Alex

I see there was another farmer’s protest in Whitehall (against the budget but pre-planned of course). I doubt many farmers who are the bones of their arse (which I imagine makes up a fair proportion of them) have the time or money to drive tractors round central London

It’s quite a ridiculous stance imo to think you’ve paid your bit and shouldn’t be taxed on income whilst still getting the benefits of the welfare system, the nhs, etc

Good to see that Isak continues to be at his impactful best.

Re: Hooper, according to Pedro, who seen him at Liverpool and Newcastle, he was absolutely class in training and a very ly talented keeper. But he just lacked the bottle and mentality to play in front of large crowds under that sort of pressure

I didn’t actually realise you were being serious tbh.

I think more of a question mark for me is why not rotate the midfield for last night. If Howe doesn’t rate Miley enough to start him then he needs to be replaced. If the same is the case for Ramsey then why did we buy him? Because the amount of running required by Tonali and Bruno on top of playing v Man City isn’t sustainable. Plus Howe was clearly willing to leave other players out. Hindsight and you can understand wanting them in to exert control but I just feel like those two need game time if they are to be genuine rotation options.

Have you considered doing less peyote before lunch?

If you’ve got players in key positions out injured and just recovering fully from injury and you’re in the champions league and trying to retain the league cup and still prioritising the league itself then you can’t realistically start your strongest XI every match. When you leave people out who would ideally be starting it’s a calculated risk. I assume the thought process behind that is our already having a strong position in the CL and Marseille being perceived as not particularly strong opponents. It didn’t work out as planned but it should have, as even with the ropey performance they should’ve got at least a draw.

I think he could do that job in Europe and would’ve been a better bet last night. Not exactly in great form himself though

Woltemade needing a rest isn’t dependent on that.

Barnes is lightweight as a winger let alone as a central striker and Elanga has fuck all confidence playing in his preferred role so Gordon is a more logical option. Albeit less than ideal and not in good form himself.

Too much blue pop and critical thinking are not happy bedfellows

They’ve got a chequered history

Thing is with Gordon, to be effective he needs to be running all over, not strolling about like last night. If it’s fitness I’d rather see him do that for 45 mins - an hour instead of playing within himself. I don’t really like to single players out because there’s never a single factor to a poor team performance but he was pretty awful

I said at the time who is the worst player on the pitch when it comes to taking a set piece? Absolutely ridiculous to let him take it. It kind of summed up the complacency of the whole performance. Still probably had enough opportunities to win.

Some of the early ones have some decent pop music on but even they are a proper mixed bag.

The other thing is that the ref can get in bother for not following the letter of the law even if he’d liked to have booked the player. Actually, scratch that, the main thing is it made Man Utd’s subsequent performance and the result absolutely hilarious

Nice to see him looking genuinely happy after that team performance

U ok, hun?

When you look at the stats the Mackems were absolutely battered yet it was only 1-0. I fully expected a late equaliser tbh. They’ve done great and they’re obviously quite resilient but hopefully that’s their luck used up for a while

That combined with Wissa getting injured before he’d even played for us and Wilson (so far) remaining fit and scoring goals for West Ham

If he’s going to come good for Liverpool he’s taking his fucking time like. Absolute poetic justice so far

Aye. Bristol

I think it was PL on here who said Bazball was like a cult although I’ve seen a few journalists say that too. Usually foreign ones taking the piss IIRC

Team batting first always wins here so that’s another record broken by England in the Bazball era. I know it’s easy to employ hindsight but if things go the way I expect from here Bazball is just a failed experiment at the end of the day. He’ll probably go and so will Stokes. What I find annoying is we’ve actually got some top players. We should’ve won the Ashes at home two years ago imo. It would have been very difficult to come here and win but you have to give yourself and your bowlers a fucking chance, man. No wonder it’s ridiculed in Australia. I could point at a few things in other series too. When they lost by a run or two in New Zealand after they enforced the follow on it was lauded as magnificent sportsmanship whereas I thought doing the one thing that gave the opponents a sniff in a test match was a fucking disgrace tbh.