Skimpledawg what do you think of Thomas Frank and the prospects of Brentford?

Can’t believe they defeated West Ham away from home.

raumdeuter:


When a striker is useless that is when they will start finding other roles for him to play on the field. Just like Gabriel Jesus that is now shunted on the wings. When you leave his main responsibility and start looking for fine handwriting like you are doing for Firmino then that is a useless striker

When Liverpool won the league Firmino the striker contributed 9 goals. If that is what other attackers are contributing will they win?

A coach will always praise his player the same Klopp praising him dropped him to the bench as fast as possible. Even today if you ask Klopp he will still tell you how important Firmino is for the bench.
The main reason Firmino lasted that long in the starting eleven was because the other option was Origi
Immediately Jota who isn't even close to world class just a decent striker. Jota who couldn't even strike for Wolves show face Firmino found out his relevance to the team and those lies they were telling him about him linking attack suddenly became him linking the bench together

If Poland had firmino as striker in the last world cup perhaps they would not have finished last in a group containing the mighty Senegal, Japan and Colombia

hensben:
Leave raumdeuter, na only score regularly Dey influence win. Firmino acted as false 9 to Mane and Salah that gave them ucl and epl. Firmino is not a natural 9.

Do you realize that this Jota is actually a left winger and logically should replace Mane. But when a left winger is replacing a 9 in a team that should tell you that Firmino was only endured that long because there was no other option

CAPdan21:

If Poland had firmino as striker in the last world cup perhaps they would not have finished last in a group containing the mighty Senegal, Japan and Colombia

Shebi Brazil that had him won the trophy and Firmino was top scorer

izzou:


I really can't wait to see Firminho in another club, without Salah and Mane.

Let me see how that club would go far relying on him as their goalscorer.

You wan expose Firmino be that. All the years na excuse we dey hear of how he binds the attack he does things we cannot see like he is Professor Peller

Now he has been promoted to be doing those things on the bench

When you see a useless player that is when excuses will be flying around. And I think he is the same age as Salah and Mane. Real age maybe Mane fit even collect 5yrs from Firmino sef

But na left winger dey bench am now

Almajirihunter:
Is the Salah vs Mane comparison still alive

Every Salah comparison has died a violent death

We wey sabi ball told them earlier on but their lack of foresight made them argue.

Now posterity has shut them up. Everything Salah does I endorse

CAPdan21:

The funniest part of his criticism is that firmino fulfills all aparisport criteria by winning CL, EPL and Copa America on the field

Just like Giroud but people wey get eye to watch know. The striker wey was quickly replaced even after winning CL and World cup

Jodera:
The one and only striker that fits all his criteria yet doesn't fit all his criteria

The only reason why egbon never drag Lewy na because him dey play for bayern, if not, na like gen him for dey drag am

You mean drag a striker who is the 3rd all time scorer in the Champions league only behind Ronaldo and Messi?

hensben:
I don’t have a problem with a player that is good in his primary duty.

But you are here hailing a striker like Firmino who failed miserably at his primary duty year upon year

Hailing an attacker like Hazard who failed to score like an attacker

raumdeuter:


But you are here hailing a striker like Firmino who failed miserably at his primary duty year upon year

Hailing an attacker like Hazard who failed to score like an attacker

Firmino is not a natural striker from day one.

Hazard serve as playmaker/creator for Chelsea which was his primary duty.

CAPdan21:

Dayo and his useless criterias...wonder what he saw in ayinde martial that made him to say he has more in his arsenal than kane and lukaku

Anyone who watches ball properly will know that Martial is a wing forward and not a central striker.

User09:


Currently, I think the team plays better without Lukaku. Except there's a shift in system by TT or Lukaku improves in certain areas upfront (pressing, movement) we're going to be way too predictable. Plenty times during the games, I thought he needed to move deep or go wide to allow other forward players take up the vacated central spots

He probably needs to sit some games out. At least he provides flexibility for us. He currently has a better chemistry with Timo compared to the others and he has a history of playing 3-5-2 in Inter with Conte

TT certainly has his work cut out for him in terms of synergy upfront. Let's see in December, I expect adjustments to have been made

Why Lukaku isnt getting service.

izzou:


Since when Lukaku came?

If yes, how many?

All our attackers have been utter gibberish this season. All of them deserve to be thrown under a trailer.

If not for our defence, we would not be where we are now. That's the honest truth

we have more defenders than attackers wat more can TT do...In Lampard's first season,, he wanted d team to play fluid attacking footie,,we were drinking goals like kunu,,second season he tried to balance tinz up but still it ended badly till TT came and discovered d strength of d team and played to their strength

izzou:


Since when Lukaku came?

If yes, how many?

All our attackers have been utter gibberish this season. All of them deserve to be thrown under a trailer.

If not for our defence, we would not be where we are now. That's the honest truth

Whether or not you include the games after the arrival of Lukaku, it doesn't change the fact that Mount has the most big chances created in our side. Our attack hasn't clicked well yet and I'm sure it definitely will, but don't throw one player under the bus to exonerate another.

hensben:
Firmino is not a natural striker from day one.

Hazard serve as playmaker/creator for Chelsea which was his primary duty.

Those are lies you tell yourself to make you feel better.
Salah was not scoring like this before until he improved himself
Hazard is a forward just like Neymar Gnabry etc and fails in comparison to all of them when it comes to delivering

Havertz10:
when I used to randomly visit this thread, I didn't like rumdeuter

He was always critical of our players and naturally it annoyed me

Then I listened to his assertions and he actually made a lot of sense most times with his assertions

We aren't both Chelsea fans but I will agree with him 98% of the time meanwhile i'm in disagreement with Chelsea fans 50% of the time

Tribes and clans are overrated, an aboki can share more in values with an igbo man than his own brother, religion and tribes really hinders us as humans

Just last season when I already saw that Lampard was an ekpa, it was the same set of fans with fan tribalism blaming everyone insulting everyone because they felt they must be loyal to their club and one of their own

Another truth is that most of those that constitute Chelsea fanbase are not very intelligent, there is a reason Chelsea fans are seen as Agbero and not other clubs. They are mostly one way direction people who cannot think for themselves

Jodera

A coach like Klopp or Pep will always continue praising you as long as you are his player. Up till he binned Lovren and Karius he was always praising them. The same way he praised and always hailed Firmino yet at first opportunity he benched him with an above average attacker like Jota

raumdeuter:


Shebi Brazil that had him won the trophy and Firmino was top scorer

At least he scored there and also featured in Copa America win as the starting striker on the field while also being the joint top scorer...your polish fraud led Poland to disgrace in two successive tournaments..Poland must be wishing they have firmino maybe they would have won something

raumdeuter:


Just like Giroud but people wey get eye to watch know. The striker wey was quickly replaced even after winning CL and World cup

Egbon dayo come and tell us why the polish fraud is leading his country to disgrace...France without Giroud = bundled out to Switzerland, France with Giroud = world cup win... choose your poison wisely

raumdeuter:


Those are lies you tell yourself to make you feel better.
Salah was not scoring like this before until he improved himself
Hazard is a forward just like Neymar Gnabry etc and fails in comparison to all of them when it comes to delivering

What did Gnabry do in epl. Any decent player can shine in Bayern liga. Hazard conquered league 1 already with low rated Lille with good goals and assist.

Salah doesn’t orchestrate Liverpool’s play like how Hazard was doing for Chelsea.

izzou:


I didn't throw one player under the Bus. I threw all of them under it. It was you who singled out Mount to defend him.

In our regular first 11, only Lukaku joined. So, I don't understand how we need to give our attackers time to click well.

I think we need to stop making excuses of how Mount costs nothing and how Havertz is just 21 abi 22, so therefore they can be excused whenever they feed us watery shiit.

If these guys cannot live up to expectations, they should just getat abeg.

Creativity is alien to these guys. Omo, I no wan vex now

So you don’t know one player can change the way the team play. You guys should leave stats and focus on how team/players play on the field, the tactical set up to know how football works.

On David Hundeyin’s Cornflakes of Jihad By AbdulBasit Kassim

Deep Sigh!

As long as you are active on any social media platform, by now, you should have read, or someone must have shared the trending David Hundeyin’s article “Cornflakes for Jihad: The Boko Haram Origin Story” (https://westafricaweekly.substack.com/p/cornflakes-for-jihad-the-boko-haram) with you. Regardless of his political positions, David Hundeyin dug up the archive that most people in the religious establishment of northern Nigeria know but would instead prefer to be silent upon. Although David often raises interesting issues in his investigative articles, he can sometimes appear too sensational and quick in reaching conclusions.

Andrea Brigaglia, Alex Thurston, Jacob Zenn, and other scholars who have closely studied the microhistory of the evolution of Boko Haram based on a careful examination of a wide range of primary sources have previously discussed some of the issues in David’s article. In the 2020 article “Entangled Incidents: Nigeria in the Global War on Terror (1994–2009)”, Andrea Brigaglia and Alessio Lochi provided an extensive analysis of the 27 September 2006 letter Aminu B. Wali (then the Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations) wrote to the Chairman of the Counter-Terrorism Committee. In his book Unmasking Boko Haram, Jacob Zenn also discussed the transnational engagements between the Izala-scholar Mallam Yakubu Katsina and the Algerian-based GSPC and GIA.

These uncomfortable, traceable, verifiable, and evidence-based facts are known and documented even though many prefer to listen only to the set of narratives that suit their sectarian leanings. Shying away from confronting difficult conversations about your archive is an act of cowardice. It is only a matter of time; sooner or later, people would dig deep inside those records and ask uncomfortable questions that would put you on the defensive. It would help if clerics, rulers, and people with shady past address, reckon, redress, repair, and grapple with complicated, violent, and disavowed aspects of collective histories before academics, journalists, and curators of archive unearth their records for public scrutiny.

What is new in David’s article is the record and detailed information he unearthed that linked the identities of previously unknown actors to the web of Boko Haram’s history. At a time when the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, has defended the decision of the government not to name financiers who have been indicted for funding Boko Haram, David’s piece would certainly provoke questions. However, despite the trove of records in David’s article, he ended with a dangerous and conspiratorial conclusion by attempting to lump different issues together, including early al-Qaeda connections, the emergence of Boko Haram, and farmers/nomadic herders conflict.

Before addressing this conspiratorial bent, it is important to ask questions about the state-funded NGO in Jordan. According to the article, David hatched a narrative that incriminates the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre (an affiliate of the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought) as part of a coordinated international campaign with the intentional aim of distorting the reality of Muslim-Christian religious tensions and crisis in Nigeria. Yakubu Musa is the “black face clerical surrogate” whom the Jordanian NGO conferred the “500 Most Influential Muslims” badge to reward his role in this grand coordinated campaign. This narrative is consistent with the commentaries that often strip away the agency of African Muslims by presenting them as proxies and local clients doing the bidding, nefarious foreign plots, and the global expansionist agenda of Middle Eastern hegemons on the ground in Africa.

The Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought is the Jordanian version of the UAE-funded Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies (led by Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah), the Qatari-funded Al-Qaradawi Center for Islamic Moderation and Renewal (led by Shaykh Yusuf Qaradawi), and the Moroccan-funded Higher Council Mohammed VI Foundation of African Oulema (led by King Mohammed VI and Ahmed Toufiq, the Moroccan Minister of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs). Arab rulers established these institutions to promote their soft power and competing state brands and foreign policies in Muslim societies across the globe. The Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought is particularly anti-Salafi in its religious orientation. The anti-Salafi leaning of this institution is evident in their 2007 launch of the inter-religious initiative “A Common Word” and their 2005 conference of Islamic scholars where they produced the “Three Points of Amman Message.”

The annual 500 most influential Muslims published by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought is an effort to promote mostly Sufi scholars. They mention the leaders of some mass Salafi movements only for political correctness. This political correctness is the reason Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute refers to Yakubu Musa as a leader of an activist Sufi brotherhood. Izala is not a Sufi movement. This begs the question, what exactly does the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought seek to gain by forming a partnership with a Nigerian Salafi cleric to obfuscate the reality of Muslim-Christian tensions in Nigeria? David’s claim on the Jordanian connection does not add up.

David also seems to conflate the two Yakubu from Katsina. Yakubu Hassan Musa Kafanchan of Izala is different from Yakubu Yahaya of the Shiites Islamic Movement of Nigeria. The former earned his moniker “Kafanchan” during the 1987 Kafanchan crisis while the latter acted as the deputy of Ibrahim Zakzaky. Newsweek documented his face-off with Governor Yahaya Madaki in Katsina in the aftermath of the 27 March 1991 burning of the Katsina office of Daily Times. Like most religious clerics in northern Nigeria, the two Yakubu have drifted away from the anti-state proselytism they propagated in the past.

David’s article also attempted to frame the 2012 publication ‘Report on the Inter-Religious Tensions and Crisis in Nigeria’ published by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought and their recommendation of “grazing routes” as evidence of their alleged pre-emptive knowledge of violence related to nomadic cattle herding. In the article, David concluded with the paragraph:

“Very tellingly, at a time when conversations about violence related to nomadic cattle herding were not yet present in Nigeria’s political equation, a Jordanian organization with links to Yakubu Katsina — a known Nigerian terrorist — was already recommending “grazing routes” as a solution for a problem that for the most part, did not actually exist yet. 9 years later, the question is…how did they know?”

This conspiratorial conclusion contradicts the colonial and post-colonial history of nomadic herders and farmers’ conflict in Nigeria. The history of violence related to nomadic cattle-herding predates Nigeria’s independence. As early as 24 August 1949, the veterinary officer of Sokoto province, K.J.R. Maclennon, issued a memo under the title “Grazing Control and the Utilisation of Fulani Cattle.” In the memo, he wrote:

“It is suggested that means of encouraging a close association of Fulani and farmers are likely to lead to quicker and more widespread benefits than efforts to settle Fulani on mixed farming on a large scale.

For this reason, investigations are being made into the adequacy of Burtali, Mashelari, and grazing grounds, as well as the causes of conflict between the two interests.

I should grateful for your views and those of the native administration on the partial remission of Jangali for those herds that spend a specified period, say two or three months krasled on farmland during the dry season as a means of encouraging the practice.”

One out of the cache of evidence of the history of farmers and Fulani herdsmen conflict in the post-colonial period is the 1990 budget broadcast of the Military Governor of Niger State, Lt. Colonel Lawal Gwadabe, reported by Triumph Newspaper on 15 January 1990. In the broadcast, Lawal Gwadabe appealed to the Fulani leaders in Niger state to control their people by cautioning them against using their cattle to trample on people’s farms.

David is outrightly wrong to have concluded that conversations about violence related to nomadic cattle herding were nonexistent in Nigeria’s political equation when the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought published its 2012 report. On the contrary, the colonial archive documented the “grazing routes” almost a century before the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought issued their recommendation, which David attempted to present from a conspiratorial position.

So the answer to the concluding question of the article “9 years later, how did they know” is entirely conspiratorial and out of place. Historians should always endeavor to demystify the “perceived newness” often attributed to the present’s chaos and ruptures. Although this article is well-researched, it was severely marred the moment the author attempted to draw unfounded and conspiratorial conclusions.

N.B: For the sake of clarity, this piece is NOT a rejoinder to Hundeyin’s article. His article is thorough, well-researched and flooded with a trove of verifiable and traceable records. The only drawback in the article is the author’s conspiratorial conclusion and attempt to muddle unrelated conflicts together.

hensben:
What did Gnabry do in epl. Any decent player can shine in Bayern liga. Hazard conquered league 1 already with low rated Lille with good goals and assist.

Salah doesn’t orchestrate Liverpool’s play like how Hazard was doing for Chelsea.

What did Hazard do in la Liga and CL
Gnabry scored in 1 CL game vs Spurs all the open play goals Hazard has scored in his entire career

raumdeuter:


When a striker is useless that is when they will start finding other roles for him to play on the field. Just like Gabriel Jesus that is now shunted on the wings. When you leave his main responsibility and start looking for fine handwriting like you are doing for Firmino then that is a useless striker

When Liverpool won the league Firmino the striker contributed 9 goals. If that is what other attackers are contributing will they win?

A coach will always praise his player the same Klopp praising him dropped him to the bench as fast as possible. Even today if you ask Klopp he will still tell you how important Firmino is for the bench.
The main reason Firmino lasted that long in the starting eleven was because the other option was Origi
Immediately Jota who isn't even close to world class just a decent striker. Jota who couldn't even strike for Wolves show face Firmino found out his relevance to the team and those lies they were telling him about him linking attack suddenly became him linking the bench together

Everyone knows firmino isn't a natural striker. Firmino's case is different from giroud own cos most arsenal fans watching him wanted him out as he kills so many attack amongst other things. Same can't be said for firmino who interpreted his role well till his loss of form post covid.

CAPdan21:

Egbon dayo come and tell us why the polish fraud is leading his country to disgrace...France without Giroud = bundled out to Switzerland, France with Giroud = world cup win... choose your poison wisely

Giroud was on the field when France lost to Switzerland
Giroud was so important to Chelsea that he was bundled out immediately
Giroud was so important to France that they benched him immediately

raumdeuter:

What did Hazard do in la Liga and CL
Gnabry scored in 1 CL game vs Spurs all the open play goals Hazard has scored in his entire career

Why is same Gnabry not rated high by fifa, Uefa and sport outlet.

raumdeuter:
Jodera

A coach like Klopp or Pep will always continue praising you as long as you are his player. Up till he binned Lovren and Karius he was always praising them. The same way he praised and always hailed Firmino yet at first opportunity he benched him with an above average attacker like Jota

Klopp is a competitive and ambitious coach, he's not like Wenger that will keep misfiring striker like giroud without competition esp wen he's dropping stinkers.
The question you'll ask is
1... Why didn't klopp buy a striker(or attacker) when they lost cl 2018?
2... Why didn't he buy an attacker wen he narrowly lost to man city with one point in 2019?
3... Entering 2020 wen they need the league, why didn't he buy another striker if firmino was so useless.

Mind you, firmino isn't a big money signing that the issue of "he'll need to justify his money" will be used. Also he is benching strikers in sturridge and origi. It's not like Liverpool doesn't have money that you'll say it's lack of money.

Jodera:
Everyone knows firmino isn't a natural striker. Firmino's case is different from giroud own cos most arsenal fans watching him wanted him out as he kills so many attack amongst other things. Same can't be said for firmino who interpreted his role well till his loss of form post covid.

Which role did he interpret? The part of being barren. Firmino a striker that went almost a whole year without a goal at Anfield before covid and you are here blaming post covid

See the attached below, see the date that was before COVID and Firmino was already celebrating 324days without a goal at Anfield

No wonder Jota an above average left winger sharply sent him to the bench

You are an Arsenal fan. Do you hope your number 9 goals a whole year without a home goal?

hensben:
Why is same Gnabry not rated high by fifa, Uefa and sport outlet.

The number of champions league goals already rate him ahead of Hidden Hazard

izzou:


I really can't wait to see Firminho in another club, without Salah and Mane.

Let me see how that club would go far relying on him as their goalscorer.

firmino is a striker that his skillset flourished under klopp. If you can call him a system player in that striker role under klopp, I might agree with you, but saying he's useless to Liverpool's success or he's an activity former is pure false.