Wherever he plays, they'll fit him in somewhere. Spurs are looking quite scary for next season, if you imagine that Son and Kane will be getting improved service and so will be likely to score even more goals.
Arsenal look better too with Gabriel Jesus, plus they have a Vieira back in midfield again for the first time in a long time... you can imagine Spurs and Arsenal will start to pull away from Man U a bit, and leave Man U really struggling to try to get a Champions League place.

If you want to sign a player, then do it quickly, offer a bit more fee, a bit more wages, whatever it takes. Because you just know that if you take too long, another team (or teams) will get involved, and you may end up not being able to get your man.
There's a lot to be said for the Aston Villa approach, they made a couple of great signings right at the start of the summer, before any other club had even woken up. There was no media speculation or anything, just sudden news that they'd signed. You just know if they were trying to sign Kamara and Diego Carlos now they'd have no chance, both players would get picked up by bigger clubs.

Same thing with Raphinha. It was obvious that quite a few teams would be interested. So come April/May, if you want him, go for him, get it done early. Don't be still in negotiations in July.

When he's good he's great, when he's not he's not. If his girlfriend had changed his attitude, and he was playing at maximum Kyrgios every match, he'd be almost untouchable and one of the top favourites for the tournament.
But we only have to go back to his match in the earlier round against the unknown 200+ ranked Paul Jubb. At break-point down at 5-5 in the fifth, Kyrgios was nearly out. He won that game with a sudden flurry of three unreturnable serves, and from there won the match. But he was probably a single point away from going out there, just a couple of days ago.

Of course he may win the tournament, but equally, he may have another off-day or off-thirty-minutes at a crucial moment. The problem from a betting perspective is we just can never tell. I don't think I've ever placed a bet for or against him, he's too unpredictable.

Maybe all the teams, but not all the drivers. Entirely unsurprisingly, Max Verstappen has come out on the side of Nelson Piquet. Who'd have thought that would happen?  
Apparently it was all taken out of context, Piquet is great, not a racist at all, he just used a wrong word. Poor, misunderstood Piquet.  

"I’ve spent a bit of time with Nelson, I think more than the average person in general, and he’s definitely not a racist. He’s actually a really nice and relaxed guy, and I’m pretty sure that also the statement he released, I think you can see the word in two ways. But I think it’s still better not to use it."

Not that Piquet has any history of this sort of stuff at all... the stuff back in the 80s about complaining Mansell's wife is ugly, and Senna is gay, etc.
But on the other hand, you can see why he gets on so well with the Verstappen family... Max's prospective father-in-law may be a racist bigot, but Kelly Piquet's prospective father-in-law was arrested for attempted murder. I don't know what a family dinner would look like... probably a load of pointy white hats.

I suppose the answer is that for a World Cup of 32 nations to truly be a World Cup, it can't just have the best 32 nations. It has to have representatives from all around the world. If it was just the best 32 nations, then no doubt Italy would be there... but Italy's gain would be the tournament's loss, because a best 32 World Cup would be mostly European, with a few South American nations, and maybe a couple from elsewhere.

The thing that makes a World Cup so great is that there are teams from everywhere, and a decent number of them, not just one token team from Africa, for example, but many.

And this also makes qualification more exciting. If most European nations qualified, then there'd be little sense of jeopardy in the qualification process. Far better to have limited spaces available.

It's July 2022. The Covid pandemic started over 2 years ago. Safe and effective vaccines were developed within months. The number of vaccine doses administered now numbers in the tens of billions. It's a triumph of science that the vaccines were developed so quickly and, apart from some distasteful vaccine hoarding by wealthier nations, a triumph of organisation that so many people have received their doses. Countless lives have been saved. And there are vast quantities of data from sources all around the world that prove this is true.

So why are people still arguing about whether the vaccines are safe or effective? If you don't understand how facts and evidence work, then you are ignoring logic altogether, and making a simple faith-based argument... in which case, please don't attempt to use logic to build a case for yourself, as you're simply undermining your own argument.

Just say "God came to me in a dream and said vaccines are evil" or "It doesn't mention Covid vaccines in the bible, so I'm against them". Don't try to prop yourself up with the very thing that you're trying to tear down.

I saw the latter part of Kyrgios's first round match. He was playing a Brit (Paul Jubb) who is ranked outside the top 200 and has never done anything before. It was a 5-setter, and although Kyrgios won that final set 7-5, he was actually break-point down when serving at 5-5. If he'd lost that one point, then Jubb would have been serving for the match, and likely would have gone through. The fact that Krygios was so close to losing a match that he should have won without any trouble makes me sceptical that he's going to go far. I know he's volatile, and you can never tell what he's going to do, how he's going to play... but nevertheless this match was a bit of a warning sign.

Murray has perhaps the best record of anyone against Isner, he's 8-0.
I know Murray now is not quite the Murray of his peak years, but he's still one of the great returners in the game, and I think he'll win. Murray's main issue is maintaining fitness, and an Isner match isn't too much of an issue as half of it is invariably spent standing around. It's not like it's going to be a succession of long, draining rallies.

One big difference between Maradona's era and the current era is the level of professionalism. It was far easier back in the 80s for one exceptional player to carry a team, as Maradona did particularly in Italia 90. Nowadays teams are a lot more professional, with better tactics, better fitness etc... and it's tougher even for the best player in the world to make the same difference. Messi is certainly at the Maradona level, it's just that the opposition has improved.

It's been clear for a while that Chelsea were desperate to get rid of Lukaku, and the finances on this deal make it perfectly clear that is what's happening. One other factor though, which might mean it's not quite so bad for Chelsea as it looks, is that wages for these big names players are massive. If Inter are paying 100% of his wages on the loan, then that's not quite such a crazy deal as it seems at first glance.

I saw the latter stages of the match, and yes, she was getting quite emotional. I wonder if she was thinking 'This is my last Wimbledon'. If she was just a bit rusty at the start of her comeback, and thinking she could return to Wimbledon for the next couple of years, and fight for titles, then she wouldn't have that sort of reaction. I think maybe it was quite revealing, and she knows it's time to retire. I'm wondering if she will make an announcement after the US Open later this year.

Nothing has happened to Nadal, he's won the first two sets against Cerundolo and we're heading into the third set now.

It's just there is some concern over his fitness, with the injury he's been managing, and after he effectively won the French Open on one foot, with no feeling in the other. The pre-Wimbledon surgery apparently went well, which is why he's playing now... but it's difficult to tell whether his body will be able to hold up for seven matches in a fortnight, which is what it takes to win the tournament. If he can stay fit, then he's certainly one of the favourites to win the thing... but we just don't know for sure whether he'll hold up.

One of the few big names left standing on the men's side, Kyrgios isn't looking too great at the moment either. He lost the first set, but won the next two and it's currently on serve in the fourth (he's 3-2 down). He's also ranting to himself about the state of the grass. He's also playing against a Brit (who is ranked 219), so the chances of the crowd rooting for Krygios seem pretty slim.

Looks like the chances of a trademark implosion are rising...

Don't bet on Dimitrov either, he's now retired injured... I don't think he was really a contender, but still, it's another big name departing in the first round. I don't know about trying to find a dark horse, we're running out of horses altogether the way this is going! At least Djokovic and Nadal are still in the tournament... let's hope Nadal doesn't retire injured later today!

FAA definitely has a chance. Norrie maybe, but a bit of a long shot. Maybe add Kyrgios in there? But of course he's wildly unpredictable. You can probably get good odds on someone like Taylor Fritz, too. Ruud? Sinner? But I don't see them as winning the whole thing.

Alcaraz looked unconvincing, and Tsitsipas is, well, Tsitsipas, so I wouldn't bet on either of those two.

Yeah, looks like Djokovic and Nadal really.

You could just visit the page to view the source, or even look at the 'Our World in Data' logo on the chart, to get some idea.
Here's where the chart is from: http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/life-expectancy/
There's a section at the bottom of that page detailing the data sources. Knock yourself out.*



People have to die from something. More people dying from things like cancer and heart disease is partly a consequence of people living longer, due to better healthcare following the rise of modern medicine. Your argument is essentially: "Modern medicine prevented this person from dying at 5yo from a preventable childhood disease, but instead they died at 90yo from cancer. Therefore medicine is useless".






* But beforehand, please arrange to be brought back to consciousness by a medical professional (who knows what they're doing) rather than a priest (who doesn't).

---

Edit, second reply:


It's quite amusing that just in the space of a couple of sentences, you suggest that I don't understand what life expectancy means, and then proceed to wildly misunderstand it. You're not stupid, so I assume you're simply being disingenuous. A life expectancy of, for example, 40, certainly does not suggest that a large number of people die at age 40, as I'm sure you know. It also doesn't say very much about the chances of someone who is 70 being able to survive to the age of 80. The biggest factor, historically, has been infant mortality. If you are genuinely arguing that modern medicine has not reduced infant mortality, and that average lifespan has not increased, even in the face of the data, then you may as well go back to reading the bible with BADecker, because I'm not going to be able to shake your faith with something as mundane as evidence.

Breaking News!

Berrettini is out of Wimbledon after testing positive for Covid.
He was 8th seed, but obviously a lot of people had him down as a potential winner. With both him and Hurk out, the men's draw is already starting to open up a bit.
I'm sure he'll be really disappointed, as he had a genuine chance of winning the thing. On the plus side though, it won't make any difference to his ranking points - everyone gets a 0 this year!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/61966938

Well, let's look at the data. Let's compare change in life expectancy over time, and the effect of modern medicine.
Hmm, that's weird, it looks like you're talking nonsense. Or maybe it was just a typo, and you actually meant: People should believe in medicine, not God.
Vaccines, antibiotics etc save lives. Waving your arms at the sky and imploring it to help you, doesn't*.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy





* I mean, if you're sufficiently energetic about it, then the arm waving thing may burn some calories, and help with weight loss, so there's that.

It's a shock that he's out in the first round, many had him down to go far in the tournament. Other news on the men's side, could have been a shock but wasn't in the end, Alcaraz is through unconvincingly after winning a five-setter. He's not looking like one of the favourites so far.

On the women's side, Raducanu is through what was a potentially tricky first-round tie, playing some decent tennis at times, but will need to improve to progress far.

The Frenkie de Jong deal does seem like it is likely to happen. Neymar though, I agree with you, no chance that Neymar would go there.

So the problem the new Man United manager has is twofold. He needs to bring in top players, but many top players aren't going to want to go there. The second part is obviously whichever players he does bring in, he has then got to rebuild the team around them and then hope everything gels immediately, so that United start the season on a positive note, by winning games... of course if it takes time for the new players to bed in, and United start badly, it will hit confidence and they could find themselves in a worse spot than they did in the season just gone. But expectations at United are always so high, there may not be much time before the fans start getting restless again.