Iskaral Pust

Liverpool finally looked composed and balanced throughout the team, rather than ropey and prone to disaster. And that clean sheet arrived without the two starting CBs or a DM. I’m not sure if Villa were so bad that they made us look good or if we negated Villa so well that it made them look bad. Nunez was definitely the right choice at 9, with all three forwards offering a pacy threat behind Villa’s high line; that plus the early goal and their early sub seemed to leave them uncertain how to proceed. Once it was 3-0, Villa just retreated to limit any further damage, and Liverpool were content to play the game out with minimal threat. Gomez had a very good game and the whole defense looked better positioned today than prior games. Szoboszlai was very good again and scored a cracking opener. Jones was a bit rusty (understandably) on his return but contributed to a more solid MF (at last!) even with MacAllister more of a deep playmaker than a DM. Nunez resumed his personal vendetta against the goal frame but it was still an impactful contribution from him. Gakpo has been unfortunate after a very good prior season to start this one out of position as a makeshift MF and hasn’t really found his groove yet. But I expect he’ll be back in form soon. Perhaps he could have played LW for his sub appearance today instead of false 9. Elliott has been pretty tidy as a MF sub so far this season; it would be great if he can replicate Jones’ maturation last year.

Fall, Or Dodge In Hell by Neal Stephenson is a specfic novel about the nature of consciousness, especially an uploaded consciousness that persists beyond death. I wasn’t much impressed. It’s a pity to see Stephenson’s writing turn so stale and flat since Anathem. No Plan B by Lee Child is a Jack Reacher novel, but one of the weaker ones I’ve read. I’ll still continue buying these whenever they’re on sale for Kindle. Northern Wolf by Daniel Green is a historical fiction novel set in the American Civil War and this opening volume in the series is set at Gettysburg, told from the POV of a recently recruited Union cavalry trooper positioned on the defensive flank. Capably enough written. I may read more of the series.

Destroyer Of Cities is #5 in Christian Cameron’s Tyrant series of historical fiction set in the military conflict among the successors to Alexander The Great’s empire. This volume features the siege of Rhodes. This author (also writes Fantasy as Miles Cameron) does militaristic historical fiction very well, even if his main characters are a bit repetitive and tropey. The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin is a Scottish police procedural fiction in his Malcolm Fox series about a strait-laced internal affairs police officer who wants to wash away the outdated corrupt culture and old-boys system of policing. I prefer his John Rebus series but this was still a pretty good read. Scythe by Neal Shusterman is a YA (IMO) SciFi novel with a contrived setting to explore a moral question and character development. In a world where death is all but eliminated, Scythes are selected to cull people randomly in line with prior rates of mortality. They are supposed to be objective and eschew all power, but an evil faction emerges. Perhaps this would be deep stuff for a 14yr old. Not terribly written, just too YA for my taste.

Liverpool have seven points from nine, including two very tough away games, but they’ve looked so ropey in those games. The silver lining of two red cards was ten men playing more compactly and counterattacking. I used the “it’s only pre-season” caveat at the time but all of those problems have persisted. It’s bad enough that we have some players out of position, especially MacAllister and Gakpo for the first two games and Robertson in general now, but the formation is badly unbalanced and highly reliant on Konate’s (injured again now!) pace and stamina to cover acres of defensive territory. Amongst the new players, Szoboslai has started really well, MacAllister looks very good if we can play him in the right role, and Endo looks like he has been thrown in before he’s ready (too early to judge more harshly than that). Salah continues his blend of high G+A while also being anonymous or ineffective for long periods. Diaz and Nunez look hungry. The defense is a mess. Alisson will have another busy season. The high press looks too uncoordinated, which is leaving us very exposed to attacks.

The Endo signing seems random af. Let’s buy a 30 year old player whose game has always depended on his high work rate — that never ends badly. I hope he does well, I also hope he’s not the only DM we’re targeting. Bajetic seems like a tidy player but hasn’t looked like a dominant defensive destroyer to shield a high defense and shut down all counter-attacks.

I wondered about that angle myself and was debating it back and forth with some friends as the Caicedo saga unfolded. The group eventually decided that the long initial contract is just a floor because top performers can still agitate for higher wages mid-contract or else start a disaffected flirtation with another club. Only Spurs was successful at keeping high performing players at below-market wages, and even then the disaffection eventually became a problem. So the young player will still value the long contract that insures them against future injury or loss of form, and assume they can renegotiate wages in the future if their value rises. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out because Chelsea are the first club to embrace these 7-8 year contracts. There’s a lot of unknown ahead for them and these players. Even just wage inflation in football over the past 30 years would say that a player shouldn’t lock up fixed wages for 8 years. They can always by injury insurance for themselves if they want. We’ll see how long it is before Caicedo or Lavia want higher wages.

Liverpool fans are now on the darkest timeline, but this was exactly my fear when we dithered on Lavia’s fee and then abruptly went all-in on Caicedo despite him spending months talking to Chelsea. But, in fairness to Liverpool’s transfer team, Chelsea’s willingness to give very long contracts and pay more to agents gives them an advantage in a head-to-head bidding war so maybe our flailing about was only a partial contributor. Chelsea do seem over-stacked in CM for a 3-4-3 or a 4-2-3-1. Enzo and Caicedes look like the obvious starters, and Chelsea doesn’t have European football this season to need a lot of squad management. And, yes, Boehly’s free-spending ways pre-date the Saudi influx but Chelsea have generated a lot in sales, pumped up directly and indirectly by Saudi money, and the asking prices of all the selling clubs like Brighton and Southampton are influenced by the amount of money they see sloshing around this summer. I just hope Liverpool don’t end up with something like an Arthur Melo loan again. It’s a waste of time, money, development and smacks of a failure to identify & secure a real target.

Liverpool messing around with the Caicedo bid has destabilized Lavia, who previously reportedly favored a move to Anfield. Although Chelsea’s higher wages and longer contracts for new signings are probably a factor too. The bidding war for these DMs, and potentially others, is a real-time example of the inflation I mentioned from the influx of Saudi money. Every club knows Liverpool is desperate for a DM and willing to spend up to 110m. Expect to get rinsed. Clubs focused on developing & selling players will receive a boost, e.g. the handful of Portuguese clubs.

Liverpool obviously lack a DM but they also have a system problem. TAA’s position change still leaves far too much vulnerable space and Robertson is still not a LCB. Plus we no longer have as much pressing ability among our MF and forwards so we’re too easy to play through. We don’t currently have the organization or the players for a high line plus high press system. A DM who can cover a lot of ground would help a lot but we still need to figure out what we’re doing with the two FBs and what shape to adopt in defensive transition. Does it even make sense for TAA to still play as an inverted FB if now have more ball-playing MFs and a gaping void in defense?; that switch last year was really a bandaid for Henderson’s abysmal composure on the ball Chelsea had a clearer system and organization today, despite coming off a weaker season and (IMO) looking like a weaker team on paper. They used their FBs much more effectively for width while still controlling the center through their MF. Similar to last season, Liverpool looked physically unprepared for the start of the season. If the press is a step too slow and/or uncoordinated, then it just wastes energy. The players lost all momentum as the game went on, just like against Fulham last year.

I know it has been discussed before but the WC groups look very unbalanced because of how early they are set. I guess it’s a positive for the sport that teams can become more competitive quickly but Scotland’s recent renaissance makes their group now look a much tougher competition than the others.

The Caicedo bid is hard to believe. Let’s see if it really sticks. It would be great for our MF, of course. It’s shocking we have that much to spend, but the 52m from Fabinho + Henderson expands our budget, and simultaneously increases the asking price from every selling club who knows we’re desperate for a DM and have some funds. I think it’s clear though that Bellingham had a strong preference for RM, so Liverpool backed out of the running months ago. I don’t think it’s fair to say we should have just got Bellingham if we were willing to spend this much on Caicedo anyway. Next step is for Liverpool to get the wage bill to a more sustainable level. Firmino, Fabinho, Hendo, Milner, Ox, Keita and Arthur Melo all coming off the wage bill helps us this year, and Thiago, Matip and Adrian for just one more year, and Salah for two more. We cannot repeat the pattern of recent years of letting a generation of players all age together into bigger contracts and less resale value. There has to be some balance of younger and older players, including selling some players in their prime to keep refreshing the team. I know a lot of the keyboard warriors in Liverpool’s fandom love to complain about FSG, and it is frustrating when an otherwise highly competitive team leaves some obvious gaps (GK a few years back, MF last year, defense this year), but they have invested in the infrastructure (stadium and training ground), they’ve supported a very high wage bill for a very successful squad, they’ve brought in some very expensive key players despite playing moneyball (VVD, Alisson, Fabinho, Keita, Nunez, Szoboszlai and possibly Caicedo). If it wasn’t for City spending a billion to immediately fix any squad problem, Liverpool would have 2-3 more PLs under Klopp. Unfortunately RM still had the measure of us in one-off cup games in the CL.

I was wondering how Arsenal have spent so much under Arteta, without any CL yet, without incurring FFP problems. I’m probably forgetting some funds raised by sales. Even with a good amount of youth players like Saka and Martinelli, they have spent a lot to overhaul the team.

I enjoy Rankin’s Rebus series but less so his Malcolm Fox series.

Same. I started a reread but found it boring and slow to start so far, although I know I enjoyed it when I first read it years ago.

I just found out that we’ve had an unwatched AppleTV subscription running in the background for the past several months after a free period (after buying a new iPad) just rolled into a paid period. I hate scummy tactics like that. We’ve started Hijack based on a rec from a friend, but then we’ll shut down the subscription again.

Liverpool’s pursuit of Lavia has been painful to watch. Southampton want 50m for him so they can receive 40m net of the 20% sell-on clause to City. Otherwise they’ll receive 40m next summer anyway under City’s buy-back clause because, unless he gets seriously injured, he’ll be worth at least that much then if he’s already worth 40m+ to Liverpool now. Southampton feel pretty sure City will exercise the buy-back even if they would only re-sell him then rather than keep him. Liverpool may not think he’s worth 50m to them but that’s the economics of the sell-on clause and buy-back clause: they give City an economic advantage over anyone else trying to buy Lavia. I think it’s hard for Liverpool to walk away because he represents a homegrown player when we have very few.

Having previously been disciplined rotators of streaming services, with only Netflix and Prime as constants, I think we’ve now had Max/HBO, BritBox and Peacock (for PL football and whatever rugby is available) uninterrupted for a long time too. I used to drop each of them for months at a time. Max/HBO hasn’t had much of interest to me in their recent shows (Warrior S3 excepted) but they have an incredible back-catalogue for rewatch. Disney+, AppleTV, Paramount, Hulu, etc are losing out in our house for lack of quality and/or breadth. I’ll turn each of them on for 2-3 months to binge one or two particular shows and then drop them again. We’re just one household and obviously out of step with the zeitgeist around Succession (unpleasant people being unpleasant to each other — why is pop culture so miserable?), Euphoria, The Last Of Us (well made but still another post-apocalyptic misery), Severance. But regardless of whether our particular bundle is representative, the next chapter for streaming is probably some convergence toward the winners (not everyone throwing silly money at any script) that will form a new equilibrium. We just don’t know yet the equilibrium level of content vs cost vs ads. We just know it won’t be as favorable as recent years when cheap capital fueled an arms race for subscribers.

I know it’s only preseason but Liverpool look like they could ship a lot of goals this year unless they change the formation or add an excellent DM and CB. It’s very attack-heavy so far, and the space behind is too easily exploited. Jones can play DM for England U21 but hasn’t shown the defensive ability to do so at the PL level. We’ve added two quality MF players but we’ve seen five depart. Yes, there were sick-notes and the aged among the departures but we’re still low on numbers and we’ve lost all continuity. The defense still looks very unbalanced and exposed by TAA’s reinvention.

It’s probably obvious but the Saudi recruitment drive will unleash football inflation, especially in Europe, far greater than when PSG signed Neymar and Mbappe, or the brief China bubble. The simultaneous injection of new money and reduced supply of top players (more players are shifting out of European clubs into Saudi clubs, rather than just staying within the pool of European clubs). It’ll continue to play out for as long as as the Saudi’s are spending, and then persist for another year or two as a lagged effect. This will benefit clubs who have stockpiled talent — perhaps Boehly is a genius after all — while harming clubs like Liverpool who were approaching a rebuild. (At least Liverpool bought some new forwards before this effect hit). Separately but on the same thread of financial risk: there are too many wealthy clubs in the PL now competing for the limited number of CL spots. With City and Newcastle both oil state-funded over time, plus United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs all relatively wealthy, it means at least two clubs (after the 2024 changes to CL spots) with huge wage bills will miss out on CL revenue each year. The other major leagues have opposite situations where the number of CL spots exceeds the number of big-spending clubs. It’s an unhealthy dynamic for the PL, whosr big clubs now need the super league more than any other top league.

Good Omens S2 is fun so far on Prime. David Tennant clearly enjoys his character.

Red Bull will be saving their development budget and wind tunnel time for the 2024 car, so I’d expect the other teams to close some of the gap in the second half. They’ve just had a huge advantage last year and this year in how they perceived the aerodynamics of the new regs, which will eventually erode, plus they have a great driver to take advantage. As much as it gets called a rocketship, the car doesn’t look dominant for Perez. Unlucky for Piastri today after doing so well yesterday, although the car was less competitive in today’s conditions regardless of that early collision.

That makes Darwin Nunez look like a bargain. FWIW, it’s only preseason but he has looked more composed and poised so far. It would be great to see him gain that development this season.

Imagine if Bellingham, Rice and Grealish had declared for Ireland instead of England. The football might even be watchable.

Supposedly Chelsea are trying to gazump Liverpool for Lavia too. It doesn’t seem like they need both Caicedo and Lavia but I’d be naive to rely on their prudence in transfers.

A Certain Threat by Roger Burnage is the first in his historical fiction series The Merriman Chronicles. Here a young lieutenant/commander in the Royal Navy takes command of a sloop to foil some French plot in England’s home waters before war has even formally started. It’s enjoyable enough although it would be improved if everything didn’t progress quite so smoothly and easily for the hero. Disoriental by Negar Djavadi is literary fiction about Iranian immigrants in Paris, contrasting the Iranian cultural history with the modern sensibilities of the current day character. DNF. I tried this during a very busy period in work and I just found myself unable to care for the prose, characters or the message the author is hammering home. Shockingly high reviews on GoodReads appear to come from an audience with heavy selection bias. The Winter Road by Adrian Selby is a gritty fantasy novel about a grizzled (woman) warrior doggedly trying to complete a journey/mission as she is beset by attacks and betrayal. Too tropey and not enough quality in the prose. Mostly I was bored.