#so...idk I’m just improv-ing and using sources

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

anyway I have no idea how a sixteenth-century pope wrote their letters so I’m just going into this assignment blind

[roundthatcorner]

“I said what I said, and it was wrong, or it was taken wrong, and now it's all this...”

BASICALLY.

So the furor, such as it is, that has resulted from a fairly innocuous post of mine seems to have taken on a bit of a life of its own, so I feel somewhat responsible and need to address certain things. A lot of what's been said seems frankly disconnected from anything I actually wrote, so I'm going to cover some but not all of the misconceptions – particular themes have been chosen because honestly some of the ideas I've been credited with are quite hurtful, to me personally and I think to a few other people.  I'm not 'at'-ing people because I'm not sure it would be at all fruitful or worthwhile to do so, and I'm not going to rebut things line-by-line because that seems more counterproductive than anything. My goal here is to hopefully dampen 'the controversy' (again, such as it is!) rather than inflame it.

On the one hand, I stand by the bulk of what I said – there's been some serious misinterpretations going around, some of which are genuinely baffling – but I can also see that my tone and my contextualization could have been improved. I do 'read' a little bratty or something in that post, which is something I should try to improve upon in the future. As for this post, I'm trying to essentially be the opposite of how I sounded there – be, like, very straightfoward and emotionally open and hopefully not stick my foot in it, or whatever. I'm basically a pathologically shy and conflict averse person, and totally just hoped that this would blow over, so all of this is way beyond my comfort zone. I hope people will see that this post is very much heartfelt, and imbue their reading of it with some generosity towards me and my intentions.

Anyways, the bulk of it, in which I pick out those misinterpretations that I would find it particularly upsetting to let stand as somehow representative of how I think:

a) Re John and being a fan: I love John. I can seriously count on one hand the number of people I love and admire more than John, and the subset under consideration for that isn't, like, 'famous people I like' or 'musicians', it's 'everybody who has ever existed.' I quite simply adore John and if I didn't I wouldn't expend the effort I do into trying to understand him. The implication that I can't possibly be a Beatles 'fan' (said in quotes, no less! Super disheartening), let alone a longtime fan is quite bizarre and insulting. I mean, I think there's a base presumption of 'grace' we should try to extend to other fans: none of us think any of them were or are irredeemable; we are all here because we love them; we all want to see them clearly and fairly. I am (clearly!) not some troll shouting 'John sux!' or whatever. It's not a mark of love for me or anyone to refuse to see John as he was – and by this I don't mean that not seeing John exactly as I do is a failure of anyone else, or deliberate, or that my interpretation is accurate, or whatever, just that FOR ME to limit my interpretation in order to 'keep' John sufficiently lovable or whatever would be silly. John was/is plenty lovable! I don't need to 'protect' myself from whatever dark places may have existed in his mind because I am entirely capable (as I think we all are) of loving him through that (not in spite of that, but THROUGH it, with empathy for him). I don't have to love or accept everything about John to love him – I don't have to love Yoko, or heroin, or Allen Klein, or stupid anti-Semitic cracks, or whatever (which is not to compare those things straightforwardly – obviously – but to make the point that it's okay to dislike things John liked!). We don't owe it to him as fans to make excuses for him; what we owe him is the same as what we owe any human being, which is just to try to understand where he's coming from. That's all that I was trying to do in my post – just delineate the thought processes he may have been having. I don't think I need to surround every discussion about John with 5 dozen caveats about his mental health issues or drug use simply because I have assumed that we all know these things and accept them as the (only) basis for further conversation (and actually I did reference both of those as clear sources of his behavior – I don't know that I can much more explicitly reference his suffering mental health than to say he was experiencing a break with reality). Furthermore, the idea that John's behavior during the final years of the Beatles was at least in part based on virulent paranoia directed at Paul as well as a desire to punish him is not something I came up with – it's a somewhat standard interpretation at this point. Even Paul (who also manages to love John while acknowledging his faults!) has admitted that John became very paranoid, jealous, neurotic, etc. Michael Gerber from Hey Dullblog once commented something like, to paraphrase, the hardest thing to accept as Beatles fans is that John broke up the Beatles and he did it willfully and deliberately...I don't know that that's THE hardest, but it's certainly up there. It's incredibly emotionally draining to consider the dynamics at work during the break-up, but I also think it's worthwhile to do so as honestly as we can, because we love them all so much and because they have so much to teach us, even when it's through this painful, agonizing shit.  

b) Re things assumed about me or what-have-you: It strikes me as really quite unfair to assume that because I've never discussed certain things on this blog (or in that specific post), that I don't understand or have never experienced them and am coming at them from a position of somewhat cruel disengagement or w/e. The title of the blog isn't 'Bisexuality, Mental Illness, Drug Addiction & Me', so I really didn't consider it under the purview and have generally refrained from inserting too much of 'myself' (or at least myself non-filtered through Beatles). I don't talk about feminism, or cats, or Mad Men or make-up or agile software development or robotic vacuums because despite my interest in all of them, that's not the intention of my tumblr. Nevertheless, some grotesque oversharing in hopes of re-assembling/salvaging some of what's been misconstrued:

- I am bisexual...too...like many people are. This gets back to the whole 'text doesn't always telegraph meaning particularly well', but the paragraph for which I was criticized for sounding like a Nat Geo narrator or w/e...as I was writing it I was actually getting quite emotional thinking of...John, like, maybe discovering his sexuality at 16, because that was the exact age where I was literally writing in my diary in cryptic little coded comments about being attracted to girls, and then blacking the comments out and tearing them out of the journal and ripping them up because I was SO fucking ashamed and scared and alone with all of it. Basically, I am not at all looking at this from the perspective of an outsider, let alone a heteronormative outsider.

- To be accused or w/e of not understanding or being unsympathetic to mental illness is more than a little ironically funny to me, because literally the reason I started this blog, writing fics, etc is because after over a decade on anti-depressants, I went off them about six months ago (lest this too be misconstrued, I am not advocating this (or un-advocating it), it simply is). My brain has therefore been 'allowed' to loop incessantly/unconstrainedly on the Beatles for the first time since I was fifteen – so mental illness is quite literally why I'm here! Funny stuff. I don't want or need or feel obliged to go into much more detail about this, so let it suffice to say that I have deep understanding and sympathy for mentally ill people, for John in particular, and I fully appreciate the impact of mental illness on a person's behavior, and any flippancy is, ah, semi-literally gallows humor.

- If I sound hardened or unsympathetic with regard to drug addictions...it's partially because I am on some level. I invite anyone who takes issue with this to go re-live their childhood with the trauma of multi-generational drug and alcohol abuse that I lived with, because I will guess that anyone who is less than saintly, as we all are, will end up just as jaded about it as I am, just from the inescapable daily grind of taking care of addicts. Sorry to sound fairly bitchy about this point, but...idk, man, it's always really really difficult to have people be like, “have you considered their feelings? Have you devoted enough of your life to ritually gutting yourself on the pyre of this or that person's addiction?” Like, yes? Sorry, all the mornings where I had to make sure my dad hadn't choked to death on his vomit before I got on the school bus have kind of drained my sympathy. Nonetheless, some of my favorite people are junkies...

c) Re Linda and Paul: I would never disrespect their relationship, and this is far and away the most upsetting thing to have people skew, because I admire what they were able to create and sustain SO much – it means so much to me in terms of what is possible even from the blackest fucking depths. Linda could have been another Francie, or Heather Mills, or Yoko, and GOSH, how much fucking poorer the world would have been, how much darker. Linda and his kids gave Paul something to live for, a whole second life after the center fell out of his first. They were actually able to make a happy life that was snatched from total chaos and despair – that's so incredible and awe-worthy to me. When I said that Paul chose Linda over dying, I was not putting down their relationship, or devaluing it or her (I think she is maybe the most admirable person in all of Beatle-dom), or anything even remotely like that. For me, there is no deeper compliment to give someone than to say that they chose to keep going when they could've died. I mean, compliment is not even the word for it, I honestly don't think I have the capacity to express this..but, like, this is soul-deep for me, the deepest, sincerest possible feeling. I derive enormous comfort and strength on literally a daily basis from the choice Paul made in the winter of 1970. Believe me when I say I would never denigrate Paul's experience or Linda's role in it or the love and commitment they showed each other.

d) Re interpretation versus facts:  There's some criticism based on me presenting my ideas as facts. I don't think I did this – I couched the thing repeatedly with 'conjecture' (in all caps!), 'my interpretation', 'I think', 'maybe' and 'may', 'a range of possibilities', 'possibly', 'presumably', 'might', etc. I was not presenting what I said as verifiable fact but as my evolving understanding of what may have happened. Besides...all of us are here because we think there was or could have been a romantic/sexual component to John & Paul's relationship. This is not something that is at all verifiable (and it even very often requires that we assume people are lying!). Practically everything we say is conjecture based on our very unorthodox interpretation of sometimes conflicting/contradictory/bewildering information, and I am no more (or less) guilty of presenting my ideas as fact than, I think, anyone here.

e) Re Yoko: I get the sense that this was the main initial point of disagreement in all of this, and the rest of it was kind of...throwing stuff and seeing what stuck (unfortunately some of it seems to have). This is actually the only intractable issue – it's not one based on misunderstanding or a failure on my part to be clear enough. I dislike Yoko exactly as much (or more!) as I conveyed in the original post, and I have good reason for it. Pretty much every day of my life I learn something about her or about the world, relationships, responsibility, children, how a person should treat others, etc, that makes her behavior that much more noxious, inexcusable, and reproachable. Once upon a time I was thirteen and believed wholeheartedly in the Ballad of John & Yoko narrative – but as an adult, I simply can't countenance it. If we were not talking about 'John and Yoko' but rather about 'Joe and Sally Schmoe', or my brother and his girlfriend, or the next case on the docket in the local family court, there would be no question that this was a profoundly unhealthy and damaging relationship. Like...are most love affairs as enormously, relentlessly destructive as theirs was? Is there anyone from John's pre-1968 life that was allowed to really remain a part of his life post-Yoko? What kind of healthy romantic relationship cuts a person off from everything else? Is 'all that I know is just what you tell me' anything other than a deeply disturbing sentiment? Some of this can be laid at John's feet but on the other hand his 25 year old secretary (as well as every other significant person in his life except for his parents and probably Mimi) was able to coax him into being a BETTER person, whereas he only seemed to become an unhealthier and more damaged person the longer he spent with Yoko (and the feminism thing...like, the most feminist thing he could have done would be sending Cynthia an additional $10,000 a month – 'look at the one you're with' or were with, after all). I can't say that Yoko didn't love John but I will say that she didn't love him well – based on the standards for human relationships and interaction that we are willing to apply to normal people. To quote John Dunbar (who is definitely a longtime John fan!), “If I had set out to destroy John Lennon, I could not have done any better than to introduce him to Yoko Ono.”

If anyone wants to talk any more about this, please message or ask me (I will likely not respond to asks in the interest of not encouraging divisiveness or whatever, but I do appreciate what I’ve been sent). I can't control what anyone posts, obviously, and there are maybe still sensitive and insightful things to be said about some of it, so go ahead if you feel the need. For my part I probably won't engage any further publicly, especially since it's been unhelpfully dug into the ground (over...and over...and over) and there's a certain amount of like...willful misconstruing that's going on that’s just not worth getting into.

And just because it came on shuffle, and because sometimes Paul is exactly what one needs him to be, I'll end by saying:

“Is it better to love than to give in to hate?

Yeah, we'd better take good care of each other,

 Avoid slipping back, off the straight and narrow”

:)

[walkonwalkonwithhopeinyourheart]

[Discussion, Long] Should Liverpool Target Wilfried Zaha? via /r/LiverpoolFC

[Discussion, Long] Should Liverpool Target Wilfried Zaha?

So I think we've generally agreed that we need cover in the attack. Whether it's to replace the squad wingers that don't really exist or to prevent us from playing Ings and Solanke in the CL, it seems a quality attacker needs to be added to this side so we can start to build the depth teams like Real, City and Bayern have.

I've been watching Wilf Zaha from afar for the past couple of years, and he seems a very talented lad, so I'm wondering if he could be a good option for a rotation striker/winger who might not break the bank. Here I dig deeper into that thought to see if it could be a good idea

Comparing Wilfried Zaha to Alexis Sanchez

I know Zaha is a former Manc and he's a bit divey, and I can see how those things would put people off. But I'm curious as to how his performance this season compares to that of Alexis Sanchez.

Few would dispute that Sanchez is one of the Prem's elite wingers/forwards, as well as a high-workrate player who would fit well in Klopp's system, so I think he's a good comparison point in evaluating the way a younger forward might fit in with our squad.

Now I'm in no way saying that I think Zaha plays a similar game to Alexis or that he's as good as Alexis. I just want to see how his numbers look against one of the elite players in our league

I've gathered stats from 3 sources (but I really wish packing stats were widely available!):

PL Official Site: Sanchez, Zaha

WhoScored: Sanchez, Zaha

transfer markt: Sanchez, Zaha

For those who don't want to click the links, I'll go ahead and break it down.

To be clear, I'm only addressing this season, and I'm only taking each player's PL stats into account because Zaha has only played in the PL this season. I understand that this decision might handicap Alexis's metrics a bit, but I couldn't think of a simple and sensible way to factor in his cup matches, so comparing their performances in the same competition seemed like the best way to go.

PL Official Site

Statistic Sanchez Zaha Appearances 28 26 Goals 9 (1 Pen) 7 (0 Pens) Goals / Match .32 .27 Goals (Head) 1 1 Goals (Right) 7 5 Goals (Left) 1 1 Shot Accuracy 39% 39% Big Chances Missed 8 7 Assists 6 2 Total Passes 1308 518 Passes / Match 46.71 19.92 Big Chances Created 10 6 Crosses 86 74 Cross Accuracy Not Listed 18% Through Balls Not Listed 4 Accurate Long Balls Not Listed 8 Tackles 38 30 Tackle Success % Not Listed 77% Blocked Shots 29 18 Interceptions 16 6 Clearances 0 1 Recoveries Not Listed 116 Duels Won Not Listed 210 Duels Lost Not Listed 231 Successful 50/50s Not Listed 106 Aerial Battles Won Not Listed 3 Aerial Battles Lost Not Listed 13 Errors Leading to Goal Not Listed 0 Yellow Cards 5 5 Red Cards 0 0 Fouls 31 40 Offsides 23 18

For some reason there are a bunch of stats on the PL site that are available for Zaha but not for Alexis. Idk what that's about

Who Scored

Statistic Sanchez Zaha Age 29 25 Rating 7.33 (AFC), 7.62 (MU) 7.29 Minutes 2286 2281 Shots / Match 3.6 (AFC), 1.7 (MU) 2.2 Pass Success % 72.4% (AFC), 74.3% (MU) 73.2% Aerials Won / Match 0.8 (AFC), 0.4 (MU) 0.1 Man of the Match 6 times (3 AFC, 3 MU) 3 Times Key Passes / Match 2.7 (AFC), 1.9 (MU) 1.7 Dribbles / Match 2.1 (AFC), 3.8 (MU) 4.1 Fouled 2.3 (AFC), 3 (MU) 2.7 Offsides / Match 0.8 0.7 Dispossessed / Match 2.5 (AFC), 3.2 (MU) 3.8 Bad Control / Match 3.4 (AFC), 2.8 (MU) 3.7 Crosses / Match 0.5 (AFC), 0.7 (MU) 0.5 Long Balls / Match 2.6 (AFC), 2.2 (MU) 0.3 Through Balls / Match 0.4 - Tackles / Match 1.1 (AFC), 2 (MU) 1.2 Interceptions / Match 0.3 (AFC), 1.1 (MU) 0.2 Fouls / Match 1.1 (at both clubs) 1.5 Dribbled Past / Match (Defense) 1.3 (AFC), 2.2 (MU) 0.7 Blocks / Match 0.1 (AFC), 0 (MU) -

WhoScored lists his strengths and weaknesses as follows:

Skill Quality Dribbling Very Strong Holding onto the ball Weak Aerial Duels Weak

And they describe his style of play like this:

Gets fouled often

Likes to dribble

Counter attack threat

transfermarkt

transfermarkt doesn't offer a lot of new information after scraping the first two sites, but it's still got a few interesting tidbits. First is that they credit Zaha with 4 assists rather than the 2 assists that WhoScored and the PL attribute to him, and they also have him with one fewer yellow. So idk what's up with that.

Here's the rest. It's not much

Statistic Sanchez Zaha Matches missed due to injury 2 (strained ab; he also missed 1 for an international match and 2 during his transfer saga) 9 (knee injury, 2 different spells) Note: Palace lost every match he missed, so they're 8-11-7 with him on the pitch Subbed Off 10 times Twice Subbed On Twice Once Minutes / Goal 254 313

Now obviously Sanchez is the better player. But I'm impressed with how well Zaha holds up.

Starting with attack, both players do most of their scoring with their right. Their shot accuracy is the same. And while Zaha scores less frequently than Alexis, it's not by too terribly much, and he doesn't shoot as often. He's missed one fewer big chance than Alexis in pretty much equal minutes.

Alexis has a clear advantage as a playmaker (and of course it's hard to parse exactly how much of that is thanks to the talent around him relative to the talent around Zaha). They pass with about the same accuracy, but Alexis passes WAY more, resulting in more through balls, more long balls, more key passes, more big chances created & more assists. Even so, Zaha is averaging close to as many key passes per game as Alexis has averaged since his move to United. They cross about the same amount, but it's hard to get a sense of how effective their crosses are from these statistics, and I haven't watched them enough to judge.

Alexis also shows better ball control, with fewer dispossessions and bad touches by a significant (but not embarrassing) amount. However, Zaha outdribbles Sanchez, draws about the same number of fouls, and strays offside a bit less often.

Defensively, both players are willing to put in a tackle, and I'm impressed with Zaha's 77% success rate in his tackles (I wish the PL had that stat for Alexis!). Their disciplinary record is effectively the same. Zaha fouls a bit more, but they've picked up the same number of yellows, and neither has a red.

Zaha's most undeniable flaw is that he just doesn't win aerial duels ever. He just doesn't do it. But that's not such bad news when considering adding him to this club because we don't really ask our forwards to do that. They occasionally score headed goals, but those goals come from well-worked build-up play, not from Bobby, Mo or Sadio out-muscling behemoths or flashing their high-jump skills

One thing I also found tremendously impressive about Zaha (assuming it's accurate) is that, even in an injury-plagued season, he was only subbed on once (meaning if they eased him back into match fitness, they only gave him one match, max three if the sub-offs were part of it!), and he was only subbed off twice! So in 23 of his 26 league appearances, he went the full 90! That suggests two things to me:

1) He has the stamina to go 90 minutes even when he's fighting or recovering from injury

2) His manager DOES NOT want to take him off the pitch

To me both of those are very encouraging signs.

I'm also meditating a bit on the split in Alexis's stats between the two clubs he's played for this season. His transition to United brought with it major statistical fluctation

He had one severe Dropoff:

Shots taken

Some non-negligible dropoffs:

Aerial duels won

Key passes

Bad control

Long balls

A few non-negligible upticks

Fouls drawn

Dispossessions

And a few major upticks

Dribbles

Tackles

Interceptions

Dribbled past by opponent while defending

So first, credit Alexis for his ability to transmute his playing style to fit a new managerial scheme. But second, it's such a stark reminder that statistics can be tremendously skewed by the tactics a player is asked to execute. You can't say that Arsenal Alexis is the real Alexis, and you can't say United Alexis is the real Alexis. What you can say is that Alexis is a player who has the tools do what's needed to play fluid, pass-and-move Arsene Wenger football, as well as the tools to play disciplined, deep-lying, shape-holding Jose Mourinho football.

I say that to say this: In considering whether or not Zaha would be a good option for Liverpool Football Club, I believe we should evaluate what tools he has to play for a Jurgen Klopp side, as well as what tools he'll need to develop further to truly succeed here. And when I look at the player he is right now, I'm excited about the kind of player he could be with Jurgen Klopp.

Here's what I see that I like:

He has something of an end product. 7 goals might not look like a ton, but with a .27 Goals / Match ratio, he's a bit better than a 1 in 4 scorer. That'd probably be about 10 goals if he were a 38 game starter for Palace, and my hunch is his confidence in front of goal would improve tenfold with the guidance of Jurgen Klopp & Zeljko Buvac, especially with the likes of (some combination of) Mane, Firmino, Salah, and Keita pushing forward with him on the counter

Dribbling is one of his finest skills, and he's got solid pace. Fits perfectly with our attack. He could sub on for Bobby if we want to inject some pace in the center of the attack, or he could give us the freedom to make like-for-like substitutions for Mo or Sadio if they start to lose their legs

He's missed fewer big chances than Alexis. Sterling's missed 11 so far this season, btw

He can put in a tackle. 30 tackles with 77% accuracy in 26 matches is nothing to sneeze at for a forward, especially one who's missed 9 matches to knee injuries

He hardly lets anyone dribble past him. I don't know enough about Palace's tactics to know how often he's put in that position, but people get past him about half as much as even Arsenal Alexis

He doesn't seem to get tired. If we start him, we won't have to worry about giving him a breather, and if we bring him on as a sub, he could cause real havoc with fresh legs against a tired defense

He's an efficient passer, or at least he's pretty much on par with Alexis Sanchez

He has 1 less key pass per match than Arsenal Alexis and nearly the same amount of key passes per match as United Alexis, even though he attempts solidly less than half as many passes as Alexis. Similarly, Alexis's 1308 passes have created 10 big chances, while Zaha's 518 passes have created 6 big chances. I'm encouraged enough by his peripheral passing stats that I think the assists would come were he placed in a system that asked him to pass more and he had the option of picking out Salah, Mane, Firmino etc

He gets caught offside less than once per match

He's 25, 1 year older than Ox, Robbo and Karius; the same age as Mo; 1 year younger than Bobby, Sadio, VVD and Matip; 2 years younger than Hendo, Clyne and Gini; 3 years younger than Lovren. Of course we've got the young pups like TAA coming up, and Milly and Lallana are becoming the elder statesmen, but I love the idea of having a group of guys in the same age group come into their primes together

He's good at drawing fouls

He likes to attack on the counter. I don't think he's as fast as Mo or Sadio, but he is fast, and obviously if you like an aggressive counter attack we're the place to go

He's doing all this in a shit Palace side and -- shudder -- a Hodgson side, at that. I really think he could have a Salah-esque breakout season under Klopp, though of course he'd have to share the pitch with our top-tier forwards, so he wouldn't have the abundance of opportunity Mo's had

I find the WhoScored Rating to be a bit shit, but Zaha is in good company, at least (tied with Muller and Mane, for instance)

Potential concerns:

Hold on to the ball! We don't want another Jordon Ibe "dribble.. dribble.. oops the other guy has it" situation. However, I think Zaha's a much more potent dribbler than Ibe, and I think our pressing tactics allow our forwards to make more direct attempts to beat a man because they know if they lose the ball there will be a swarm of red converging on the ball within seconds. So I'm not sure this would be too much of a problem here. I think our style might actually embolden him to take men on and drive toward the net with purpose. Just play smart and don't give it away in compromising positions.

pass more! I think that would be a natural transition from a Hodgson side to a Klopp side though. I haven't watched a ton of Palace this year, but I imagine he's often put in a position where he's kind of alone up top and the best option is to go for it himself or hold play up. Could contribute to his high dispossession count as well

TLDR: I think Jurgen could make excellent use of Zaha. It's not that he'd add a dimension we're currently lacking, it's just that I'd feel completely comfortable with bringing him off the bench or starting him when one of our front three picks up a knock.

Before I started writing this, if you offered me Alexis Sanchez or Wilf Zaha today, I would've snapped your hand off to nab Sanchez. Now... I'm not so sure. Zaha is 4 years younger, the same age as our core, and he has the physical tools to become sensational playing the kind of football we play, and he's already shown a willingness to involve himself defensively. I think he could really blow up in the right environment, and I think we could be that environment.

Now I don't know anything about how he is off the pitch, what kind of teammate he is, how strong his work ethic is, or if his personality would mesh well with Klopp's.

I also don't really have a sense of what his market is going to be, but I feel like he'd likely be in that tier below the 70-80m types. But who knows with this market? I'm not attached enough to the idea to throw stupid money around with City and their ilk at the expense of getting a Kondogbia-type in the middle of the park

Submitted April 22, 2018 at 03:15AM by arrogantdesperado via reddit https://ift.tt/2K3Mk3m