Vesper

Donald Trump 00:07:24-00:07:46 (22 sec) They're living under fallen concrete that's very dangerous and very precarious. They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again. The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out. Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job, do something different. Just can't go back. If you go back, it's going to end up the same way it has for 100 years. I'm hopeful that this ceasefire could be the beginning of a larger and more enduring peace that will end the bloodshed and killing once and for all. With the same goal in mind, my administration has been moving quickly to restore trust in the alliance and rebuild American strength throughout the region and we've really done that. We're a respected nation again. A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. We are actually a very respected nation again. I ended the last administration's de facto arms embargo on over $1 billion, in military assistance for Israel. And I'm also pleased to announce that this afternoon, the United States withdrew from the anti-Semitic UN Human Rights Council and ended all of the support for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which funneled money to Hamas, and which was very disloyal to humanity. Question 00:18:46-00:19:06 (20 sec) Mr. President, can a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia be achieved without the acknowledgment of a Palestinian state? That question for you, too, Mr. Prime Minister. And Mr. President, given what you've said about Gaza, did the US send troops to help secure the security vacuum? Donald Trump 00:19:06-00:19:29 (24 sec) So, Saudi Arabia is going to be very helpful. And they have been very helpful. They want peace in the Middle East. It's very simple. Uh, we know their leader and their leaders very well. They are wonderful people. And they want peace in the Middle East. As far as Gaza is concerned, we will do what is necessary. If it's necessary, we'll do that. We're going to take over that place and we're going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs. And it will be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of. But everybody feels that continuing the same process that's gone on forever over and over again and then it starts and then the killing starts, and all of the other problems start, and you end up in the same place and we don't want to see that happen. So, by the United States, with its stability and strength, owning it, especially the strength that we're developing and developed over the last fairly short period of time, I would say really since the election, I think we'll be a great keeper of something that is very, very strong, very powerful and very, very good for the area, not just for Israel, for the entire Middle East. It's very important and we'll again have thousands of jobs. And there will be jobs for everyone, not for a specific group of people, but for everybody. OK? Please. Question 00:21:08-00:21:26 (18 sec) First of all, President Trump, did you hear from Prime Minister Netanyahu [Inaudible] guarantees that the ceasefire will go on, including Phase 2? And Prime Minister Netanyahu, for you. Why are you refusing to set up a national commission to investigate the failure of the project? Donald Trump 00:21:26-00:21:51 (24 sec) Well, I can't tell you whether or not the ceasefire will hold. We've done I think a very masterful job. We weren't helped very much by the Biden administration. I can tell you that. But we've gotten quite a few hostages out. We're going to get more out. But we're dealing with very complex people, and we are going to see whether or not it holds. We certainly want to have more come out. They've come out damaged in many ways, damaged, very damaged people. But they're going to get better and they're going to be strong and they're going to have a good life. And we hope to get as many as possible out. Whether or not it holds, I don't know. We hope it holds. We hope it holds. Question 00:22:44-00:23:07 (22 sec) Mr. President, you are outlining something that is really quite striking. You are talking about -- OK, thank you. Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, you are talking tonight about the United States taking over a sovereign territory. What authority would allow you to do that? Are you talking about a permanent occupation there, redevelopment? Question 00:23:07-00:23:26 (19 sec) And Mr. Prime Minister, do you see this idea as a way to expand the boundaries of Israel and to have a longer peace, even though the Israeli people know how important that land is to you and your citizens just as the space is inherited by the Palestinians as well? Donald Trump 00:23:26-00:23:53 (27 sec) I do see a long-term ownership position and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East. And everybody I've spoken to -- this was not a decision made lightly. Everybody I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent in a really magnificent area that nobody would know. Nobody can look because all they see is death and destruction and rubble and demolished buildings falling all over. It's just a terrible, terrible sight. I've studied it -- Donald Trump 00:24:05-00:24:25 (21 sec) I've studied this very closely over a lot of months, and I've seen it from every different angle. And it's a very, very dangerous place to be and it's only going to get worse. And I think this is an idea that's gotten tremendous -- and I'm talking about from the highest level of leadership, gotten tremendous praise. Donald Trump 00:24:25-00:24:34 (8 sec) And if the United States can help to bring stability and peace in the Middle East, we'll do that. Bibi? Benjamin Netanyahu 00:24:34-00:24:48 (15 sec) I mentioned again tonight our three goals and the third goal is to make sure that Gaza never poses a threat to Israel again. President Trump is taking it to a much higher level. He sees a different -- Donald Trump 00:24:48-00:25:14 (26 sec) -- he sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism, so much -- so many attacks against us. So, many trials and so many tribulations. He has a different idea, and I think it's worth paying attention to this. We're talking about it, he's exploring it with his people, with his staff. I think it's something that could change history and it's worthwhile really pursuing this avenue. Question 00:26:34-00:26:46 (12 sec) How much time you think it will take? Mr. President, do you support Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria areas, which many believe is the biblical homeland of the Jewish people? Donald Trump 00:26:46-00:27:05 (19 sec) Well, we're discussing that with many of your representatives. You're represented very well, and people do like the idea, but we haven't taken a position on it yet. But we will be -- we'll be making an announcement probably on that very specific topic over the next four weeks. Question 00:27:10-00:27:25 (15 sec) Thank you so much, Mr. President. So, you just said -- OK. You just said that you think all the Palestinians should be relocated to other countries. Does that mean that you do not support the two-state solution? Donald Trump 00:27:25-00:27:48 (23 sec) It doesn't mean anything about a two-state or a one-state or any other state. It means that we want to have -- we want to give people a chance at life. They have never had a chance at life because the Gaza Strip has been a hellhole for people living there. It's been horrible. Hamas has made it so bad, so bad, so dangerous, so unfair to people. Donald Trump 00:27:48-00:28:08 (20 sec) And by doing what I'm recommending that we do, it's a very strong recommendation, but it is a strong recommendation. By doing that we think we're going to bring perhaps great peace to long beyond this area. And I have to stress, this is not for Israel, this is for everybody in the Middle East -- Arabs, Muslims -- this is for everybody. This would be where they can partake in terms of jobs and living and all of the other benefits. And I think it's very important. It just doesn't work the other way. You can't keep trying. They just -- has been going along for so many decades you can't even count. You just can't keep doing -- you have to learn from history. You can't keep doing the same mistake over and over again. Gaza is a hellhole right now. It was before the bombing started frankly. And we're going to give people a chance to live in a beautiful community that's safe and secure. And I think you're going to see tremendous -- a tremendous outflowing of support. I can tell you, I spoke to other leaders of countries in the Middle East and they love the idea. They say it would really bring stability and what we need is stability. Question 00:38:02-00:38:15 (12 sec) Just a follow up on what you were saying about the Gazans leaving Gaza going to other countries. One, where exactly are you suggesting that they should go? And two, are you saying they should return after it's rebuilt? And if not, who do you envision living there? Donald Trump 00:38:15-00:38:34 (20 sec) I envision a world -- people living there, the world's people. I think you'll make that into an international, unbelievable place. I think the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable. And I think the entire world, representatives from all over the world will be there and they'll -- Question 00:38:34-00:38:35 (1 sec) [Inaudible] Palestinians? Donald Trump 00:38:35-00:38:56 (21 sec) And they'll live there. Palestinians also. Palestinians will live there, many people will live there. But they've tried the other and they've tried it for decades and decades and decades. It's not going to work it work. It didn't work. It will never work. And you have to learn from history. History has -- you know, you just can't let it keep repeating itself. We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don't want to be cute. I don't want to be a wise guy. But the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so -- This could be so magnificent. But more importantly than that is the people that have been absolutely destroyed that live there now can live in peace in a much better situation because they are living in hell. And those people will now be able to live in peace. We'll make sure that it's done world class. It will be wonderful for the people. Palestinians, Palestinians mostly we're talking about. And I have a feeling that despite them saying no, I have a feeling that the king in Jordan and that the general president -- but that the general in Egypt will open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done, and people can live in harmony and in peace. Donald Trump 00:39:52-00:40:05 (13 sec) Thank you all, very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

The Osimhen Test https://www.scoutednotebook.com/i/156402230/the-osimhen-test Victor Osimhen is a caricature centre-forward. On MD8 of the UEFA Europa League, he almost generated as many Expected Goals (1.48) as passes completed (2). He attempted nine shots from 21 total touches. Across the entire UEL League Phase, he averaged a shot every 3.8 touches and almost had as many shots (41) as successful passes (53). This is the pinnacle of a goal-hanging poacher. This is the next centre-forward profile I want to explore. To do so, I decided to find out the following: during his time at Napoli, was Victor Osimhen the premium poacher in Europe’s Big Five Leagues? The hope was that I would stumble across some next generation goal-hangers along the way. Here is the Osimhen Test in Scatter Plot form, with a few high-profile names highlighted. If at any point you would like to ignore me and query the tables, it should be available here. If you would like to explore the Scatter Plot, click here. For those venturing on, I am going to work through my methodology, explaining my thought process while highlighting some outliers and anomalies. Spoiler alert: one of them is the €77m man, Jhon Durán. To begin answering my question, I exported Stathead FBref data for every forward to score at least five non-penalty goals from 2020/21 to 2023/24. This produced 703 players. 182 of those players were aged 23 or under during the final season contributing to their data. That sounds convoluted but it’s the best way to explain it. For example, Martin Ødegaard appears as an U23 player because he was tagged as a forward by FBref for a handful of games during the 2021/22 season, therefore appearing in the export. If anyone has any suggestions on how to refine position further, let me know. I then calculated my two top-tier poacher metrics you can see in the Scatter Plot: Touches per Shot and Penalty Box Proximity. It’s very nice to see Osimhen rank second for both. After all, this test is named after him. For Touches per Shot, Rodrigo Muniz is a fun surprise at number one and he’s good for the brand considering he was born in 2001. The fact his Average Shot Distance is the third-closest to goal within this group of 15 is another good sign; Mauro Icardi, who leads this group for that metric, stands tall in a land of giants to rank third overall for this metric. The appearance of Loïs Openda, Darwin Núñez and Erling Haaland also shows that Power Forwards can exhibit Poacher traits: purposeful, pacy off-ball runners rarely have lots of touches. It would be interesting to see how Osimhen and Muniz stack up in the Power Forward profile (I have a SkillCorner article in the works, watch this space). Returning to Penalty Box Proximity, another big-body centre-forward takes top spot: Like Muniz, there is a much smaller sample of data for Artem Dovbyk when compared to Osimhen, but the fact nearly a third of the Ukrainian’s touches occurred inside the penalty area is a testament to Girona’s style of play and the Ukrainian’s ability to operate and make an impact in that area. After posting about these metrics following last week’s MNS, the very smart Scott Willis (Cannon Stats) made a very smart suggestion: what about applying the calculations to final third actions only? Although it produced a similar ranking, there were enough subtle changes to suggest we can use the Final Third derivatives to laser in on the centre-forwards that set up a tent in the penalty area. For instance, it helps provide a fairer representation of style for strikers in teams that demand a lot of work battling for duels in the middle third. Take Luuk de Jong. He ranks in the 74th percentile when looking at his percentage of total touches that come inside the area (Penalty Box Proximity). However, he ranks in the 94th percentile when focussing on the percentage of his final third touches that occur in the penalty area. This suggests he does a lot of work to help his team get into final third but once that territory is secured, he pitches up his tent in the box - his top five ranking for Average Shot Distance we saw earlier backs this up. My theory is that there is less of a gap between both metrics when looking at his output for PSV given their recent dominance of the Eredivisie. The nugget of (potential) insight to introduce after looking at that first batch of data is that when looking at the correlation between NPxG and the others in this table, the strongest positive correlation was, excluding Non-Penalty Goals, was provided by Penalty Box Proximity (0.76), ahead of its Final Third variant (0.74) and Shots (0.7). Non-penalty Conversion Rate (0.13) and Touches in the Penalty Area had the weakest correlation in the set (0.24). Conversion Rate is the biggest purple patch metric I have come across in my eight years of working with this kind of data. Darwin Núñez and Nicolas Jackson both hit 30% before their respective moves to Liverpool and Chelsea. Now they share a reputation as two of the poorest finishers in the Premier League. I believe it makes little sense to focus on Conversion Rate on its own. There could be value in measuring it for particular game states or periods of the match to help profile the clutch poachers, while extreme values would also be worth investigating. But it is more often than not a vanity metric to highlight form and generate buzz for a signing - trust me, I used to help generate that buzz. If I told you that Chris Wood’s Non-Penalty Conversion Rate within this dataset is 13.8%, would that change your perception of him? It shouldn’t. Eyes of Arsenal fans reading (and writing, guilty) may have been drawn to Benjamin Šeško in the table above. I imagine the recruitment team’s job is to try to work out if there is a particular skill or collection of other metrics that suggests he could maintain that 29.8%, rather than pushing the club to sign him because of it. Trust this process. As for the lack of relationship between Touches in the Attacking Penalty Area and NPxG is likely due to the fact wingers and wide-forwards usually dominate the former. Not only do the likes of Kylian Mbappé and Mohamed Salah rain down shots from inside the area, their take-ons completed and passes inside the box all contribute to the tally. There is a reason we described Victor Boniface as the ‘nine with a winger’s soul’. Also note that Darwin Núñez appears in another Top 15, while Alejandro Garnacho is the closest to Mbappé for this metric. Keep the faith, United fans. As I have stressed before, I am still an aspiring data journalist [says who? - ed] and far from a data scientist - I have not studied maths beyond GCSE level. You may think ‘spending most of your time in the box will lead to good chances’ is so obvious it’s not even worth saying. But I’ve said it. I am completely ready for someone to tell me that I have used correlations and the like incorrectly. Even then, I still think looking at Penalty Box Proximity at least alongside Touches in the Attacking Penalty Area and other traditional metrics can help identify the ‘out-and-out centre-forwards’ everyone cries out for. When people say ‘out-and-out centre-forward’ they mean Victor Osimhen. Do they also mean Jhon Durán? The Colombian is an anomaly for numerous reasons, but let’s deal with his shot make-up for now. Despite ranking 7th for Final Third Touches per Shot, he has the lowest Penalty Box Proximity in this group. This fits the eye-test perception of his maverick playing style, further compounded by his Average Shot Distance of 17.1 yards. Does any of this matter when he’s scoring 0.74 NPG per 90? We don’t know, but it’s worth the risk to find out. Durán’s data paints the picture of a shoot on sight, pot-shotter. Now, he’s playing alongside another one up front. While players like Jhon Durán are undeniably box-office, Victor Osimhen is renting an office in the box. Goal-hanging is a craft and the Nigerian has mastered it. Now you know how to discover his apprentice.

Another wonderkid for Chelsea?! Blues considering summer swoop to sign €20m-rated Sporting CP midfielder Dario Essugo Chelsea are eyeing a move for Sporting CP wonderkid Dario Essugo in the summer transfer window. Feb 04, 2025 22:58+01:00 https://www.goal.com/en/lists/another-wonderkid-for-Chelsea-considering-summer-swoop-to-sign-sporting-cp-midfielder-dario-essugo/blt50e22423592c6b3c

Trump Proposes the U.S. Take Over Gaza, Says Palestinians Have 'No Alternative' but to Leave Gaza https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/04/us/trump-administration-rfk-jr-gabbard President Trump declared Tuesday that all Palestinians in Gaza — some two million people — should leave, describing a permanent relocation to one or more sites funded by “countries of interest with humanitarian hearts.” As he hosted Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for a joint news conference in the White House, Mr. Trump proposed that the United States “take over the Gaza Strip.” Read more › Trump Says Palestinians Have ‘No Alternative’ but to Leave Gaza https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/04/us/trump-administration-rfk-jr-gabbard/trump-netanyahu-meeting-israel-gaza https://archive.ph/ZHwdi President Trump declared on Tuesday that Palestinians had no choice but to leave Gaza because of the devastation wrought by Israel’s war with Hamas after the terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023, suggesting that they be given a new homeland. Mr. Trump made the comments to reporters shortly before hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House to talk about the next stage of a cease-fire in the Gaza war. Speaking in the Oval Office while signing executive orders, Mr. Trump said he wanted Jordan and Egypt to take in the Palestinians. “They have no alternative right now” but to leave, Mr. Trump said of Gazans. “I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.” He added: “I don’t know how they could want to stay. It’s a demolition site. It’s a pure demolition site.” Mr. Trump seemed to indicate that he wanted to find a permanent new homeland for the Palestinians rather than reconstruct Gaza. “If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places with plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” he said. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza.” While the president framed the matter as a humanitarian imperative, the notion of clearing Palestinians out of Gaza is an explosive one in a region that has endured generations of warfare over questions of homelands and forced migration. Neither Egypt nor Jordan want large numbers of Palestinians, given the burden and fears of instability, nor is it clear that Gazans would willingly abandon the enclave they have spent years defending, even with the destruction. snip

Bournemouth sign Eli Junior Kroupi from Lorient on €12m deal plus add-ons, top talent for the future. He’s staying at Lorient on loan until June.

Tuchel was a master at that

7 added minutes, arff

yes

it is why he didnt celebrate so yes, I did reply to your point

it was an OG

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

wow dodged a bullet there but would have been offside anyway

woot given

offsides?

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Willian

Nkunku and Gusto on