ljkeane

This has been a pretty ropey performance by Liverpool despite the score, play like this against City and we’ll get battered. On the plus side at least the score line means the tie’s effectively over. That defeat’s a real blow for Brighton. It’s really felt like doing well in Europe was the focus for this season for them.

And Konate’s pulled up injured. Fuuuuck.

I’m not sure about this team Klopp’s putting out. Feels like we could definitely have gone with the under 16s for this game, saved the senior players for City and then backed ourselves to win it at Anfield.

I don’t know about conditions being benign, there was a fair amount in it for the bowlers, but it isn’t a bad pitch by any means. England’s middle order are in pretty bad form though unfortunately. The real problem today though was I think they just aren’t picking Kuldeep Yadav, which isn’t ideal. I’m not sure there’s an obvious place for them to go for a quick fix though. Brook would have been in the side you’d think but he’s unavailable for some sort of personal reason. I’d probably have given Lawrence a chance at some point.

Bayern getting knocked out would be funny but unfortunately I think there’s a very limited number of teams in the Champions League this year who could conceivably stop City winning it. Bayern if they pull themselves together and get a bit lucky might, I can’t see Lazio providing much of a challenge.

I stopped watching after the first goal ‘cause, you know, Sheffield United aren’t getting a goal so game over but, bloody hell, they’re 4 down already? That’s embarrassing even by their standards this season.

Not sure about that but it doesn't really matter. The foul is playing the ball in dangerous manner, you don't have to make contact. High boot in a crowded box near someone's head is a foul.

I saw all the uproar before I'd seen the game so I assumed the ball had been passed straight to Nunez and he scored, possession changes hands about 3 times before the Liverpool goal. Plus, yeah, the 'correct' decision should have been a Liverpool free kick for Konate getting booted in the head.

We really shouldn’t play Maguire. Not because the other options are drastically better than him, he’s not a bad player despite occasional form issues, but because he’s slow and it means we have to play deep. It’s what irritates me about Southgate, we’ve got all these brilliant attacking talents who’re used to playing on the front foot with their club sides and we’re building the side around Maguire’s limitations. Just pick a centre back who’s quick enough to play in a high line (and don’t pick Henderson) ffs.

Eh, it’s been coming for pretty much the whole game. Rashford scoring a bit of a screamer made it look a bit more interesting but City have been squeezing United throughout, this United team were never going to hold up for 90 plus minutes.

Wahey! Still not confident but, hey, at least United scoring first is better than the other way around.

So I watched the Liverpool game after all the furore thinking we were going to have been on the rack all game but the xg was about 2-1 in Liverpools favour and Forest's big chance for Elanga was offside and would have been called back if he'd scored. I suppose it's dramatic because the Nunez goal was so late but it was overall a fairly 'Liverpool win by the odd goal' game.

Southee dropped an absolute dolly the last ball of day 2 to let give Lyon a life too and I see he went on to top score for Australia in their second innings. New Zealand are going to be kicking themselves after this one. Also there's a weird number of wickets for spinners in this test. New Zealand is normally the absolute worst conditions to bowl spin in.

I'm a bit late to the other two games because I was busy while they were on and after the England game and a fairly irritating game I played in I wasn't in a great mood about rugby so I didn't catch up with them straight away. The France Italy game was fun, shame Italy didn't pull off the win. To be fair to France they were well on top in the first half, they just weren't clinical about putting away their chances. The red card really killed them though. In terms of what's going wrong, it's fairly obvious, but if Dupont plays they probably score a few more tries in the first half and win comfortably. Still, losing just one player, even probably the best player in world rugby, shouldn't be hurting them this much. Ireland just very polished I have to say. They've obviously got a lot of good players but the real stand out is how clearly they all understand what and how they should be playing. They look by an absolute mile the best coached side in the Six Nations. This clip I saw on twitter of their last try is a really good example. They don't do anything particularly flash, they just calmly manipulate the defence through multiple phases to pick off a tired front row. Back to England I'm just really down on Borthwick as the coach. The defence has had some issues in every game but, ok, they've got a new defence coach and they've changed to more of a high risk, high reward system. If you're flying off the line misreads are going to lead to big holes. If they're planning to stick with it for this World Cup cycle you can accept some teething problems for the first few games. In attack though it's been 17 games now and I don't think there's been a really good game yet. I can't really see what it even is they're trying to do. Regardless of what you're trying to do winning quick clean ball and getting into your attacking shape quickly between phases is pretty essential, going back to Ireland that is what they're excellent at, but England are terrible. They've got a flyhalf in Ford who's really good at running a multiphase attack but England basically never do it because everything falls apart after a phase or two. It's really starting to get on my nerves.

Wow, I've only seen the highlights of the first day's play so far but the Black Caps letting Australia get to 383 after winning the toss and putting them in is a bit of a disaster. There's a bit of talent there at least so that's encouraging but the problem is the structure of English first class cricket is just terrible for developing spinners. It's never been great with conditions being what they are but it's about as bad as it's possible to be these days. It's hard to see how they're going to go away and improve when they get sent back to their counties.

I’m not overly encouraged by this Edwards stuff. Yeah, he was excellent in his first tenure but he’s obviously not that sold on coming back and it suggests that FSG still don’t have a clear plan for what they’re going to do about sporting director. Also by the sound of it they want him to take over a fairly big chunk of Mike Gordon’s job. Since he’s also been good that’s not too encouraging either (if it’s because he wants to step back). Having said all that if we do get him back that’s probably good.

I suspect you're being disingenuous because you actually agree with Biden on this issue and don't want to see a policy change but if this is an issue you care about the strategic thing to do it make it clear it's going to cost votes. What politicians really care about is issues that'll cost them elections. The orthodox political position in the US, for both parties, is incredibly pro Israel. I suspect Palestinian supporters can just give up on Republicans but if this issue costs Biden a Presidential Election you can be pretty sure the it'll be an issue the Democrats take seriously next time out.

It’s good Jones is back writing but isn’t this meant to be the penultimate book? There’s another one to go yet.

It would have seemed crazy to say this 10 years ago but Barcelona is pretty comfortably the worst job out of those options (plus Chelsea) I’d say. They’ve absolutely fucked themselves pulling financial levers to buy an aging not especially good squad. Real have put together a team that looks like it’s going to be fantastic for the next decade and Barcelona are going to be at a constant big financial disadvantage.

I've been thinking this season regarding how well all the youngsters coming in have done they all look like they know what they're supposed to do. It obviously helps Klopp is willing to give them a chance, and not all managers would by any means, but all these players will have spent pretty much their entire youth development in a system designed to produce players for a Klopp team. It's one real advantage that comes with continuity. It's a shame Klopp's leaving as it all seems to be clicking.

In fairness there's been a lot of talk about Chelsea having a far stronger bench than Liverpool but the one area they didn't really have anyone to come on for was midfield, because they spent all their money on Caicedo and Lavia and Lavia's not fit, that's probably key when they're trying to keep the pace of the game up.

Great result considering there was half the under 21s on the pitch in extra time.

Extra time, just what we need.

I don’t disagree that’s a foul but, for example, Arsenal do some variation of a block like that pretty much every set piece and it never gets called. It’s just a complete lottery what fouls are getting called on set pieces in the box. Ffs.

To be fair from Neville talking about what the VAR was saying to the referee it sounds like the ref just hasn’t really seen it. Nasty challenge from Caicedo though. ETA: And he’s just committed another foul. How’s he not got a yellow ffs?