It's a big London derby this Sunday which means time for a thread on Spurs! 🐓

I'll try to look at Spurs' strengths & weaknesses and conclude with my XI to beat them.

Mourinho is such a great tactician that it's nearly impossible to guess his exact setup but I'll try here. (1)

Expected to line-up in a 4-2-3-1, Spurs' game plan will be to frustrate us & try to nick a goal on counter.

Defensively, they sit in a 4-4-2, with the 2 front players (Kane & Ndombele) focused on cutting off passing lanes to midfield rather than pressing the CBs too hard. (2)
Spurs' two CMs and wingers sit narrow and mark the opposition CMs & cut-off passing lanes to them respectively.

This strategy of cutting off passing lanes into midfield from Spurs makes Thiago Silva's diagonals to our attacking FBs/wingers even more important in this game. (3)
To counter, Spurs utilise the pace of their wingers while Kane, who is an excellent playmaker, is the one who becomes the pivot to launch these counters.

Kane likes to drop deep, drawing the opposition CBs out of position. This leaves space for the Spurs' wingers to run into (4)
To stop this, it's very important for our players to remain positionally disciplined.

Silva's experience should help in this while Kante's presence in the space infront of defence will be key in putting pressure on Kane and stopping him from picking passes from those areas. (5)
When in possession, the Spurs full-backs love to bomb forward while their 2CMs cover for them. This at times leaves them vulnerable to quick counters.

The pace and 1v1 ability of our front players especially Tammy and Timo could be extremely useful in such situations. (6)
Toby is a big miss for Spurs in defence. His absence leaves them short in experience & their other CBs are prone to lapses in concentration which can be exploited.

Toby's absence also leaves Spurs vulnerable at set-pieces and is another area which we should try and target. (7)
Players to watch out for:

• Kane - Excellent playmaker & finisher. To stop him, Kante & Silva will be key.

• Son - Kane's partner in crime. A disciplined defence is key to stop him.

• Hojbjerg - Rock in the middle. Any loose passes/touches and this guy will eat you up. (8)
Spurs Weak Areas:

• Flanks - Spurs give up space on flanks. The quality from our wide players & FBs will be crucial in this game. Need to overload this area to force Spurs to come wide which in turn will create space in the middle

• Set-pieces - No Toby, less experience (9)
My preferred XI to beat them

• RJ & Ben the key players & we need them on top form

• Tammy & Timo to continue their brilliant partnership

• Kai in for his passing ability & threat from range. Kovacic tends to play a few loose passes which could be costly in this game (10)

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.