CHOULO19

At Stoke on a cold and rainy Monday night? That doesn't sound worrying at all...

The same Maribor we drew against?

Physically yes, but mentally he does not have the discipline to play the holding role for a whole match and I don't think he'd want to. Absolutely no idea why we are discussing this. The chances of him coming here are practically zero.

I'm sorry, but where is exactly is the reasoning for this coming from? You're using this as fact when it is far from it. Last night, we something very close to our best XI (only Mikel was arguably one of the 'fringe' players after Zouma was subbed off as Luis and Drogba are very much regulars) and we were looking in trouble until the ref decided to wrongly send off a Derby player. Yes, we managed the game well and made it look fairly comfortable most of the times but that was a close game. Derby played very well and made it difficult for us, as we all knew they would. How exactly do you conclude that we would still have won had a couple of first-teamers been replaced by inexperience youth players? For me, the way the game panned out and level at which Derby played only confirms that Jose was 100% right to start a very strong team.

That's not true. Jose did what was best for the team. The team always comes first and the simple fact is Rami is more important to the team than Mo. It's literally that simple.

No, there is no direct logical conclusion (that I know of) from evolution about the absence of free will. That's what I meant that you can't apply it any specific situation. Moral principles are pretty common globally. But when you take any specific situation into consideration (obvious the more complicated the more contentious) there will be several morals and non-ethical motivations to take different stances on the matter. It doesn't mean that if two people come to different conclusions that they have different moral principles, they are just applying them different. In the example of the plane, there is of course the moral urge to not kill and harm the innocent and contradictory to that is the motivation to do what you believe brings 'good' and the best interest of the world and society (obvious that is an over-simplification and I'm not in any attempting to justify 9/11). But if you talk in general and not about any specific situation, anyone in the world would say that lying is in general immoral, but everyone would also tell you that it is sometimes the best solution. There is nothing to suggest that morals should be coherent and all point to the same direction. In fact, it is very evident that quite the opposite is true. And evolution actually provides a perfect explanation for this. Because the theory states that morals come from different physical mechanisms in the brain that have evolved due to different evolutionary needs and pressures and hence that they contradict in complex issues and in issues that they did evolve to solve is not only normal but a necessity for the theory to be correct.

So he is Brazilian after all!

Reading on Twitter that it's not a bad or long-term injury. Hopefully true.

Hitler was also a Catholic, so that has nothing to do with beliefs. You can twist almost any belief to suite your agenda. What we call "good" and "bad" (from a moral perspective) are what sustain or destroy a community. Like any other physical evolutionary trait, natural selection decides what's 'good' and what's 'bad'. You can't create a star in a lab but yet we know for a scientific fact how stars are formed. The global concepts of 'good' and 'evil' are almost the same anywhere. Forget a bit our modern day of communication and go back 2-3 thousand years and you'll find societies in the east and the west had almost identical views of 'good' and 'evil' even though those societies have never interacted with each other. Various religions of distant cultures have very similar moral codes. People, even from the same society and background and even beliefs, can have different opinions on 'good' and 'evil' on specific situations because we all have various moral-related and non-moral related urges that often contradict one another. Morality itself is often self-contradictory in complex situations. Morals are ideally 'designed' for very simple social interactions.

Honestly, like I said before, I was very impressed by your team. I've seen a couple of your games this season but I thought you really upped your performance today. I can honestly say that probably better than a few of the PL teams we've played this season like Hull, QPR and Burnley. I though McClaren got his tactics pretty spot on.

Why do bad? Or rather why not do good? No one lives their lives on a purely logical basis. We are all affected by instincts and biological nature and cultural and social influences so we all want to do good by moral standards. Think of it this way, if you are convinced that this the only life you'll get then you have everything to live for right now. Would you want to spend your one and only life doing bad? If you have no after life and heaven to go to, wouldn't you want to try your best to turn your current life as close as possible to that idealistic view of life?

Don't want to get into a religious debate but don't want to dismiss your question, either. So, to put it simply and briefly: the will to live. That has led to many animals, including humans, to live in communities which has in turn forced the evolution of a set of shared ground rules that govern these communities, namely morals. There's plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that morals (at least the basic transcultural forms of them) are physical aspects of the brain (neurons) whose properties are passed on genetically. Actually, this is one of the areas of expertise of @Stingray, if I remember correctly. You'd probably get a more detailed and full answer from him.

Inconsistent. Even during a single game like tonight he seems to have good and bad spells. Needs to stop worrying about scoring goals and start worrying about performing consistently.

Think he was meant to come off the bench if it weren't for the injuries. Unfortunately for him getting Rami back to full fitness is more important than giving him a chance to prove himself. That said, I still think there's a start for him somewhere between now and Jan 1st.

As far as I know (which isn't much to be perfectly honest) this year the Pakistani army launched it's biggest ever attack on Taliban, so they know what they're up against. By my understanding this attack was, to the Taliban, some sort of retaliation to that campaign. By what I read, the Pakistani army themselves have made some mistakes as well by blocking out any media coverage of this campaign and reportedly sometimes targeting civilian areas which only increases the extremism. But I'm sure that @Mufassir08 can give a much more complete image of this than me.

That's a relief. Was genuinely worried about him, especially after seeing the reaction of the players around him. Head injury is nothing to take lightly.

I take what I said about him in the number 10 position, he was incredible today! Well, not everything, I still have reservations that he has the legs to press top teams high up the pitch like Oscar and Willian do. But his involvement today was excellent and he was brilliant on the ball.

Reports that one of their leaders was quoted saying that this is "only the start". What's next? An attack on a kindergarten?!

Went with Eden for MOTM for his amazing professionalism and work-rate, even though Cesc was incredible as well. Really, everyone had an excellent or at least decent game, today.

Of course you didn't, why in the world would any of the western mainstream media outlets, especially under the Reagan administration, report that? It's very well documented, though. Even a simple search on wikipedia and you'll find it: "The mujahideen favoured sabotage operations. The more common types of sabotage included damaging power lines, knocking out pipelines and radio stations, blowing up government office buildings, air terminals, hotels, cinemas, and so on...They concentrated on both civilian and military targets, knocking out bridges, closing major roads, attacking convoys, disrupting the electric power system and industrial production...." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan

You're assuming they beat Bournemouth?!

That was proper match. Fair play to Derby who I thought got their game-plan spot on and played rather well apart from a couple of mistakes. But we managed the game excellently and always looked fairly comfortable. Through to the semis and 6 days until the next match

I really hope so. Otherwise there could be some broken or fractured cheek bones.

Peaceful organization? Why do you think he was meeting with them? To give them weapons and funds to perform what would now be called 'terrorist' operations against the Soviet union. Of course, back then it was called resistance. Same people, same organizations, same ideologies, same methods, different political alliances and interests.

Well, there must be something hard inside to protect the skull. Plastic?