Rayvin

I'll say again, no one should be going to that. It's the 1936 Olympics all over again.

I just... I mean there's no fucking words anymore. I cannot understand how America is continuing to disgrace itself with this fucking weapon.

Wasn't able to watch any of this at all but am very pleased at the result and the scorers Well done lads, that's another semi final for Howe. Third in three consecutive seasons is it?

Not much we don't know but still good to see it all confirmed.

Genuinely, it would absolutely devastate me to do it But I don't really believe I can come out and say 'I think we should have the death penalty for traitors to the realm' if I'm expecting someone else to taint their soul and carry it out while I'm not prepared to. If it's something I'd advocate for, I'd have to be prepared to do it myself. I would take no joy in it, but I genuinely think the lives lost and the harm done by people taking Russian money and breaking Western civilisation are serious enough that I struggle to talk myself down from this position. I will clarify though that it is only if someone is acting on behalf of Russia to undermine our society knowingly. If they're just a fuckwit then that wouldn't be enough.

He has quite impressively managed to lose 3 games in that time 2 home games (one albeit against Roma) and a cup final. Clearly they're overreacting but you do wonder if they might have been better off sticking with MON until end of season or, hell, maybe just not introducing the new manager in this specific week. League leaders Hearts, Roma and a cup final. Baptism of fire.

Yes, I think that's the play. There will be pushbacks, cries of conspiracy or targeting or whatever, but it is absolutely crucial that Farage goes down in flames as the traitor he is. We need to start fighting back against Russian sponsored devastation in our societies, and that means we need to stop being so tolerant of people like Farage. I would genuinely implement the death penalty for any politician taking money from a hostile foreign state. I'm anti-death penalty but I'd pull the trigger myself on those people were that the state's position on justice in that sense. The damage they are doing to our society is unbelievable.

I'm still not totally sure we land on Farage here. That would be tantamount to handing the country over to a Russian sponsored traitor, and I just can't quite believe that the established forces let it happen. Maybe wishful thinking.

As an aside, to offer some slender optimism here, the online right wing in the US are tearing themselves apart at the moment. There's a real fault line over Israel for one thing, the actual nazis have been emboldened enough by all the 'winning' to come to the forefront and funnily enough they still hate Jewish people - and with the extent to which Israel owns US politics, there's a fuckton of stuff for them to run at which is causing people like Shapiro, Pool, Rubin, and Saint Charlie himself to come under fire. Additionally, to nobody's great surprise, it is increasingly looking like Turning Point USA (Kirk's propaganda outlet which has now been taken over by his wife) has been paying off politicians, taking bribes (again from Israel) and so on. I know this sounds 'terminally online' but it is the single thing that's giving me some grim satisfaction at the moment. They're ripping each other apart.

I think Starmer is starting to run out of road on this - it's not just the BBC. He also should be speaking out against the NSS report thing which basically stated the US aim to interfere in Europe and European democracies to ensure right wing fuckheads end up winning, and that the EU is broken up. Beyond that the £31bn investment that was 'agreed' in the tech sector intended for the north east they have now gone back on until we drop other regulations that protect us from US shit. It's going to get harder and harder for Starmer to continue being fucking worthless at standing up to Trump. If he has any sense at all he'll be working with the EU on a combined response rather than sticking out on his own. We have to stop pretending that we have any friends beyond the EU/Australia/Canada. We just don't.

It does sound bad tbf, the detail about how it all went down. 21 years sounds a lot given he didn't kill anyone, but then he easily could have done and ended up hitting over 100 people to varying degrees of severity. Including children. Complete bellend really and I have no sympathy. That's his life basically over.

I think that's a slippery slope though, when companies start ignoring rulings from specific countries. That being said, it sounds as though since the episode didn't air over there, he's on very flimsy footing anyway. The issue is what the BBC has to gain from it. The US side is saying they should just settle for around $10m since the alternative is likely going to cost them more, and will involve a lengthy discovery process which might reveal yet more things/negative comments that they wouldn't want him to see or which might draw more attention. But the downside with settling of course is that it makes him the winner and gives him his moment to state his narrative as being fact.

Seemed inevitable - I'd imagine that Frank may get the bullet for that since Amorim seems to have worked out how to survive. Maresca maybe. He's done well tbf, does deserve a more ambitious club than Palace.

This reddit thread from the r/conservative community - generally massively pro-Trump - actually gives some hope. Even the right wing edgelords online are struggling with his complete lack of class over this. A decent number of them seem to be legitimately done with him, looking forward to his successor.

Good. Hopefully part of that patience comes from the notion that rather than just 'sharing in responsibility' out of a sense of fraternity and team-building, they're also doing it because they recognise their own culpability.

Part of me thinks the real issue isn't that people aren't horrified - I imagine a good fucking number of them are - but that the US has no mechanism to do anything about this. Trump will either die in office or shortly after, so he's gotten away with all of this now in terms of legal consequences - he doesn't give a fuck, he's not answerable to anything or anyone, and he's the most powerful man alive. There is nothing anyone can actually do about him without breaking the entire system that he's sitting on top of - a bit like Brexit in a way. Everyone on all sides knows it's fucking mental, but they can't do anything about it without undermining democracy in the eyes of the people. This is a point in which the institutions needed to be strong, but Trump stripped them early doors, replacing key people with patsies. I can't believe how vulnerable our systems are when someone comes along who just doesn't give a fuck about the supposed rules. We are so ill prepared to do what must be done as a civilisation when our norms are challenged. It's a bigger issue than Trump now anyway, this whole thing always should have been about Russia influencing and subverting our democracies. The cold war didn't end, it just stopped bothering with the pretense of ideology.

It's a pathetic comment that makes him look like a fucking child, so hopefully he's deleted it out of some personal sense of shame. I doubt it, but I hope he did.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for any sort of earnest sentiment from players, but I really do appreciate Bruno saying these things. He may not be a leader on the pitch in the same way Trippier is, but he is closer to representing the 'heart' of the club than any player I've seen play for us in quite some time.

How is this utter cunt acceptable to anyone. Literally anyone.

I agree with you on this, so the question following isn't a challenge, it's just curiosity - Why do you think we're misfiring, based on the data?

I'm not saying by the way that Ramsey won't come good, or even Elanga - I'm just saying that based on how the side seems to be functioning, and the players we went for ahead of those that we ended up with in certain cases at least, I doubt this is what Howe was really after for the shape of this team coming into the season.

A happier way to look at that might be that without him, we may not have won the cup. He was important in the Arsenal games, I remember that much. Clutching at straws, I know.

It's starting to feel like a lot of our business over the summer might have been panic buys. Thiaw is the exception but then we'd been chasing him for a good couple of years so had done our homework there. The others though - Elanga was the first signing during a window when it felt that pressure was mounting around our inability to bring anyone in, Ramsdale wasn't the plan, Woltemade wasn't the plan, Ramsey was opportunism, Wissa maybe would have been on the radar either way. It's still obviously better to have all of them than not, but I very much doubt this team looks much at all like what Howe had specified he wanted prior to the summer window opening.

I agree with this but am going to add that the one area I think people can and do have legitimate grievance with Howe is that his approach to games like this is much the same as mine, on a philosophical level. To him, it's just another game. He understands that some of our fans care more about it than most games, but he doesn't really think it's that important in the overall scheme of his ambitions for himself and the club. He prioritises glory and success over the parochial elements - so yes, I can see him taking an approach such as you've laid out, 100%. But it's going to rub the fans up the wrong way because seemingly some of us would rather beat the mackems than progress in the cup, or whatever the tradeoff might have otherwise been.

Yeah am I fuck watching any of the media coverage about this. No thanks.