I think it will be, the French Open is shaping up to be really interesting, with Alcaraz a genuine contender for the title along with Djokovic and as always Nadal. And let's not forget that Medvedev is aiming to be back as well, although of course he's not so great on clay, but he's still a huge name and one of the best players in tennis right now (I think he's taken a wildcard entry to the Geneva tournament which starts in a couple of days, so we should be able to see what sort of shape he's in, and whether he has rushed back too early).

Yep, it's not going great for Arsenal. If they lose this then of course they still have a point advantage over Spurs, but then the last two games of the season are much easier for Spurs, whereas Arsenal have quite tough fixtures. A draw wouldn't be a disaster for Arsenal tonight, but they really could do without losing and gifting Spurs three points.

But hopefully it means he'll be fully refreshed and ready to go for the French Open, which would be great. I'd rather he skip a tournament now and be fit for Roland Garros rather than play at say 80% there.

Meanwhile, with Alcaraz out of the way, I suppose the big potential match-up in this tournament is Nadal vs Djokovic. If this happens, I'd probably favour Nadal... I think the way the draw is, they'd meet up in the semi.


BTW I've never understood tournaments where the semis are 1 vs 3 and 2 vs 4. Shouldn't it always be 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3?

Thanks for explaining. I don't think there's much chance of any other teams wanting to copy the Mercedes build at the moment! But I understand the general point. Has it actually helped Merc at all, or is it too early to say? I mean apart from Friday, their performance in Miami was about equally as terrible as it has been at every other race so far this season.

I think Arsenal will win. The two teams are fairly closely matched, but Arsenal's recent form has been far superior, and form is crucial. The prize if they win is to secure that Champions League spot, and I think they'll manage it, and leave Spurs finishing in fifth.

Nervous is the key word here for Liverpool. I think the league title is most likely beyond them now, but the question is whether losing the league will be detrimental to their hopes of winning the Champions League. A nervous team doesn't usually become a confident team overnight just because we've switched from one competition to another. And Real face no such problems, as they have already won their domestic league.

Yeah, I've shared that link myself a few times. The number is quite astonishing, and I do think this is a big part of his success, the speed with which one lie is replaced by the next. Our modern 24-hour news culture is a big part of this as well, everything is 'breaking news', up-to-the-minute... and whenever Trump said something outrageous, it wasn't like everyone could sit back and assess it over the next day, it just got buried five minutes later by the next lie... and there was no time to focus on that one either, because the next one had already appeared, etc. The fact that he was able to keep this up almost without a break is quite a skill in itself.

Yeah, definitely, I was talking more about the evolutionary origin of lying and the extent to which lying is 'natural' behaviour amongst the human population.

Certainly the modern world is very different to the world we've lived in for the vast majority of our evolutionary history as a social species, and selection pressures are no longer the same. It's no doubt true that habitual lying can be rewarded much more now than it has been in the (evolutionary) past, because we live in a global society where we can interact a lot more with people we don't know*, and the stuff we can lie about is no longer easily verifiable (or necessarily verifiable at all). The guy who keeps telling his tribe "There's a lion coming! Get back to the cave!" gets found out, and kicked out of the group. The guy who says "The reason you don't have a job is all these immigrants" does not get found out so much. Who knows, one day a habitual liar might even rise to become POTUS...




* as I'm doing right now. Although I'm not lying!

There's been a lot of speculation that because Man City play Villa on the last day of the season, if the gap to Liverpool is still 3 points, then Steve Gerrard will work some magic so Villa beat City and gift the league title to Liverpool. It's a bit of a fairy tale really, I can't see this happening and Villa beating City... and even if they somehow did, they might have to win by a few goals, as City already have a superior goal difference compared to Liverpool.

It looks extremely likely now that Man City will win it,and with that huge win at the weekend, they not only opened a gap on Liverpool, they also created a vital gap on goal difference, too.
Both teams have three games left, and both have to play both Villa and Wolves. Their other games are Southampton (Liverpool) and West Ham (Man City).
For Man City to not win the league, they need to drop three points or more. So even two wins and a draw gives them the title. It really does look to be just about settled now.

I'm still not sure what you're alluding to. I assume I'm missing something, but I've not seen anything about Mercedes breaking or bending the rules. What is it they're doing?

Anyway, I don't think it was a good result for Merc after the promise they showed on Friday. I'd certainly agree that RB had the strongest package here, and a Max win was almost inevitable... although Leclerc probably needs to get his elbows out a bit and fight even if the other car is faster.

It is certainly true that everyone should give their all. If you find yourself in a bad situation, and then just sit back and do nothing and blame the government, then it's difficult to justify your actions (or inaction). However, if you try your hardest, then it is certainly fair to blame the government for your situation.

No government is perfect, and some are much worse than others. They should definitely be held accountable for their failures, and in particular for inequality of opportunity.
But equally, it is incumbent on us as individuals to always try our best.

I think these are two separate things.

The best bit of Zverev's runners up speech was when he said to Alcaraz "Even though you are still five years old you are still beating us all". That was really funny. But yes, top five looks a certainty before long for Alcaraz... if Zverev is number three, and on this showing Alcaraz is vastly better than number three already. And looking at this year's race, Alcaraz is number two, and only 70 points behind Nadal!

Well, Alcaraz won. It seems like he just can't lose at the moment. I know both Nadal and Djokovic are below their best, but it still takes a phenomenal performance to knock them both out on successive days. The rise of Alcaraz continues, and it doesn't like like it will be long before he's vying for the #1 ranking. There have been a few next-generation pretenders over the last decade or so, waiting to inherit top spot from the big three... it does look increasingly like Alcaraz is the real thing. Of course from a betting perspective, it means very little chance of making money on him, unless you're prepared to bet big.

Man City could have had a lot of pressure on them going into this game, on the back of their CL exit... but the Liverpool draw yesterday mitigated a lot of this, which I think helped City to play more freely... which of course resulted in that emphatic victory.

Elsewhere that Leeds defeat and Everton win does now make it start to look like Everton will survive this season - they do have an easy run-in, as well as games in hand. It looks increasingly like Leeds or Burnley for that last relegation spot.

I've not seen any suggestion that Mercedes have broken the rules, what is the illegal (or grey area) thing that they're doing?

They weren't hiding their pace on Saturday, they were genuinely worse than on Friday, because the porpoising returned. But yes, I too expected they'd retain their Friday pace and would be challenging RB and Ferrari. Wolff has explained it though, they made a minor tweak after Friday, hoping it would bring further improvements... but it backfired and just brought the porpoising back, which wrecked FP3 and qualifying.

Depends what you mean by far-left, but I'm certainly not advocating a far-left party as a solution. Communism in practice leads to the same overall result as would be obtained with utterly unregulated laissez-faire capitalism... the establishment and entrenchment of an elite minority, whilst everyone else can go f*ck themselves and scrabble about as perpetual wage slaves, with zero chance of digging themselves out of the dirt. The problem is not so much inequality of outcome, it's more inequality of opportunity. Any system that has a direction of travel and lacks a counteracting force will be exploited; my issue with far-right governments in what are (nominally) capitalist democracies is that they are pressing in the wrong direction, and so work to enable and promote quite egregious abuse.

I have to say after the first two practice sessions, I am very surprised to see Mercedes back up at the top. Are they really back? Are they really going to fight it out with both RB and Ferrari in a three way battle?
I hope so, it would be incredible to have three teams as fast as each other, and potentially six drivers who can win at any given weekend. Of course it's much too early to say for sure, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

That's a part of it, certainly, but a long way from the whole story. People in many other European countries are not facing the same increases. Part of it is a historic lack of investment in just helping people... houses are built cheaply here and generally to the bare minimum legal standard, insulation is poor and so people use more power to heat their homes. Government grants for home insulation have been scaled back under this government, as has pretty much everything else. There's also no long-term planning and no reserves; short-termism is endemic. But the single biggest cause underlying it all is their pathological adherence to the mantra of "let the market decide" ... no matter what the situation. Anything to further enrich the already rich and reinforce the status quo of rulers and ruled.

I also assume the OP is referencing the away goals rule, and yes, this has already been removed.

Personally, I think it's good that it was removed. There are quite a few reasons why I was against the rule, but just a couple 1) It just feels unfair that a draw over two legs can result in a winner. If a team wins the first leg 3-1, and then loses the second leg 2-0, then it's 3-3 on aggregate, and neither side should be perceived as having "won", and more importantly 2) If it's level over two legs, and the match goes to extra time - it's only the second leg that goes to extra time, not both of them... so the side that's away in the second leg just gets a huge advantage... if both teams score one goal in extra time, it means the away team "win".