TorontoChelsea

First off, it was not literally millions. It was literally hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were expelled or fled. The event is actually incredibly common in history. (Pick a war, any war, and you will find refugees. The Syrian civil war already has over a million refugees for example, 2 million have fled from Iraq). The big difference is that for political reasons, countries that should have allowed Palestinians to assimilate, with the exception of Jordan, kept them in awful conditions and didn't allow them to hold even the most basic jobs or even build houses. That has never happened to any other population for so long a period of time. The plight of the Palestinians is critical and deserves attention, but pretending it is remotely unique in history is ridiculous. Almost every single country was created under similar circumstances (one population comes in, displaces another by force.) It was the same in Australia, all of North America, all of South America...well, even Europe but that was generally longer ago.

But...the media where? In the US and in Europe of course they're going to cover it more. If they are covering it more in Lebanon than they do the Syrian crises, then that's astonishing. If the media gave more coverage to people dying from hunger in Africa, nothing would happen. The coverage of starvation in Africa has been going on for as long as I can remember and longer. Is there anybody who doesn't know that there is massive hunger in much of Africa? There have been concerts, rallies, charities galore and all of it has amounted to nothing. People like to think of the media (and society in general) as top-down whereas generally, it's just capitalist. The stories that get covered are the stories that interest people. The news has a lot of power, but its power is also limited. It can't dictate what interests people and in the West, it has to fight for attention and gear its news to that. It can show horrible images and people will think "that's sad" and then turn the channel to watch a football match or celebrity gossip. If there were any sort of market for the sort of news you'd like to see, it would have happened but there isn't and it isn't a conspiracy. It's human nature.

That's the way the news works for a number of reasons. First off, people don't care about the chronic, regular occurrence they care about the acute one-off event. That's why school massacres get attention and the day to day shootings which kill far more people, don't. Attacks in the US are incredibly rare. That's why it's news. Attacks in Syria at this point are not really news because they happen every day. Second, people in the west care about the attacks on our lives. We know there are tons of deaths all over the world. It's a natural reaction to more horrified at attacks in circumstances you might find yourself in. Someone being shot at your supermarket is more newsworthy to you than 10, 000 dead in a Bangladesh flood. It's not wrong, it's natural self-interest. It doesn't mean that the person killed in the supermarket is worth 10, 000 Bangladeshi lives. Lastly, comparing death totals is a fool's game. Were people not supposed to be upset by the July 7 attacks because they didn't kill that meany people relative to wars? Should we ignore Syria because 70,000 people killed in a war is still historically insignificant? The siege of Leningrad killed about 1, 000, 000 civilians. If you play this game, you can keep going until you can't discuss anything. People were killed today and it's shocking and awful. That doesn't mean that people killed in Syria is any less awful or that their lives are worth less.

It depends what you mean by high cost. There were really only 3 expensive players coming into the Premier League this season (over 20M) so obviously not going to be a lot of bargains there. Lots of good value at lower costs though. (Nestasic, Michu, Vertonghen, Benteke, etc...)

Yeah, that's true and it was a poor signing. He's a decent player, but not near elite. Still, the overall group of midfielders signed in this range (and even lower) is excellent.

I can't blame Foy for that one. In real time, nobody saw how bad it was. It actually looked unintentional. It was only after watching the replays that you could see it for what it really was. The Torres non-call was much worse because it was obvious even in real time.

I wanted something in between one choice and everybody. I don't think either of our managers this season really deserve blame for the current general state of the club and I don't think managers matter that much anyway. We wouldn't win with this club under any manager. We're simply not as talented as the top teams, we have less depth, and we have bigger holes in our roster despite generally outspending them. To me, that means that most of the fault lies with the board.

I agree except that City were also unlucky not to score more. Milner would have scored had the ball not hit Aguero who was off-side. Kompany had almost an open net and missed it by a mile. They outplayed us and actually dominated us for much of the game. The ref was awful, but we deserved to lose. (I can actually excuse Foy for not seeing the Aguero stomp because it was difficult to see in real time, but the Kompany tug on Torres' shirt was the centre of play. He had to see that!)

No...he was atrocious. His crossing was awful and his defending was terrible.

A couple of awful calls but quite frankly, City were better than we were.

Great half for a neutral. Unfortunately, I'm not a neutral. We were outplayed and they deserve to be ahead. We keep getting overrun in the midfield, largely because our forwards don't track back well/at all.

Ageruo saved us a goal.

We're being so vastly outplayed right now.

2 Things. 1) We paid 13M for Lukaku with clauses that could take it up to 18...so half of what Oscar cost. Lots of young promising, talented players like Oxlade-Chamberlin and Phil Jones go for around what Lukaku went for. In the last 3 seasons, the midfielders who went for more than 20M have been. Hazard, Mata, Nasri, Ya Ya Toure, and Silva. All of those players were successful at a high level before the transfers. If you go a bit cheaper, you get players like Kagawa, Milner, Ramires, and Dembele. 2) Lukaku had no success his first year because he never played. He started 4 games in the entire season and 3 of those were in the League Cup. Oscar has played a full first-team season with Chelsea. Because tho cost of transfers are spread out over the life of a contract, we're actually paying for Oscar (let's say he's making 40K/week) over 7M pounds a year. This is why despite what people want, paying big money for players you need to develop is a bad policy because you have to pay big money while they are developing which means that the financial benefit you get later in the contract is mitigated by your losses earlier in the contract... (Also, as KDB and Courtois and others have shown, you can get very good quality youngsters for cheaper anyway).

The problem is that Rafa has not done well. We have a worse overall winning percentage under Rafa than under RDM with a much easier schedule. We have played very few difficult fixtures under Rafa. I'm talking about maybe 10-15% difficult matches..We're winning most of the easier games, but we did that under RDM as well and our worst losses of the season have almost all come under Rafa. I'd say our most difficult games played so far this season have been Juventus, City, Spurs, and Arsenal away, and ManU and Juventus at home. All but one came under RDM. Of our worst results this season, Brentford draw, QPR loss and draw, West Ham loss, Southampton loss and draw, Reading draw, all but one have come under Rafa. I never really hated him, but he hasn't done a good job. We're beating teams we should be beating and even then at a lower rate than we should be or that we did under RDM.

He hasn't had a good season. He has basically been useless in the league and a few great games in Europe doesn't make up for that. Expectations are directly related to cost. Oscar cost 25M pounds which is what elite midfielders cost. When you buy someone for 5M pounds or whatever, you expect growing pains and struggles, for 25M, you expect immediate excellence or you really shouldn't be paying that much.

All students can study at: HEC Montreal (Montreal, Quebec) - highly recommended by QUT Business School. Simon Fraser University (British Columbia) - new. All undergraduate students can study at: Bishop's University (Sherbrooke, Quebec) - recommended by the Creative Industries Faculty and the Science and Engineering Faculty (Science). Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia) - recommended by the Creative Industries Faculty. Ecole Polytechnique Montreal (Centreville, Quebec) - recommended for engineering and IT (research internship opportunity). I was thinking Quebec so I could hopefully learn French or something. All students can study at: HEC Montreal (Montreal, Quebec) - highly recommended by QUT Business School. Simon Fraser University (British Columbia) - new. All undergraduate students can study at: Bishop's University (Sherbrooke, Quebec) - recommended by the Creative Industries Faculty and the Science and Engineering Faculty (Science). Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia) - recommended by the Creative Industries Faculty. Ecole Polytechnique Montreal (Centreville, Quebec) - recommended for engineering and IT (research internship opportunity). I was thinking Quebec so I could hopefully learn French or something. Montreal is a great city in many ways. It has a very European feel. Not the best place to learn French because it also has big Anglo population so you automatically migrate to them. Still, if you want to, you can definitely learn. Halifax is an interesting city as well. Smaller and right on the water. It's more like England than central Canada (in its maritime climate and more English culture). Sherbrooke is a very Quebecois city. Very few English speakers but even that could be interesting. Simon Fraser is in a beautiful setting, but it's actually just outside Vancouver in Burnaby which would annoy me. Ecole Polytechnique is good for engineering but is sadly most famous for a massacre there about 25 years ago where a man killed a bunch of women. If I had to pick, I'd probably pick Montreal because I am a big city person and Universite de Montreal (which the HEC is affiliated with) is probably the best university on the list although all of them are absolutely fine.

I have Australian friends in Toronto. The weather is a fairly big change, but apart from that, things will make a lot of sense to you. English speaking, former English colony. Modern country, big city, etc...Any English-speaking country is just much easier to adapt to (for obvious reasons) but some are harder to adapt to than others. (The US is close to Canada in many ways but also completely different from any other country in others).

I would recommend Canada if you can get in. The weather is awful, but it's an easy place to be (things generally make sense and work pretty well) and you can find any community you want. Lots of Lebanese in Montreal because of the French connection and Toronto because in Toronto, we have every sort of immigrant. As well, you meet people from different communities which is amazing.

They don't work in the US. Basketball is the most uneven sport in the world. Going into the season, only 2 or 3 teams had any chance to win and I'd be very surprised if the Heat don't win it. NFL works because there are so few games but the NFL, the winner isn't the best team, it's just a team that happens to get hot, avoid injuries at the right time, and gets some luck. I follow the NHL and have done so for a long time. Prior to the salary cap, the league was infinitely better. You had bad teams and great teams. Now, you have a lot of OK teams. I find that generally dull. I want to watch teams like Barcelona, ManU, Juventus, Bayern ,Chelsea, etc...not teams like Sunderland and Levante and Parma. Parity means mediocrity. Even so, salary caps don't really work. Since 2000, in North American sports, here is how many different teams have won their championships. NBA (salary cap)-6 NFL (salary cap)-10 MLB (no salary cap)-10

Salary caps are awful. They are socialism for the super rich and they create a league of mediocrity. I agree that money wins (I don't see how anyone can argue otherwise based on results) but I'd rather have 10-15 very good to excellent teams competing at the top of Europe than 200 mediocre teams. There are things that could and should be done to bring the level of spending down so that more teams can compete though.

City won't win the title. ManU are 12 points up with 7 matches to go. ManU need 10 more points to clinch the title. 10 points in 7 games is 3 wins and a draw and that's if City won every single match. If City lost just one of 7, ManU would just need 7 points to clinch the title..

There aren't any of the best teams in Europe in this tournament and that's why I and others don't rate it. It's the quarter-finals and the teams are Champions League group stage quality. It's the Championship of tournaments.

A win is a win, but we were pretty lucky. Ivanovic MOTM for me even without the goal. 6 tackles, 9 clearances, 4 aerial duels won, and 88% passing with 9 for 12 on long balls. Luiz also had a very good game.

Another pinball goal!!!