Foxtrot

Or like the Chinese mafioso, who made an offer they couldn't understand.

You tapped into my usual stream of semi-consciousness here.

If they were, aren’t all their games then counted as forfeits and everybody win against them?

Did his daisy cutter of a shot against the post count as an assist? Yeah, guess so.

And he scores a very nifty goal too. Hit the post earlier after an equally nifty two footer in the area.

Klopp has Wirtz as captain tonight, fwiw.

Yeah, that's the content of it pretty much. He's the Germany manager now and does wisely to draw a line between him and his previous career. In (free) parliamentary republics where the President has a mostly ceremonial role (or less than in the US and France anyway), when a politician becomes President, s/he no longer does "politics" but is the high representative of the country. Football-wise, that is what Klopp is now: the leader of the country and not a club anymore.

Can't resist a slice of Argyle here.

That's not allowed either, is it? That's direct governmental involvement and that's not supposed to happen.

Or maybe Iraola rates Mac higher than Szobo and Grav and it's one of them who is off. Let's see during the season which of those three will be Iraola's go-to midfielder.

Was thinking the same. There very well might be jail time behind this stuff: The panel found “evidence given by a number of important factual witnesses called to give evidence on behalf of the club was false in a number of key respects” and “certain of those factual witnesses had given evidence at the hearing that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest”. So after the footballing charges and penalties are set, the courts might like to have a look at what's been going on here.

Too right. Well put mate. I give an Amen to that!

That was my reaction too. It's actually starting to look like the League are going to f***ing do them bad. And it's the only way ahead tool. The sums involved are crazy: 900m during those years bought you the two best players in the world for almost any position - every f***ing year. That is the scale of it.

I'm too young to really remember a LFC centre back before Phil Thompson (only just) and then Alan Hansen and I never "experienced" someone like Beckenbauer, but for me Baresi was the fiercest and most frightening bentre back that I ever saw, including Virgil. But perhaps just because Baresi was the first huge one for me.

To be fair, Gakpo and Eki aren't having your typical "sick note" injuries. These things happen, and when the inevitable injuries do happen, they both should be replaceable by players of similar or higher quality. Isak is more of a worry, injury-wise. But the biggest problem is the overall squad quality: we just don't have a team of starters where any of them feel undroppable, never mind losing the only two lads who have remembered how to score a goal.