Lighthouse

The latter two, when fit, were capable of 15 league goals in a season. I'm not aware of Adams having any injury concerns. He could be the next Lambert or the next Vydra, I guess we will (probably) find out in 11 months.

I’m sure Brum had nothing to do with that.

To further expand on the analogy, it's more like penalising someone for doing 31 in a 30 outside a school or busy pedestrian area, but ignoring someone doing 40 in a 30 on some disused industrial estate. VAR wont be perfect, far from it, but it will make the game better IMO. Give it a few games, diving and shirt pulling will be almost dead.

?

Yep, should have been retaken again. Everyone does it because it never gets punished. VAR is like putting a speed camera on a 30 road where everyone normally does 45 because they just do. The first couple of days will be speeding tickets galore; after that everyone soon learns. That's what the start of the season will be like, if you're still giving away 5 penalties a games after that then more fool you.

If nothing else we can re-use Charlie Austin’s monogrammed shorts.

Hope this weather doesn’t make it to Manchester before we bowl them out.

Are you saying there is something dodgy about awarding the World Cup to a country with 2.6 million people, massive amounts of disposable income, no footballing heritage, no stadiums, where it's too hot to go for a walk in June, let alone play elite level football?

Never thought we’d have a nail biting last ball.

The bit in bold is where I disagree with quite a few people. You're right but what you're basically saying is that they are being trained to cheat in order to gain an advantage. Until now they've largely gotten away with it. It has always been the rule, so it's hardly as if players are going to be caught by surprise. The difference is now it's going to be enforced and the onus is on coaches to make sure their 'keepers are compliant in preseason. The French player could well argue that the Nigerian 'keeper put her off by stepping forward and covering more of the goal. She then missed the target trying to get the ball into a gap which wasn't there. The Nigerian keeper will argue she just missed the target and it's just tit for tat. All you can say for certain is the 'keeper broke the rule, so IMO the kick should be retaken if it's not scored.

Apart from verbally abusing two managers and punching Erik Lamela?

I don't see a problem with any of that personally. Supposing we change those faces around a bit. Saints are France, Liverpool are Nigeria, that's at the Kop End and the defender sent off is Lovren. With no VAR that penalty isn't given and Lovren isn't sent off. Two minutes later, he goes up the other end and scores the winner from a corner and Saints lose 1-0. We'd all be absolutely fuming that we were robbed of a game we should have won but the officials bottled it at Anfield again. As for the retake, that seems fair enough to me too. I think some of you are falling for the puppy dog eyes, 'what have I done!?' face, players always seem to pull in these situations. She knew exactly what she was doing, she shuffled forward a good foot off her line before the kick was taken. It's not as if the 'keeper didn't know this rule. I'm all in favour of VAR officials coming down hard early on. Maybe we will see games with eight penalties given for shirt pulling; so what? The players will soon learn to stop and the game will be all the better for it.

This isn’t worth arguing over. To put it literally; Iran might want a nuclear weapon and I can understand why. However, I don’t think letting them develop one would be a sensible idea. I honestly don’t get the willingness of some people to think all countries are the same and should be treated equally. The "if America can have nukes, why can’t Iran and North Korea?" Mentality.

When you're basically writing, "death to Israel!" on the side of the cruise missiles you've been developing, it kind of is a hostile act. That's not a deterrent. From most other nations it is but I can't totally convince myself Iran would never use it. Not going to disagree with that at all.

Half decent football, challenging for the top half. I like unearthing talent from abroad and I'll happily take the odd Moi and Gaston mixed in with the Manes and Tadics. What I can't stand is throwing away about 15 games a season in the last 5 minutes and making ridiculous signings like Carrillo and Osvaldo, which are doomed from day 1.

Only if you don’t understand it. My point wasn’t literally comparing ice cream to a thermonuclear warhead. I don’t want anyone to have nuclear weapons but we do and they will never be uninvented. What we can do is stop them from spreading to fanatical religious fantasists who might be more inclined to use them.

I can't blame a five year old for wanting three pints of chocolate ice cream. Doesn't mean they should have it.

No, different problems. I haven't crashed my car into a telegraph pole.

At the moment it seems they do. They've both managed to drag a one off problem out for about 6 months.

This morning; car insurance and broadband providers.

As far as I am aware, India/Pakistan is more of a territorial dispute which can be moderated through patient negotiation and diplomacy. I don’t support Trump or his decision to withdraw from the agreement but I doubt we wants to start a war in the region either. Quite simply, he wants to re-impose restrictions on a belligerent regime which threatens US interests in the area, both Arab and Israeli. Iran may act like they are being bullied in the playground but if they didn’t keep running up to the hardest kid in school and kicking him in the nads, it might aid their situation somewhat.

I sleep soundly at night knowing that whatever I think of USA, Russia and China, they aren't about to nuke each other off the face of the planet. On the other hand I think a country which believes that... MIGHT be tempted to fire one off at Israel.

Yeah, cool, except I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about the missile with, "Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth," written on the side, in Hebrew. You think a country that says stuff like this is developing nuclear material for peaceful purposes; and I'm the naive one?!

Well, that sounds perfectly sensible to me. Also I didn't say World, I said West. Iran are test firing cruise missiles with, "Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth," written on the side, trying to develop nuclear weapons and your response is some 30 second video of Pompeo saying, "we lied, we cheated, we stole."

I've never said I trust any of those men, I don't get your point or how it is relevant to what I said.