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On being reminded Benteke, who was considered by Liverpool as a solution to their striking problems last summer before being overlooked as he continued to recover from an Achilles injury, has amassed eight goals in six games for Villa since Tim Sherwood replaced Paul Lambert, Skrtel smiles. |
Skrtel played in a behind-closed-doors game with Steven Gerrard against a Shrewsbury Under-23s side on Monday in order to stretch his legs after being retrospectively handed a three-match suspension following a clash with Manchester United’s David de Gea last month. |
Skrtel prefers to look forward rather than back, and does not shy away from the importance of Liverpool making good their potential. |
Last season’s title challenge, January’s Capital One Cup semi-finals with Chelsea and now a tete a tete with Villa reveal Rodgers’ squad to be contenders for the major honours. |
Regardless of whether Skrtel returns in a back three or a four-man rearguard, whether or not Gerrard also steps back into the spotlight, Liverpool must now cross the line or the tag of ‘nearly men’ will threaten to stick. |
“Every single footballer plays for the trophies,” said Skrtel at the launch of Liverpool’s new home strip for 2015-16 manufactured by New Balance. “The semi-final against Chelsea was unlucky for us because we were doing well, we created the chances but just couldn’t score. |
“Obviously it was the Capital One Cup, some people don’t take it seriously, but it is still a trophy, and we were doing everything to win it. Unfortunately we couldn’t. Now is our other chance. |
Do you know where your friends are? If not, Google wants to help you find them. Today, Google introduced Latitude, a new opt-in feature that lets smartphone and laptop users share their location with friends and allows those friends to share their locations in return. Although not pinpoint accurate, Latitude can displa... |
Once you and your friends have opted in to Latitude, you can see your friends' Google icon displayed on Google Maps. Clicking on their icon allows you to call, email or IM them, and you can even use the directions feature on Google Maps to help you get to their location. |
Let's say Bob wants to share his location with his girlfriend Jane. He invites her to accept his invitation through his mobile device or computer. Then Jane can accept and share her location back; accept but not share her location; or completely reject poor Bob. If Jane has chosen to share her location with Bob, she ca... |
In addition to restricting specific people, Latitude will also let you do a blanket location setting for all your contacts. You can choose to let Latitude detect your location automatically, you can also set it manually if you prefer or you can hide your location completely. |
According to company statements, Google only keeps your most recent shared location on its servers at any time. If you've hidden your location, then Google doesn't hold any information on your locale at all. |
While this feature sounds like it could be helpful, and sometimes incredibly annoying, I wonder what this does to the notion of privacy. For example, will federal officials or the police ever try to force Google to relay your location information? Where you are can also say a lot about you especially when it comes to y... |
Google could easily build a demographic chart to show where certain age groups like to congregate in a particular city. I hope this is not the case, but questions about Google's privacy practices have been raised many, many, many, many times before. |
If you're opting in to Google Latitude, then check out the video in this post for a brief introduction to Google's Latitude service. Then go to http://google.com/latitude to sign up. |
Having spent five years in Major League Soccer and having won an MLS championship with the San Jose Earthquakes in 2001, Wade Barrett last year decided he needed a change of scenery, a broader horizon. |
So, like many Americans before him, he headed for Europe, eventually signing with AGF Arhus in Denmark. |
AGF is not a fashionable club, even by Danish standards. Located on the coast of Jutland, Arhus is Denmark's second-largest city, but its soccer team lives in the across-the-water shadow of Copenhagen giants Brondby and FC Copenhagen, the country's two most successful clubs. |
But AGF wanted Barrett and the 27-year-old from Virginia Beach, Va., was happy to make the move. |
"To be honest, the club kind of chose me," Barrett said last week at the Home Depot Center in Carson, where he was training with the U.S. national team for today's match against -- oddly enough -- Denmark. |
"I was just interested in going overseas. I'd been thinking about trying to go and play somewhere. It wasn't necessarily Denmark, but that just happened to be where the interest came from. |
"It was a bit of a gamble. I was happy in San Jose. I liked the guys on the team, I liked the coach, I liked the city, I liked everything about it, but I was just ready to try something different. It's been a fantastic experience so far." |
Poul Hansen was AGF's coach when Barrett signed a 2 1/2-year contract one year ago this week. |
"It gives our game another dimension to have a strong, fast, left-footed player as left back," Hansen said at the time. |
Which is precisely why U.S. Coach Bruce Arena called Barrett into camp for today's match. The outside back positions, and the left back spot in particular, are problem areas for Arena. |
With World Cup 2006 qualifying starting in June and becoming competitively serious in 2005, Arena has to find a player who can fill that role naturally, comfortably and capably. |
At the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, former UCLA standout Frankie Hejduk was more or less an emergency solution, a right-footed player playing out of position on the left and relying on his athletic ability to get him out of trouble. |
It worked then, but Hejduk will be almost 32 by the next World Cup. Arena therefore needs to find a true left back for Germany 2006 and Barrett is one of several candidates. |
"It's good to have Wade in camp, to follow his progress and see how he's developed since he left MLS," Arena said. "Wade's future with the national team is going to be highly dependent on how he fares with his club team, so we'll be watching him closely over the next year. Right now I don't think he's ready to play for... |
"It's still a question mark. We had a big turnover of players in the last [World Cup] cycle and in that position it'll be interesting to see what's going to happen." |
Barrett, a former U.S. under-20 national team player from William & Mary, has played only once for the full national team -- against El Salvador in 2002 -- but he says he knows what Arena seeks. |
"Bruce is very clear about what he is looking for," Barrett said. "He's looking for top-quality defending No. 1. When you're one of the back four, you have to be able to defend well, win balls, break up plays, be hard to play against." |
Is the Danish league the place to best hone those skills? |
"I think I've become even more of a professional since I've been there," Barrett said. "I hope that my play has improved. |
"It's comparable [to MLS]. Sometimes it's better and sometimes it's worse. MLS is a good league and I think the Danish league is good, but people don't know much about it. There are good players and good teams there." |
Meanwhile, Barrett is trying to make the best of each opportunity whenever he is called into camp and using the U.S. team's run to the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals as inspiration. |
"I was amazed with the games and impressed at how the U.S. played," he said. "In the back of your mind you think maybe you'll have a chance to do that at some point. That's the inspiration everybody gets from watching that World Cup. All of us here now want to be part of something like that." |
President Obama's supporters are using fringe threats as a potent fundraising tool. Here's what it looks like. |
By almost every indication, President Obama is not going to be impeached. |
Sure, there are rabble-rousers like Sarah Palin calling for it, but her influence in the GOP has been waning for years. Party mandarins are hasty to warn against it. And Speaker John Boehner, whose chamber would have to do the impeaching, has ruled it out (though, yes, sometimes Boehner does not seem to have total cont... |
If all you were reading were Democratic email lists, though, you might imagine it was December 1998 all over again. The set of increasingly hysterical missives from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee presents an alternate political history of the last week. |
It's no secret why Democrats are so eager to talk about impeachment. By their own admission, it's been a cash cow, drawing in millions of dollars in donations. The fact that it seems to annoy Boehner—who noted early on that this was a fundraising ploy—is political icing on the money cake. The subject lines are easy to ... |
To get a sense of the tone, and volume, of the deluge, here are the emails I've gotten over just the last week, excepting press emails and the like; some people have reported getting even more. |
1. July 23: It all begins with a DCCC note asking supporters to sign a virtual birthday card for Obama's 53rd birthday. "Boehner wants to sue President Obama. Palin wants to impeach him. We want to say Happy Birthday!" the message reads. |
2. July 24: Next up is a classic Joe Biden plea, asking for donations between $5 and $250. |
3. July 25: The next day, the DCCC blasts out a Rachel Maddow quote about Boehner's lawsuit. |
4. July 25: Later that day, at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer says the lawsuit is only a first step. "I think Speaker Boehner, by going down the path of this lawsuit, has opened the door to impeachment sometime in the future," he says. The email is about to go from a stea... |
5. July 25: That evening, an apologetic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi follows up. |
6. July 26: Apparently the DCCC is cutting down on its sleep; after Pelosi's apology for emailing late on a Friday, the committee apologizes for emailing early the next day. RED ALERT appears to mostly mean asking for money. |
7. July 26: Four hours later, Democratic HQ is still on red alert. Update aside, nothing has happened. |
8. July 27: By Sunday night, the counterattack is bearing fruit—or at least money. Although Boehner's position doesn't appear to have changed, the DCCC has raised almost $2 million, and the speaker is apparently STUNNED. |
9. July 28: Stunning wasn't enough; a crushing blow is needed. |
10. July 28: The DCCC calls on Clinton administration veteran Paul Begala for help. |
11. July 28: The DCCC asks the question on everyone's minds. Well, everyone receiving their emails. |
12. July 28: If Begala is the good cop, Pelosi is the heavy. And she's got some bad news. |
13. July 28: The president himself weighs in: "We keep emailing." You don't say? |
15. July 28: Joking aside, one note shows why Democrats keep sending these emails: "We're in range of our single best day of the year!" |
16. July 29: On Tuesday, a weary Boehner dismisses the emails to reporter. "Listen, this whole talk about impeachment is coming from the president's own staff, and coming from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Why? Because they're trying to rally their people to give money and to show up in this year's election," he says. "Li... |
17. July 29: The plan is, you give money. |
19. July 29: Democratic HQ is still at red alert, presumably desperately brainstorming subject lines that aren't several days old. |
20. July 29: "There’s no doubt that Boehner made the worst blunder of his career when he launched his frivolous lawsuit against President Obama," the DCCC boasts. |
UPDATE: No sooner had I published this post than what should land in my inbox? |
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