Vesper

Fullkrug just blew his hamstring down and out after just getting back from a long term injury

Potter the wizard off and running, lol

nil 1 Hammers

Aston Villa – West Ham United England. FA Cup / 10 January at 21:00

https://redditsoccerstreams.org/event/aston-villa-west-ham-united/1501372

https://www.vipleague.pm/fa-cup/aston-villa-vs-west-ham-united-1-live-streaming https://www.vipleague.pm/fa-cup/aston-villa-vs-west-ham-united-2-live-streaming

Philomena Cunk vs Prof. Brian Cox

this year yes, but IF he ends up going for only 35, 40m quid or so, and IF he stays healthy the rest of this year, I would not be adverse to a gamble, as when he is healthy he is a monster

https://thedailybriefing.io/i/154489566/paris-saint-germain Milan Skriniar has been offered to Napoli as part of a potential Kvaratskhelia deal with Paris Saint-Germain. No green light from the Italians at this stage.

fuck, if true https://thedailybriefing.io/i/154489566/barcelona Juventus want to tie up a deal for Ronald Araujo deal, and more contact is planned with Barcelona to speed up negotiations.

Pikey Wizard

Easy for some: Charlotte Owen got peerage for ‘advising Boris Johnson on reshuffles’ The former prime minister called Charlotte Owen, who became the youngest life peer in parliamentary history, an ‘extremely effective’ adviser https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/charlotte-owen-got-peerage-for-advising-boris-johnson-on-reshuffles-5qfbvdfvt Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge was 30 when nominated for her peerage, and had spent six years in relatively junior Westminster roles Boris Johnson justified handing a junior aide a spot in the House of Lords by saying she advised him on cabinet reshuffles and ministerial appointments. Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge and Lord Kempsell, two former special advisers in the Conservative government, were appointed to the House of Lords in Johnson’s resignation honours list. The government’s justification for the appointments, published on Thursday, says that Johnson “entrusted Charlotte with engaging the parliamentary party on his behalf and she was essential to maintaining his relationship with them”. It added that “Charlotte was later tasked with helping the new chief whip in his role and used her unique knowledge to become a bridge between the prime minister and the chief whip”. Owen was 30 when Johnson put her forward for the peerage in 2023, after only six years at Westminster in relatively junior roles, making her the youngest life peer in parliamentary history. The former prime minister has previously defended the move saying that she had been an “extremely effective” political adviser. Johnson’s citation for her also states that “Charlotte led on many sensitive and key projects including advising the prime minister and the chief whip on suitability for ministerial appointments during the reshuffle”. Owen’s formal nominators for the peerage were Grant Shapps and Chris Heaton-Harris, then cabinet ministers. Owen was said to have been “essential” to Boris Johnson’s relationship with his parliamentary party TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL Kempsell, appointed when he was 31, was also an adviser to Johnson and political director of the Conservative Party. The justification given in his case included: “As political director, he was the most senior policy and political official in the Conservative Party, having overall responsibility for developing the party’s policy platform, political campaigning, media position and managing a team of ten in the party’s policy and research secretariat. “He provided political advice directly to the prime minister, all cabinet ministers and many MPs, prepared the prime minister for parliamentary appearances and developed the party’s platform for multiple party conferences. He led work on major parliamentary by-elections.” The reasons were only published after an 18-month freedom of information battle with Martin Rosenbaum, a transparency campaigner. Rosenbaum took the House of Lords Appointments Commission (Holac) to a tribunal to reveal the letters. Holac had refused his freedom of information request on the grounds that the citations contained confidential personal information but a judge upheld Rosenbaum’s arguments that releasing the information was in the public interest. Rosenbaum said that the reasons cited for nominating Owen “do come across as very thin, inadequate and lacking in evidence of relevant achievements”. He added: “They leave her peerage as a mystery rather than properly justifying and explaining it. “I am very pleased that the documentation has now been revealed, but it shouldn’t need an argument over 18 months for the public to find out what reasons are officially provided for allocating certain people important political powers.”

Britain at a Crossroads: financial turmoil meets political threats Paul Mason 10th January 2025 As the UK battles rising bond yields, a weakening currency, and Musk’s online assault on democracy, Starmer’s government finds itself on the frontline of a global power struggle. https://www.socialeurope.eu/britain-at-a-crossroads-financial-turmoil-meets-political-threats I am writing this from an island under siege. One of the sieges is financial: the yield on a UK 10-year government bond is hovering around 4.8 percent, while sterling’s value against the dollar is falling. This has prompted foreign exchange traders to begin referring to the pound as the Great British Peso, and some commentators to push for immediate fiscal austerity. The other siege is an existential attack on Britain’s democracy. Since the turn of the year, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the owner of X.com, has bombarded the Labour government with a string of insults and disinformation designed—according to a report by the Financial Times—to eject Keir Starmer from power. Musk’s chosen casus belli is the so-called “grooming gang” scandal, which emerged under successive governments in the first two decades of this century. From around 2011, a pattern emerged in police investigations which found that gangs of men—often taxi drivers or others involved in manual work—had been preying on girls beneath the age of consent: tricking them into imagined relationships and then gang-raping them. Some, but not all, of the perpetrators were of Pakistani origin. Numerous local and national investigations found the police had failed to investigate these rape gangs properly. Councils, which were supposed to care for some of the victims, downplayed both the crimes and the ethnicity of the perpetrators. It was a major breakdown in the justice system because, despite scores of men being convicted, the number of victims runs into thousands, many of whom neither testified in court nor received compensation. It has become a cause célèbre for the extreme right. What the far right wants is for the British state to associate this pattern of sexual violence with Pakistani ethnic identity. But it cannot. First, because the state’s records of the perpetrators’ ethnicity are patchy; second, because professional criminologists simply will not draw such binary conclusions. When Labour refused to call yet another national inquiry into the scandal, Musk piled in. He accused the Labour minister Jess Phillips of assisting genocide, accused Starmer of a deliberate cover-up, and has allegedly begun discussions with aides about bringing Labour down. He offered support to the right-wing populist Reform Party, urged it to ally with the convicted criminal and far-right leader Tommy Robinson, and then slammed the party’s leader—Nigel Farage—when he refused. He has called for the King to dissolve Parliament and reposted numerous offensive messages from fascist-aligned X.com accounts. And it is not over. Keir Starmer came out fighting against Musk, while the British finance minister Rachel Reeves has played what English cricketers call a “straight bat” against the financial threat: calm words, orthodox policies, and non-engagement with the panic narrative. My fear, however, is that the perils of destabilisation will haunt both the UK government and its major European allies for as long as Trump is president and his ally, Musk, is engaged in his task of democratic destabilisation. Looming over the entire relationship between European states and these figureheads of American racism and misogyny is Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on European states, to seize Canada and Greenland, and to walk away from NATO. Linking cause to effect in the bond market can be difficult. A plausible account of Britain’s high cost of borrowing goes like this: Brexit has impaired the country’s economy; the crazed policymaking of the 49-day Liz Truss administration has impaired its reputation for fiscal stability, so the UK is paying a higher price than any other G7 country for its borrowing, despite its debt being well below 100 percent of GDP. In addition, however, it is paying a premium for Trump’s mercurial policymaking. If he does impose tariffs on European goods, the argument goes, Britain will fare worse than its G7 counterparts in the EU because its trade balance and currency are more exposed than those of the Eurozone. These dangers alone would be enough to put the Labour government on the defensive: its entire political project is premised on being able to stimulate growth through borrowing, state direction, and industrial strategy. Yet the economy is stagnating because global demand is weak and the sources of potential growth and productivity have atrophied during decades of offshoring and the rise of rentier capitalism. But Musk’s intervention feels like a deliberate “force multiplier” in an asymmetric attack. The bond markets target the fiscal authorities, Musk targets the stability and reputation of the government, while Trump puts the squeeze on Britain to spend more on defence, to accept a one-sided trade deal (locking us out of the Single Market forever), and preparing the way for his ally, Farage, to supplant the Conservative Party as the potential next government. This may sound paranoid, but it would not require Trump or Musk to possess the brain cells and political interest in the UK to enact this strategy, because there are numerous British figures surrounding them for whom this is a desired course of action. Starmer’s government is obliged to fend off the bond market vigilantes with the traditional tools: fiscal rigour, central bank signalling and, if necessary, intervention. The delayed and timid implementation of a new internet law, which would have obliged Musk to act more responsibly regarding hate speech and disinformation, has left Britain currently defenceless against his online manipulation. Moreover, UK laws on foreign electoral interference may not be strong enough to prevent Musk from attempting to buy the next election. Thus, the ultimate fate of the Labour government may depend on the forces it can mobilise within UK civil society and the goodwill it can garner from more traditional conservatives in Washington. Above all, Starmer needs to deliver not just the long-term promise of growth and national renewal on which he won his substantial majority in July 2024, but also real, short-term improvements in living costs, housing supply and basic economic demand. The one sure-fire way of achieving this, even in a deindustrialised economy like Britain’s, would be to rearm to meet the external threat posed by Russia. Rachel Reeves, the finance minister, has pledged never to borrow for day-to-day spending, only to invest. If the Strategic Defence Review—an independent and external review of UK military capability—mandates the government to lift defence spending substantially, then the path may be open to higher borrowing, particularly if Trump makes the same demand. The worst of all worlds would be if the UK caves to the pressure of the bond market, imposing renewed cuts to public spending, while failing to mobilise progressive forces within civil society to resist the far right. Britain, unlike Germany, has no debt brake, nor is it constrained by the rules of the Maastricht Treaty. It is on its own when it comes to dealing with the chaos engine that is the incoming Trump administration, which is, not surprisingly, exactly where the Brexiteers wanted it to be when they designed their catastrophic project. European governments may be bemused, for now, at Starmer’s predicament. But they should watch it closely. Because this asymmetric mixture of trade war, bond market pressure and outright political interference is coming everyone’s way soon. This is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS-Journal Paul Mason Paul Mason is a journalist, writer and filmmaker. His latest book is How To Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance (Allen Lane). His most recent films include R is For Rosa, with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. He writes weekly for New Statesman and contributes to Der Freitag and Le Monde Diplomatique.

The Scouser One

add in Vitor Reis (likely if not a lock) and bloody hell, do I wish we had Citeh's CBs! LOADED with both vets and now youngsters with massive potential. MF is what is killing them (Rodri out has been devastating obviously, without him they have been so overrun is so many games), plus LB

big LWer breakdown: Kvaratskhelia is a LWer and is ambipedal, but plays mostly on the left, not the right Estevão is a left footed RWer, so 2 different types of player I assume we will eventually sell Muddy and Felix (who is not a pure LWer and lacks pace) so it would be Kvaratskhelia and Sancho as our 2 LWers there are 6 WC left wingers out there who are potentially available (assuming Real Madrid does NOT sell either Mbappe or Vini Jr, and I so doubt either would come here anyway) the first two and the last one can also play AMF and SS (and the first two are the 2 best IMHO, after the abovementioned Mbappe and Vini Jr)) Florian Wirtz Jamal Musiala Khvicha Kvaratskhelia Rafael Leão Nico Williams Xavi Simons there are 4 another wild cards for LW Rodrygo (he is right footer who plays out of postion on the right at Real due to RM's overload on the left) he would be a superb left winger as well, but again, I so doubt Real would sell him Jamie Gittens of Dortmund is the 2nd wild card (and is only 20yo, so prime age for the BlueCo model) Kenan Yıldız of Juve is the 3rd, and he is only 19yo (but so doubtful Juve would sell him for annything other than silly money) Johan Bakayoko of PSV Eindhoven is the 4th, but he has regressed a bit this seaons (he is only 21, so still have a long time to come good, BUT I am leary of Dutch League players overall) all that said Bradley Barcola at PSG is another WC left winger, but I see no possible scenario where PSG would sell him, he is the 2nd leading scorer in Ligue 1, trailing Jonathan David of Lille (a CF) by one goal, plus Désiré Doué has not exactly set the world on fire at PSG so far Dani Olmo and Ademola Lookman (who also, like Wirtz, Musiala, and Simons also play AMF and /or SS) plus Diaz and Gapko of Pool, and Doku of Citeh are the last of the WC left wingers, but Barca just won their appeal (granted temp) and have now registred Olmo to play, and I also do not see Atalanta selling Lookman, same for Gapko (Diaz is wanted BADLY by the Saudis, and has said IF he leaves Pool it will NOT be for another EPL club) No chance Citeh sell Doku. I am not yet sold on Álex Baena of Villarreal, Gordon of NUFC would be insanely expensive for the quality, and obviously Pulisic is not coming back here. I do not rate Adeyemi of Dortmund enough to think about buying him. Far too inconsistent. Mathys Tel has had a poor year he is only 19yo, and the porrness also comes from almsot no playing time atm), and is more of a CF than a winger. Need to see another year or 2 from Antonio Nusa at Leipzig. All the other great wingers not listed above are RWers Lamine Yamal Bukayo Saka Phil Foden Raphinha Michael Olise Mohamed Salah Ousmane Dembélé Bryan Mbeumo Mohammed Kudus Geovany Quenda in closing, I probably forgot some names overall at bother wings, but I listed a shedload, lolol

Vans and Carpet Company Reunite to Unveil Skate Old Skool 36+ to the World Inspired by the OG Style 36—originally introduced in 1977 as the first iteration of the Old Skool—this updated model combines timeless design with modern upgrades. https://www.vans.eu/news/vans-carpet-company-skate-old-skool-36.html Set to release on January 9, 2025, through VCU (Vans Checkerboard Union), Vans and Carpet Company are reimagining the classic Old Skool™ with the launch of the Skate Old Skool 36+. Inspired by the OG Style 36—originally introduced in 1977 as the first iteration of the Old Skool—this updated model combines timeless design with modern upgrades. Key features include a single-wrap foxing, a padded tongue for added comfort, and durable metal eyelets, all while staying true to the spirit of the iconic sneaker.

all of the following are 30yo or older Scott Carson Kyle Walker İlkay Gündoğan Kevin De Bruyne Stefan Ortega Ederson Mateo Kovacic John Stones Bernardo Silva Nathan Aké (30yo next month) Manuel Akanji (30yo in July) Jack Grealish (30yo in early September) on loan Kalvin Phillips (30yo in December)

IF we dump fucking 70m quid on Mainoo I am done DONE not having a laugh the only CMFs I rate at £70m or more (Bellingham is more of an AMF, but if you count him as a CMF, then obviously he is the top of the list) are Federico Valverde Pedri Eduardo Camavinga Nicolò Barella (and time is running out, he turns 29 in the middle of next season) Alexis Mac Allister Warren Zaïre-Emery Vitinha (Gavi is a no, he is chronically injured atm, I would need to see 2 straight healthy seasons) below those would be Pablo Barrios Fermín López these 4 are DMFs João Neves Martín Zubimendi Aleksandar Pavlovic Carlos Baleba

around 2/3rds RB 1/3rd CB a few games as a RMF Stats 24/25 Stats 23/24 Stats 22/23 Stats 21/22

Christian Pulisic inspires Milan to Super Cup win, clinches his first trophy for the club https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6042672/2025/01/06/pulisic-ac-milan-super-cup-win/ Christian Pulisic lifted his first trophy for AC Milan as he once again led a fightback which saw his team come from behind and beat rivals Inter 3-2 in the Italian Super Cup final. The USMNT international scored a wonderful goal on 80 minutes during the final in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday to make it 2-2, after the Rossoneri had trailed by two goals to Simone Inzaghi’s men either side of half-time. Then in added time Pulisic played a sublime defence-splitting pass, which allowed Rafael Leao to slide the ball across goal for Tammy Abraham to tap into the net and clinch their first silverware since 2022. It was a suitably dramatic ending to a game which Milan were only in thanks to another Pulisic salvation act at the same Al-Awal stadium on Friday. In the semi-final he helped them come from behind again to beat Weston McKennie and Tim Weah’s Juventus 2-1 with another equaliser, before compatriot Yunus Musah forced the own goal that gave them victory. But Pulisic saved his best for Monday’s final against Serie A’s third-place team, as Milan currently languish in eighth after a patch of indifferent form that saw Paulo Fonseca fired and Sergio Conceicao appointed manager last week. Things looked bleak for the new man in charge with Inter leading in the showpiece final, but France defender Theo Hernandez pulled a goal back on 52 minutes before Pulisic’s wonderful turn and finish with 10 minutes of ordinary time remaining. The 26-year-old former Chelsea and Borussia Dortmund attacker managed to squeeze in his left-footed strike past goalkeeper Yann Sommer, despite being surrounded by blue and black shirts, after a smart turn. Then he showed his creative genius in the third minute of added time with the left-footed pass that created Abraham’s winner. Cutting in off the right flank, the American went past defender Carlos Augusto and then, spotting Leao’s darting run into the area, he played an inch-perfect pass that split Inters covering duo Alessandro Bastonu and Kristjan Asllani, enabling Leao to simply turn the ball across goal at close range for Abraham to convert. For new boss Conceicao it meant wins over Juventus and Inter in his first two games in charge. And for the Rossoneri the trophy might galvanise a season that had began to drift, but sees them still in the Champions League and able to fight for qualification for that tournament again next season via the league, even if the Scudetto seems beyond them as they trail leaders Napoli by 17 points. But in many ways this final will be remembered for Pulisic’s game-changing role. He has now made 22 appearances in all competitions for Milan this season, scoring nine goals and providing six assists as he flourishes into a talismanic performer. Capped 76 times by the USMNT, he has registered two goals and two assists in three appearances under new head coach Mauricio Pochettino.