Squirrel Patrick

@Paul31463933143 @ezmehn3y I don't know exactly what, but something went wrong there. For those in the medical profession, it became extremely difficult to go against the witch hunt ("it would be bad for your career if you testify for Letby") I'm not sure if that mentality extended to the legal profession.

@ezmehn3y I may be wrong but my personal opinion is that Lucy's defence were told the prosecution had it in a bag and that Lucy had no chance of winning. It seems the media the prosecution and the judge had already made their minds up well before the trial was over.

I’m sorry, but what was going on with Lucy Letby’s trial defence? No cohesive counter narrative. No medical expert witnesses. No proper funding (legal aid). No research on Shoo Lee’s paper. And agreeing too much evidence that should have been contested.

Argentina are the only team out of all 48 participants not to have a single VAR intervention against them, despite committing the most fouls in the tournament. Do you even realize how insane that is?

@Lawton_Times Even if he is right about fatigue, that doesn't mean that throwing everyone behind the ball is a good defensive strategy.

Worth a read this. A leading sports physiologist explains why, in his opinion, Tuchel had no option but to make the changes he did. His players went into that semi-final severely fatigued. Data analysis based on previous Eng and Arg games in Atlanta. thetimes.com/article/6d2100…

@ContrarianJolly @Ice_Landic

@PatrickSquirrel @Ice_Landic There are ten England defenders in the box, and five Argentinians are effectively unmarked. What is the point of the england line at this point? Either man-mark, or go for zone defence (though: don’t do that in the penalty box!) but playing a ten man offside trap is nuts.

Aún hay gente diciendo que Bellingham llega tarde a tapar el tiro de Enzo.

@Benjwinst You cannot rely on the goalkeeper to save everything. Pickford made some sharp saves. How about defending properly?

First time I’ve seen this angle, How can anyone criticise Jordan Pickford for this goal. Blame 100 percent on players failing to close down quick enough to stop the shot. x.com/ansiebos/statu…

@cso4x @allenf32 I would have the team practice this religously. Idea: one team can score, the other cannot, so just plays possession. Swap around at half time. That would teach the maximally defensive strategy.

@PatrickSquirrel @allenf32 Of course, but their confidence broke. The faith in what Tuchel was telling them failed. Ultimately that's on Tuchel (and he accepted responsibility) but most people are just blabbering the dimitted story that he made a simple mistake.

the emerging consensus on England and Tuchel, that he made horribly defensive substitutions and threw away the game, is completely wrong. I honestly think it's because most (maybe all) English/British pundits want to blame Tuchel as an outsider rather than face up to how the game actually played out. the entirety of the game after Gordon's goal was dominated by Argentina. but note the first substitution was 17 minutes later on 72 minutes and the *really* defensive ones were on 82 minutes. in the 17 minutes before the first sub, Argentina could and arguably should have scored 3 times. in the 10 minutes before the next, they could and should have scored twice more. in that interval, England did absolutely nothing. they had already given up. they strung virtually zero passes together and I don't think touched the ball in the opposition half (never mind box). I think that Tuchel realized this (because he is an excellent coach) and *correctly* concluded they needed to shore up or Argentina would indeed score 3 or more before long. one idea I've seen is Tuchel should have thrown on the likes of Rashford and Watkins (who are fast, basically) to better press from the front and give England a route to play out. but imagine he had done this, England became *even more pathetically open* and Argentina had won 4-1. the criticism would have been even worse than now, and would have called for *exactly what he did*. so, no, he did what he had to do as he watched his team completely collapse for no reason. and *it could have worked*! after the second set of subs, Argentina had one very long-distance shot and the two goals. but the two goals were a result of astoundingly lazy lack of pressing, not tactics. the chances before were getting sliced apart in open play. the chances after were pathetic individual discipline. so, no, the substitutions did not throw away the game and Tuchel did not get it wrong. England epically shat the bed, should have ended up losing 4-1, and Tuchel attempted the only viable route to holding on and still winning. it is no way his fault that Bellingham couldn't be bothered closing down Fernandez and Spence couldn't be bothered closing down Messi, amongst the other 5 goals they could have conceded after giving up. English pundits want somebody to blame, so they blame Tuchel (who conveniently isn't English). what they ought to do is face up to this being one of the most astonishing psychological capitulations in World Cup history.

@ContrarianJolly @Ice_Landic "If I am behind the ball, I am defending more effectively" seems to be the cognitive bias

@cso4x @allenf32 Does the manager have the chance to train the team in practice for such scenarios?

@allenf32 The players fucked it. Tuchel isn't stupid. He was trying to convince them they needed to push forward. They didn't listen and didn't have faith in that management instruction and just keep getting deeper. So what could he do? Go along with it and then the defence they wanted.

@allenf32 The manager has more to do with the team than curating substitutions!

@williamnhutton England were lucky to have maintained a lead until then.

Thomas Tuchel will be endlessly criticised for being too defensive too soon. But Fernandez’s 85 th minute strike was a wonder goal. The margins at this level are so fine. England were a few minutes and 3/4 inches from pulling it off. Cut a great team and manager a little slack.

@ContrarianJolly You got me 😄

We complain about England being defensive when they get a lead but everyone does it. Remember when Germany unexpectedly went one up against Brazil in the WC semi in Brazil in 2014. They were exactly the same. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_v_…

@lukemcgee "England barely had the ball" is not a valid reason for their strategy, which can be described as, "just survive the next attack". It is the outcome of the strategy.

FWIW, Tuchel was right to be defensive. England barely had the ball, low XG and the goal was a freak. If you don't understand that, you don't watch enough football. Moving to 5 at the back probably messed up shape, but the idea you should just go after Argentina is idiotic.

@McFlybowy You may well be damned for playing a good strategy and luck going against you, but that doesn't mean that England's strategy was objectively correct. 12% possession after scoring is no good. You aren't punishing the opponent's failed attacks in any way. Seek over 50% possession

The only thing that makes your idea a genius is it being successful. If Tuchel had won today, people would be calling it a tactical masterclass. They’d say he outsmarted Argentina, managed the game perfectly, and knew exactly when to defend his lead. The very same decisions that are being mocked now would have been praised as brave, calculated and disciplined. lol But football doesn’t judge ideas, it judges outcomes. One goal changes the entire narrative. You go from being a genius to being accused of having no ambition. That’s how brutal this sport is. The margins are so thin. Protecting a one-goal lead in a World Cup semi-final isn’t some outrageous concept. Managers have done it for decades. The greatest coaches in history have all asked their teams to suffer without the ball when the situation demanded it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And today is one of those days it doesn’t. Tuchel’s mistake wasn’t necessarily deciding to defend. His mistake was failing to survive the pressure that inevitably comes with inviting a team like Argentina onto you. Against a side filled with technically gifted players and led by Messi, every extra minute you spend defending increases the chances that one moment of brilliance will punish you. That’s why football is so unforgiving. The same plan can be hailed as tactical brilliance one day and ridiculed as cowardice the next, simply because of the final score. In elite football, the line between genius and failure is often just one goal. Today, Tuchel ended up on the wrong side of that line. Had England held on, we’d be reading articles about his game management and defensive organisation. Instead, he’ll be criticised for being too conservative. That’s the reality of knockout football. Results write history, and history rarely remembers the logic behind the decisions, it remembers who won.

@JamesMelville Yes. When maximising possession actually becomes a good idea.

England went 1-0 up and largely on the front foot against Argentina and then crapped themselves. From the moment England went 1-0 up to the end of the game England only had 12% possession. When it really mattered, Tuchel fell into the same park the bus mistakes as Southgate.

@JamesMelville It's like a boxer who stops throwing punches and wonders why he got knocked out

Southgate was criticised for parking the bus when 1-0 up in important games. Tuchel has thrown on defenders and done exactly the same. #ARGENG

@RNFlood @litewhisperer I would rather say that taxation forces the shopkeeper to honour and discharge the monetary claim. Thus fiat represents an aggregate obligation to economic society, while being an asset to the bearer. In another word, "debt".

@PatrickSquirrel @litewhisperer The point is that taxation leads to a demand for that particular currency, thereby, giving it value. Shopkeepers want you to spend £s in the UK because they have to pay taxes in £s. Why would they except another currency as payment?

"Moreover, the state's collection of taxes is one of the key reasons that makes an asset money"

@RNFlood @litewhisperer Broadly true. I just don't believe in "net financial assets"

@litewhisperer @widespreadhaze You are not reading my posts. I have not disaggregated the treasury and central bank: quite the reverse, I call them the "monetary authority". I simply disaggregate the state entities that trade in real value, like the treasury biscuit tin.

@PatrickSquirrel @widespreadhaze You cannot separate the two because TSY's cash flow passes through Central Bank's ledger. If you disaggregate them on paper, you are dividing a single, unified payment system into two artificial boxes that do not exist in the actual clearing infrastructure.

"Taxpayers do not owe the National Debt; taxpayers *OWN* the National Debt as a financial asset"