ljkeane

Looks like it's going to be Arne Slot for the next Liverpool manager. I don't really have any particular opinion on whether he or Amorim is the better candidate having watched exactly zero minutes of either the Dutch or Portuguese leagues this season. We'll have to see how it goes I suppose.

I only watched bits of the Arsenal Chelsea game last night but watching the highlights this morning Jackson had an, er, interesting game. He genuinely had Saliba and Gabriel on toast by the look of it. He's left Saliba for dead in the first half, then Gabriel's very lucky not to score an own goal. In the second half he really embarrasses Gabriel before his big chance. On the other side of the ledger he basically bottles going for the header in the first half for what should have been a massive chance and his chance in the second half, come on, you have to shoot across the keeper there. Oh yeah, and he should have had a red card.

Heh, Gabriel’s rugby tackled Madueke before that third goal. The VAR is clearly a Luton fan.

In fairness if you defend as badly as Chelsea did for that second goal you don’t really deserve for decisions to go your way.

No Palmer? Fuck’s sake.

6 minutes ago, Fez said:

Sure. Except that falls into the "impossible" category. The student demand goes beyond stopping direct investment in Israel/Israeli companies (which the University doesn't do anyway— except building a student center in Tel Aviv that the protesters also want cancelled) and is instead that Columbia University not invest in any company that does any business with Israel or even any index fund that includes those companies. Which means they don't want the endowment fund to be invested in the stock market at all; something the university will never do.

I mean I'm pretty sure if a bunch of significant institutional investors wanted to invest in a fund that didn't include companies doing business with/in Israel there would be a lot of financial institutions offering one pretty quickly. It'd be pretty inconvenient but I very much doubt it's impossible.

7 minutes ago, Whiskeyjack said:

The VAR is a City fan and wanted his boys to play against the easier team.

I don’t know why he was ruling out Coventry goals then. 

Wahey.

You can see why Liverpool like Gravenberch, and why Bayern liked him before them, he’s got all the attributes to be a top midfielder, but it’d be nice if he was knitting it all together more often. It feels like a real lottery what’s going happen anytime the action’s near him.

Heh, Everton have spent all season spurning high xg chances and then in probably the biggest game of the season McNeil scores that.

ETA: Beto did not look in a good way after that head clash.

City on Fire was good. I'll definitely give a few more Don Winslow books a try.

Next I'm going to read Ithaca by Claire North. North's books are pretty consistently good and it seems fitting to go from one book roughly based on the Iliad to one roughly based on the end of the Odyssey.

8 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

 Refs are usually a bit more lenient with fouls in the box, because a penalty (likely goal) is quite impactful. And refs really don't want the game and subsequent headlines to be about them (at least the good ones) and their decissions. So they are rather cautious in those situations.

So I actually think that’s more ‘deserving’ of a penalty than a lot of penalties. Was Jackson going to score there? Probably not but he could have got a shot off and Walker’s absolutely deliberately knocking him off balance to prevent that. On other hand does someone’s toe getting clipped while they’re running away from goal in the box deserve a 90% chance of a goal? Not really.

7 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

2. Too little for a penalty imho. If Chelsea had been awarded a penalty for that, then City for once would've had more right to complain about that call, then Chelsea about it not being given.

I mean he’s clearly shoved him and it’s not shoulder to shoulder. It’s a foul and it’s in the box. It’s not the kind of thing that’s usually given but the officials having just decided they’re not going to give certain types of fouls in the box does irritate me.

Fuck’s sake. Can we not at least have extra time?

As I said last week my opinion on goalscoring is that everyone misses chances and sometimes shit happens and the ball doesn’t go in the net but, bloody hell, Jackson could do with taking one of these chances.

ETA: Er, decent shout that’s a penalty.

ETA2: Er, not a bad shout that’s a penalty either. Walker’s shoved Jackson in the back there.

Chelsea are getting quite a few chances on the break here.

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.