RicoS321

It would have been much nicer if the diets had lost.

Polvara is a very good passer of the ball, especially long pings from one side to the other. His long legs seem to offer a fairly effortless drilling of the ball, which is nice to watch. Nilsen is far better at using his body and taking the ball in tight spots and still coming out with it. It's funny, because Palaversa was absolutely terrible in the second half last week, Polvara is regularly injured, Shinnie and Nilsen are getting on a bit and Clarkson only has 70 minutes in him. I initially thought we were overloaded in midfield, but actually we should just play them all turn about. They'll all get plenty of minutes. I think that Shinnie and Nilsen are our best combination, but I don't think there's a huge difference between any of them. Clarkson on his day is the most talented, and is certainly the one that could still be very good. The others are all more than good enough for our first eleven assuming they're fit and on form. I'd like to have seen both Clarkson and Polvara as number 10 earlier in the season, but with Nisbet and - to a lesser extent - Gueye now offering something in there, I think we should maybe persist with both in rotation with the others. If we are in Europe next season, then it's ready made for all five getting plenty of game time. They can probably cover other roles too as required. Two older heads, and three young players reaching the age where they really start to blossom is a good thing. Based on our other signings, I think we could go out in the summer and try and replace either of these players, and end up with something much worse. In fact, I think that's exactly what would happen. Give Polvara plenty of sub time over the next few weeks and get him back up to speed. Get Milne in ahead of Dorrington (Dorrington was fine in the last game, and significantly better on the right, but Milne is our future). I don't think there's much of a future in Sokler, but I'd like to see if he can work up a partnership with Nisbet too. Dabbagh, I'm not convinced is any better than Sokler, both industrious and show good movement.

It depends what you mean by ignoring social class? Do you mean that there is increased mixing between classes as if they are a single class? Or do you mean that people ignore that classes exist, and thus ignore inequality? If it's the latter, then in the UK, class is still a thing but the discussion is probably on the sidelines. Starmer, for example, will bring up that his father was a toolmaker, and all parties will pretend to be the friend of the working man, but the actual policies on the ground are as thin as possible. I guess that's because the working class have been hollowed out by offshoring of industry, so the actual working class are simply on another continent (bloody foreigners), or majority immigrants. In the US, there always seems to have been a pretending that there is no class divisions (the American dream etc), and that upward mobility is available to all regardless of circumstance, despite the overwhelming evidence pointing to that not being the case. Of course, that upward mobility was historically impossible for all but a relative handful of black people up until the sixties and seventies as the ending of segregation took hold. That's why things like DEI exist there, and why inequality is discussed in terms of race. But because inequality actually exists over class lines, resentment builds up for policies surrounding race rather than income level. I suspect that the same is true with indigenous folks in Australia and New Zealand (and obviously the US). Structural racism exists in all three countries (and the UK), but it's no longer rooted in "actual" racism (not to say racism is solved!), rather you have an existing issue where people in lower classes happen to be majority ethnic minority, but the barriers to mobility are now the same for all ethnicities. Social mobility and terrible working conditions are as great an issue for working class white people as working class black people. Presenting the problem along race lines is a mistake. Possibly a deliberate one (divide and conquer). A good illustration in the UK would have been stabbing victims in London, which occur more regularly in areas with higher proportion of ethnic minority. You could take that as black people stab one other because they're black and it's in their culture. Yet the same thing occurred in deprived areas of weegieland, predominantly white. The issue is, and always has been, that you experience significantly more crime in areas of deprivation. Why, then, would class be ignored? Because the last thing anyone I'm charge wants is an empowered working or lower class. Almost all western media is owned by the billionaire class. If not, then it's run by the managerial professional middle class. It is much easier for them and their business to have the lower classes divided and blaming one another. A working class white person in a poor neighbourhood has far more in common with a working class brown person in a similar situation, yet the majority (in this case white) will side with a charlatan like Farage, because they've been primed to hate the other. Middle class professionals - like me - have no real skin in the game either way, and so can virtue signal 'til our heart's content, because it makes no difference to us whether our charity victims are poor black or white people.

I don't think climate change sits with race and LGBTQ rights. One is backed by overwhelming volumes of science, grounded in fairly simple - and undeniable - physics. Otherwise, I agree. Economically progressive <> socially progressive (I'm not particularly sure what the second one means, or where its boundaries lie), and economic progressiveness must always come before social, which takes time if at all desirable. However, the answer to that isn't Reform, or Donald Trump, very clearly. The strangest part being, that those that vote for the former wouldn't be willing to overlook a few progressive policies, and a character like Corbyn*, holding their nose to vote for demonstrably economically progressive policies, but they would sabotage economically progressive policies by voting for the moreso odious character that apparently prioritises social conservativism. To the extent that there is a generational element (and I think that is overblown), what intrigues me most is the generation that benefited from huge social welfare, fair house prices, free education and relative wealth equality, are comfortable to deny that for future generations to prevent social progressiveness. I'm ultimately getting involved in a fight that I have no dog in here though, I just find it interesting. I don't actually believe in nations (apart from for fitba purposes) or national governments as a concept, and think that they are time-limited and can only exist in a period of abundant energy. In my opinion, it shouldn't be possible, or desirable, to manage human needs at the level of the state and I think that will always lead to what we have playing out before us. I think that democracy is a fairly unnatural state of affairs, a somewhat nebulous concept, and I don't think that it has too many decades left. *I didn't vote for Corbyn, but not because he was an upper middle class London cunt.

Not really, no. The people you are saying are left leaning are not, they are to the right of centre. It's not patronising to correct someone. I was pointing out an inaccuracy, that's fairly fundamental in the position you hold, and one that's very common in the UK. I've not given you my political position (I can if you like). It certainly wouldn't be voting for Biden, and if I wanted the things that you want, I absolutely wouldn't have voted Trump. It's frustrating, because about 80% of what you say you want - including controlled immigration - are made significantly more likely by actual left wing policies. Instead of fighting for an actual left wing party, a significant portion of both UK and US are voting for grifters like Trump, whilst the middle class professionals vote for sudo-socially-progressive charlatans, happy to throw around apparently socially progressive policies safe in the knowledge that they've already solved the world's economic problems - for themselves and their class. It adds up to me that someone would vote for Trump because they've lost sight of what left wing actually means. As I stated in my first post - and other conversations we had recently on the topic (where you used terms like socialism) - that isn't a criticism of your voting decision or intent, it's a criticism of a system that has polluted politics so massively that you can't even picture anything that isn't neoliberal, corporatist oligarchy, run by absolute cunts like the Tesla fucker. My only criticism of you was the fact that you use terms like left when you must know from your time in Scotland that they're not left at all? You even used "far left", which just backs up the point - you genuinely think there are communists in the multimillionaire US senate? It's absolutely ludicrous - McCarthyism, basically. I will apologise though, as the criticism isn't helpful. It was more from a place of disbelief/bewilderment that things have become so detached from reality. I should know better.

We've got another attacking threat though, don't we? Ah, no, oh well.

He's a sixteen year old centre half, there's nothing we're missing. The Dons would love him to sign a five year deal and get him in the first team in a few years time.

There has not been a left wing government in the US since FDR, there has never, ever been a far left government. I'd have thought that as a Scot you would have access to what those things actually mean. You know, healthcare free at the point of use, unionism, state railways and buses, council houses, state owned energy, free nursery, cooperatives, state education, free higher education, disability allowance, and a focus on ever decreasing income inequality through taxation on wealth. Not just a couple of those, all of them, and that would get you to a basic social democracy, still a long way from socialism. Distributive policies that have been proven worldwide to reduce crime and homelessness (not socialism). I suspect that this is in large part why folk from across Europe and the wider world are looking on in horror. The overton window, as it's called, is so far right in the US that the arguments aren't even on the same planet. Biden is about as far left as David Cameron, which is to say, not remotely. I guess that thirty years in the US has somewhat clouded your view. Again, I'm not disagreeing with your political position, I'm saying that you are demonstrably/factually incorrect when you use the term left wing to describe US government at federal or state level. It's important because it leaves a gaping hole in the purview of the US citizen. There's this weird dichotomy where folks pine for the "better times" of the fifties and sixties (Trump voters in the US, reform voters here). They are pointing to a time that is so far left (huge taxation for example) that it's no longer in their frame, because of the eclipse of neoliberal politics, which is the only offering in the UK and US in the last fifty years.

Two Cole Burke's

Clarkson was a joy to watch yesterday, he's the type of player you go to see and hope that he's on form. It requires a level of patience though, as he tries things that have a low percentage chance of coming off, and can often be risky, or wasteful. His form has meant that many had lost patience, but hopefully his recents displays have shone through. He tried a first time cross yesterday, on a moving ball, that was just magnificent technique. The Utd defender put in a superb diving header to prevent Nisbet connecting, but it was such a difficult ball to play, and there wasn't a player on the park capable of doing it other than Clarkson. That said, Clarkson benefitted massively from Jim Goodwin's tactics of throwing away leads (I can only assume by now that it's deliberate). Clarkson was collecting deep and quickly releasing, reminiscent of the time under Robson where he flourished. That requires a team sitting in, and lots of space for Clarkson to work in, which means either two high pressing midfielders (Shinnie and Ramadani previously), or some derivative of that (high fullbacks and a front two like we had in the second half). It's quite high risk too, and needs a directness that maybe doesn't suit Thelin. All in, I'm not sure Thelin will go for Clarkson from the start of games because of that, in a similar way that Morris doesn't start. I think he'd be happier playing out from the back, trying to draw players in, and hope that something comes off up front to give us a lead rather than trying the risky approach from the start and then maybe not having the bench to change it. It seems to me that after 6 months, Thelin is still no closer to knowing his best eleven, or even his best formation. Perhaps that's a good thing, as it suggest we have options.

I wasn't joking, not really. I found the European group stages too much. The fact that we were parachuted into them probably didn't help, but towards the end it was just a saturation of football that ruined it for me. I didn't even go to the Frankfurt game at home (I had a ticket) because it was just too much football. Might have been the only game at Pittodrie I've missed since COVID, certainly hasn't been more than three. The effect lasted the entire season too, I was jaded and bored by that point, and it wasn't just because we had a crap season, I was very pleased when it finished. The extra games in a knockout format don't have the same effect, as they're spread out, and you know that you won't last long. It's an abomination of a format, that's ruining leagues across Europe, and is nothing when compared to the cup winners cup, European and uefa cups of old. It feels dirty just being in it, it's a format for Huns and Tims.

European group stages were a bore, fuck them. Unearned pish. Today's game was hard going at times, thought the first half would never end. Nisbet excellent today, Clarkson very good when he came on, as were Morris and Shinnie. Okkels must have something on Thelin, he's done absolutely nothing to deserve to start in any of the games he's played so far. He's just a nothing player, I'd rather have Matty Kennedy back. Gueye was pish too. I'm assuming MacKenzie was injured, because there were at least five players requiring subbed before him. It was a strange sub that left us playing Keskinen through cramp for the last half hour. The only other reason I can think for it was the big argument he had with Nilsen in the first half. Nilsen did his trademark: shite pass, followed by shouting at the player who had no chance of getting it, and MacKenzie correctly shouted back at him. Anyway, Shinnie was good when he came on. Palaversa poor for the second start in a row, and started the second half like he'd never seen a football before. Clarkson has to be ahead of him now, he ran the show when he came on. The back two were fine. Knoester looks good. Losing goals to crosses and set pieces is a tactical thing, we're clearly setting up wrong. Although Mitov should have saved the first quite easily. He was otherwise good, building quickly from the back.

One of the first chants my daughter learned, and when to shout it, was "dig a hole". A classic. Although I did have to stop her shouting it at a Dons Womens' match, which was a nice lesson on the boundaries of acceptability.

Have you even said thanks once to the moderators for letting you post on this forum today?

Aye, but that has to be weighed against the fact that Okkels. Yes, you can bench him, especially if it's down to fitness. I also agree though that Nilsen and Shinnie were better than Nilsen and Palaversa in the previous game (Clarkson was also better than Palaversa when he came on in the same role). If I were dropping either of the two, though, it'd be Nilsen. Despite having the better game on the ball, he was largely responsible for the gaping holes in behind as he doesn't get back and doesn't sit when Shinnie goes. Of course, that was against a good team, and not hugely relevant against utd, where we'd probably want his ability on the ball. The biggest thing for me though was that he was down to walking pace when he came off. Ten minutes prior, MacKenzie was 2 on 1 at left back, and was pointing for Nilsen to track his man, but he just stood in the worst possible position, because he knew he wasn't going to be able to match the run, leaving MacKenzie to pick up both players.

You could see why when Gueye came on. He just sort of wondered about, not taking up particularly good space, and not shutting down the angles in defence, he just looked lazy. Not a player for a game against the Tims. The midfield was a slight surprise, although Palaversa wasn't particularly good at the weekend. The biggest surprise was Doohan, as I think even if Mitov had a leg missing I'd have played him.

Shady Mo with the moral victory.

Mental that Nisbet is off rather than Dabbagh.

I think we can forgive the giving the ball away by Shinnie and Nielsen (Shinnie started poorly but improved), as they close quickly, and we're trying to play tight balls rather than just aimless punts. I agree about the poor play for the goals. I would add the Knoester was poor for one of them. Maeda was very obviously making space for the wide player, and Knoester allowed himself to be dragged right across his other centre half. He can see Tobers, all he has to do his stop his run,playing Maeda offside, and being in place to cut out the wide player. It was poor from a centre half.

Yep, Doohan been poor. Okkels been gash. Otherwise, we've been not too bad, and the scoreline flatters them. Dabbagh struggling a little up front too.

Apart from the first twelve games, where it worked extremely well. I actually think they're our most suited pairing, they rarely get in one another's way, unlike Nilsen and Palaversa. They just both got knackered at exactly the same time and started making errors turn about.

Hoilett would have been handy during first half of the season, but he'd have been sub, not a starter. McGrath and Gueye would both have started ahead of him. The intention would always have been to replace him in January too (although I don't think Okkels has reached the level hoilett did yet), so a two year deal would have been far too long. McGrath on a four year deal is different. There's a good argument for just giving him the deal with a view to getting 2-3 good seasons out of him. I can completely understand why the club wouldn't go for it though, especially as they've likely already begun scouting for a replacement. It seems that Hibs aren't outbidding us, just offering more security.

The whole team chucked it after that. He was running on fumes in that game, and the ones after. He seemed to get more game the more tired he got, playing 80+ minutes every game bar one (and mostly the full 90) from the draw with Tims, where he was brilliant, to the point he got injured. Despite the fact that that was the point he needed the rest most. He was really good up until that point, where he was being taken off in 60-80 minutes most weeks, having done the hard work. The creative parts of your game are the first to go when you tire, which doesn't leave guys like McGrath or Clarkson much to work with. I think we'll struggle to replace him (guys like Okkels are nowhere near the level), but I wouldn't have given him a four year deal either.

It's a very good signing for them. I'm quite surprised that he's not just running his deal down to see if he gets more offers in the summer. His injury came at the wrong time for us, as we could have shipped him out in January for a small fee. It's worked well for Hibs in that they don't have to bother with the fee. A step sideways and perhaps a little bit downward, but I suspect the money on offer would have been similar to here, so likely a family decision. He's been a good signing for us. Hope he breaks his leg.

Fucking Hibs? Cunt.