ljkeane

I was going to watch Daisy Jones and the Six but I've seen a few things saying the book was good so I decided to read it first. I was a bit uncertain about it but I ended up really enjoying it. The faux oral history format works surprisingly well. Next I'm going to read S.A. Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi.

Age of Ash was good as expected. Some elements of it were a little odd, with significant seeming things happening and then not being followed up on but I assume that's down to the trilogy of books taking place simultaneously thing and they'll be addressed in one of the other books. It'll be interesting to see how Abraham manages to cover things over the next two books. I also read Django Wexler's Emperor of Ruin the last book of his Burningblade and Silvereye trilogy. It was okay. I do quite like Wexler's books but his series do tend to start out really strong and not quite manage to end on a high.

Yeah, I’m not a particularly big fan of Sanderson’s books but that’s a pretty harsh article. I actually think something along the lines of ‘Sanderson’s widely accepted to not be a great writer but is very successful, why?’ would be quite interesting but the personal stuff just feels a bit mean.

I’m not a fan of VAR never overruling the officials in the Premier League but I’m not sure about this one. It’s hit the Italian defender’s arm behind his head, not sure that merits a penalty. Anyway, Kane’s now England’s record goalscorer.

Dion Dublin talking about football seems weird these days. Shouldn’t he be telling us about property investment opportunities in Naples?

Yeah, I’d guess Liverpool had probably received some indication Bellingham wanted to come to us. If you look at it last summer that’d probably make sense. Assuming he wanted to come back to England the two obvious options were City and us and from Bellingham’s perspective he’d be the clear main man in Liverpool’s midfield unlike City. You’d also think he might be changing his mind on that front even if it was the case before this season. Also the fee would probably depend on us getting into the Champions League to have any chance of being able to afford it.

Good game between Ireland and England in the Under 20s, it was very even until England picked up a couple of cards and Ireland pulled away. Unlike the Steward red yesterday though I've got no issue with either of the cards. So that's a Grand Slam for Ireland at Under 20s level too. Still, despite the loss I do like the look of a few of the England squad this year. The two centres look good, Ma'asi-White in particular, and Chessum, Fisilau and Cunnigham-South in the forwards. I do think the RFU needs to invest more money in the youth coaching though. England pretty clearly had the best age grade set of of the Northern Hemisphere countries a few years back but it's really fallen off over the last few years. From the Irish team the flyhalf Prendergast looks good. The back three were good too, the left winger Gavin in particular, and the eight Gleeson was probably the stand out forward.

I think Ireland are in pretty good shape actually. Tagdh Beirne’s the longest term injury they’ve got so far as I’m aware and he should be be back well before the World Cup. Sexton pulled up with a groin injury towards the end today but it’s hard to see that lasting until the World Cup. Er, yeah, there’s not a lot between them for me. France are probably a bit more talented, Ireland have more cohesion. I’d probably lean towards France with home advantage but there’s very little in it. I’m expecting the Springboks to be in the mix too.

Better performance from England this week although I’m not sure I’d go as far as to call it good. Ireland looked a bit tense but got the win they needed. I have to say I really hate the red card decision. The officials were treating it like it was a tackle ‘you’re always upright’ etc when it wasn’t a tackle, they were both going for a loose ball and they’ve run into each other. Not everything has to be reviewed to the nth degree ffs. Still, although it’s irritating that it made it less of a contest in that second half I doubt it would have changed the result.

Since I lasted posted in this thread I've read Christopher Buehlman's The Blacktongue Thief which I didn't particularly like. The humour didn't click with me which quite a lot of the book revolves around. After that I read Rachel Aaron's The Battle of Medicine Rocks which I really enjoyed. As her books tend to be it was a nice, fun read. Now I'm reading Daniel Abraham's Age of Ash.

Got their first ever win yesterday. Apparently Harrison Ford played a key role, not bad for an 80 year old.

Good first half at Murrayfield then Ireland played well to pull away in the second half. Given England’s performance yesterday you’d think it’d be an absolute disaster for them to not win the Six Nations from here. I have to say though as a second row and frequent lineout caller Scotland’s lineout defence in that second half was abominably bad. With Ireland having to call on emergency thrower in Van der Flier it’s pretty much lineout 101 you have to be all over that front ball until he shows he can hit anything further back. That it took Scotland until about 75 minutes (after they’d already lost) to work that out is pretty embarrassing.

That didn’t go as well as could have been hoped.

I like the under 20s tournaments. They tend to try and play rugby and defences aren’t quite as good. I quite like the look of England’s team this year but it fell apart a bit against the French last night apparently. Still, the last game between Ireland and England should be good. I’m going to the England France game today so it’s good to see Borthwick’s dropped the out of form Farrell and gone with Smith at 10. It should make it an entertaining game at least.

Well that was comfortably the most fun I’ve had watching Liverpool this season. As we all said the other day; Cody Gakpo, brilliant signing. Clear game changer for Liverpool’s season. ETA: Surprisingly measured post match analysis from Roy Keane. That’s not really on brand.

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Eyes of the Void is 99p on Amazon.co.uk.

I’ve got Paramount Plus free for a couple of months so I’m giving a few of the series on that a try at the moment. Tulsa King was entertaining without being anything special. I’ve not really liked any of the Star Trek tv shows for a long time but for nostalgia reasons I’d quite like to like one. I’ve heard some good things about Strange New Worlds so I’ll give that a try, the first episode was ok. I’ll probably watch some of the many Yellowstone shows at some point.

India definitely in trouble here. Although I also thought they were in the last test. It’s interesting how India have decided that playing on very bowling friendly pitches is the way to go since they lost the first test in the England series. It’s clearly worked for them so far and the bowling is their stronger suit these days but the conventional wisdom is it’s a bit of a lottery to play on real minefields. England playing the first ODI already in Bangladesh already so presumably there won’t be any crossovers from the test squad. No Rehan Ahmed in the team which is a little disappointing.

Watching the highlights it was even closer that just the score tells you, that last delivery was there to be knocked round the corner for the winning runs by Anderson. You're probably talking a feather more contact on the ball being the difference between the two sides in the end. Good test match.

Lisandro Martinez is a fucking dick isn't he? I do kind of like that in a defender though, at least until he does it against Liverpool in a way that annoys me.

I think the good choice is clearly United (of the Manchester variety). The Glazers are shit owners and just kind of dickheads and it's United but, still, so far as I'm aware they've never murdered anyone and they're not responsible for any war crimes or general oppression. That's what the sports washing era has brought me to.

Well that was fun. I thought Scotland were going to get absolutely blown away after the red card and the two early French tries. I thought Scotland were going to get blown away again after the fairly poor Finn Russell loose pass for the intercept try but after that they were great and with a little more luck going their way they could have come away with a win. They got a little help in the middle of all that with Haouas rather stupidly getting himself sent off.

Trossard's 28 and has basically never had a good goal scoring season. Arsenal have signed him to do a job for them right now when they need a forward to keep them in a title race. Liverpool obviously wanted Gakpo to fill in for a bit while they were waiting for Jota, Diaz and Firmino but they presumably also see him as someone they can develop longterm too. It's just not a signing to get too excited about either way for me. Liverpool have paid about the market rate for a player who's going to replace Firmino as a rotation option for the forward line. If they could have found a good option cheaper that would have been great but it's also not really breaking the bank for a Premier League team anymore. Neither of those options really strike me as good solutions to Liverpool's midfield issues. There were rotational options in the squad, it's just that two of them, Jota and Firmino, were also injured. They did replace Minamino and Shaqiri with Carvalho but don't seem to think he's quite ready to play significant minutes yet (not that Minamino or Shaqiri did either). Honestly I don't think it'd have made a massive difference just playing Nunez and Salah with one of the young players but Firmino's leaving in the summer if they think Gakpo's a good option to replace him why not sign him when they get the chance? Well, yeah, clearly they've gotten it wrong on whether the midfield could go another year. Liverpool's squad building has gone really well for a number of years, it's not gone well this season. They're going to have to make some big decisions in the Summer so we'll have to see whether they can get it back on track.

I mean they've signed Gakpo to be their 4th/5th choice forward going into the next few seasons (I think that's why they want him to be able to play across the front line too). That's fine, £40 million is about the going rate for that nowadays. I suspect it was a player they quite liked just being available signing rather than a 'this is going to solve all our problems' signing. Buying players you think are going to be good when they're available isn't necessarily a bad plan but, you know, if there was a £40 million midfielder who could have slotted straight into the team available and they chose to sign Gakpo over him then, yeah, it was a bad choice.

I think you're overstating how obvious the problem was going into this season. We were one of the best two or three teams in the world last year with that midfield. I think it was obvious there was going to be a bit of a diminishing returns situation with the age profile and they'd need to get some new midfielders in relatively soon but I don't recall many people, you included, saying the midfield was going to be an absolute disaster this season. I think they were viewing this season as a bit of a transition year and they've focused on rebuilding the forward line first. Which didn't seem unreasonable at the time. I think you could have reasonably predicted it might be a struggle to win the league this season with Liverpool's aging midfield, I don't think anyone thought they weren't going to be able to get by at a level that'd get them comfortably into the Champions League places though.