ljkeane

I don’t love heights but it’s not like a crippling fear or anything.

12 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Pretty disappointing from Liverpool in the end. They didn't really look like they wanted to achieve the comeback.

I think that's underselling Atalanta's role a fair bit. We were causing them quite a few problems in the first half then they've adjusted at half time and we couldn't get the ball through midfield. Same as last week really. A very impressive couple of games for Gasperini.

19 hours ago, Wilbur said:

I laughed aloud at the thought of the challenge a writer would have to make neutropenic precautions a gripping read.  "Quick, apply the antimycotic medical cream!"

Can’t say I was overly confident with Rudiger there though. Whew.

Get in.

Heh, fair play to the keeper for having the balls to just stand there. They should do that at least once a shootout, someone always goes down the middle.

Tight tie between Arsenal and Bayern but Bayern pulled away in that last 45 to deserve to go through I’d say.

We could really do with Real doing a Real here.

I read Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly. Connelly's books are pretty consistently solidly ok reads, very airport read books. Which is actually what I intended this book for but I never got around to reading it while I was away. Anyway, another decent detective/lawyer thriller. Although Bosch is probably another character who the author obviously likes who's probably getting a bit too old for the kind of storylines he's being put in.

I also read The Blighted Stars by Megan O'Keefe which was another of the cheap kindle books I'm trying to see if I can find a new author I like. I didn't like this one. There's what's effectively a side plot about an alien fungus which also didn't really work for me but it's mostly two characters, both of which I found fairly irritating, doing a lot of naval gazing.

Next up I'm going to try another new author for me with Don Winslow's City on Fire.

This season could have a pretty grim ending.

Well, shit. Ffs, Barca don’t fuck this up.

27 minutes ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

I’d say a minimum of 10 years. That’s roughly the timespan for building a civil nuclear power plant, so it’s hard to imagine a nuclear weapons program taking less time. 

If we're talking about a fission bomb it took the British about 5 years to build one after the US cut them out of sharing nuclear weapons technology. I'm sure Canada has people who know exactly how to make one so the limitation is having enough plutonium but if it took less than 10 years with 1940s technology I can't see it taking 10 years or more with current technology.

6 hours ago, House Balstroko said:

Iran has already attacked Israeli diplomatic missions, which includes embassies in the past. Claiming that they should retaliate now is utter nonsense.

Iran hasn’t attacked Israeli diplomatic missions. Groups with varying degrees of association with Iran which may have been acting at Iran’s direction have attacked Israeli diplomats and/or embassies. Just like Israel has more than likely assassinated a fair number of Iranian government officials and scientists but there remained a degree of deniability.

A direct attack by the Israeli military on, effectively, Iran is a different matter. 

Pickford’s not having the best of nights. There’s maybe not much he could do about the first one but I’m not sure he’ll like conceding from that range. The second and third goals are clearly his fault.

I suppose Arsenal dropping points is good for Liverpool’s chances but honestly it just feels like another City title is incoming. Bah.

18 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Darwin's miss after that corner in the second half was as good a chance as it gets. Virtually 5m from the goal line you really should score there. Yes, Henderson reacted great, but he really shouldn't have been given a chance to react there. Place the shot instead of just powering it towards the goal and the score is level.

It was a bouncing ball in a crowded box off a set piece. You don't fuck around trying to place the ball in those situations, get a shot off and if it's on target 90% of the time you score. He's done the right thing there, hitting the keeper is basically bad luck.

18 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Those were the three really good chances you fluffed. If you had been clinical...

Again, talking about being clinical is really a bullshit way of looking at football, because really nobody is clinical. Haaland is probably the most 'clinical' striker in world football and he misses loads of chances he should score. Jota is Liverpool's most clinical forward and he missed the best chance Liverpool had today.

Don't get me wrong I think Liverpool's forwards weren't good today but it's not because they didn't take their chances. It's because they were pretty rubbish in general play. Salah was basically uninvolved for most of the game, Diaz is meant to be one of out main outlets for progressing the ball and he kept losing it. Nunez honestly wasn't that bad imo and Gakpo was pretty good when he came on.

Pundits (especially ex pros) don't like to say it but honestly scoring frequently just comes down to luck so you need to weight the odds in your favour as much as possible by doing everything else well and Liverpool really didn't do that today.

4 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Today they should've scored 2-3 goals (fill in Liverpool forward of your choice today, all of them had at least one good or at least semi-good chance to score) and could've scored up to 5, if they were really clinical and had lady luck smile upon them (Endo).

Yeah, strongly disagree on that one. The problem today was the midfield was terrible with both Endo and Mac Allister in particular looking very fatigued. The thing about chances is that everyone misses more than they score. Yeah, we could have scored a couple of goals (Nunez and Salah didn't really do anything wrong with their chances, Jones and Jota could have done better) but, honestly, Palace missed two better chances.

Well that was desperately poor. We could have won if we’d taken our chances but honestly it wouldn’t have been anywhere near deserved. Ffs. 

So I thought Thursday was in large part down to Atalanta being really good but this has been very poor from Liverpool. Endo and Mac Allister in midfield in particular have not been good.

Eze and Olise both fit for Palace. That’s not ideal, Palace are a significantly more dangerous side with both of them in the team.

On the plus side Liverpool are finally approaching a fully fit squad except for Thiago and Matip who won’t be back.

1 hour ago, Consigliere said:

Yeah, I think Ten Hag is gone at the end of the season. Last season he implemented a more compact setup but the chaos element showed up from time-to-time. Judging by this season and the fact he's persisted with a tactical setup that leaves the midfield and defence exposed, it does suggest that the chaotic setup is what Ten Hag is actually going for which is clearly not sustainable.

To be fair to Ten Hag he seems to have decided that United's attacking players don't really fit into a more measured attacking build up and they're a lot more effective when there's space in behind the opposition. I don't think he's wrong about that. In talking about tactics at the moment there's a lot of focus on control because that's basically the point of Guardiola and Arteta's tactical philosophies but that doesn't have to be your primary goal. Klopp on the other hand is really more about winning in transitions.

I don't watch United that much but my issue with Ten Hag would be not that he's going for a transitional style it's more that I don't really see what the plan is for tilting the odds in United's favour beyond 'create a back and forth game and hope it goes our way'.

It should also be noted that Iran has said they would have been satisfied with a UN Security Council condemnation of the Israeli attack on their embassy but that was blocked by the US along with the UK and France. Biden really has been pretty terrible on anything related to Israel.

I was going to post that Leinster had finally broken their La Rochelle hoodoo. Their defence was probably the most impressive thing about it. They’ve been on top at times in the previous games but La Rochelle gradually worked their way in front, they were never in the game today.

Looks like they’ll be playing Northampton in the semifinal. I suspect Northampton won’t be good enough to beat Leinster, in defence at least, but they’re quite an interesting side in attack. Pretty much everyone bases their attack around pulling defences out of shape through multiple phases these days. Saints are really all about running strike plays whenever they can. It should be fun anyway.

Probably the most impressive win today though was Harlequins going to Bordeaux and winning 41-42. I definitely didn’t see that coming.

7 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Yeah, but Kelleher is also sorta on the hook for Atalanta's first.

That was a bit of a weird one. I thought it must have been deflected the way the shot's mishit and then just goes through him, when he was otherwise having a very good game, but no. He did get absolutely smashed in the face with the ball so maybe he was still struggling a bit with his vision or something.

7 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

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.

I genuinely don’t think it’s that. I think Gasperini really out coached Klopp on this one. They had a funky man to man pressing system that we couldn’t get a handle on at all. We really struggled to the ball into midfield at all.

4 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

More like a lesson in how to put your chances away.

This could/should've been a 2-2 or 2-3 game from Liverpool's perspective.

Nah, Atalanta were comfortably the better side. Kelleher made a couple of great saves to keep it down to 3 goals for them.

So, er, this isn’t going as expected. Gasperini has out Klopped Klopp here. We just can’t deal with their pressing at all. I think this is comfortably the best anyone has played against us all season.

On the plus side I don’t think we’ll need to worry about playing Thursday Sunday for the rest of the season.