ljkeane

Arsenal have obviously had bunch of players having a good season but I think Odegaard's the stand out candidate for player of the season amongst the Arsenal options for me. I kind of thought he hit a hot streak last year and wasn't sure he'd replicate it again but he really has. He's basically playing as a traditional 10 in the attacking third and has the attacking numbers to back it up but he's also great at pressing without the ball and when Arsenal need to progress the ball from deep he's also dropping deep and is their best progessive passer. Having said all that I'm still going for Watkins overall. 19 non penalty goals and 12 assists playing for Villa is nuts.

I think you have to give quite a lot of extra weight to non penalty goals to be fair. Foden's on 16 non penalty goals and 8 assists. That's a better season than Saka's 10 non penalty goals (plus six penalties) and 9 assists I'd say.

Mainoo shouldn't be on that young player list. You could argue about whether they should significantly restrict the cut offs but there are a lot of players under the current rules who've been better than him. There's a definite 'lot of former United players in the media talking about the one bright spark' boost there. He's had some real flashes that show he's got a lot potential but if you look at his stats objectively he hasn't had a great season, there's a lot of red on there. Compare that to Wharton or Elliott as young players in midfield.

I mean, sure, but they've won multiple Champions Leagues in recent years when they clearly weren't the better side so it'd be nice if the shoe was on the other foot for once.

Bayern with some justification irritated with that. The assistant ref shouldn’t be raising his flag there. The Bayern player was probably off but it was tight.

Ffs. Fucking Real Madrid.

Nice goal. Real getting Real’d by Bayern would be amusing. Also TNT taking the executive decision to give us more Rio Ferdinand by sticking him on commentary wasn’t a good choice. ETA: Fuck’s sake. And Bayern have subbed Kane and Musiala off.

Yeah, if PSG win we can’t be messing about hoping Bayern turn up and play well in the final, so I’d definitely prefer Real go through to try and prevent the disaster result of a PSG win. If Dortmund go through though an all German final would be great.

On reflection maybe only losing by one goal to this Palace juggernaut wasn’t that bad of a result.

I’m pretty sure it’ll be down to him and, quite possibly his family, getting horrendous abuse online. So, you know, it’s not really him deleting a few pictures I’d have the issue with.

Ithaca was ok. It's well written like all of North's books but it felt a bit predictable being constrained to stick to the outline of the story we know from the Odyssey and the premise of 'actually all the men from the Illiad/Odyssey were fairly awful' doesn't feel like an especially radical reimagining of the original. I didn't dislike it and I'll read the sequel but it didn't really hold my attention that well either. Next I'm going to read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Alien Clay.

Endo’s done pretty well as a cheaper stopgap measure for Liverpool in defensive midfield this season but they’re going to have to find a longer term solution. It’d be nice if that solution turned out to be Bajetic and they don’t need to go out and buy one. It’s a shame he’s missed so much of this season so we couldn’t have had more of a trial run.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s a penalty. It’s probably one of those that isn’t going to get turned over if it’s given but I think it was the right call. We’ve been comfortably the better side but it’d be nice if that was reflected with us being comfortably in front on the scoreboard for the first time in a while.

Mo Salah looks like he’s had enough of the question marks around his position.

I think this probably has to be the end of the line for the prospect of 777 Partners taking over Everton. Beyond it becoming clear they likely don’t have the money to do so committing fraud is something that will rule you out as a fit and proper Premier League owner. Unlike, say, being a despotic regime and/or having people murdered.

I just saw this on Match of the Day. I mean, come on, you can’t rule out goals in Arsenal’s favour for obstructing the goalkeeper. It should be written into the rules at this stage that teams are allowed to do whatever they want to Raya.

Jim Ratcliffe visited United’s facilities at Carrington recently and followed it up with an e-mail having a go at how untidy the IT department was and threatening to cancel staff Christmas parties. A friend of a friend worked for Ineos and he encountered Ratcliffe fairly frequently and apparently he’s a massive dick. He’s not taking long to show that at United.

Yeah, you're right there. 19 non penalty goals and 12 assists playing for Villa. It should be Watkins.

Indeed. From a realpolitik perspective of the US regional allies Saudi Arabia is obviously the most significant and I’d argue Egypt, Turkey and the UAE are more useful for US interests than Israel. The US is probably harming its own interests in the region with its support for Israel. It’s kind of odd that supporting Israel no matter what has become such a central feature of US foreign policy. It really wasn’t the case until the 80s, maybe the 90s? ETA: Thinking about it, it was definitely the late 90s. It really wasn’t a notable thing for the US to vote in favour of Security Council resolutions critical of Israel before then.

This Jadon Sancho looks a real prospect.

Taylor’s bottled that. Clear push in the box.

Fucking Real Madrid man.

Bayern well on top here. Real Madrid to go through then. ETA: Ok that was class. It probably shouldn’t be that easy though.

You don’t sell Salah because he had a tiff on the sidelines with Klopp, of course that’s complete nonsense. You sell him because he’s soon to be 32 and you’re going to get diminishing returns from him. If the Saudis are willing to pay over the odds for him you probably take the money. If they aren’t, and there seems to be talk they’re reining in their spending, then you probably keep him ‘cause he’s still a good player. I doubt Everton will actually go out of business. I suspect your creditors are angling to try and take over without having to pay Moshiri for the privilege.

777 Partners seem dodgy as fuck. When you consider all the sketchy owners football clubs have had how unreliable do you have to be for the Premier League not to sign off on you? So it's probably not a bad thing they don't seem to be taking over but the problem is Everton now owe them about £200 million apparently.