Rooney

It doesn't, it just pisses people off and makes China stronger. That show of locking them up was something akin to North Korea. Like I've always said, this isolationism period for America is going to piss off the rest of the world. Everyone needs friends, it's not good for the long term.

25% tariffs on Colombia, trying to go to 50% next week, all because they refused to accept deportation flights. Can see this getting messy and backfiring. Adding inflation to coffee, sugar and flowers will show America who is the real boss!

Yeah the PR has been disasterous, but they can claw some stuff back and as soon as we get to April, the WFA topic will go back down. The big thing for me is while Reform can quite clearly shout the loudest, they're not really making any big grounds in the council by-elections. Now they'll tell you "they're not planning on winning these seats", they're going to have to win either ALL of the Brexit area seats or eat in to the liberal vote, which I can't see.

He literally got Labour in power :lol: That's not a mistake. The Tories were damned no matter who they picked, support was wavering and the laughing stock of Liz Truss won't be forgotten about for a generation. She her attempts to twek for the MAGA crowd and Reform, but she is a genuine joke in this country. Labour are a bit stuck at the moment as unless they grow the economy and people feel richer that's going to be the sticky point, so they're going to have to make some decisions which will annoying some people. Really hope they don't cave in the deregulation of building housing though. That's a complete mess waiting to happen that's already happening. But Trump thinks he's doing a good job, so be interesting to see how the Reform weirdos react to that.

It depends. They didn't have Hudson-Odoi today who is a HUGE miss for them. Some good teams in an around there and it looks like 5th might get it this season too. It will be close.

Dunno, as someone whose watched all 3 series from the start, there were points this series where I was getting a little bored as you knew the format and the logic people were using. I think it needs twists to keep the players on theie toes. I enjoyed the Seer twist, I think it made the first half of the episode and the iamspamspamamiscene TV gold. It left the finale a little anticlimatic, but I think the finale last year was a complete one off in terms of drama. With all these twists or when players get pulled out (like the death match or the prison in Series 1/2) it immeditely brings suspicion on them and seems unfair, but that's the game.

She said she did it because of the Freddie vote in Uncloaked tonight as it seeded a small bit of doubt! Knew it. No way she would have picked Charlotte otherwise, she'd have picked Alexander. I thought the episode was brilliant. There's always been an element of cliqueyness in every series so far. If you get picked for those dungeon/death match games it's so hard to come back. Alexander was dealt a difficult hand, but that's just the game. The seer twist was great as it got in everyone's head, Charlotte pulled a blinder and she would have been a brilliant winner too as a traitor. But I also think the way to play the game is to play the odds and banish if there is any doubt.

That's what the producers want you to think. That clip iirc was a voiceover clip. This show is so heavily edited and clipped that it pulls together a narrative (like the other night, where is heavily hinted Jake would be murdered). In Frankie's mind it will be win-win, if it's a Faithful then she knows a true ally, but that vote that Freddie did will have put a seed of doubt in her mind, which is why she choose her as she wants to believe she's a faithful. Otherwise it's fecking stupid as you'd just know for certain whether Alexander was a traitor or not.

It's an effort to rewrite the rules though. What I long suspected too, the MAGA crowd trying to create a system where democracy exists but it's not really democracy (ala Russia). This is the sort of move though that I think could backfire. It is funny though that they'd be scared to go up against Obama.

Saturday 25th January AFC Bournemouth 1-1 Nottingham Forest Brighton & Hove Albion 2-1 Everton Liverpool 3-0 Ipswich Town Southampton 1-3 Newcastle United Wolverhampton Wanderers 1-2 Arsenal Manchester City 2-3 Chelsea (17:30) Sunday 26th January Crystal Palace 2-1 Brentford (14:00) Tottenham Hotspur 3-2 Leicester City (14:00) Aston Villa 1-0 West Ham United (16:30) Fulham 1-1 Manchester United (19:00)

Charlotte was picked because Freddie was a traitor and he voted for Charlotte randomly. The logical thing to do would have been to vote for Alexander. The vote for Charlotte from Freddie sewed a seed of doubt and now she will know if Charlotte is a traitor or a faithful. Charlotte was playing a blinding game, but that stitch up of Freddie was a good and bad move. Of course he would try and throw her under the bus too, it was naive of Charlotte to think this in the round table unless she calculated it could be a Freddie/Alexander split in the vote. It was TOO random a vote, similar to Kieran voting Wilf in season 1. If I’m honest, I think Charlotte almost got too clever. The heat was already on Freddie and she had the numbers to win in a vote. She didn’t need to do that shield decoy.

These owners are horrible - close to PSR rules so they're saying they're going to raise ticket prices and slash jobs. More like the idiotic spending on wages and transfer fees is how they're in such a mess. I'm absolutely not shocked at all they've not managed to shift Rashford at all either. It's why they will end up selling a Garnacho/Mainoo.

The stitch up always happens though, it happened with Kieran in Season 1 and Andrew in Season 2. At that point in the game it's impossible. I thought Freddie actually did a really good job, but the lie caught him out in the end, otherwise he would have got away with it. The irony being if Alexander gets banished, Charlotte would 100% win the show. Now we've got to a stage where Leanne & Jake win. There is no way they don't from here on out. Freddie rightly through Charlotte under the bus there, but otherwise she'd have won easily. I like the Seer twist and it's good the show is experimenting with new ideas to keep the format the same but fresh too. Agree that at this late stage in the game it seems a bit wasted, but it makes for a good last episode at least. Not sure the Season 2 finale will be beaten with that Harry vs Jaz finale. To be fair to Jake, he has been a good faithful, but he's so irritating :lol: Also, Frankie obviously only picked Charlotte as Freddie's vote spooked her. I think it was a bad play on her behalf now as Charlotte will spin it and put heat on Frankie. Jake could definitely be convinced, Leanne possibly could be too.

The pressure got to Minah, I think you could sense it, she started slipping up when heat came up on her and she only had two allies really. At this point in the game it's so hard, I think a lot of it comes down to luck or making one great big strategic play. Likewise with Hannah now - I think the move is brilliant. However the editing is also really clever. Surely Freddie must know he's being played here and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that someone will reveal before the roundtable that Leanne had the shield and Hannah/Jake/Frankie all knew.

Money buys you power. I don't know why that is so hard to grasp. All of it reads straight out of a playbook from Germany in the 1930s. Him owning a social media platform (which nobody uses outside of his cult) and that bitcoin is so dodgy, obviously pushed by his followers. All of his followers are just useful idiots, exactly the same mantra that Reform are playing on. Trump is clearly a clown in political terms, he's obviously not stupid but you only have to listen to someone like Boris Johnson that the way to play Trump is to let him think everything is his idea. The idea that Putin is being put in a corner is laughable - there's been a war for 3 years, Trump would just have appeased Putin, then in 5 years time he becomes even more bold.

Or what's more likely is Trump completely underestimated Putin and what Putin's play is.

So he didn't end the war on day one like he said he would.

Is the Ukraine war over yet?

You’ve been consumed by so much far right nonsense. “Too much regulation” - no, it actually shows the regulation did its job indentifying someone who could pose a threat. There’s a failure of the agencies involved of course, but that’s for an investigation to establish what went wrong locally. That may come down to a lack of countability, but again, it will come down to these resources being severely underfunded. There’s no magic fix. I’m fairly certain in legal terms the media are not allowed to report with police mugshots in this country too when there’s a trial involved.

I've geuinely no idea what his endgame is with that man. Nobody even likes him.

While I don't think it was a full salute, he knew exactly what he was doing there. Probably blame all the comments on the woke liberal mind virus.

Pretty much every massive Western bellend who'd sell their Grandma for a few dollars was there in attendance today. Tells you all you need to know really. All the big companies smelling great ways they can make money, not to mention Gianni Infantino. Then it's actually embarrassing to witness the likes of Fox, Farage and Braverman proclaiming fawing. I wish people would remember we're not actually American. Anyway in classic Trump style, he'll talk a lot and say things on emotion. Not convinced this idea of starting a period of isolation is going to work. Everyone needs friends.

All of this is easily solved though with a proper football structure. Let’s take Liverpool as an example, now we are at the extremes as we are very risk adverse when it comes to transfers, but we buy players who fit the ethos, or who we could flip for a profit if they don’t work out. That’s not to say we don’t make bad transfers still or everyone is super frustrated when we don’t buy players when there’s an obvious gap, but our success rate of transfers over the last 10 years is insane. What’s even more bonkers is you had a football structure in place, then Ratcliffe chose to ignore it! I think Amorim is a bad fit because if he gets his players and it goes wrong, then you’re back to square one again. Plus with the optics in the transfer market at the moment, you either have to massively over spend or look for the next big thing. I totally agree taking Hojlund as an example it was a bad move. He needed another year/two at Atalanta to see if he progressed. But I also think that summer was a bit of fomo. If I remember correctly Haaland, Isak, Vlahovic, Kane, Nunez all moved within the last 12 months and there was a bit of max thing about strikers.

There's loads of different players though now, it just shows that it doesn't really matter who the manager is imo, I think the bigger part is culturally. Loads of players picking up huge paychecks. Pretty telling that in good results, Man Utd have just by-passed the midfield and played percentage football. Weirdly I think if you'd gone for someone like Marco Silva or date I even say.. Southgate - they'd work better with the toos. But the issue now is Man Utd have a manager who is not pragmatic and entirely wedded to his formation. Part of the issue of throwing most players under a bus, is it will take 3-4 transfer windows to get rid of people!

This stuff will be his undoing though, he thinks he will be popular with the Gen Z crowd, but Trump also does want China to overtake America. So he'll try and make some massive concessions and judging from Twitter, Musk wants Twitter to be in China (never gonna happen). A deal was always going to be struck, but this is the sort of issue where Trump will want to be popular but he also won't want to be seen as weak. When not sure if both can happen tbh.