If I had no idea who Guy Fieri was and you asked me who I thought his NFL team was, 10/10 would guess the Raiders.

That was an absolutely nasty freekick!

I mean at this point, I don’t think the argument is Sanchez vs Petrovic. If it isn’t Sanchez as our #1, it has to be a new signing. Unless everyone else on the team just fucking loves Sanchez and was clamoring for Sanchez to be our #1 GK Maresca wouldn’t have anything to gain by starting day one by backing Sanchez as our guy.

1) He doesn’t strike me as a manager that backs a player like that without doing his homework first.

2) What manager would start their stint at club where the expectations are sky high by shutting down signing attempts in favor of a current keeper UNLESS he thought that player could perform at the necessary level?

His natural talent to drive were completely out of proportion. If Morata had Diego Costa’s spirit, he could have been one of Chelsea’s best strikers.

He literally just admitted to attempting a bloodless coup. “We are revolting and we won’t be violent unless you try and stop our revolution.”

I bought a second jersey (Enzo home first then Mudryk away) immediately after I saw news about the Infinite Athlete deal just because I didn’t think I’d get another chance to buy a sponsor-less kit.

If it’s an option again this year I’d definitely buy another 2…if I didn’t find 2 of our 3 kits absolutely appalling. Maybe we’ll get lucky and change them before the official unveil, but the away and third kits are just god awful.

Black and neon bright pink is just silly unless you have the perfect design to pull it off…which that kit doesn’t. And a subtly wavy blue-on-blue pattern makes absolutely no sense for a team that’s based in a city that isn’t remotely “coastal.”

I think it’s an unfortunate combination to two things that’s causing a lot of the problems. It’s that 1) Matt and the party made the conscious decision to up the intensity of this campaign, which is hard to do over such a long campaign without a ramped up pacing and consistently putting the party against the clock and 2) everyone in the party has played together for SO MANY hours that their PC’s bonds are just so easy to build in much more subtle ways than we as the audience can appreciate or really notice.

The worst thing that happed to C3 is Robbie not being a full-time party member. He brought a new perspective and energy that really helped bring a lot of those subtle party dynamic building moments to the surface and we, as the audience, could appreciate them.

As to the things being alive that shouldn’t be, I’m not totally sure what you mean by that. That’s a pretty big staple of D&D.

As an American who watched an orange windbag take office coming off any election where he publicly and proudly showed how morally objectionable he is that year. So I feel like professionalism was well dead and buried and we (Americans) were dancing on its grave that year.

The saddest thing is even being a cameo player last season would have been an improvement for Fofana and Lavia

Really like the away, absolutely hate the other too. The third kit looks like some weird urban camo design with inexplicably neon pink accents. And why is the Nike logo turned 90°? I’ve never seen a Nike logo on the chest of a shirt oriented like that and our alt kit is a bizarre time to roll out that deviation from the norm.

The home kit looks like it’s supposed to resemble the ocean, which might be cool if we were anywhere near the coast.

Abstract designs and jerseys aren’t a good combination. If you aren’t going to go with a clean, simple design, it’s got to be a very striking design. These just look like stock options for a computer background.

If he was rating Sanchez before he was just a manger trying to show public support for his player. So if Maresca was rating him before he even signed as our manager, then I’m good with Sanchez.

I’d be hard pressed to name any mangers that are better or more dedicated students of the game than him. Fully believe that if he doesn’t succeed at Chelsea, it won’t be because of poor tactical decisions.

I agree that’ll he’ll likely be far better with his distribution this season. My biggest problem/concern with him is his complete lapses in judgement or focus. If he were 5 years younger, I wouldn’t be nearly as concerned.

I think Sterling is the same way. A quality player whose high points are diminished by disproportionately low ones, but that problem is so much more costly when it’s a keeper.

It’s such a tight race points-wise to finish in the top 5, and we likely won’t be able to afford dropping those handful of points those very avoidable mistakes can cost us.

Has there been any suggestion or rumor of that being on our radar for a summer signing? I haven’t seen anything, which seems baffling to me considering how we’ve been signing players left right and center just to have a 3rd backup at positions we already have quality and keepers have by far the lowest transfer fees…

but maybe that’s why we haven’t. If a player’s price tag is anywhere under $35M, our owners are only interested if there’s somewhat of a chance they’ll be worth double that within the next 5-7 years. And only we’re dumb enough to pay a premium that high on a keeper.

I wish I had any confidence your expectations will be met. But my gut feeling is we’ll see 2 of those 4 available for 50% of games and be doing well for 3 of the 4. All of them would be a miracle in my book.

Considering she landed on ‘A Jumbo Genital’, that’s way too obvious. ASAP would be something like ‘Always Select Acute Penises.’

(also just one of your genitals being enlarged sounds more like a cry for medical attention, not sexual attention)

Fernandez. Gotta worry about how he adjusts socially too!

I might be in the minority here but I feel like Alonso’s greatest strength was being able to provide an unexpected attacking threat on any given play. But if he were an expected attacking threat on every play as a forward, he would have been a rotation-level at best. He had some great goals but what takes them from great to amazing is the context that he scored them while playing LB.

Where he was a phenomenal threat was on set pieces. But if set piece ability translated one-to-one to attacking ability, Willian would have topped Lampard for being the clubs top goal scorer.

All that I’m saying is I don’t think we just completely wasted Alonso’s talent but shunting him back at LB. And even if we did, he made far more of it than any of us could have ever expected him to.

I think hubris is the tidiest way to sum up what happened without getting really deep into the weeds with a silmarillion-esque lore dump.

It’s like saying the rise of German nationalism is the cause of WWII. It definitely played a major part and was a common theme amongst many of the more nuanced events that lead up to it.

I also think there’s a lot more nuance to the “hubris” than you’re giving it credit. I think what Aabria was alluding to with her comment about the differences is that with the rise of arcane magic, mortals are able to rise beyond the dependence on deities for magic. Obviously there are instances of divine casters in calamity that don’t have patrons. But when you look at where they fit into an arcane-centric society, shunted to very specific roles with very definitive ceilings in terms of how high they can rise amongst society and compare that to where clerics and paladins have typically sat in society ie Vasselheim, the contrast is pretty glaring.

It wasn’t a literal comparison of mortals as they were then to deities but where the limitations were for mortals dependent on patrons for their power vs the limitless possibilities, as Laerryn saw it, for mortals that could shape and develop their own magic/power.

But mortals took that potential and ran too far with it too quickly. And their consequences were the result of them acting without the wisdom and understanding that only comes from the experience of wielding that much power for a long time.

But when you’re talking about what caused the calamity which was a planar-level event but only examining from the microscope of a group of people from one city, it’s never going to line up perfectly with one driving force like hubris. People are rarely so myopic in their motivations. But you can’t apply that much nuance to such a wide spread event unless you’re doing an entire dissertation on it. And Exandria’s history is told through stories, not academic papers. And every great epic has themes that allow the authors to weave a coherent narrative from such massive events. And in this case that’s hubris because when you look at what mortals did that lead up to and resulted in the calamity, at the macro-level, there’s an undeniable amount of hubris in it.

It’s like saying the rise of nazi germany that lead to WWII shouldn’t be attributed to nationalism because if you look at specific Germans their motive wasn’t just fucking loving their country too much. No, it was the result of social, political, and economic turmoil that drove people cling to a narrative that the world was against them and the only path forward was rallying around their ethno-nationalist ideology of Germany first and aryan supremacy. Millions of people didn’t just wake up one day and happen to concurrently come to the conclusion that protecting their ethnic superiority warranted genocide and a litany of other war crimes.

But that explanation took so much longer than just German nationalism gave rise to nazism which lead to WWII. If you’re still reading this, I’m amazed!

TL;DR when people talk about large-scale historical events, especially in the context of a story, it’s impossible to do that in serious detail while also having an engaging narrative about the current subject matter. So it’s much more buttoned up to talk about it in broad strokes and overarching themes so your audience can understand the context of the past event without losing all focus on the story at hand.

Would I read a silmarillion-type book about Exandria if Matt wrote it? Yes, and I’d love every page of it. But there’s a reason the silmarillion is a separate book and not the first chapter of the fellowship of the ring.

Playing devils advocate.

There are people who have bad experiences with a doctor and stop going to doctors for medical treatment.

But you can’t have your cake and eat it to. If a piece of medical advice is so widely accepted amongst doctors (ie vaccines are not only safe but life-saving) that doctors that say otherwise are not just extremely rare but those anomalous doctors have less than reputable credentials, then that’s about as close to an objective fact as you can get in the world of science. But if you refuse to accept that fact because it doesn’t fit into your highly subjective and arbitrary world view but still regularly get medical treatment outside of that very specific area of treatment, then you’ve lost your legitimacy for speaking out against that medical advice.

I guarantee to you that he’s at the very least gone to the Colts team doctors for treatment on more than one occasion. I’m not going to speculate on his medical visits outside that because how could I.

If you have the extreme misfortune of a medical condition occurring close enough to getting vaccinated that you attribute blame to the vaccine, it’d be a lot easier for mistaking correlation from causation.

TL;DR if your mistrust of doctors runs so deep you’d avoid seeking even life saving treatment from them, I can acknowledge that your criticism of vaccines comes from a legitimate opinion on doctors. But if you trust doctors enough to provide treatment outside vaccines, then I think your beliefs about vaccines are stupid and don’t think you have a leg to stand on. (And I’m not using “you” to refer to anyone specific in the comments. It’s a general you, that includes but isn’t limited to Laiatu)

I mean that’s the reality of professional sports. Abramovich was so outside the norm of a modern owner of a professional club. Clubs have such an extremely high value (and cost to run) that there are quite literally only a handful of people that actually have the net worth to afford a (competitive) PL team and treat it like a passion project rather than a business.

What I will say as an American that’s watched what Boehly has done with the Dodgers, he provides a much more human, passionate presence in a league that quite literally birthed detached, numbers driven moneyball decision making and management.

Profit seeking is never not going to be a driving factor of Boehly’s ownership but once things get dialed in (assuming they do), I think there will be a lot more room for passion/human-driven decisions.

The profit formula is just predicated on low-cost, high yield talent acquisition to routinely compete at the highest level because no team that loses consistently has broad global appeal (except arguably the late 90s, pre-2004 Red Sox). But unless you’re the Yankees or Lakers, fan engagement (ie their spending) is impacted by emotion not just success. So becoming perennially successful allows room for emotion-driven decisions to have enough of an impact on profits that ownership has to consider them. Even if they are a profit-driven, treat-the-club-as-a-financial-asset minded owner.

TL;DR any major sports team that changes hands is either bought by an entity that’ll treat the club as a financial asset or they made their money by committing a decent number of egregious human rights violations (ie things the UN consider violations like war crimes, not just being a union busting POS like Bezos).

Really burying the lead with his best trait in his bald head. Minus the honestly negligible effect it has on his headers, it is undeniably his best trait. Very smooth, high shine. If anything, it helps his teammates spot him for all the goals he’s poached…because, let’s be honest, if you take out poached goals, he’s behind the other Hazard in Belgian goals.

When I was a kid, my family had a membership at the Y. We only ever really went to the Graystone one. I’ve been to the MB one a couple times. It’s probably the nicest large gym in Birmingham outside of LifeTime (member there now, can’t recommend it enough).

I was a member of the LJCC when I lived in Crestwood. I absolutely loved it. It’s not dated but it’s definitely not super up to date. But if you like a more peaceful workout environment with some of the sweetest old Jewish men and women, can’t beat it.

Long story short, it comes down to what you want more - gym quality or quality environment. The MB Y is for sure nicer, but it’s much more crowded and you’ll definitely have to deal with all of the stereotypical types of MB people.

Also you can’t put a price on convenience. If you can’t decide, I’d say go with whichever is closest.

Well first off Petrovic was tied for 7th worst save % and more importantly just 0.5% below Villa’s keeper - a top 4 team.

I think that’s where we disagree on what makes a keeper good with the ball at their feet. I’d argue that they more than any other position need to be consistent with the ball at their feet to be good because of how much more their errors cost. Football isn’t a high scoring game so for example the value of a keeper that’s a 7/10 100% of the time is far more valuable than a keeper that’s a 9/10 95% of the time but then a 2/10 the other 5%.

Yes, coming off line in those scenarios is not just a good thing, it’s an imperative. But that’s not what I meant and I think you know that because no keeper spends 25% of the game challenging a one-on-one or going up for crosses. Those things happen in seconds. The only way that could even feasibly be necessary 25% of a game is if the ball never leaves your half of the pitch. Also Sanchez is obviously not the only one of the 3 that does those things so how could that even be a criticism. Most of the time he’s off his line it’s either because he’s caught looking (and not moving) or because he couldn’t multitask managing his back line and maintaining his line as a play progresses. It’s not that he’s incapable of doing it, but like you said, he just has boneheaded moments.

As for Kepa’s PSxG, I don’t think it’s fair to compare doing that with the team he had around him and the level of competition he was playing against. But it also doesn’t surprise me. He isn’t a talentless player. His biggest knock by far is that he’s a problem player (similarly but not nearly as bad as Lukaku)

I think it speaks to his character that it isn’t. He never gives any indication that personal accolades matter to him. But being able to be a pivotal part of the team’s success that’s 100% behind the scenes feels right up his alley.

He was probably the most humble of the bunch, but it’s remarkable how we consecutively had either the best or at least, unquestionably, top 5 qbs in college football from Hurts through Bryce Young that barely had an ounce of ego between the 4 of them.

That isn’t to say they didn’t believe in themselves immensely. They all had moments of being unbelievably ice cold for an 18-20 year old. But I don’t think any of them ever gave an indication that they put themselves on a pedestal ahead of the team. But also makes sense considering players with big egos rarely ever thrived under Saban. Or if they had one coming into college, they didn’t leave with one.

First of all, your dad is wrong. It won’t be 4 1/2 years. It takes delinquent accounts 7 years to roll off your credit.

Second, your dad went from denying to admitting (and dismissing the consequences to you) only once his back was against the wall. At no point did he apologize or do anything akin to acknowledging what he did was wrong.

You don’t owe your dad anything. He owes you a shit load. The fact that he’s guilt tripping you instead of trying to make it up to you in anyway is fucked. And fucked for anyone to do to someone they’re close to, exponentially more so to do to your child. If he has no regard for your wellbeing, the onus is not on you to try and look out for both y’all’s wellbeing.

Report him for fraud. You gave him multiple opportunities to show the slightest contrition and you received none. The more you prove you’re financially healthy, the more likely he is to continue to try and take advantage of it.

Also since he’s so worried about being able to afford his basic necessities, he should be comforted by the fact that those are all provided for in prison. In many ways, it’s the most advantageous outcome for you both.