Lighthouse

Newcastle fans singing, "Mike Ashley, he’s coming for you!" At Chelsea. 😆

Anyone would think we were a mid-table team who have periods of good form and periods of bad form.

What in the name of f**king f**Kerry was that!?

Free kick there just because it’s the keeper.

Like the back four. One striker is an interesting move.

Anybody going to take in a refugee?

I'd have Perraud and Redmond in for Moi and Liv but persevere with Broja for now.

If Ukraine did pull off the unthinkable and drive them out, we should offer Russia a fast track NATO membership. For their own protection.

And then there were five. I think it’ll come down to Burnley or Leeds, probably the latter. They need three goals just to get a point these days.

The Man With The Golden Wig

Ten hour round trip, early kick off, 6am start, not much to play for, for a championship game that’s one tele. Don’t think it’s that bad.

In terms of what the Ukrainians and Russians deserve and what’s fair, you’re absolutely right, I can’t argue. As a strategy for the greater good however, I think we’re better off staying out as much as possible, whilst supporting the resistance in Ukraine. As far as Russia are concerned, the less this war is about NATO the more infighting will begin to fester, as we’re starting to see. We don’t want to give in to temptation and become the distraction Putin craves. if Putin starts firing nerve agents at Russian speakers in Mariupol or Kharkiv, there’s an outside chance it might just be the end of him.

The Ukrainians could have played blinder there, preying on Putin’s paranoia, sewing the seeds of doubt that his own FSB may have betrayed his wishes. Whatever the case, he’s now reaping the rewards of an empire built on fear and yes men. If nobody dares tell you when you’re making grave errors, you’re never going to know. By all accounts his generals and spies have just told him the things he wanted to hear.

He’s really gone all in on the whole Hitler thing, you’ve got to give him that. I just hope someone puts the briefcase on the left side of the table leg this time.

That's one hell of an assumption to draw from a 20 year old having some mixed performances. The likes of Sims and Tella have been far more up and down and they were/are a couple of years older.

Last I saw he was getting involved in some 'stop the war' social media campaign which was basically laying the blame squarely at NATO's door. Then again, this is the same bloke that said he's a pacifist, wants to get rid of the nuclear deterrent and was pretty much the only person in Britain who believed Putin when he said those two assassins in Salisbury just happened to be there on holiday at that exact time. He still has supporters, who largely spend their days calling Starmer 'Keith' for having the audacity to be somewhat electable. In other news, I don't know what to make of these Syrian mercenaries. Surely Russian forces aren't that thinly spread and depleted already...

This doesn't seem to be leading to anything interesting or constructive. If you really must discuss gays, there's a thread in the lounge.

There’re a few rules I’d change about football. One of them is that if a player needs a physio on, the game carries on with them on the pitch. If that’s not possible, the ‘injured’ player has to leave the field for 5 minutes minimum whilst the game continues.

This pretty much sums it up for me. Apart from five minutes around their second goal they were nothing special but we rarely troubled them either. I think we should have gone Perraud for Livramento second half and swapped KWP across. Moi was too narrow and slow, he didn’t really offer much and the strikers didn’t have much to go on. I really want a better CB than Bednarek too.

I think we should supply the Russian peacekeepers with ammo. Ammo travelling at 700mph.

I want Mbappe for Theo Walcott.

Crudely, but it’s massively skewed by the companies registered there. If Musk were to move Tesla’s HQ to Riga, Latvia would probably jump 10 places without the real world ‘wealth’ of the country changing.

The west is NOT running scared of Putin. We have a strategy, we're playing as calmly as we can and are not being drawn in to escalation. We hold all the cards, Putin's options are limited. Stick it out in Ukraine. He will probably occupy most of the country eventually but it'll be costly in terms of lives and money. It's going to be very rough domestically. Escalate and attack NATO; he'll get an arse whooping in a conventional war. Try to push the big red button; the military will step in and say enough is enough. Try to compromise or retreat; he's terrified of appearing weak more than anything else.

For a start we don’t have anything the Ukrainians can fly, secondly I believe they would be defined as offensive weapons as opposed to defensive. I don’t quite get why that’s an issue but that’s the distinction. Russia doesn’t have license to do anything they’ve done in Ukraine over the last 8 years, or in Syria or Chechnya. Sadly it’s the world we live in. I don’t know if and when we intervene, I honestly have no idea at what point that crossover happens. It’s a big escalation and opens up thousands of cans of worms. They could launch missiles at NATO countries, shoot down a couple more commercial airliners or anything they choose. As horrible as it is, Russians can go a lot worse than killing 50 people in a maternity hospital. We haven’t been to war with a nuclear power though, that’s the distinction here. From a purely political POV Ukraine just isn’t important enough to warrant that.

It does when Russia can’t afford to replace its losses on the battlefield. When logistics continue to flounder and vehicles and weapons fall victim to disrepair. When the morale of Russian citizens plummets and their conscript army has no desire to fight.