. 

Seen some interesting analysis today about the relative no-show of their large airforce. There’s a view that he’s holding most of that back, along with considerable stocks of precision guided munitions and various types of unmanned systems, in case of escalation and a direct clash with NATO. 

The Russian Air Force doesn’t have a cat in hell’s chance vs. the USAF.

The only way Russia will ever invade a NATO country is if they are 100% certain the USA won’t respond. It’s a complete mis-match.

13 minutes ago, PussEKatt said:

According to a docco that I watched a Russian is the secetary General of either NATO or the UN and according to this documentary the SG has been veto Ukrain joining NATO for ages

Not sure what you watched - but the UN have no power to veto NATO members.

There are no Russians in NATO. It's a defensive alliance of the US, Canada + most of Western (and now Eastern...) Europe. It's head is Jens Stoltenberg and he's Norweigan. The prior head was Danish I think.

The UN Secretary General is Portguese, Antonio Gutteres. Russia are on the Security Council of the UN (along with the UK, USA, China and France aka the original nuclear powers) - this gives them the right to veto legislation proposed in the UN. However, NATO is a completely independent organisation. 

53 minutes ago, avfc1982am said:

No. He has a taste for conquest regardless of the human cost. 

He's not going to go into a NATO country. He's not gone insane, he's not going to invade the USA. They'd get absolutely battered.

It's a terrible tragedy and a humanitarian disaster - but ultimately, we can't risk nuclear war on the sovereignty of Ukraine. I think they need to accept Putin's demands. The loss of innocent life is going to become even more depressing otherwise.  

52 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

 

Things like this have definitely aged badly.

 

But there isn't a bottom-less pit of money. At some point you have to decide if you're willing to spend on Defence at the sacrifice of the NHS, pensions, education, etc.

Ultimately, it's fruitless anyway. A war with anyone would be absolutely devastating. All we can do is keep ticking our box by investing 2% of our GDP and pray the USA stays in NATO. We're not beating anyone, let alone Russia, by our own - whether we had 30 more Challenger tanks or not. 

24 minutes ago, Genie said:

Brexit, pandemic and a war. I bet Boris wishes he sat this one out.

 

This war has been the best thing to happen to him.

Completely taken the heat off back home. Him and Rishi were interviewed by the police under caution re: C-19 parties last week - barely heard a peep from the media. 

He idolises Churchill, I bet he’s loving this.

14 minutes ago, Genie said:

Big PR exercise from Roman going on here. I think somebody wants to carry on living in London.

He's selling his entire London property portfolio. Strange way to go about staying in London...

17 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

Ukraine will end up split, either with a demilitarized zone separating the "independent states" from the rest of Ukraine, or even with a wall ala Germany after WWII.

I expect this was Putin’s goal all along. He can’t have expected to subjugate the entirety of a country that big. 

Putin will get the huge natural gas reserves in the East of the country and control the access to the Black Sea in the South. He’ll also have the “buffer” between the NATO states.

I think he underestimated the West’s co-ordinated response/ sanctions and under-estimated Zelenskyy too.

I imagine we’ll get a ceasefire relatively shortly (hopefully), fingers crossed it doesn’t take the Russians shelling the shit out of Kharkiv and Kiev (but I’m worried it might).

The Western sanctions will probably end there. European energy strategy and Ukraine’s borders will change, and little else.

12 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

I think with the exception of Stephen Hammond, these all have an army background?

David Davis pretty loosely (TA's before he went to uni) - but the rest, yes

4 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Iraq is not US’s neighbour. It’s not even close to the same thing.

I mean, the USA spent months amassing their forces in Kuwait and were facing a much weaker military opposition. It's not incomparable. 

Ukraine doesn't have a chance here. They can drag it out with guerilla fighting for a while. Modern armies are not well-equipped for urban warfare and it will take the Russians months to clear the big cities if there is strong resistance. 

33 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

That speech by Putin earlier just shows a man who’s realised he’s overplayed his hand. His stronk army has been stopped in Kharkiv, lost many of his most trusted airborne units and gotten pummelled by UK/American shoulder launched stingers.

The fact that they’re not already parading back in Moscow is a failure. The fact that people in Russia are protesting is a massive failure. He’s describing the Ukrainian democratically elected government as drug users and neo nazis. What on earth is his government then?

It took the combined USA and U.K. forces well over a month to take Iraq. There's literally no way Putin thought it would be over already.

Also the protests were by a few thousand people out of a population of 144 million. 

I imagine it's going pretty much as he expected.

He’s been utterly utterly dreadful 

24 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

You won't, but it might catch up with him sooner rather than later. This is floating around on Twitter - 

 

Looking more and more like the right decision to flog him for £100m…

Sadly unlikely to be just alcohol for our Jack, gurning away on that lollipop.

I’m slowly moving from hoping he’d fail miserably to hoping he’s okay. Doesn’t look like he’s got the right people around him at the moment. 

1 minute ago, Xela said:

A tad melodramatic don't you think mate?  

Young can cover if need be.

There is no chance Young is a PL level left back. He played LWB in a 3-5-2 in Serie A a year ago. He’s 36 and barely played LB in his life.

If Digne gets injured, this move will look even more moronic than it currently does.

Looks like Forest are going to sign Sam Surridge today. 

A striker in a similar mould to Keinan - so could limit his minutes going forward.

12 minutes ago, Xela said:

In terms of 'helping' Newcastle, we probably need to stop worrying about what other teams do. Worry about ourselves. 

Even if we were loaning him to Burnley, it’s a strange decision.

Doesn’t seem to be a loan fee? Or obligation to buy?

It’s not like he needs game time to develop, he’s 26. All it does is make our squad depth worse. 

1 hour ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Obviously management feel different, or might have something else lined up.

We just have to trust their judgement.

FYI, I didn't want him to go either. But I reckon he wanted to go.

EDIT: Ming's used to be a Left Back

And there’s a reason he’s not any more.

Regardless, if we have to pull our captain and best CB out of the centre of defence to cover the fact we pointlessly loaned out Matt Targett - it’s even more idiotic than I thought.