Lighthouse

Probably the most damning indictment I have of PEH is that barely 18 months later, I’ve pretty much forgotten he played for us. Whenever he pops up on TV for Spurs I think, "oh yeah, him…"

I can’t remember anyone saying he didn’t make a tactical error, just that he tried something different, which didn’t work. It’s not like it went worse than any other team who’ve played Liverpool recently.

The club would probably take a 9-0 every season if we also avoided relegation fairly comfortably, as Ralph has since he arrived here. His mandate, given our lack of net spending, is to stay in the league.

What on Earth are you talking about?

We had to lock the whole country down for six weeks to stop the situation spiralling out of control, that doesn’t happen under a normal flu season, you’re comparing apples with oranges. Covid infections, admissions and deaths were shooting up exponentially. If we hadn’t done anything, we’d have ended up like India, Brazil and a few other countries who tried to carry on as normal.

Is "died with COVID-19" a perfect and flawlessly accurate representation of COVID deaths? No, absolutely not and I haven't seen anyone reasonably try to argue that but the NHS wasn't pushed to breaking point last January by people with terminal erectile dysfunction or rabies, who happened to catch COVID on their ward.

Neither had Eriksen apparently. All very scary indeed but it’s random, unverified half truths floating around on social media. The chances of having cardiovascular problems from the actual virus far outweigh any potential side effects if the vaccine.

The hypocrisy of it all is possibly the worst thing about it. For months Tiss has been all about government control, coercion, misinformation, fear etc. etc. Then one day the Bangladeshi government apparently (I haven't seen this verified, personally) reports zero Covid deaths with a low vaccination uptake and BOOM - This government is 100% trustworthy, their statistics, reporting and medical records are totally accurate and I completely trust everything they say. Telling people they need to wake up whilst exhibiting the absolute antithesis of critical thinking. Wonderful.

Haven’t all Bednarek’s goals been the opener in a game we’ve lost 3-2 having been 2-0 up?

Amazing isn't it, you can make anything sound like a conspiracy if you nuance your phrasing the right way. Most of the people dying of Covid are unvaccinated. What a 'coincidence', all the people who refuse to comply with government instructions are slowly being killed off! 😲

Tuned in for the last five mins or so, the Latvians can barely kick it beyond their own penalty area, it’s something of a farce.

That’s a non-sequitur, boosters haven’t come about because of the new variant at all. They’ve been administered for a couple of months, would have been planned for several months before that and probably discussed with medical experts since the vaccines were first developed a year ago. We’ve been ramping it up because of the large spikes in cases of delta variant across Europe.

Booster jabs started being rolled out on 30th September and we’ve known about the onion variant for barely a fortnight.

At this exact moment and only in the UK. The rest of Europe is seeing a spike, so would it not be best to pre-empt that and get everyone a booster?

You don’t think increased infections of the Delta variant are a problem in Europe right now?

Yes I would, not that it’s mathematically plausible. Your definition of how good a manager is performing seems to hinge on how other teams in the League are doing and not how good we are on the pitch. Supposing every team in the league except Saints was caught fiddling their taxes and deduced 30 points from last season. We end up about 5th, so would that make Ralph better than Puel in your opinion?

So you’re judging who’s the better manager purely by the number of points OTHER teams scored in a season? In other words if Pep’s Man City team had lost a couple of extra games against Palace and Everton two years ago, that would have made Liverpool and Klopp better, in your eyes?

I didn’t realise number of points scored was a "ridiculous measure" of success. The only actual example of that is Liverpool two years ago who won 30/38 games, scored 97 points and were 13mm away from being invincible themselves. Yes, I would say they were marginally better than Arsenal’s invincibles.

As opposed to Ralph never having any of those players and in his two full seasons here averaging 48 points, two more than Puel's 46?

It’s how we’ve played 80 minutes of this fixture for the last two seasons.

One of the all time greats of the sport. My earliest memories are of watching Hill and Villeneuve fight it out for the world Championship. For most of the 90s and parts of the 80s, they were the team to beat.

Infection rates have been fluctuating around roughly the same level since early August as they are. Anything which would have reduced the R number would have seen that level steadily decline.

He was, for one of the three seasons he was here.

Don’t be silly, everyone knows the batteries in the microchips only last six months. If you Google, “electro-thermic lithium decay in organic microchips by professor Keith Malcolm,“ you’ll find an article on a free-web hosting site on page 32 of the result, which explains everything for you.

He is the Clinton Baptiste of sports journalism.