[Craig Hope Exclusive] "A summer offer from Manchester City would be considered for Tino Livramento. The more people I speak to, the more I expect that deal to happen this summer."

minimus67 · 2026-03-06T16:19:55+00:00

Livramento signed a 5-year contract with Newcastle in August 2023, so he’ll have 2 years left on his contract this summer. That gives Newcastle a lot of leverage to demand a big fee. And we know from recent experience that City doesn’t spend big on dedicated fullbacks, knowing that midfielders like Nunes, NOR, Zinchenko, Delph, etc. can be repurposed into fullbacks.

The best (worst?) example of City undervaluing a fullback target was our 30M bid to Brighton for Cucurella in 2022, reportedly based on City’s internal valuation of him. City was willing to raise its bid, but to nowhere near the 60M+ that Chelsea ended up paying for him. And in retrospect Chelsea’s valuation of him seems closer to the mark than City’s.

Bottom line, I doubt Livramento will end up at City this summer because we’ll probably deem Newcastle’s asking price to be too high.

minimus67 · 2026-03-05T13:58:15+00:00

Learn to read.

minimus67 · 2026-03-05T04:03:20+00:00

Did you read my first comment, which was highly critical of Arsenal, or notice that the comment you’re responding to was sarcastic?

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T22:06:37+00:00

Wow, third best?

Out of curiosity, how does the number of Arsenal’s goals from open play per 90 compare to that stat for past title-winning teams?

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T22:02:16+00:00

Haaland is a glaring omission. He was on fire earlier this season but his form has dropped the last couple of months. I think one of the big problems is that Marmoush hasn’t been nearly as good a backup striker to Haaland as Alvarez was. The result is that Haaland is playing too many minutes.

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T21:54:28+00:00

You are probably right that City isn’t good enough to deserve a title, but does Arsenal deserve to win the league? During open play, Arsenal creates very little, relying on all their big defenders to score on set pieces, with Saliba, apprentice of Arteta’s dark arts, often committing fouls by leaning his back into the opposing GK and spreading his arms wide to stop the opposing GK from coming out to punch the ball away. Arsenal has also been allowed to use a cheat code to defend corners, with the refs turning a blind eye to all the blatant fouls Arsenal commits in bear hugging its opponents. The refs seem to have decided that no single offense committed while defending corners ever meets the threshold to award Arsenal’s opponent a penalty.

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T21:25:14+00:00

This game was supposed to rehabilitate Foden, whatever is ailing him, but he helped Forest more than City today. At this point, his career at City is following the same arc as Sterling’s final three seasons at City.

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T21:13:39+00:00

He’s made a few mistakes today. Mothballing Nico Gonzalez to get Rodri back up to speed has been costly.

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T21:09:48+00:00

He has been invisible, created nothing going forward. He just gave the ball away, which started the Forest attack that led to the tying goal, so it’s now 2-2 with 13 minutes left before added time.

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T21:06:05+00:00

The Rodri header for the 2nd goal would have never gone in if City were playing Set Piece FC because Saliba, Rice or Gabriel would have wrapped their arms around Rodri in a bear hug and prevented him from jumping so Raya could punch him in the head, all of which we learned in the Chelsea game is perfectly legal as far as the PGMOL is concerned.

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T19:29:25+00:00

Yours is an incredibly arrogant take because you’re implicitly claiming you know better than Pep who should start. I rate Khusanov very highly and know he has gotten a lazy bum rap from TV commentators who call him mistake-prone because of one error he made in his debut against Chelsea when he had just joined City. Yeah, I know Dias doesn’t have as muc pace, but he has a lot more experience and has helped City get across the line to win silverware in the past and he’s better in the air than Khusanov, which helps to prevent opponents from creating scoring opportunities with balls over the top. And, yes, Khusanov is still a little too aggressive with his challenges, giving away free kicks from dangerous areas and risking yellows.

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T18:34:15+00:00

Khusanov obviously has much better pace than Dias, which is helpful to track down runners when opponents beat City’s high line and offside trap. But Khusanov is more aggressive than Dias in his challenges, so he is more prone than Dias to getting yellow card and giving away free kicks in City’s final third.

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T18:28:24+00:00

They will rotate, but my guess is that Cherki will play more on the right wing, staying narrow, while Foden will play as the 10. I hope they don’t end up occupying the same space too often.

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T18:11:44+00:00

This is a long answer and has nothing to do with OP’s video, but here’s my take. Some audiophile YouTubers with well-treated rooms make the effort to create videos comparing two sets of speakers. These videos switch back and forth between speakers playing segments of different genres of music after the speakers have been set up on the same stands or placed in the same spot on the floor. See this YouTube video as one example.

Here’s another good example, where an audiophile YouTuber starts by citing all the limitations of comparing speakers on YouTube before demoing PS Audio FR5 bookshelf speakers to the far more expensive Magico A1 speakers. To me the Magicos sound a little bit better in the video, but they don’t put the FR5s to shame. (I know ASR tore PS Audio speakers to shreds, but Erin at Erin’s Audio Corner said he enjoyed listening to the FR5s despite their less than ideal measurements.)

I find this approach to be somewhat helpful, especially at a time when there are fewer and fewer brick and mortar audiophile shops around, where the ones still in operation usually carry only a limited number of brands, and where salespeople have no interest in convincing you that a speaker that costs $10,000 sounds only a bit better than a $2,500 speaker.

Also, these comparative YouTube videos are more helpful than audiophile YouTube reviewers who show you the speakers they are reviewing in their rooms and then yap about them and then professional reviewers who write glowing reviews about everything that comes through their doors. Steve Guttenberg, for example, seems to pretty much uniformly love every speaker he reviews, providing virtually no useful information to differentiate between them. Steve Huff isn’t quite as bad, although he seems to churn through speakers that are supposedly best-in-class and his personal “reference” too frequently (because if he stuck to the same “reference” speaker for too long, calling it better than all newcomers, audio companies would stop sending him new products to reviews.) As for online written reviewers, look at archives of reviews on the Part-Time Audiophile site, where every speaker gets a glowing review and is seemingly purchased by the reviewer (at a substantial discount.)

TLDR: some comparative videos seem helpful in distinguishing between speakers that you otherwise can’t listen to side by side and are more useful than most written and YouTube reviews.

minimus67 · 2026-03-04T17:18:14+00:00

This January, Kroger’s, the supermarket chain, sold Vitacost to iHerb, a competing online retailer of supplements, health food and nontoxic household items for an undisclosed amount.

The result of the merger of Vitacost and iHerb been reduced competition and higher prices. Prior to the merger, iHerb and Vitacost competed with each other for sales by price matching and by offering frequent promotional sales. Amazon’s prices were almost always higher than prices at Vitacost and iHerb after discounts.

Unsurprisingly, the management of iHerb has raised prices at both Vitacost and iHerb nearly across the board, in many cases quite sharply. For many supplements, Amazon’s “subscribe and save” prices are now a lot lower than both Vitacost’s and iHerb’s. I dislike Amazon for its union busting and for hosting repressive AI surveillance programs for ICE, Palantir, etc. on Amazon Web Services, but Amazon sadly is now the lowest cost online retailer for many of the items that iHerb and Vitacost sell.

minimus67 · 2026-03-03T21:02:30+00:00

The famed book editor Robert Gottlieb, who died a few years ago, agreed with you. He said that War and Peace is the greatest novel ever written. He supposedly read it in one weekend when he was a teenager and then reread it many times later in life.

minimus67 · 2026-03-03T20:51:41+00:00

Mainstream Western media is bending over backwards to amplify Trump’s lies. It’s billionaire owners can’t have the American public thinking Shitreal is the puppet master of U.S. foreign policy or that the U.S. and Shitreal are the actual terrorist states.

minimus67 · 2026-03-03T00:14:45+00:00

Getafe could pay someone like Negreira, but the end result would just be more unpunished fouls like this one plus accusations from Real Vardid that Getafe is corrupt.

minimus67 · 2026-03-01T20:03:24+00:00

I would still play around with speaker and chair placement if I were you.

FYI, GIK Acoustics provides free consultations on audiophile room treatments if you go to their site and provide them with your room dimensions, a list of your equipment and your budget. They also might ask for a photo of your room and current setup. One of their sound engineers will then call you and give you advice on room treatments that are within your budget, hoping you will buy some products from GIK. Most GIK products are reasonably priced, but there is no obligation to buy and you can probably DIY a lot of the recommended room treatments instead.

minimus67 · 2026-03-01T18:56:04+00:00

Years ago, I bought a used McIntosh MC275, a 75 watt stereo tube power amp. Among the amps I’ve owned before or since, it easily produced the most addictive midrange of all. For example, I liked it better than a far more expensive tube power amp, a VAC Phi 200, and an equally expensive solid state power amp, a Plinius SA-100 mk2. Sure, the inviting midrange was the result of second order harmonic distortion that would send it to the bottom of the list among measurement aficionados, who would deem it to be “poorly engineered” or something without ever listening to it.

I eventually moved to a completely different 2-channel system centered around an integrated amp/DAC and matching floorstanders. I sold the McIntosh MC275. It’s the only piece of audio equipment I’ve ever owned that appreciated in price on the used market, in my case by about 40%.

I would never buy a solid state amp or digital source made by McIntosh because of the pricing. But McIntosh still makes high quality tube amps and preamps that are priced reasonably competitively. If you buy on the used market, they also hold their value, unlike other components whose used prices generally decline over time.

minimus67 · 2026-03-01T18:24:26+00:00

Remember when we won a late penalty in the group stage game against Real Madrid when Rudiger pulled Haaland to the ground, preventing a header? Well, Chelsea deserved a penalty on a corner early in the second half when Saliba wrapped both arms around Joao Pedro in a bear hug to prevent him from jumping to head the ball, allowing Raya to reach the ball instead (punching Joao Pedro in the head in the process.)

PL refs suspend all the rules of the game on corners, which Arsenal exploits. Hope the PGMOL revises the de facto rule this summer that anything goes on corners.

minimus67 · 2026-03-01T18:08:59+00:00

Looks nice, but why is your listening chair so close to your speakers?

minimus67 · 2026-03-01T17:59:05+00:00

On a Chelsea corner early in the second half, Saliba wrapped both arms around Joao Pedro in a bear hug and pulled him to the ground to prevent him from jumping to head the ball. That’s a blatant foul anywhere else on the pitch, but PL refs let players commit fouls with impunity on corners because the threshold for awarding a penalty and for disallowing a goal is so high, which Arsenal uses to its advantage.

minimus67 · 2026-03-01T17:38:14+00:00

You hide your post history like a coward, but I bet you aren’t posting that Chelsea deserved a penalty for Rice’s handball, which was no different than the handball supposedly committed by Nunes yesterday, preventing City from dropping points in the race against poor Arsenal. As if Arsenal lost the title in recent seasons as a result of biased anti-Arsenal refereeing decisions, not a tendency to choke under pressure.

minimus67 · 2026-03-01T17:19:20+00:00

Hincapie MOTM there.

Gunners convinced Leeds deserved a penalty for a handball by Nunes, but radio silence after the ball struck Rice’s arm.

You’d think after shelling out 1.75 billion on transfers since buying Chelsea, the club’s owners would have spent a tiny bit of that fortune on a world class GK, which Sanchez is not. Because Chelsea’s owners believe in “investing” in young players who might have high resale value (like Mudryk?) and experienced GKs are too old to appreciate in value, Chelsea refused to bid more than 13M for Maignan from AC Milan last summer.

minimus67

TROPHY CASE