KentVillan

I was a bit baffled by the formation he put up, as I don't think of that as the archetypal Gerrard formation that's given us our best results. But he's right, actually, that that's the one we've played the most (although he's got McGinn and Ramsey the wrong way round)... Just looking at our starting lineups since Coutinho joined: 15 Jan, Man Utd - 4-3-3 with Watkins, Ings, Buendia up front 22 Jan, Everton - 4-3-2-1 with Coutinho, Watkins, Buendia 9 Feb, Leeds - 4-3-2-1 with Coutinho, Watkins, Buendia 13 Feb, Newcastle - 4-3-2-1 with Coutinho, Watkins, Buendia 19 Feb, Watford - 4-3-2-1 with Coutinho, Watkins, Buendia 26 Feb, Brighton - 4-3-1-2 (or 4-4-2 diamond) with Coutinho 10 and Watkins & Ings front 2 5 Mar, Southampton - 4-3-1-2 / diamond with Coutinho 10 and Watkins & Ings front 2 10 Mar, Leeds - 4-3-1-2 / diamond with Coutinho 10 and Watkins & Ings front 2 13 Mar, West Ham - 4-3-1-2 / diamond with Coutinho 10 and Watkins & Ings front 2 19 Mar, Arsenal - 4-3-2-1 with Coutinho, Watkins, Buendia (I think this is the only game where McGinn played LCM and Ramsey RCM) So tbh Gerrard has a couple of systems. And the one with Coutinho and Buendia isn't a classic 4-3-3, it's definitely a 4-3-2-1 with the two "wide" men playing very deep and narrow. I think we've looked best with that 4-3-1-2 / 4-4-2 diamond shape, and imagine most people here agree. But it does depend on Ings's fitness, and it does mean leaving Buendia on the bench. Don't think we'll really know what Gerrard wants to do until he's found a "destroyer" DM or Nakamba returns. Is the 4-3-2-1 just a way of squeezing Buendia and Coutinho into the same side, or is it his philosophy?

He's a hard player to dislike, even when he's having a below par game. Really just seems a nice lad with a good attitude, and not afraid of a scrap.

I think you’re talking about his movement for the final pass, which isn’t always perfect. But his general movement (eg creating wide options, knowing when to come deep, etc) is excellent. That’s why I think he benefits from more pace and width around him, as he’s good at dragging centre backs out of position and creating space.

Think Ollie is a classic workhorse striker who benefits from having pace and attacking ability around him.

I don’t think he was assuming that, but within the senior ranks of the army there will also be men who doubt the strategy, and they are the only people with a faint chance of seizing power. Most likely I think is that Putin hangs on and Russia becomes a kind of North Korea - increasingly isolated, impoverished and paranoid, but able to survive as a cult of personality. The oligarchs make their getaways and Putin clings on to power without their support. But who knows… there are so many possibilities at the moment.

It was an unpleasant joke, but men who “defend their wife’s honour” like this are usually quite unpleasant people too. Chris Rock is a comedian being paid to tell controversial jokes, not some random bloke in the street shouting abuse. Will Smith could have stood up for her in a more grown up way. It was bizarre. Also he’s twice the size of Chris Rock, who took the slap pretty well and carried on talking.

Without condoning his behaviour, or trying to pass the buck, it did seem a bit like a man trying to prove to his wife he isn't a pussy... just very cringe and pointless.

I highlighted it because so many people wrongly believe that "Russian speaking" = pro-Putin / pro-Russia. It's more like the situation in Ireland/Wales, where plenty of nationalist/separatists were brought up speaking English as their first language. But it also means he can fluently explain things to a Russian audience, as you say.

Russian is Zelenskyy's first language btw

Read the whole thread, but Germany increasingly looks like a bad (or, charitably, indifferent) actor in this whole conflict. They're not willing to take any dent in GDP to do the right thing, and their vulnerability to Russian influence is based on unforced errors that they were warned about at the time.

Was anti-vax and had previously had a near death experience ODing on Class A drugs, but yes there were still people querying whether it might be vaccine related

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p054dybk Listening to this at the moment - really interesting. Am 8 episodes in, and love the way it introduces all the people and locations - goes off on some really interesting tangents, but ties it all together well. No idea if it's worth listening to the end, but will do anyway!

Literally every time anyone under the age of 60 dies now, social media full of ghouls concern trolling about "the epidemic of deaths" since Covid vaccines.

Yeah I have a Garmin running watch, and I find it genuinely useful. You can run with a phone holder, but it's annoying, and it doesn't keep track of your heart rate, stress levels, etc. These kinds of watches are bringing something extra beyond just "Swiss precision timekeeping" or whatever a Rolex offers.

I love it, even went to see that Gatz play where the main character recites the whole book from memory. Partly it’s just a very easy read, but layered with enough subtext to be worth rereading and discussing. Regardless of what you think about the wider story, the opening page is such an insightful observation on growing up: “for the intimate revelations of young men are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions” What a line

Yeah by far the best thing about going to uni and doing this kind of degree is just getting the curated reading lists for each module. You wouldn’t know where to start otherwise.

Literally nobody has suggested that. But some regions have larger pro-Russia populations than others - and Putin has driven opponents out of the parts he controls. Edit: to elaborate a bit, my point was that Putin looks for regions where there is *some* support for him, not necessarily majority support, and tries to leverage that. It would be the same story in the Baltic States. None of these countries wants to be part of Russia, but they do have significant populations who are sympathetic to him, even if the majority despise him. He will have a relatively easier (but still very difficult) time holding on to Donetsk / Luhansk than he would ever have controlling western Ukraine, and his aim will be to change the makeup of the population over time, through ethnic cleansing, migration, etc.

I did a similar degree and ended up working in politics for about 10 years, but I wouldn’t say the degree actually prepared me for any of the stuff I did. It was, however, a really interesting subject to study. I now work in a completely unrelated field. (One thing maybe it did teach is smashing out an essay at the last minute to a deadline, which was a useful skill in a way… although academic writing is so clunky that you have to learn how to stop using words like “furthermore” and “therefore” and all the “isms”). I think the main value of these kinds of degrees is the intrinsic pleasure you get from studying them, and I would love to do another degree in later life.

Expensive watches Was just looking at the Watches thread and it just goes over my head completely. I get that they go up in value and can be a good investment, but it’s the whole concept of wearing £5k or £10k or whatever on your wrist that just boggles the mind. Aren’t you worried about getting mugged? I feel the same way about jewellery tbh

I agree to some extent, but there was already an active separatist movement there, and it’s wishful thinking to believe that there is no sympathy in those regions towards Russia. Whether the *majority* believe that is another question, my point was simply that it is relatively more pro-Putin than other regions of Ukraine. I don’t understand how that’s controversial.

In key battlegrounds like Mariupol, probably, but the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts are quite large areas and the picture is more complicated. Lots of the local population are fighting on the Russian side, and many pro-Moscow people will still see this as a liberation exercise (with unfortunate collateral damage). Sadly, I doubt Putin’s atrocities play out the way we see them in the West. That’s not to say that people are completely blind to them, but people are remarkably good at explaining things away if they contradict their previous beliefs.

I think a lot depends on the movement of civilians in and out of the region. Putin’s classic approach to this has been to drive non-Russian / anti-Putin civilians out of these contested areas, while a big Russian migrant community settles there alongside the existing ethnic Russian community, so that over time they basically become sympathetic to Moscow. Have a look at the conflicts in Georgia (South Ossetia / Abkhazia) and Moldova (Transnistria) and of course the last few years in Crimea for good examples of how he operates. So it’s a fluid situation. The population right now may not like what is happening, but they may not be the population in 5 years. On top of that, these are areas where there is already somewhat more pro-Moscow opinion than in other parts of Ukraine (although not to the extent Putin would like everyone to believe - Russian ethnicity / Russian first language does not automatically mean pro-Putin).

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/biden-putin-regime-change-russia/629397/ A good piece by a guy who is sympathetic to Biden, but thinks this one was an unscripted, unforced error.

If Biden really did go off script there, which it sounds like he did, then that’s a bad one. Bit puzzling, as he’s been pretty solid so far

Yes it’s a different environment, and it’s easier for nutters to get a platform, but back in the day it was just much, much harder to actually arrive at the truth even if you were trying. Most populations were completely in the dark about major global events. WWI was largely understood through Blackadder and a few poems you were taught at school. WWII was understood virtually everywhere except Germany & Japan as a story of immense national heroism with few failures or any acknowledgement of how close it came to turning the other way. Vietnam dragged on for decades with people largely unaware of the extent of the failings there. Northern Ireland was terrorists vs good guys whichever side you were on. Carrots gave you good eyesight and spinach & milk made you strong. Uri Geller was a mainstream celebrity who had psychic powers. Was it really that much better? It’s so hard to say without travelling back in time, but I feel like people have always been vulnerable to believing half baked ideas, and it’s always been hard to keep a lid on it. A 3 min YouTube video that is broadly accurate (if light on detail) isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world. The rise of Trump, for example, owes more to decades of political corruption in the States, where they’ve allowed the Supreme Court to become a radical right institution and states to gerrymander voting districts and an insane amount of private money to flood into campaigns. It’s easy to blame it on social media, but I think it’s far more complex than that. I do agree it’s scary to have YouTube influencers just peddling nonsense about medicine, nutrition and conspiracy theories to their followers, but religious institutions have been doing that for centuries.