ljkeane

That’s a pretty harsh penalty. If it’d hit his hand on the initial ball in fair enough but on the header back from a yard away as he’s turning around, if that’s deliberate it’s quite impressive. Oh well, I still want City to lose so an equaliser’s a good thing.

Oh, ffs.

By the sound it of it there was a release clause put into the new contract Mac Allister signed. I doubt Brighton will have put themselves into the position of having to sell him below market value so it’s not going to be cheap but presumably Mac Allister also had an interest in not pricing himself out of a move so it’s probably not exorbitant either (relatively speaking). It does feel like a bit of a safe choice by Liverpool, we’re not finding an undervalued player in the transfer market here, but it’s unlikely to be a bust either. From Real’s perspective Liverpool dropping out of the race for Bellingham’s a bit of a bonus. He doesn’t seem to want to go to City so they’re pretty much the only option now.

So this England Ireland test feels like a bit of a warm up for the Ashes for England with Ireland not even putting out a full strength side. I am a bit interested to see what Harry Tector looks like (after he didn’t really feature in the first innings) as he’s apparently Ireland’s next big batting prospect.

I'd guess it's the retaken penalty in the shootout he's losing his shit over. Which wasn't actually Taylor's call but I doubt Mourinho would let that get in the way of a good tantrum.

I think that’s part of Sevilla’s success in the Europa League. You’d expect a team good enough to win it this many times would be good enough to move up and consistently play in the Champions League, and as a result not be in the Europa League enough to win it 7 times, but Sevilla have very much accepted this is their level and really committed to it.

It's a bit hard to tell with behind the scenes stuff but by the sound of it Liverpool weren't expecting to lose Ward and have been caught out a bit. Schmadtke does seem like a bit of a stopgap measure from the way it's been repeatedly pointed out it's not a long term appointment at this stage. He's reasonably qualified, available and seems happy to sign up to a temporary role. I can't say I'm particularly delighted that our recruitment team seems to be in a bit of disarray just as we're going into a fairly big transfer window for rebuilding the side but it does seem like the targets have already been identified and the plan is for Schmadtke to come in and manage the transfer negotiations. I'd guess the club hierarchy will want to recruit someone who fits in a bit more with their data driven recruitment model for the longer term after that but we'll see.

It's kind of a mixed bag. A lot of the problems rugby has I think come down to the fact that professionalism was left too late. Ireland was quite lucky that there was already a preexisting provincial structure that people bought into that matches well with their resources and feeding into international rugby. Wales didn't really have that so the provincial sides they've introduced haven't really connected with the fans. English rugby's sort of in the middle there are a few clubs that did/do have the infrastructure and fanbase that translates well to running professional sides, mainly the Midlands sides, but around that a lot of the other clubs have various issues. Sale and Newcastle don't really have the fanbase you'd like to see considering they're the only two clubs in the North. The problem a lot of the London clubs have is because they're late to the professional sport game they don't have grounds in London that were bought back when that wasn't a huge financial obstacle. In general I'd say 10 clubs is probably a better sized league. As to whether any other clubs will have difficulties, it probably depends on the degree to which their owners are willing to continue to subsidize them but I don't think any of them are as obviously vulnerable as Worcester, Wasps and Irish. ETA: On the plus side London Irish have apparently had a weeks extension on the deadline to get the sale of the club done if they pay their staff’s wages.

Nah, Everton’s problem is DCL is never fit, Bamford’s not an improvement on that front on this season’s evidence.

Did Brentford do the double over City? Not a bad effort even against City's reserves.

Decent game in the Premiership final. Sale are my localish team so I would have preferred them to win but, unlike Sarries these days, they have a pretty conservative game plan. If you’re going to play like that the issues they had in the lineout were always going to be a big problem and once they went two scores down in the second half it looked pretty much over.

Bayern aren’t out of the race to throw away this title yet. 1-1.

And now a Haller penalty saved. ETA: And they nailed on should have had another penalty straight away but not given.

I don’t watch too much WSL, largely because as the standard of women’s football in England has improved in recent years Liverpool haven’t been very good, but we’ve got a chance to deny United a title win on the final day of the season today. That’d be fun.

The Book That Wouldn't Burn was good but fairly convoluted. It felt like quite a lot was crammed into the one book. Now I'm reading Kate Elliott's Furious Heaven.

In fairness he’s not on his own in this game. An impressive number of the players out there have been rubbish so far. ETA: Chelsea really should have conceded 4 goals in this half and they’ve probably been the better side.

It's a bit more than that apparently. The Srivaddhanaprabha (looked that spelling up) family's money is very tied up with the travel industry so covid really had a big impact on them beyond just the general covid losses for football. So they've really not been in a position to make the kind moves they needed to make to refresh their squad. Also it's really starting to look like Rodgers is a good manager but one with a clear shelf life while working with the same group of players, at least at Premier League level. It worked quite well at Liverpool until it didn't and then the wheels came off and the same seems to have happened at Leicester.

If PGMOL hadn’t conspired to rob us of a win against Villa this would be very entertaining. Still, you have to admire Leicester’s commitment to not trying to score a goal. ETA: Heh, on cue Leicester almost snatch a win.

Leicester look done to me, I’d be pretty surprised if they pick up a win. On the downside for Everton Spurs also look done so I reckon Leeds will beat them at the weekend. ETA: That’s not a long way away from being a red card.

It's never really been a thing in rugby to not use the term league to describe competitions, the distinction between Rugby League the sport and whatever Rugby Union competition being a league is pretty well understood. The Irish/Welsh/Scottish professional league was called the Celtic League for a while. The French professional rugby body is the LNR (Ligue National de Rugby) and the RFU (the original Union in Rugby Union) calls plenty of its competitions leagues. From a North American perspective I don't think Rugby League is a big enough thing for them to be worried about it being a problem. I'd be surprised if it's actually making a profit but, to be fair, I'm pretty sure MLR is mostly semi professional so it might not be that far off. I doubt the plan is for them to be drawing in crowds in the tens of thousands or anything.

I watched Air. It was fine. It was entertaining enough but I'm not really sure why we're supposed to care that Nike managed to increase their market share in the sale of basketball shoes. Good for them I suppose.

Er, yeah, bit weird that. I just watched and thought it was close but I thought Loma pretty clearly won. ETA: The Nakatani knockout was impressive but Moloney’s corner really shouldn’t have sent him out for after the knock down in the previous round.

So that’s Forest safe and City officially Champions. I know Arsenal don’t really have anything to play for but this is becoming a really bad finish to the season now. They want to be careful it doesn’t become demoralising enough to have a knock on effect on next season.

So Dortmund are definitely losing to Augsburg tomorrow then.

Really good game in the final. La Rochelle got absolutely done in the first 10 minutes by Leinster, whose coaches had clearly spent a lot of time thinking of ways to beat them, but then La Rochelle were the better side for the next 70 minutes or so and managed to overhaul Leinster. Just. It's a shame the game ended on a bit of a down not with a potential serious injury but the officials were absolutely right with the red card decision. From a Leinster perspective it does just feel that they've run into a side in La Rochelle that're almost perfectly put together to beat them just as they're peaking in their own development cycle. The combination of the power that La Rochelle have with their quality at the breakdown really does disrupt the way Leinster want to play but, still, based on the two finals there's very little in it.