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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Trump-Thailand talks: What to expect?

You know those awkward dinner parties when the two people you didn't invite are all anyone can talk about?

Well, imagine for a moment the conversation between Thailand's Prime Minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, and the US President Donald Trump.

It is likely to be dominated by two countries that have preoccupied President Trump's brain space (and his social media feed) of late: North Korea and China.

But there are other things on the agenda - trade and defence ties for instance are likely to be discussed as well.

Here's what I think President Trump will be focused on talking to the Thai leader about:

Trade

When Prime Minister Prayuth meets President Trump he will get to see first hand what the "America First" trade policy really means.

President Trump has pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal - a deal that Thailand was very close to signing.

This White House administration has been very clear about its feelings with regards to the trade deficit between Thailand and the US - it wants the gap narrowed.

The US had a $19bn trade deficit in 2016 with Thailand, but the Thai Commerce Ministry has been keen to point out that is only 1.5% of the US's overall trade deficit, and is based on structural issues and not due to unfair trade policies.

Bangkok will be keen to show that it's playing by President Trump's new rules on global trade and not be named a currency manipulator.

But analysts have told me that it's likely the president's rhetoric on trade may well be a way for him to pressure General Prayuth to take a harder line on North Korea.

North Korea sanctions

US officials, like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have already pressured Thailand to cut funding to North Korea.

Bangkok is home to a North Korean embassy, which many experts believe is a way for Pyongyang to earn foreign revenue. Thailand was also one of the main suppliers of goods to North Korea in 2015.

Bilateral trade has dropped substantially since then - by almost 90%, according to Thai officials. But, reportedly, many North Korean businesses still operate out of the country - although not in any significant fashion and certainly not in any way that would flout sanctions.

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Duke's Grayson Allen regains captain honor

Not only will Grayson Allen return to the Blue Devils for his senior year, he will also regain the captain title that was taken away from him last year for bad behavior on the court. 

As the only player on Duke's roster to start more than one game, the 6-5 senior guard earned back the trust from his coaches and teammates and was selected as the lone captain for the 2017-18 season. 

"I think he’s in a great place," Duke associate head coach Jeff Capel told The Herald-Sun. "The very first thing is he is healthy. He’s happy. He’s had time to reflect, to get refreshed."

Last season Allen was elected as one of three captains along with seniors Amile Jefferson and Matt Jones, but the honor was taken away after he tripped Elon's Steven Santa Ana on the court. It was the third time Allen tripped another player during a game and as a result coach Mike Krzyzewski suspended him for one game and took away his captaincy. 

"He had to learn how to adapt to all of those things," Capel said. "Being looked upon as being that so-called villain at Duke. I think all of it wore on him for the last two years."

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JOHN BARROW: The most partisan voters decide how partisan is too partisan

JOHN BARROW: The most partisan voters decide how partisan is too partisan

EDITOR'S NOTE: John Barrow served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2005 to 2015. He currently is a Democratic candidate for Georgia Secretary of State. This column originally appeared in The Washington Post.

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The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to tackle one of the most divisive issues in election law: partisan gerrymandering. The June announcement that the court will review the problem in a case from Wisconsin has caused some to wonder: Do we really want the Supreme Court to decide how partisan is too partisan?

This misstates the problem. The question is not whether the courts should decide how partisan is too partisan.  It is how to make it possible for voters to decide that for themselves.

Right now, due to a combination of polarized voting and partisan gerrymandering, primary voters rule the roost. As a result, a relatively small number of primary voters are vastly overrepresented in our legislative bodies while voters who show up only in general elections are vastly underrepresented.  The most partisan voters end up deciding how partisan is too partisan.  That’s the problem.

As a former member of Congress who faced one of the most egregious cases of gerrymandering in our country, I have a modest suggestion: We should draw representative districts so that moderate voters have as much say as partisan voters. That means doing away with as many reliably partisan districts as possible.

This approach would solve two problems at once: It would prevent any partisan majority in control of the redistricting process from abusing that power to enhance their power, and it would also be a relatively easy standard for the courts to administer.

Consider what would happen if the courts were to adopt the following rule: Any map that maximizes partisan competitiveness in as many districts as possible — and maximizes partisan competitiveness as much as possible in all the remaining districts — would be presumed to be constitutional. Any map falling short of that standard would be presumed unconstitutional.

Such a map would produce the largest number of districts where there is no partisan advantage whatsoever. In such districts, the nominee of either party would have to compete for and win the support of independent voters.  The partisan tilt of the overall population would be reflected in the remainder of districts where the partisan advantage of the dominant party simply cannot be neutralized.

In most states, neutral districts would become a majority; in others, a minority. But in any case, the goal should be to get as many neutral districts as possible because only these districts can temper partisan impulses.  And only a neutral district gives independent voters as much say so as partisan voters.

There are plenty good government reasons for such a rule. But as far as courts are concerned, only a rule that requires a maximum number of neutral districts can effectively prevent a partisan majority from running up the score for their side.  That’s the constitutional reason for such a rule.

This would not require judges to wade into the political thicket and decide how partisan is too partisan. Rather, any litigation would take on the character of judicially supervised baseball arbitration.  Instead of engaging in positional bargaining, forcing the judiciary to attempt the line-drawing by splitting the difference between relatively partisan maps, each side would have the incentive to come closest to hitting the goal of maximum competitiveness, on the understanding that if their map fell short, the other side’s map would be adopted.

Representatives from so-called safe seats may not like this change, especially if they had to run in more representative districts for a change. But having 200 to 300 genuinely competitive seats in the House is just what we need.  We have a few remaining moderates in such seats, but there aren’t enough of them, and they’re too easily pushed around (or pushed out) by the combination of outside money and the polarized votes of the primary voters.

Under our current system, all votes get counted, but some votes count a whole lot more than others. Primary votes count too much, and general election votes hardly count at all. That’s the problem.

The solution is to make everyone’s vote count as much as possible and in as many districts as possible. Lord knows we’ve exhausted the alternative, and it ain’t working.

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