ljkeane

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?

Fuck.

Really awful performance from England. There were so many errors and a lot of them were unforced. Borthwick’s had a fair number of games in charge now and there’s no real signs of improvement with the attack. Scotland were pretty flat in the first half but once they realised they just needed to wait for England to cough the ball up they looked a lot more in control.

Er, star players weren’t rested, other than Konate and Robertson on the bench I suppose, that was all the available senior players.

The team for Saturdays games: Ireland and Wales, England and Scotland. No real surprises in the Wales side. Ireland are obviously very settled generally but with Keenan out they've gone with Frawley at fullback and I don't think I've ever seen him play there. I doubt it'll matter either way though. Scotland have probably their strongest side so far this tournament with Kinghorn and Steyn back. England have made some interesting choices. Lawrence and Martin are back from injury and Mitchell is out with injury. Furbank ahead of Steward at fullback is the headliner though. There's arguments to be made either way but I'd probably lean towards picking more of a playmaker at fullback being the right call. It does seem that Borthwick doesn't have a particularly clear plan for what the team should be doing in attack though since it's a pretty big change in player profile.

Pressing has become a much bigger part of basically everyone’s gameplan these days too. It wasn’t that long ago that a lot fowards could spend a decent chunk of the game jogging around making sure they were in roughly the right position but weren’t being asked to do anything too taxing. Now even out of possession it’s loads of high intensity sprints.

It feels like a real down year for the Champions League this season. Barcelona and Napoli have really regressed after winning the league in Spain and Italy last season, Liverpool and Leverkusen are in the Europa League, United and Newcastle were weak 3rd and 4th Premier League sides. Even Real are in a bit of a transition this season.

I think Arsenal will still be pretty confident of going through with the home leg to come but that’s certainly made things interesting.

If Jota has gone above Diaz in the pecking order, and I think it’s fair to say he has, that’s 7 of our first choice 11 out and Konate and Robertson only make the bench. Jesus.

It didn’t damage his reputation that much, although the can’t win in Europe without Messi thing was weighing on him for some time, but he’d clearly failed to achieve what they were aiming for. Also Guardiola started his time at Bayern up against Klopp’s Dortmund so there was still a domestic rival to overcome. Alonso going to Bayern would undermine Leverkusen straight off the bat.