u/Subtleiaint

In 2022, when Mason Greenwood was 20 years old, photos and video emerged that heavily implied that Greenwood was sexually abusing his girlfriend. He was suspended by Manchester Utd and never played for them again, he was dropped by sponsors. A year later the charges against Greenwood were dropped with the crown prosecution service stating that key witnesses had withdrawn. For the 23/24 season Greenwood was loaned to Getafe before transferring to Marseille in 2024, in 2026 he transferred to Fenerbahce, he has played at a high level across his career but he has not been involved with the England National team since the allegations. He is currently 24 years old.

In the past 4 and half years Greenwood has not talked about what happened nor has he attempted to rehabilitate his image in England, in 2024 he requested to switch his nationality to Jamaica but has yet to play for them. Given his silence it is impossible to understand how Greenwood feels about his reputation or what has happened to him, it is conceivable that his silence is a result of legal agreements made during legal proceedings.

My take is that, if he had wanted to, Greenwood could have rehabilitated his reputation in England. Whilst the evidence against him is terrible he was 20 years old when it was recorded, barely an adult. A public apology, a recognition of his failures, visible work on rehabilitation, support for women's charities and shelters are all actions he could have taken if he wanted to. Greenwood could have made himself a cautionary for other young footballers, he could have tried to make something positive from what he did, if he had I believe his reputation in England could have been repaired.

I do not know if he is simply uninterested, unrepentant or legally restricted from trying this and I do not argue that he doesn't deserve our judgement, but everyone deserves the chance to apologise, Greenwood hasn't taken his chance yet.

Hi all, I've got a technical question.

I've been on Ozempic for 6 months now and one of the things that surprises me is that I seem to lose weight even when I've not eaten well. I've had weeks on holiday for example where I've made no effort to avoid junk food (although I've still eaten less than I used to) and I've still lost weight.

It made me wonder whether my weight loss is purely down to calorie reduction or whether the drug has some other impact (like supercharging my metabolism or something)?

The reason I ask is that I feel i can maintain the calorie reduction I've been doing, or at least enough to not gain weight, without the drug but, if the drug is doing something else, then I've got to account for that as well.

After just 16 days 2026 holds the post pandemic domestic record for August. The month currently stands just $118m behind the the biggest domestic August of all time and should break that record next Sunday. How much further can it go?

Hi all, my 5 month old Fox Red Labrador bitch has always been anxious (she used to cry in her crate every morning from 4 30 but she seemed to get over that) but we're currently on holiday and things have gotten much worse.

She's started whining or howling not only when she's on her own but also when she's just got a barrier between us or when she's with people but her favourite person (my wife) isn't there.

For example we're staying at a holiday camp. After the beach we wash her off, dry her with a towel and then leave her on the deck to finish drying. I'm still outside washing off all our other beach stuff, I'm still within sight of her, but she's whining about being behind a gate.

Even worse when I'm with her but my wife walks to another room or just out for a bit, she'll whine then as well.

Is this just puppy behaviour or is this a problem? What can we do to make her more secure on her own (or just away from her favourite person)?

The current biggest week in North American history is the release week of Endgame in 2019, a week that, unsurprisingly, coincided with the biggest opening in NA box office history, that week delivered $536m.

Brand new day will not open as big as Endgame but that film was supported by $60m from the rest of the schedule. This week the Odyssey led a week of $300m and, with its excellent holds, its second week is going to be around $230m. I doubt the third week holds will be as impressive but a third week of $130m from those films wouldn't be impossible.

Meanwhile Spider-Man: No Way Home delivered $386m in its opening week and Brand New Day has a chance of being bigger. A week of $500m is close to locked but if things go as well as they could $550m is not out of the question.

This sub has come down with an awful case of 'the grass is greener on the other side' and I wanted to write a quick post about just how green the grass is on our side. This isn't a post about how we're the best squad, I'm not going to argue that it's coming home, I just want to knock some sense into your heads.

Starting with the obvious, we've got Harry Kane, European Golden Shoe winner in 2 of the last three seasons and currently in a World Cup shoot out with Michael Olise and Lamine Yamal for who will win the Ballon D'Or in 2026.

Next up we have Jude Bellingham, a contender for best midfielder in the world. He literally turned 23 two days ago and could end his career as one of England's greatest ever players.

Declan Rice just won the Premier League as the heartbeat of Arsenal and has made the Champions League team of the season for the last two years.

Bukayo Saka has apparently had a bad season, he was still ranked the 23rd best player in Europe last season by the data aggregator whoscored. At his best he's one of the best right wingers in the world.

Elliott Anderson just had a breakthrough season emerging as the most sort after defensive midfielder in Europe resulting in Man City making him the PL's second most expensive signing ever.

We all know that Reece James is made of glass but, when he's on the pitch and match fit, he's world class.

These are 6 players that would be in every squad at the tournament and, by my count, there isn't a team in the tournament that would start less than 4 of them.

After that we've got two left wingers that play for Barcelona, we've got midfielders that are keeping Cole Palmer and Phil Foden out of the squad, we've got the PL young player of the season at left back, Real Madrid's first choice right back isn't even fourth choice for England.

We don't have to be jealous of any other squad at the tournament, we are ranked fourth in the world by a completely objective ranking system, we are ridiculously good.

We've crate trained our Labrador puppy (16 weeks) and she's pretty happy with it. She sleeps through the night and she races there at bed time because she knows going in her crate means she gets a treat.

However the crate is on the verge of being too small for her and we'll need to get her a large one soon. The question is whether we need to keep her in her crate at all?

As a puppy we needed a place for her to go so she didn't mess up the place when we weren't supervising her but she's chilled out a lot (well, a bit...) and it no longer feels like she'll turn the house upside down if we're not careful. She doesn't use her crate as her refuge and we'd prefer her to have a big comfy dog bed in the future.

Should crate trained dogs keep their crates forever? If not is there a right time to move out of her crate? We don't want to move her too early if it could cause problems.

We're just wondering what the internet thinks?

It's the morning after the night before and I'm growing incredulous browsing the Three Lions sub. Posts lamenting leaving Palmer behind, complaining about Anderson, about a lack of line breaking passes, how outrageous it is that we haven't won both our opening games and how are chances our doomed.

I'll tell you what I watched last night. I watched our midfielders dominate their opposition, I watched our wingers terrorise Ghanaian fullbacks, I watched our attackers create more than enough to win the match, I watched a proud world cup team resort to packing their box and desperate defending. I watched a match where we were the far better team who should have won.

Is it a shame we didn't? Yeah sure, but get some perspective. We're still likely to top our group, we're playing well but, sometimes, you roll the dice and get a one. England Ghana was just one of those games.

I wanted to give some context to the first round of matches so I did some analysis of Elo ratings (which are often considered more accurate than FIFA world rankings) and some other stats. Here's what I found.

England vs Croatia was the highest rated match of the first round with a combined Elo of 3936, just above France vs Senegal at 3923. It was also the 6th most competitive match with the two teams Elo rating's 112 apart, the most competitive match was South Korea vs Czechia who were separated by 18 points.

The biggest upsets of the first round (defined as a lower ranked team beating a higher ranked team) was the Ivory Coast beating Ecuador (Ecuador's Elo was 243 points above the Ivory Coast), Panama losing to Ghana (220 points difference) and Australia beating Turkey (134 points difference). Whilst there were no bigger upsets there were a number of unfortunate draws with Portugal failing to beat the DRC (despite being ranked 337 points higher), Switzerland drawing with Qatar (470 points higher) and, of course, Spain struggling against Cape Verde (553 points higher and the second least competitive game of the whole group stage after Spain vs Saudi).

Looking at xG the three most attacking performances were England who accumulated 2.8 xG against Croatia (who were the best team to lose in the first round), Switzerland who couldn't beat Qatar, the lowest ranked team in the tournament, despite accumulating 3.24 xg, and Germany who hammered Curacao and accumulated 3.91 xG. The teams that were most flattered by their scoreline were the USA who scored 4 off 1.34 xG, Germany who scored 7 off their 3.91 xG and Sweden who scored 5 from just 1.37 xG.

The worst attacking performances were Tunisia and Cape Verde who could manage just 0.29 xG against Sweden and Spain respectively, and South Africa who managed a shocking 0.07 xG against Mexico.

There were 6 results that went noticeably against the run of play; Uruguay, Cape Verde and Qatar managed draws despite having an xGD of -0.55, -2 and -2.48 against Uruguay, Spain and Switzerland. Columbia got a lucky win against Uzbekistan despite managing an xGD of 0.46. Finally Scotland and Australia won against the run of play managing an xGD of -0.2 and -0.6 against Haiti and Turkey.

If anyone finds this interesting I'll do the same for each round of the tournament.

If you've watched Dear England, this is pretty on the nose.

It's time to thread the needle, group phase strategy time!

Going out in the group phase is obviously the worst outcome but, arguably, the second worst is coming second in our group. If we do our most likely route to the final is Columbia>Spain>Belgium> France!

If we win the group, or are one of the best third place teams, we go into the bottom half of the draw, admittedly we would likely have to beat Argentina and Brazil in the quarters and the semis but, arguably, that's easier than beating France and Spain!

We have two routes in the bottom half, If we come first our most likely opponents are a random third place team in the round of 32 before facing Mexico in their home stadium in the round of 16. If we qualify from third then we likely play Portugal then Switzerland.

So what's the preference? Portugal in the round of 32 or Mexico on their home turf?

disclaimer: I'm not seriously suggesting we try and come third, it's just a fun question.

In two days Mexico play South Africa n the first game of the Football World Cup. 78 of the 104 matches will be played at US stadiums including every match from the quarter finals onwards.

My question is how aware is the average American that this is going on? Will it get much media coverage, will the opening ceremony be on prime time TV? Are people wearing USMNT kits? Is America interested that it's hosting the biggest sporting tournament in the world?

I think O'Reilly will start there when we have a full squad but playing two different right footed left backs in a game when Hall, MLS, Shaw, even Mitchell, exist makes such little sense to me.

I know Spense got an assist but it's not about an individual moment it's about the utilisation and a left back stopping and either always cutting inside or passing back is such an easy thing to defend.

Can anyway reassure me that there's a logical reason to play a right footed left back and why, even with a right foot, Spence or Livramento are better than the left footed alternatives?

This post refers to pre pandemic norms (PPN), this is a baseline I use to evaluate box office performance. it is calculated as the average box office takings from 2017-19 for any given month. It allows me to compare different months (which traditionally see different levels of business) directly.

Apr Report

May total Box Office - $1,063m (108% of PPN)

Apr In Month releases - $917m (91.2% of PPN and counting)

Wow, that;s the only word for May, I was hoping that the month would break 90% PPN to continue the momentum 2026 has built up but it flew straight past that figure and has ended up as the third best month since the 2019. To be fair to me after the 19th my forecast was actually behind actuals (if only by a couple of million); great holds by Michael, Prada and The Sheep Detectives were making up for the shortfall of MK2 and a number of smaller releases, but then Obsession happened. Two weeks before opening Obsession was forecast for a $10m weekend and a total run of $23m, it's just flown past $100m and is showing no signs of slowing down.

Obsession is a unicorn of a film, it's been able to grow it's weekend gross in both its second and third weekend, no film has done that since ET. having just one massive breakout in a month would have been enough for most of us but May wasn't done. There had been some buzz about Backrooms for weeks, this $10m film based on a YouTube series obviously had cult appeal and it had a decent shot of being A24's biggest film. This was reflected in the forecasts, two weeks before its release Backrooms was expecting to open to $31m, it just opened to $81m.

Between them Obsession and Backrooms have pushed May from good into great territory. Since the Pandemic there has only been two better months and they both needed monster hits to do it. Jul 23 leant on Barbenheimer to hit 110.4% PPN whilst Aug 24 rode the nostalgia train with Deadpool and Wolverine to 113.6% PPN. For May 26 to do similarly well without a single film opening above $100m is astonishing, I'm so hesitant to say that cinema's back but a few more months like this (and there may well be a few more months like this this year) and the narrative really changes.

Looking at Apr's in month releases we're currently sitting at 91.2% PPN with one or two percentage points still to come (Apr releases made $13m this weekend). This was driven by the double whammy of Super Mario Galaxy's $427m (a monster hit by any reasonable measure) and Michael's $340m which also defied terrible reviews to clean up. There wasn't much behind those two, the Drama made $48m but no other Apr release broke $30m.

Looking ahead to June we're expecting another strong month just not as strong as May. Hitting 100% of PPN is not impossible but it will need Toy Story 5 to really pop off or a surprise over performance from Scary Movie 6, Masters of the Universe, Disclosure day or Supergirl to hit it, a more modest 90-95% of PPN is a safer bet. Regardless Jun is going to cap off the biggest Q2 since the pandemic meaning both record quarters belong to 2026.

BLUF - James Trafford has the most insane goal prevention statistics you've ever seen.

EDIT - I've been repeatedly challenged on whether data from different competitions is comparable. It should be, the models used are exactly the same and the analysis is based on comparative performance rather than on cumulative performance, ie, the score is based on their actual performance compared to their expected performance rather than only on their actual performance. However, to check I looked at 4 or 5 keepers who played in both the Championship and the Premier League and there's no pattern of keepers outperforming xGOT more in the Championship than they do in the PL.

Traditionally a goalie's shot stopping ability is measured by save percentage or by the goals prevented stat, the former doesn't take into account the quality of the shots faced and the latter doesn't take into consideration the volume of shots faced. I take it a step further by looking at proportion of goals conceded. Basically I look at the number of goals a keeper was expected to concede versus the numbers they do concede, this takes into account both the quality and quantity of shots faced. I was playing with this stat and Trafford's jumped out at me and I thought I'd share.

Here are Trafford's stats over the last three seasons for all competitions there's data for.

To put this in some context over the last three seasons, in all competitions, Alison has managed 95.5% saved, Pickford 93.2% , Raya 92.2%, and Donnarumma 89.8%, elite is below 95%, below 90% is godly.

What does this mean?

First of all he needs to prove he's consistently this good at elite level, his one full season in the PL was disastrous but, in principle, these stats should be just as impressive whether they were achieved in the Championship or in the Champion's league. Secondly this says nothing about his command of the box or his distribution, areas where his stats aren't as impressive but he's only 23 and well short of his prime.

Hopefully he gets to play a full season at an elite club next year and we see what he's truly capable of.

Are Arsenal going to play seriously, are Palace going to rest players ahead of the Europa Conference final? Is it a good idea to target teams on the beach or do they play better when the pressure's off, will West Ham play like demons and, almost most importantly, what the hell is Pep going to do in his last match?!?

This is going to be such an unpredictable weekend, I want to focus on safe bets but I feel there are none. Has anyone got and words of wisdom for maximising points this week?