Jimmy_D

Not playing badly here...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0bqc59f/the-fa-cup-202122-fifth-round-southampton-v-west-ham-united Up on iPlayer now.

We’re not out of it before a ball’s been kicked of course, but feels like that line up gives us far less chance than we’d want. I’d have preferred to see us going full strength from the start.

Good luck!

There’s no tactical advantage in defending empty ground with very little cover. Who were these people thinking Ukraine had any chance against a huge Russian military force a month ago?

Putin might have claimed he was packing up and going home, but no Western intelligence believed that for a second. Most of the land mass currently controlled is empty, ceded in order to concentrate on defending key targets, and on top of that is still very much contested. Painting that as already having a huge success is ridiculous.

As soon as Putin went from ‘just’ occupying the separatist regions, to a full scale assault of the whole of Ukraine, the only way it makes sense is if they were expecting their disinformation war to have been far more successful and for the Ukrainian people to welcome them. Russian units advanced way ahead of supply lines, looks like they wanted to have forces in place to accept a quick surrender, with very few casualties, and Putin be able to claim he was liberating Ukraine. If he’d have been able to claim he was there with the will of the people, the West would have been far more divided on how to respond. Now Putin is trapped as he’d look even weaker to back down, but the cost of switching to heavier tactics that have killed many civilians is high for him. Decades of Russian efforts to create division in NATO have evaporated overnight, other countries that Putin wants to return to the Russian Empire have been pushed towards NATO and the EU, Western perception of Russia’s conventional warfare capabilities have been significantly reduced, sanctions that would have been unthinkable two weeks ago are already in place, Russian people are protesting in huge numbers, and the longer this all goes on, more and more of Putin’s allies are distancing themselves from him. I don’t know what Putin was hoping for going into this, but it wasn’t that.

A huge part of Russia’s soft power has come from people believing that Russia’s conventional military capability is far more potent than it’s been shown to be in Ukraine. That’s partly down to Zelensky, and the resistance he’s helped inspire. It’s given the West enough time to react, and belief that it’s worth reacting. Even if Russia ultimately manage to gain military control in Ukraine, losing that is something Putin won’t have been counting on. They’re likely to find it almost impossible to maintain that military control long term, with the people being so clearly against it, which seems to be something else Putin miscalculated. Yet another thing he seems to have miscalculated is the unity shown in sanctions against Russia. They appear to have already gone further than Putin expected, and there seems to be a will for them to go further if needed, especially if Russia remain in Ukraine. He does still have nuclear capability of course, but Putin can’t use that without consequences for Russia that make anything else in history pale in comparison. I don’t think it’s likely, but still have to hope that he never gets to the point that he doesn’t care about those consequences and no-one stops him. It’s difficult to really tell exactly what Putin went into this expecting to achieve, and even more difficult to imagine that anything he expected to achieve is possible now, with the way events have unfolded so far.

Thought that was going to be a ‘what if’ game for Middlesbrough. Fantastic result for them, goals like that are what every kid that wants to be a footballer dreams of growing up.

Great finish!

It’s like they’re chucking darts at a list of ‘excuses’ at this point. Even if that’s meant for a domestic audience, it’ll be failing to add up for more and more people.

Everyone is aware of what Russia said. The question is why you’re blaming Truss here, given you’ve already admitted you don’t think the response was justified.

So, if you think Putin has acted irrationally in response, why are you blaming Truss for not foreseeing that?

So you think Truss’ comments justified threatening nuclear war then?

So there are no other words or actions by NATO leaders that Putin would have used as an excuse then? It was purely Truss’ comments that made Putin announce that their nuclear readiness level had been moved up to the highest level, from previously being at, uh, the highest level?

I see Switzerland are adopting EU sanctions against Russia now. Not even the Nazis managed that.

So Liz Truss controls Russia’s nuclear readiness level then?

So what is it about Liz Truss’ comments that’s making you blame her, and not the bloke using comments on breakfast news about a defensive alliance as an excuse to ready nukes?

Indeed, he replaced a keeper that was probably MotM with an outstanding clean sheet and several incredible saves, conceded against every single Liverpool player, and then missed his own kick. Every single one of his teammates scored. They literally couldn’t have done any more in the shootout, and it wasn’t enough because the keeper literally couldn’t have been any worse. You could write it, but it’d be considered a terrible and overblown storyline that was too unbelievable.

That’s the reason I said ‘in the running’

Subbed on, fails to save 11 penalties in a row, and doesn’t get a chance to save another one because he has Chelsea’s only miss in the shootout... ouch. That’s in the running for worst sub of all time.

Well there are two teams that have conceded more than 9 in one match

Seems to be going too early every time.

Not sure why they’re changing the keeper after the game he’s had. MotM for me.