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The fact that Barca paid so much for Coutinho should have rung alarm bells. You see this often at big clubs who have been dominant for so long – they have changes of manager and to compensate they increasingly get more and more desperate to stay at the top.
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Think he overthinks these games.
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Well Lyon have clearly got City’s number.
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Yes, the two bombs did distract from the colossal conventional devastation unleashed by the US in Japan of which I doubt many realise. The point about war crimes was more stressing the Japanese obviously wanted to avoid surrender if they could avoid it, but eventually had no choice. But had the axis forces won, they too would arguably have had grounds to convict for war crimes. Also the way many of the Germanic people in central and Eastern Europe were treated after WW2 is also pretty horrifying in the “flight and expulsion of the Germans” which estimated that 500,000 to 2 million German civilians were killed. Again, I doubt that is known to many.
War may sometimes be necessary, but it is can never be described as good.
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Brian, no doubt, and as the article states, the US had pretty much obliterated most Japanese cities well before the two nuclear bombs. But whilst the debate may rumble on, I don’t think it should be underestimated just how much losing sides fear being convicted of war crimes as well as losing their heritage and way of life generally (it’s also one reason I think why Kim Jong Un clings to power so hard in North Korea). Like Germany, Japan ultimately found itself between the two great powers of the world at that time, and had no where else to go. But I find it compelling that it suited Japan to turn the devastation of the two bombs into victimhood that arguably helped alleviate some of the concerns Japan had above.
Generally speaking, the role of the Soviet Union in the war rarely gets mentioned in the West. But both at Stalingrad, and in the Far East, they played a huge and arguably decisive role. And how did the Soviet Union come to be? Imperial Germany helped Lenin return to Russia in 1917 on the sealed train to basically cause havoc in Russia, who they were at war with. That was a huge moment in history, and the ghastly legacy of the Soviet Union & two world wars is still with us today, and will be for some time yet.
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Article here:
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Fascinating article that challenges the conventional wisdom of the use of the nuclear bomb to bring about Japan’s surrender, and it makes sense what with the surprising swiftness of more cordial relations between the US & Japan in the years ahead – it suited both sides to use it as the reason for surrender, when it was the invasion of the Soviet Union that ultimately left Japan with no option left.
Article below on next post (had trouble posting for some reason):
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Is it time for Messi to leave Barcelona?
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And the replays will never come back. There’s nothing so permanent as “temporary”.
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It wasn’t the best ever Utd side during Fergie’s last season but they still had a pretty solid base of De Gea, Ferdinand and Vidic, and Rooney & Van Persie up top, and every player knew their job and the manager trusted them. But every manager is different and wants different things from their teams so trust takes time to develop and then if you don’t buy particularly well that compounds things further. I agree José never really took off at Utd, but let’s not forget he won the Europa League & League Cup in his first season there, then finished 2nd in the following season. We can debate over who exactly was buying the players but I don’t think it was all down to him and they ultimately didn’t buy well and he clearly never trusted them enough or felt they were good enough to take the next step up.
So it all comes down to whether Spurs can buy well on players Jose can rely on and trust. Will those players cost the earth? That seems to be the conventional thinking on Jose in that you need to spend fortunes on his players and that he can’t develop younger players. But he’s always tended to be at big clubs that do spend a lot on players but that doesn’t mean he can’t. Spurs may have to do a bit of dealing and sell to buy to bring more suitable players in that he wants but in any case all successful teams in this league have to spend big at some point.
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Bayern vs City will be a cracker, no disrespect to Lyon.
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Sean, it will still be interesting I agree. But if we examine Poch’s time at Spurs, I guess considering his net spend in his time there, he still achieved a lot. So would another manager with the same conditions and resources Poch had have achieved more? My main feeling with Poch at Spurs was that as organised as they were, difficult to beat, etc, they didn’t quite play off the cuff enough and go for the jugular. In some ways he reminded me of Benitiez of whom a similar criticism may be thrown who was a bit too conservative at times. Now perhaps Poch just didn’t feel he had the luxury to do that. And indeed I think in Jose’s early days at Utd he too played it safe until he was able to bring some other players in and trusted them to play more expansively, though I do think Jose can perhaps eek a bit more out of his teams in terms of mentality. Now if you then compare to Klopp’s early days at Liverpool we were pretty expansive and it got us to a few finals. But we were still limited by the defence. Had Klopp been more defensive it may have helped, but then we would have lost the reason that got us to those early finals so I think all this does show the limitations of managers in their early days at a club when they don’t yet have the players they want.
To compound matters further you then have all the pressure and fear both on the manager and the board who then tend to act irrationally in the transfer market in their attempts to beat their rivals in which just one league position higher can make a huge difference in revenues. It’s no wonder it takes so long for clubs to get all the ingredients right, but one club who are one of the most consistent performers of recent decades is Chelsea. And what have Chelsea always done right? They buy well and act quickly and calmly. And look at Southampton this season, a club who have always found good players. They could have done a Watford and panicked and sacked their manager early on after an appalling start. But they kept a cool head and kept faith and boy did that faith get paid back to them. But cool headed leadership is rare and always will be.
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Sean, we’ll probably have to wait for the books to come out, but I think the whole appointment was a mess at Man Utd from the board (who are still reeling since Fergie & David Gill left) and even Mourinho himself who never really looked happy or comfortable there and the fact he stayed his entire time there in a hotel I think sums it up. I think Pogba was signed by the club more for commercial reasons and I think the club had tried several times before Mourinho came to bring him back to the club. And obviously in his last summer at the club, the board refused to back him, which was odd given his contract extension but just sums up the mess they made (and are still suffering from to this day). I’m not here to completely defend Jose, and yes, he’s volatile and hence has a short shelf life. But I still think he has the skills to deliver success. But an increasing problem for him is that we are increasingly living in the era of the ego, and the power players have now is vastly more than it was even a decade ago. Yes, he has a big ego himself but then that’s where the power should be in the dressing room. But as the player power has continually increased, what with Jose’s fiery nature, I think that clash is a worsening problem he’s faced in more recent years.
On the other side of the coin, you had Wenger, who for all the grief he got in his latter years, for me he still remained a very good coach, if somewhat blindsided. He was obviously a very different personality to Jose, but his problem was that he faced a similar kind of problem Jose did with player power, and loyalty sadly has disappeared. Whilst Wenger was probably thought of as naĂŻve at the time when Monaco sold Martial to Man Utd after previously telling Wenger he was not for sale, I always thought it was very poignant moment when Wenger said of Monaco “I thought they would maintain their word.”…as though he thought honour & loyalty still had a place in football.
So I think all this does just show a manager is only half the strategy – the club also has to be ambitious and buy well – one thing which I think has been crucial at Liverpool for some time now and we’ve finally mastered. Indeed, we really are doing proper due diligence on players now, something I’ve called for, for some time. Not signing Fekir for example, due to injury concerns, was probably the right call in hindsight. And we apparently even looked as deep as character references for the left back we’ve just signed.
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Sean, you have to compare like for like. Jose had favourable conditions at his first time at Chelsea just like Pep does at City. At Utd, Jose clearly had players he didn’t really want whilst also being encouraged by the club to play in a certain way. Also, who else could have done better with that setup under those conditions? And Jose did find a way to beat Pep in 2010. As I say, the common thread with all these top managers is that they create a strong family togetherness and unity that in turn creates a strong mentality that helps keeps focus and mistakes to a minimum. As I think Pep stated some time ago, football is a game won by the team who makes the fewest mistakes. And I think that’s absolutely the foundation on which creates big success no matter what the type of football is played. Obviously you then need the players on top of that, and without Van Dijk & Alisson, Liverpool would not be where they are today.
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The key aspect of management/coaching, regardless of the money at your disposal, is instilling a strong winning mentality. Jose is still very much capable of that which is why he’s still a top manager for me. Liverpool under Klopp in the season just gone have arguably been more Mourinho like – all players very well drilled, organised and fighting for each other, constantly finding a way to edge games out. Guardiola it’s said has raised the bar in terms of his attacking football, and I don’t doubt he has. But don’t forget Jose won the league with 95 points with Chelsea in 2005, which ain’t far off some of the totals City and Liverpool have had in recent seasons, so I’m not sure this “Jose is outdated” stacks up. Jose still has all the necessary attributes to win the big prizes, though Spurs will still have to buy well. I also think Gary Neville also mentioned that finishing 2nd with Utd with that squad some years back was one of his best achievements and I think he was probably right.
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Is it not now getting to the point you could put a crash dummy in charge of Juventus and they’d still win the league?
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It must be a difficult one for Allegri Ed. But if he doesn’t get a job for the season ahead, that’s then two seasons out of football for him which is unusual. You’d think he’d want a job in the PL but a problem I think that he’s up against is the changing culture of football both on the pitch and financially. Clubs are tending to follow the likes of Guardiola of possession and attacking based football – a significant reason I think why Arsenal installed Arteta, and partly why Chelsea went for Lampard. Allegri, though I’m sure he has undoubted winning qualities in setting up mentally strong teams, is more defensive. So you look at it, and purely out of a marriage of convenience, I could see him going back, perhaps as a short term strategy whilst he waits for another position to come up in a similar way that Mourinho is in a marriage of convenience at Spurs. Just not sure out of the top clubs who would go for him even if there was a vacancy though, as mad as that might sound. Years ago, you could have seen Chelsea going for him. But as I say, the culture has changed. He could still get a job here, but you sense he’s now thought of as more of a second choice.
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Or Allegri will go back.
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If that’s the case might as well write next season off, but keep the cups and throw in a couple of spices like having power plays, run up penalty shoot outs and playing with no goalkeepers for periods. May as well have a bit of fun…
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Find most TV disposable now (streaming corporations included). And the shear amount of it actually makes it even harder to find anything worth watching. Just find it all the same – it’s all high budget, well acted and very slick, but they’re either cliched lines/scripts, or they’re trying too hard to be different. Great if you’re an A-list actor but is the viewer really getting value for money? And the amount of recycling going on now is ridiculous be it superhero films or Star Wars rehashes. Probably one of my favourite films is Blade Runner, and why a sequel was made I don’t know, there was no where really else for the story to go. It deserved to flop. Just come up with something else that’s original. I increasingly find foreign films are where to go, or oldies or the stuff that is any good is put on some obscure channel or at a really late time on a standard channel, e.g. I caught the tail end of “The Looming Tower” on BBC some time ago, but there seemed to be very little advertising of it. Just ordered the mini series of 11.22.63 which is supposed to be good, but it was damned hard to find. The good stuff always seems to go under the radar…
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