What do you expect in today's game to win Liverpool and Stoke City?

What do you expect in today's game to win Liverpool and Stoke City?                             

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Manchester United line up vs Watford includes Paul Pogba, Anthony Martial and Marcos Rojo

Young returned to Vicarage Road to haunt his former side with a stunning brace

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Watford had no answer to Ashley Young as the Manchester United winger hit a quick-fire first-half double.

The former Watford man fired the visitors in front with a drive from outside the left hand side of the box.

He then curled home a stunning free-kick to silence the Vicarage Road crowd.

And Anthony Martial made sure of the points just after the half-hour mark when he fired home from the edge of the area.

United are bidding to narrow the gap on league leaders Manchester City to five points.

Watford: Gomes, Mariappa, Kabasele, Prodl, Femenia, Doucoure, Cleverly, Zeegelaar, Hughes, Gray, Richarlison.

Subs: Janmaat, Deeney, Wague, Carrillo, Capoue, Karnezis, Pereyra

Manchester United: De Gea, Valencia, Lindelof, Smalling, Rojo, Young, Matic, Pogba, Lingard, Martial, Lukaku.

Subs: Mata, Ibrahimovic, Rashford, Romero, Ander Herrera, Darmian, McTominay

Don't miss a kick and join us for all the action as it happens.

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Salah insider makes worrying claims over future of Liverpool star

Former Zamalek owner Mamdouh Abbas claims Mohamed Salah’s agent has confirmed the player plans to use his time at Liverpool as a springboard to move on to La Liga.

Abbas was a special guest of Salah’s during Saturday evening’s clash between Liverpool and Chelsea at Anfield and will have been impressed to see the Egypt flyer continue his hot streak by netting his 10th Premier League goal of the season and his 15th in 20 appearances in all competitions this season.

Salah has already been touted as a transfer target for Real Madrid by former Spurs striker Mido and now Abbas has further strengthened these claims by suggesting the former Roma star could leave Liverpool after just one season.

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As translated by King Fut, Abbas revealed: “Mohamed Salah is currently an institution in Egypt and has an efficient agent working to get the best for the player.

“Salah highly respects those in charge of his finances and as his agent has discussed with me, we agree that Salah should stay at Liverpool until the end of the season.”

When questioned where Salah might play next, Abbas continued: “Most probably the upcoming destination for Salah will be La Liga.

“If he scores above 20 goals in all competitions this season, his price could rise up to €150million.”

The news will hardly come as a surprise for Liverpool, who have spent the best part of the last six months trying to keep Philippe Coutinho from Barcelona’s grasp.

Salah joined Liverpool in a club record £36.9million move from Roma at the start of the summer window and has been a revelation for Jurgen Klopp’s side.

1 min. read

Player of the Season

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Denver Broncos are severely mishandling their running back rotation

They have a 3-2 record and are entering a brutal stretch of games over the next four weeks (at the Los Angeles Chargers, at the Kansas City Chiefs, at the Philadelphia Eagles, and a home game against the New England Patriots). How well the Broncos perform in those four games could dictate whether they miss the postseason for a second consecutive season.

With that said, the coaching staff needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror because the way the Broncos have handled their running back rotation over the last two weeks hasn’t given their team the best chance to win.

The problem starts with their unwarranted infatuation with second-year pro Devontae Booker, who was one of the most-hyped players on Denver’s roster throughout the offseason.

As a rookie in 2016, Booker led the Broncos in rushing with 612 yards and 4 touchdowns on 147 carries. While those numbers are solid, especially considering the offensive line issues Denver had a year ago, they don’t really merit the star treatment the former Utah standout has received from first-year coach Vance Joseph and his offensive staff.

For reference, Kansas City Chiefs rookie Kareem Hunt has already exceeded Booker’s rookie totals and Jacksonville Jaguars rookie Leonard Fournette has more rushing TDs and is only 16 yards behind Booker’s 2016 season mark, and they have each played only six games.

Booker was forced to miss the team’s first three regular-season games of 2017 with a wrist injury. When he returned, the Broncos wasted little time getting him involved in their offense, despite the immense production they were getting out of the one-two punch of veterans C.J. Anderson and Jamaal Charles.

Through the first three weeks of the season, Anderson and Charles combined to rush for 377 yards and 2 touchdowns on 81 carries (4.65 yards per carry), and they had a combined 8 catches for 57 yards and 1 touchdown. Anderson was proving to be the team’s bruiser, and Charles was looking very much like the explosive playmaker he was for so long with Chiefs, even though he entered the season with significant health concerns.

In Booker’s first two games back, Charles, who is averaging 5.1 yards per carry (38 carries for 194 yards) on the season, got a grand total of 6 touches in each game.

What’s more troubling, though, is the fact that Booker was on the field for a higher percentage of the Broncos’ offensive plays than Charles in the team’s 23-10 loss to the New York Giants in Week 6. Five games worth of statistics would suggest that Charles has been Denver’s most productive back.

To top it off, rookie running back De’Angelo Henderson, who flashed big-time potential during the preseason, has been inactive in both games since Booker’s return. In my eyes, Henderson showed more promise during the 2017 preseason than Booker has shown at any point with the club.

The Broncos entered the season with a clear-cut plan to keep Charles healthy by not overworking him. With their season essentially on the line during the next month, the time has come to abandon that plan and unleash the three-time All-Pro running back.

In a perfect world, the Broncos could find a way to get Anderson and Charles each 15-20 touches every game. That will be nearly impossible if they insist on working Booker into the mix.

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Facebook's response to fake Russian ads is not going to cut it

Facebook doesn't just have a fake news problem. It also has a fake ads problem.

Last month the company disclosed that it found about 3,000 ads that ran during the 2016 US election that were run by fake accounts linked to Russia. While the company hasn't shown the ads publicly, there's evidence that they were designed to influence voters by promoting polarizing topics. It was a wild abuse of Facebook's automated ad platform.

Facebook's answer: Throw bodies at the problem. 

Facebook announced on Monday that it would hire 1,000 people in the coming months to monitor automated ads on the social network and remove those that don't meet its guidelines. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's almost the same response Facebook had in May after a string of incidents where users live-streamed suicides and killings. Facebook said then that it would hire 3,000 new content moderators on top of the 4,500 it already had.

In addition to the 1,000 new hires announced Monday, Facebook said it's going to beef up its algorithms using machine learning to automatically detect abusive ads.

Ignoring the obvious fact that these moves come far too late, there's still a massive lack of transparency about what Facebook says will make its advertising more transparent.

Here's what we still don't know:

• Are the new employees who will be monitoring content full time staffers or contractors?
• Where are they based?
• What kind of training will they go through and what specifically are they looking for?
• What kind of machine learning improvements will Facebook make and what kind of content will the algorithm start flagging that it isn't flagging today?
• Is Facebook working with the FEC and other governments to come up with ad monitoring standards, or is it developing these standards on its own?

Facebook didn't say, and a spokesperson declined to comment beyond the company's formal announcement from Monday morning.

But Facebook needs to say more. And it needs to do so quickly.

Trust ain't enough

This isn't a product launch like a new Instagram filter or video streaming service. This is a response to very real threats to democracy in the US and around the world. It's about making sure a foreign actor can't buy influence in an election and manipulate the public discourse. Facebook isn't entitled to the luxury of secrecy that's available for business endeavors.

That's especially so since Facebook has offered little evidence that it's up to the task of monitoring content on its platform — both on the ad side and the user-generated content side. The company has been trying to get quash fake news for nearly a year now. Yet the rash of bogus news that spread across the social network on Monday following the shooting in Las Vegas was an unfortunate reminder that the problem persists. No matter how many people Facebook assigns to the task, the problem is remains far from solved.

Politicians and regulators are already starting to draft their own ideas for how to deal with the threat of deceptive ads, a regulatory intervention that Facebook and other internet companies are unlikely to welcome (even though some regulations are sensible and long overdue). 

If Facebook thinks it can fix this problem on its own, then it needs to do more than fill the air with vague soundbytes stating its intentions to do good, as it did on Monday. The company needs to tell us how it plans to control what looks more and more like a runaway train. 

Right now, Facebook is basically asking the public to trust an organization that has shown no desire to fix its fundamental problems until after a major screwup. That's unacceptable. 

And with the stakes so high, trust and more bodies, aren't going to cut it anymore.

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Nioh PC Release Date Announced For Steam, Will Support 4K

Koei Tecmo has announced Nioh, its Dark Souls-like samurai RPG, will be available on PC through Valve's Steam service from November 7, 2017. This version will be released digitally as "Nioh: Complete Edition," and will feature the original game and the three DLC expansions made available for the PS4version post-launch.

"Team Ninja is well aware of the fact that many gamers have been passionately asking for a PC version of Nioh," said the game's director, Fumihiko Yasuda. "I am thrilled to announce that this massocore game will finally be available for our die-hard PC fans in Nioh: Complete Edition! I hope you all enjoy the unforgettable drama and deeply challenging Yokai battles this action-packed experience has to offer."

The PC version will have Action Mode, which runs the game at a "stable 60 frames per second," or Movie Mode, which is "a cinematic option that can expand the display resolution to 4K." Although Koei Tecmo doesn't specify as much, the Movie Mode will presumably run at a lower frame rate.

To celebrate the release of Nioh: Complete Edition, a new item called the Dharmachakra Kabuto helmet will be available for the PC version.

"The Wheel of Dharma kabuto is a form of 'kawari-kabuto'--a family of helmets featuring fantastical designs," explains Koei Tecmo. "This helmet features a red-lacquered front crest of an ancient Buddhist symbol depicting the eightfold path to nirvana. This holy image represents spiritual enlightenment attained by casting off one's worldly desires, and also holds the power to banish evil.

"However, some claim this is not a Wheel of Dharma at all, merely a replica that looks as though it belongs on a device to regulate steam ... Some have gone so far as to suggest renaming it to 'Valve Kabuto,' but why anyone would make a helmet featuring a valve is unclear."

In GameSpot's Nioh review, critic Miguel Concepcion awarded it a 9/10. "Although the spectre of potential failure hangs heavy over any play session, dying in Nioh is never genuinely disheartening," he said. "This is thanks in part to the various avenues of character growth and many approaches you can utilize to tackle a difficult section or boss fight. It shouldn't be surprising that the foresight and patience needed to survive a battle in Dark Souls translates well to the fundamentals of samurai combat here.

"Nioh's most invigorating and intimidating moments occur when you feel you're at equal footing with your opponent. And it's during these encounters that one careless move can result in your demise or the right string of thoughtful actions can make you feel invincible."

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PlayStation Teases "Big Game Announcements" For October Event

Sony has teased its upcoming Paris Games Week press conference. In a tweet today, the company said PlayStation fans can expect "big game announcements" and other unspecified "updates" during the show.

PlayStation Live From Paris Games Week, the name of Sony's briefing at the show, will be held on October 30. The show kicks off at 3 PM GMT in Paris, which is 8 AM PT and 11 AM ET in America. For Australians, the show kicks off at 2 AM AEST on Halloween.

In a blog post, Sony teased that it will have a "slew of updates and announcements" to share. Additionally, there will be a post-show event in which Sony will share more "details and info" on other .... things.

Paris Games Week is often a big show for Sony. Some of its announcements in past years have included things like the reveal of Uncharted 4's multiplayer mode, new footage of Horizon Zero Dawn, Street Fighter V's release date and Quantic Dream's latest game, Detroit: Become Human.

The timing of Sony's Paris Games Week conference puts it just a couple months before Sony's PlayStation Experience celebration in California, USA, where the platform holder typically holds another conference full of trailers and more announcements. That event runs from December 9 to December 10.

Sony did not have a briefing at Gamescom in August (Microsoft did), so this will be the first big-time announcement event from Sony since E3 in June.

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