#op-ed

I read the following article yesterday, as well as several others like it. In the comment sections, there were hordes of Liverpool fans freaking out at the idea of selling the club captain one year before his contract ends.

With all this, I figured it was the best time for me to say what I've been thinking for months.

Virgil van Dijk is NOT one of the best centre-backs in the Premier League.

Sure, he contributed to eleven goals last year, which is remarkable for a centre-back. But how many goals could he have prevented Liverpool from conceding if he would actually do his job in the defense instead of yelling at his fellow defenders to cover?

Not every one of the 53 goals we conceded this year was his fault. But let's step back and look at the numbers. 53 goals conceded. As the captain of the team, the most experienced centre-back, and the player who played the most minutes out of all the Liverpool players in 2025/26, it is worth wondering if at least ten of those goals could've been prevented by VvD.

To illustrate, let's imagine a situation where the only difference was that none of Van Dijk's six EPL goals ever happened:

Bournemouth 3-2 Liverpool

Sunderland 0-1 Liverpool

Liverpool 5-2 West Ham United

Everton 1-2 Liverpool

Aston Villa 4-2 Liverpool (Van Dijk scored a brace here)

Liverpool would've scored 57 goals instead of 63, and would have a +4 GD instead of +10. We would have finished on 56 points rather than 60, leaving us sixth in the table. (VvD scored two against Villa, one against West Ham, and one against Bournemouth, but the basic result would've still been the same: two draws.)

However, imagine we tweaked the situation so the only difference was that Van Dijk had prevented six of the goals Liverpool conceded in the Premier League. To pick which specific goals to take away would be very difficult, as we would have to analyze every goal to see if it was Van Dijk's fault, so for simplicity's sake we can pick the last six Premier League goals Liverpool conceded last season.

Liverpool 1-1 Chelsea

Aston Villa 4-2 Liverpool

Liverpool 1-1 Brentford

Taking those six goals away would result in Liverpool gaining seven extra points. That would take us to 67 points in the 2025/26 table, with a goal difference of +14. Liverpool would've finished fourth.

Admittedly, fourth and fifth had the same value this year, Champions' League-wise. And the way things played out, taking away Van Dijk's six Premier League goals would've left Liverpool out of the Champions' League. But let's be honest with ourselves: was Virgil van Dijk only responsible (or partially responsible) for conceding six goals this year?

No.

It was a lot more than six goals. And it isn't just a case of accidental deflections and being outrun; several of these goals were positioning mistakes. Van Dijk is a two-time Premier League winner, yet recently he's been displaying more mistakes rather than less.

How many times has Van Dijk kept a player offside? How many times has he lost an aerial duel against players smaller than him? How many times could he have made a safe defensive repossession, but led the opposition attacker into the 18-yard box for either a goal or a penalty? The truth is obvious. If Van Dijk had played even 25% better than he did last year, Liverpool would've been in a better place. At the very least, we would've qualified for the Champions' League earlier.

It's all oddly reminiscent of Henderson's last year at Liverpool--increasing mistakes, losing pace, and pointing at other teammates to mop up faux pas. The interviews that don't show as much togetherness as before, and less work effort on the training ground, leaving gaping holes on the competitive field.

Honestly, I wouldn't be too upset if Liverpool sell Van Dijk this summer. Since the first title win in 2020, we've renewed and replaced players in practically every position on the field except VvD's. Even in goal, we released Kelleher and Adrian for Mamardashvili (a move that, admittedly, hasn't paid off so far). Even now, we have a viable replacement player available for every position except Salah (who just left) and Van Dijk's. Yes, even in goal; Freddie Woodman is no Alisson, but last year he showed that he can put a shift in for a game or two, should the need arise. To not have an experienced centre-back who can take Van Dijk's place for a couple of matches is utterly laughable. So I'll say it: Van Dijk should be sold sometime within the next year. At the very least, we need to buy his replacment THIS summer, and actually play him regularly enough to evaluate if we can succeed with him or need another backup.

In a well-documented case, musician Samuel Smith lost his ability to play due to onset of Parkinson’s disease. At first, he thought that this was the end to not only to his career but also his joy of creating music. Then AI came along. He now hums his melodies into a phone, lets AI generate demos, and sends them to musicians who record the album. His second album was released this year. A…

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Day 1 - Week 1, and I already have a news article ready for reading. In this article we look at the recently proposed merger deal coming from GameStop to eBay. What are the details? What does it mean for the gaming industry? What are the goals? Click here to find out more!

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that my dream career doesn't exist…yet.

I've spent a lot of time ruminating on those careers I wanted that no longer exist. I've always been an artist and my entire life, people told me: "There's no money in art," "You'll never make a career out of that," "art isn't a job."

So I thought, well Film is art and every time I watch a movie I am presented with a list of jobs and those who work them. So I began desiring a future as a filmmaker, a director, a writer, an actor. I was discouraged again. "You have to get into Hollywood," "actors never make it," "you have to be rich to make a movie." So I didn't really try. I imagined the films I'd make, I eat up film like nutrients for my inspiration but all the things I created, I learned to keep to myself.

So, as a kid, I decided to "get real." STEM is repeated, and I love science, so I'll be a scientist! The brain is so interesting to me, I'll be a neuroscientist! "Oh so you'll do brain surgery?!" Oh…no, no. I couldn't imagine anyone wanting me in their open skull, obviously no one ever believed in me, no way I'd be allowed to become a doctor. So research! I love research. Then I did poorly in my first chemistry class. I couldn't memorize the periodic table…so scientist went out the window.

Like I said, I was never encouraged.

There was so many jobs that seemed to vanish just in the time it took me to graduate high school. Strange how nostalgic I am for blockbuster, the chain I used to glower at. How much I'd give to work a video rental store. I often ruminate on the lack of funding for the arts; where does one find a sugar daddy to pay for me to paint daily? Where does one find a mentor at all? It feels like all the crafters were abandoned and the ones that remained are belittled into the point of poverty and shame.

Then there was Covid. All my dreams went out the window and I was put in the cannabis industry by chance. I loved it, but once I had a job, there were coworkers to manage relationships with. Retail, navigating the industry. Authority and white guys profiting off of the industry that put black men in prison still today.

Then began my unemployment 2023-2025. Health issues made me unreliable even as a temp. I got laid off. I was applying to jobs constantly. The start of the thousands and thousands of fake job openings posted all over the internet. I couldn't get interviews, I couldn't get a job. If I didn't have a support system, I would have been homeless and newly disabled. Nothing is available that actually pays. There's just nothing. I keep hearing about Tech but that was never in my schooling.

Back to art. It's the only thing I know I can do.

I love storyboarding! I'll go into animation-- "Don't do it." Said a trusted acquaintance in the industry. The industry is too cruel and hard, you'll burn out and not want to create anymore. Probably no animation studio I applied to even looked at my no-art-school portfolio, anyway.

And then AI. "AI." Lay offs, jobs being eliminated without discretion. It was weeks before AI itself was being used to lay people off. Artists are devalued even more than before. And then the way AI affects the job search: even more fake job postings posted by AI. AI is trained on resumes, trained to deny resumes based on whether or not they were written by AI themselves. The only jobs that are everywhere are AI-Training jobs, like sending an executioner to murder your family then asking you to mentor the executioner to murder families more efficiently.

It isn't "like" that, it's exactly that. My government lets the MLMs that are the only people to "interview" me for jobs to scam all they want to because the government itself is too busy using the same scams to make money and murder civilians!

All the capital in the world has abandoned the working class, been robbed from our fingers. It feels like they stole our hope too. I'm disgusted on the daily, wrathful on a good day. But I'm disabled too, so the jobs that I want to do just to help my community are not as accessible. Everywhere I look is a fire, a storm, a kidnapping in progress, and not enough people strong enough to stop it.

"Systems too slick to stop working" as Kae Tempest put it. A worldview that reinforces itself because you have to play the game to survive even if you don't want to win.

But no one can tell my artist's spirit that things are over. I look around on the daily, seeing trash and derelict buildings in between bougie, mall-like Whole Foods, short staffed hospitals, and statues made decades ago because no one will sponsor an installation anymore. I see a skatepark no one goes to skate at, people only go there to sleep because it's under a bridge. I lament for a few seconds before my brain gives me a brilliant vision of what could have been possible: clean parks because people are paid to clean them and unhoused people are given the empty buildings to live in. Job for builders and tradespeople because we need to build and uplift those housing conditions. We'd have jobs forever if we wanted to fix every public sidewalk or give every staircase a ramp alternative.

How easy it would be to take care of each other.

I think I know now, whatever career is really meant for me, will be brand new. It will be a career restructuring our world with equality, justice, and art in mind. It doesn't exist yet because it cannot, we have to disrupt the system first. Palestine must be free before it can rebuild. There are equitable opportunities everywhere, if only we were not so oppressed every second of every day, we could make them happen! I see it every day, like an alternate reality flashing in front of my view. A free world, a progressive world, a world that progresses with beauty because we can all work our passions with peace of mind rather than slaving away with the knowledge that the phone we talk on, the computer we work on, and the money we make all comes from genocide and slavery.

Capitalists' views are so myopic, seeing the world in terms of capital and currency. Human bodies are nothing but weight on the scales between decimals of the 1%. They cannot understand the infinite possibility of the souls of living things. That's why the push AI, they are jealous of the creativity they cannot replicate nor reciprocate, so that we loose it too and forget that they never had it. I envision a world they cannot begin to conceptualize. They're addicts, thinking about scoring the next billion, they don't see anything but that. Addicted to controlling the world while I am imagining how easy it would be to provide a 4 day work week, free healthcare and education, universal housing, and a jobs program that improves the public spaces until most traffic lanes are gardens. If all obstacles were removed we could get it done as fast as Mayor Mamdani implemented free childcare and buses.

The excuses are disappearing, their distractions and brutality are failing. The people holding on to power are right to be afraid of us. Because we do want and need to make their jobs obsolete. Consultants and lobbyists will need new jobs, CEOs will take pay-cuts, and pedophiles and war criminals need to be imprisoned. I can't tell you how much more beautiful the world would be because it costs to keep us all in this condition. It cost money, it is genuinely more expensive to maintain this system than it'd be to repair it. In money, but also the cost on humanity, on nature. They stunt our growth but their power must be deemed inert.