cosmicway

It's 2 x 3 now and it looks like it's Diego Costa's season but I 'm not impressed. West Ham played poorly against us, also in Romania on Thursday and we managed to beat them in the last minute. Watford is a team known to give up the ghost in the last half hour and defend using the cross bars. We need strong additions.

That goal we conceded looked amateur to me. Kapoue was given a free hand. There were some white shirts strolling the park some fify meters away. The equalizer was Gomez's fault. I 'd expect of him to save those then Batshuayi showed great alertness in that position. The Cesc - Diego combination qualifies for goal of the year. We have to up our game I think and the substitutions made by Conte looked very clever (at a time Watford's work rate had dropped significantly however). There was a pen not given to us in the 1-0 and the tv pundits are crying foul for Diego not being sent off. Perhaps an objection will be launched.

That goal we conceded looked amateur to me. Kapoue was given a free hand. There were some white shirts strolling the park some fify meters away. The equalizer was Gomez's fault. I 'd expect of him to save those then Batshuayi showed great alertness in that position. The Cesc - Diego combination qualifies for goal of the year. We have to up our game I think and the substitutions made by Conte looked very clever (at a time Watford's work rate had dropped significantly however). There was a pen not given to us in the 1-0 and the tv pundits are crying foul for Diego not being sent off. Perhaps an objection will be launched.

Super Diego pulls it out of the fire.

Essien was another one. But Oscar-Willian-Hazard do have the long distance shot on a good day. The secret here is to get to the position and have the momentum. The defenders are aware of this of course, but I should think one out of every three Oscar shots, with the conditions I describe statisfied, is in.

I don't understand about clear cut chances. You mean you wanted to see some clear cut chances but lost ? I think there were situations that might have gone in. Iva in the first half - saved, Oscar's pen - not given, Hazard just wide. In the second half Willian - Pedro - Terry's header - Diego's flying effort.

I liked the Conte style buid up. No longer sleepwalker's build up and we could have scored more. From West Ham I 've seen better. They were lucky to come close to a draw.

I liked the Conte style buid up. No longer sleepwalker's build up and we could have scored more. From West Ham I 've seen better. They were lucky to come close to a draw.

It shapes as if UTD will be among the protagonists - after all the money they spent. L'pool also if we judge by the friendlies and yesterday's results. From Arsenal the same story and Leicester did n't make it in their opening match.

Lei 2-1 up 5 minutes from time, despite Utd having taken the lead.

I will bring luck by opening the first league thread of the season.

Good job against strong German side. The defense needs fixing.

The one who does the "next match" is on strike. We are well into the season and it says "AC Milan

Next match is wrong. It says Real Madrid.

One more defeat for the scousers against Chelsea.

Terrorism is caused by the marginalisation of people. If the state hurts me I won't respond in this way, but what do I know about the others ? The 6th-7th person who is unjustly hurt may as well become a criminal or terrorist. The islamic terror succeded but the left wing terror failed. No more "red brigades", RAF etc,etc but in the case of the islamists they had a very strong background - the Palestinian terror organisation. It's their offspring. That's is what's happening, if you are not politically blinded. Of course extreme measures are called for. Otherwise it's like attacking the enemy forces in a battle with flowers instead of guns. But how are the home-grown nationalists handling it ? They call for more race discrimination, directed against all and sundry. There will be more violence as a result and evidently more repression in the next stage. They say "let's go after the Mexicans". Mexico is a few tens of thousands of miles away from the M.E., they don't have a single Muslim citizen, but ... "now it's the chance to get them". Similar utterings are heard from the European counterparts against innocent-unconnected parties. Don't say "come on, get off it" because it happens everyday, everywhere. You supported "remain" and not "Brexit" ? You are in danger of losing your job and also be labelled a suspect. It's just like I say and I won't take no for an answer. In parallel, we have the leftist extremists. Those are making plans for their own dictatorships, Venezuela style. Both right wing extremists and left wing extremists are having a party when something like Nice happens.

Hmmm, I vaguely remember a kissing couple who were taken to court in 1961. It happened in Syntagma square in Athens. For those who are familiar with the area it was infront of the Elysee cafe, where you take the green bus to Piraeus. Karamanlis was prime minister at the time. I don't know how big a kiss it was. Our head at school was also the member of a religious organisation. What he did among other things was to make the school cantine buy the orange drinks that were made from a subsidiary of the said religious organisation. They were producing only blue, no fizzy orange. So for six years we had to drink blue orange only because of that. So you see there are various antics that allow you and others to make noises. I 'm not going to say that the ultra-fanatics are good. But ... what about the secret schools in Turkish occupied Greece ? How did the Greek language and national heritage survive ? What about the bishops who blessed the arms of the revolution and also blew up themselves in the monasteries, when sieged ? So I believe all this talk is exaggerated.

Historically GB-USA favoured whoever was friendly to them. The Sultan was not -most of the time. But Kemal gradually befriended them. There have been many switches and turns, ups and downs. USA backed the religious Taliban in the USSR-Afghanistan war but look what happened next. You are aware I expect that Bin Laded was interviewed by the American press in 1990. They wrote "what a fascinating, dedicated and enterprising young person, but hey, we were a little scared with all those armed men dressed in black who were surrounding him". So it's impossible really to go to bed with nine-eleveners ! God forbid ! It sounds to me like you are supporting this thing: USA can't really do the business of cleaning up the middle East, Russia can do better but USA would rather let the messy situation go on than make it easy for the Russians. So in this respect they may have wanted a whatever anti-russian government in Turkey rather than the not so anti-russian any more Tayip. It's dangerously Machiavellian and kind of farfetched (n.b. with Donald the Donald as president maybe).

Some contradictions there. The coup is even more fundamentalist than Erdogan is but the US supported it ? Re. Russians the Turks were alway managing to get along. Starting with Catherine the Great who initially was their enemy but later appeased by the Sultan. The Americans always wanted Turkey close to Europe. In 2006 Bush said "let them join now and forget about economic convergence and all that fancy stuff". But GE-FR objected to this.

Depends. Everybody says that about everybody. Football players should n't mix up with politics. But if Diego Costa makes a statement in favour of labour, the labourites among cfc fans will say "what a great lad" and the cons will cry "shame". The opposite statement will produce the similar effect. We all speak about the inquisition but it's not real. The inquisition too is a much maligned institution. The number of people they burned in 10 centuries of existence is a little over one thousand known wizards and sorcerers when the states were burning millions for as little as chasing the queen's deer. The myth of the evil inquisition was created by the anglo-saxons of course, who in turn had to face the threat of the Spanish Armada at the time until saved by Sir Francis Drake. It was in those irregular circumstances that the myth was created.

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Well, it depends what they do though. Set up a new Spanish inquisition ? We had the same debate here in 2002. I sided with the church, because on the one hand we Greeks do not hurt people of different religions (like they were doing in Northern Ireland for example) while on the other hand I noticed that all those who attacked religion in the tv panels were communists who wanted to install a one party dictatorship. But I suppose this is different from Turkey. I think it's a problem. The Turks believe the world is divided between the righteous and the sinners (where your side are the righteous). The winner locks the loser to a prison cell. Just like Brexit. They have to abandon this belief. It can't work. Go to international football results and see how many Turkish league matches do not end and compare the number to other countries. Some Greeks behave the same. Before the last election, 20 September 2015, Tsipras said "on the twentieth you are finished", meaning that those who do not agree with his party will have to find some fast horses and carts and leave the country. He wants ot bring back to life the long time dead class hatred. But Tsipras is a pathetic imbecile.

So it appears to me Erdogan is too religious but without going into the extremes of ISIS and the fundamentalists, while his opponents favour a more westernised way of life. But is that enough for such a huge rift in society ? It does n't look like he planned it but maybe he took the risk to provoke them as much as he could and make them play their hand. From that much information, I don't think it is sane though. In Greece in 1967 there was at least the accusation made by the army against Andreas Papandreou that he wanted to make Greece into a baathist state. That was a false accusation, almost comical, but as accusations go it was serious enough. But starting a civil war because bikini suim suits are not allowed on the beaches seems bizarre to me.

I 'm at a loss to uderstand the motive behind the Turkish attempted coup d' etat. It does n't look like it falls into any of the usual patterns, communism-anticommunism, tribalism or even europeanism-antieuropeanism. I also find it hard to believe that either of the two sides is pro-ISIS and the other one is against.

The Johnsonian thesis on Uganda implies the following thing, if looked at carefully: "British folk are such dummies that the best place for a world Tory government is right here in London." If he thought it was otherwise he 'd be calling for a world Tory government situated some place else.