bovril

Too funny, especially after the Falklands stuff. I think right wing British Anglosphere bros have suffered enough honestly. Taken more Ls than Russell Martin.

Connections Puzzle #1188 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟨🟪 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦

I realise from my post I'm suggesting I've read every major post war British novel but obviously I haven't and Our Man in Havana is one I still need to get round to. Enjoy Le Carre very much especially the Spy Who Came in from the Cold which is one of the best 20th century British novels I've read and the Honourable Schoolboy which to go back to what IzzyMuzzet said might be to do with the fact I read it in a week lying on a Mediterranean beach in 2011. I know some people don't rate it so highly but I loved it.

"Energy" is the perfect Russell Martin word because it's such a low bar. Like, just move a bit. Well done. Much learning!

I don't think the people complaining about Americanisation are the ones going to the NFL games.

I would have more sympathy with him if he hadn't called out players and their "egos" is his first game at Rangers, and if he hadn't publically criticised the young players' fitness here in a very obvious attempt to project his own failings on to others. Not all great managers admit they made mistakes - Ferguson didn't I don't think, Guardiola tends to from time to time. But one thing they never do is make it "personal" to use our Russ' own words. Keep that shit in the dressing room. Because not only is it not conducive to success on the pitch, it's also cowardly and shitty behaviour. He definitely has personality issues, as did Rodgers, but Rodgers also had some qualities as a coach and manager that could for some time compensate for his destructive ego.

Motivational poster potential. Might hang it in my office.

Athens is a fun but not particularly safe or attractive city so not that dissimilar to Manchester. I don't think I'd be able to cope with the weather in either of them.

I just get nervous around northerners

Also, "when other managers lose their style of play isn't questioned" is an incredible take. There's absolutely no way he's turning his career round is there.

Just a feeling that crime and violence are lurking not that far under the surface. And I realise vibes are not the best way to judge a place. Probably it's just hearing the accent, makes me think I'm about to get mugged.

His press conferences and interviews just confirm not only that his style of football, team selections and tactics are crap, but that he is totally unsuited to managing people. Like he has literally zero qualities. I mean apparently even Peter Taylor was a half decent coach at some levels.

Yeah Oxford fans! Take that!

Yeah I agree. I always find it ugly, grey and with a nasty undercurrent. I think in most European countries it'd be something of an embarrassment and I have no idea why people here big it up so much.

I bought the Radetzky March in 2023 from Judd Books in London and similarly it sat on my bedside table for a long time before I read it at the end of 2024 and absolutely loved it. Since then I've read a lot of Joseph Roth's novels and enjoyed them thoroughly, especially Rebellion. Though I think outside of Radetzky he may not be to everyone's taste, I lived in and have family from Eastern Europe and he captures Central and Eastern Europe and its characters better than most writers in my opinion. But Radetzky is brilliant and would've made a great three and a half hour Kubrick film. It's interesting you mention how time and place can influence feelings towards a book because I read the Sun also Rises and to be honest couldn't stand it even though it's regularly listed in top 50 books of the century type lists. But I was going through a difficult period personally and the characters just did my head in. Smilarly, I read The Garden of the Finzi Contini at a time when I had lots of free time, was very relaxed and at peace with the world and it remains one of my favourites. Great novel I'd highly recommend.

I'm not a literary critic so apologies for the rather clumsy description and analysis coming up. Stoner is another book that while not really stylistically or thematically related is really beautifully crafted like Remains of the Day, no sentence wasted or out of place. The Go Between is one that I think probably influenced Ishiguro - a lot about past times, England, memory, life-changing decisions. Oh and Norfolk, where Ishiguro has set some of his books and where he lived for some time. Other novels I love are The Garden of the Finzi Contini, Tender is the Night, American Pastoral, the Leopard and the Radetzky March. The latter two being my all time favourites. Alas I will never work for the LRB so don't ask me why...

Best post war British novel imo, and one of the best in the English language.

I still think it's the biggest event of our lifetime and will remain so. I remember my Dad bringing me back from NYC a book about the twin towers with loads of photos in it and 8 year old me was blown away by the size of the buildings. It scared me a little bit. The force unleashed by a 767 crashing into those buildings at 500mph, the sounds and the sights, is unfathomable. It must have felt like the apocalypse. I've seen and read about more nasty stuff on the internet than I should have done but I still look away when I see a video of flight 175 about to hit the south tower. I was 16 so it was a somewhat auspicious time in my life anyway but it feels like a real inflection point now. The death of liberal optimism. We'd built a nice little gated community for ourselves in the west and 9/11 was the day the walls came crashing in. Sure 2008, 2016 and 2020 contributed too, but this was the most visceral and instant marking of the end of the 'end of history'. And it's debatable if we get 2016 without 9/11, the war on terror and all the ruptures that created. I have over the years got a little bit obssessed with it, maybe because of the age I was when it happened or what we've lost since then. I've read a lot about it. One thing that often gets me is the photos of the departed - they're almost always on 35mm film cameras. Is that the last major event where that was the case? Seems maybe like a weird and slightly silly thing to point out but for me that makes it feel even more like the end of an era. I know it's a bit cringey now to be nostalgic about the 90s but I don't think a lot of people realise how good we had it. Sure not everything economically and socially was great, often it was quite shit. but there was a definite feel that things would get better, that technology would liberate us, that we'd be able to travel and live where we wanted, that free trade and open borders would lead to more peaceful coexistance not less. A kind of United Colours of Benetton view of the future which seems very cringey and unbelievably naive now but that kind of optimism did, in my opinion, exist to some extent. 9/11 didn't kill it alone, but it woke us up from a very long and very pleasant dream.

0-1 vs Bournemouth and 3-5 vs Fulham in 2023 were pretty horrific in terms of how much more we could have got from the games and what that would've meant to the club as a whole.

Quite obviously it's 0-12.

I initially thought this was a reply to: Which to be honest would make some sense.

Was it Portsmouth where they chased a paediatrician out of his house?

He looks more like Vigo the Carpathian

The irony is that people are saying "the problems run deep, it doesn't matter what manager you appoint" which is basically true in our case because they've all been shit and will continue to be.

Well this is not a new position from Israel in regard to Argentina and the Falklands. Very strange how many English conservatives think they're our allies.