Iskaral Pust

I”ll give Liverpool credit that they secured the DoF and his infrastructure before picking the new manager or deciding on players. But it does seem like they’ve moved slowly on all of this if Klopp shared his decision back in the autumn. Perhaps they assumed Alonso would come and they didn’t expect to have a wider search that’s competing with Barca and Bayern among others.

I do 500m just as a quick warm up before weightlifting. When I was rowing as the workout, not just the warmup, I would do 5k in 21-23 minutes (depending on how hard I was pushing) but my legs were like jelly after that and my heart and lungs would be heaving as I stood up to rest. I have noticed that my new rowing machine in my home gym has a different pace than the ERG I used in our condo gym a few years ago (when I did 5k in 21-23 minutes). The ERG in the condo gym was an older model with a chain cable. On a setting of 10 (out of 10), I could sprint at 1:45/500m but a long row would have a sustained pace in the 2:10/500m ballpark. My newer ERG in my home gym uses a fan blade resistance and on a setting of 13 (out of 16) I find that 2:25/500m is a brisk warm-up pace for 500m. There’s no way I could do 2:10/500m sustained for 5k on this machine. i wondered if my fitness just declined a lot in the last few years but we’ve been back in that condo building in Chicago in the last two years to visit friends and I’ve gone back into the gym and used the same old ERG machine and I still rowed at the original pace. I think there’s just a large difference in either the resistance or how the machines convert resistance into distance. They are from different manufacturers and use different mechanical designs, but different treadmills don’t produce that kind of discrepancy.

I think the players are tired again. Going deep in four competitions, with all of the injury absences, just adds up. Unfortunately it’s a familiar pattern. The team runs out of steam each season. Guardiola seems to do a better job of having his team peak in March, April, May, even if they had a rough patch sometime earlier.

Leinster just announced that they’re signing Jordie Barrett on a short term contract. It sounds like it will just be a short term coverage role while all of Leinster’s backs are called up by Ireland, and it’s a short term adventure the player wanted to try. Munster fans are up in arms about Leinster receiving disproportionate financial backing from the IRFU, although my understanding is that Leinster have much higher revenues than the other provinces because of the Aviva stadium. I’ll need to investigate this rabbit hole of Irish rugby club financing.

The team looks badly out of form. Several individual players are struggling and now it’s too many for the collective to be effective. We carried ourselves through a difficult period of absences with kids, emotion and belief, but the returning players haven’t clicked back into form yet. Klopp has been an amazing manager for this club who made us serious consistent contenders again, produced some great football to watch, instilled a great culture, and won a few trophies. But we’ve also had to endure a lot more fading into second place than actual winning of trophies over the seasons. I think City heavily outspent us domestically (unfairly and should retroactively lose those titles) and Madrid (annd Sevilla) outfoxed us in Europe. It’s been a great era, and we may struggle to be this competitive without Klopp, but it has mostly been an era of brave but one-dimensional runners-up.

Great to see Gordon and Bajcetic playing again after long term injuries. Liverpool U21 had a difficult 2-3 months after so many players got pulled into the senior squad for injury cover, so their league position belies their quality.

Leinster finally see off LaRochelle with a pretty comprehensive victory. Five tries by Leinster, even with LaRochelle’s goal-line defense stopping more. It was a big concern for Keenan to withdraw shortly before the game, leaving Frawley and Larmour as the back two, and no backfield cover on the bench. On to the semifinal.

Liverpool have struggled against the top 6 in the PL all season, and now failing badly against the first tough opponent in Europe. We’ve been good against mid-table all season, but don’t look to have any edge for the games that will decide trophies.

Most space opera movies have been varying degrees of campy, cheesy and juvenile, even the commercial hits like Flash Gordon, Avatar or Star Wars — space wizards with laser swords! The genre’s world building is necessarily shallow and ridiculous (even when there is a deep lore constructed), and that tends to be paired with juvenile wish fulfillment stories. Hard SciFi does a better job of sticking to more complex stories but even The Expanse had a cheesiness to the novels, combining a tired noir character with a horror story and an interplanetary Cold War. I watch most of the space opera movies to enjoy the creative fantasy but I’m not surprised that Hollywood is cautious about audience demand.

That’s what they’re using the burner phones for, apparently. Ticket holders register the ticket on a dedicated smart phone; not their own personal phone with all of their data and personal use. Then they just give the phone to whoever buys the ticket and get it back afterward. This limits the reselling to a casual network so that a stranger doesn’t just disappear with the phone, but it allows people to create a black market well above face value. Hospitality tickets are available from the club at a large premium, which puts an effective ceiling on the black market prices for regular tickets.

Liverpool fans, specifically Spirit Of Shankley, have been complaining about a 2% increase in season tickets for next year. This follows a 2% increase for this year after 8 years of frozen prices. At this point season ticket holders can fund their entire 19 PL matches by re-selling just 3-4 matches. Apparently there’s a lively secondary market using burner phones to validate the season ticket when it gets passed around. I really do get tired of some of the complaining. Season tickets are an enormous protected privilege, with a -20yr waiting list, that have been significantly below inflation and yet they still complain.

I think Bajcetic is that back-up DM. I’m not sure we’ll buy a replacement for Thiago either. Elliott continues to develop and Morton or Clark could be ready for a MF depth role alongside Gravenberch. Carvalho will be a back-up forward. If Szoboszlai can find his role in the MF structure then there’s a good balance of starters and back-ups. I expect any new manager will have some freedom to sign a couple of new players that help adapt to his style, but CB and LB look like they need some depth. (I assume Tsimikas will depart soon if Gomez moved so far ahead of him in the pecking order). And a clinical forward is needed, in addition to Jota who rarely stays healthy for long.

Hot-take: Liverpool should sell Salah this summer if there’s a good offer available. The next two summers should focus on recruiting two highly clinical forwards and in the meantime judge whether Nunez, Diaz and/or Gakpo should be retained. The rebuild of the forward line hasn’t been good enough. I know the goals scored this season looks very strong but (1) chance conversion is very low, (2) we have to push too many players forward to create enough chances to yield that many goals, which creates defensive vulnerabilities, (3) we struggle to score against the top teams (which ultimately decides trophies), and rack up most of our goals against mid-table clubs or else weaker opposition in cups. Salah personally has had another strong season of G/A and some of his through balls show good vision and execution. But the quality of his scoring has dropped off a lot, and his scoring mostly relies on the team spamming him with chances rather than him finishing well.

I read a lot of novels too and have noticed that I’ve become more jaded over the years because eventually they feel repetitive in narrative structure, the middle-of-the-bell-curve quality of most prose, and in theme — there are only so many takes on the human condition, and most have been written many times.

Verstappen cruised through Suzuka. At least the pit stops forced some jockeying and over-taking before it settled into a clear run for him. As usual, there was a decent amount of competition outside of P1 though. Perez looks much more solid this year. Ricciardo is hammering the last few nails into the coffin of his racing career — he’ll be great at marketing or TV commentary instead. Sainz continues his revenge/audition tour in some style. Hamilton continues to be out-raced by Russell, leaving us in suspense as to whether it’s his declining motivation or his declining skills. Ferrari seem to have overtaken McClaren for P2 in speed, and no longer comically self-sabotage with their race strategy. Aston Martin have fallen back after starting last year so strongly and surprising everyone. The Redbull civil war seems to have quieted for now.

We’ll have a ~90% eclipse here, which IIRC is about the same as the one I saw in Chicago a few years ago (2017?). But now it’s forecast to be overcast here tomorrow afternoon, so overall sounds like not a big deal.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is a hard SciFi that’s probably already very well known. Similar to The Martian, a lone generalist scientist must improvise to survive and succeed in a space mission bombarded by a series of obstacles and perils. This novel amps up the stakes and the situation but requires significantly more suspension of disbelief. It’s still a very enjoyable read. Chaos Of The Gods by Donovan Cook is the third in his Ormstrunga series of Viking historical fiction with some light fantasy elements (Norse gods in dreams). The series is moving along well and completes the (initial?) cycle for this character and his band of companions as a trilogy, while leaving open the possibility of starting a new cycle with just the main POV character. Solid series so far. Never Go Back by Lee Child is another Jack Reacher novel. I did not allow enough time to elapse since the last one because I mostly felt the character was too grating here. I need to leave a few months at least between these books.

Midworld by Alan Dean Foster is a SciFi novel about an alien ecosystem. I DNFed. It felt like a sophomoric repeat of the Avatar story (which is itself a sophomoric repeat). Broken Glass by Alexander Hartung is a police detective novel set in Germany. I DNFed this too after only ~20%. The beige prose and tropey characterization did not hold my interest. I object to a police character who beats up a minor criminal to enforce some personal agenda — I don’t want to support any longer this “maverick” police character trope who bullies and abuses power without consequences. The Man Who died Twice by Richard Osman is the second in the Thursday Murder Club series of cosy British mysteries. Amazingly, this was even cozier than the first, but still and enjoyable read. (My wife hates the stream of consciousness narration of Joyce’s journal entries; I’m just used to my mother sending long text messages in the very same style)

The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane is the first in a series of historical fiction about a Roman legion who, after defeat by the Parthians, are pressed into service on the eastern side of the Parthian empire. This is told from the POV of slaves, and builds slowly to establish their backstory in Rome before joining the legion. It’s pretty good but quite slow moving as it tries to cover a lot. I enjoyed it. Even Dogs In The Wild by Ian Rankin is one of the John Rebus novels in the series of gloomy-toned police detective novels set in Edinburgh. These are very good and very well written. Make Me by Lee Child is a Jack Reacher novel. I won’t repeat all the problems with this character but these books are well written for a quick read. It’s a bit grating how the author gives the POV near omniscience in-universe, but the deductions are generally logical.

Yep. Fell into the same trap. We’ve lacked clinical finishing all season.

And yet the whole farce has effectively given Trump an extension of a few weeks to find another source for a bond without his assets being seized. He knows how to play the legal bureaucracy.

Relieved to win that, which is the wrong emotion after playing Sheffield United at home. That kind of game can always happen against a parked bus but there is a problem with a lack of cutting edge up front. We end up chasing far too many games (this time from a tie rather than a deficit, tbf) where we’ve been comfortably on top but not actually ahead. Salah hasn’t been sharp or clinical since returning from injury, although Ramadan could be a factor too for him. And we miss Jota’s efficiency. Diaz, for me, still lacks end product even if he’s a valuable out-ball on the left. If Jones is back and looking sharp, I wonder if Szoboslai might lose his spot, which would have been unthinkable a few months ago. His contribution has been hit or miss for a while, while MacAllister is the best player atm and Endo is important for MF balance and to release MacAllister further forward.

I’m still waiting for this annual circadian torture to be stopped. In the meantime, it has helped to have our spring break vacation take place as the clocks go forward, so we can at least get used to the change over several days and not just abruptly shift to a new schedule.

I’ve been lifting weights in my home gym. Not as consistently as I would like but the last few months have been better (until some travel in recent weeks) after I missed an extended period last year: swimming all summer, then a weird series of illnesses and gardening projects for the fall. That said, gardening projects restart very soon and we’ll reopen our pool in a few weeks. I’ll continue some weight lifting but it probably won’t be more than 1-2 times a week on average. I use the rowing machine for warm-ups, and I started taking long walks (~4 miles) with a podcast once or twice a week just for daylight exposure in the winter.

Agreed that Arsenal have the most solid defense and most suffocating press this season, even if the goals conceded aren’t that far apart. I’m just impressed that Liverpool have conceded so few considering how much of the defense has been missing: Alisson, Trent, Robertson, Konate and Matip have all had significant absences. We’re lucky that VVD has been so durable, and especially that Quansah and Bradley stepped up into the team from absolutely nowhere, and that Joe Gomez has re-emerged as a reliable and very durable FB, and Kelleher has grown into much more reliable form than he ever showed before. Any one of those outcomes would have represented good fortune for a season but getting them all at the same time is a bit of a miracle.