forameus

And now apparently, after them bringing back Rock for that wet fart of an ending, Kevin Owens attacked Rhodes in the parking lot post match. Yup. Really not worth putting that on the show at all.

Just got done with it, although my continued feud with my 2 month old left me dozing through the middle. Probably telling. Show itself seemed fine. HIAC was probably about as good as you can expect a modern WWE version to be. Sensible amounts of blading to heighten tension, suitable brutality, and the right winner. Good start. After that...big lot of "that sure was a match". Probably missed a lot and maybe I'm being harsh. Everything just carefully nudged along. But the undisputed king of nudging along is the Bloodline stuff, which continues to roll on, coasting on the odd time where they put out something really great. The little promo Reigns and Rhodes had earlier in the week was great, but this was just there. Good to have Reigns fully cement his position on the card again, and he continues to look great, but Bloodline 2.0 just seems a bit shit in comparison. I assume we're all heading towards another Bloodline Wargames match which will be fine, but skating a very fine line between long-term storytelling and just extending out the plot for the sake of it. Although highlight of the show is definitely Cole uttering the immortal (probably paraphrased, but not enough) words "I really want to see what our fans would do with Dirty Dom Toilet Paper". Jeezo. I think generally, WWE are doing really well, but it feels like they're walking a tightrope at times. The product is still of a relatively high quality, but it still feels like a lot of the time they're playing it safe and putting out shows that just move things along. It's tired, but compare to AEW who seem to put all their efforts into pulling out all the stops all the time. That isn't always the answer either, but how often is there a WWE show you absolutely have to see? The focus is so nakedly about money to the point that every show they whack their dick out, drape it with a sign crowing about how big a gate they've had, and then gleefully slap everyone with it. Prime deals giving exposure to detestable human beings. Saudi deals giving...well, exposure to more detestable human beings. Extortionate live tickets and merch...and so on. If their product takes a dive, they could have some decisions to make.

I'm not really that interested in watching it as I imagined that would be the tone of it, and to be honest outside of any criminal matters, he should just f**k off and be forgotten about. But with any doc like this, anyone watching it likely has their mind made up before watching. There'll be a few stumbling across it where it's completely new to them that he's a piece of shit, but the rest will either be people who'll always support him and call it a hit job or whatever, and those that hate him that think it probably didn't go far enough.

Reigns really is just unfairly handsome isn't he? f**k sake. Hard to draw a line between the "make the hair wetter" face guy they were so desperate to push and this guy. There is so much they can do with him now he's back as something approaching a face. Great segment that, and although it was hardly Oscar winning acting, I could see big Joe being sought after if he wants to go after it. If the boiled testicle that is current-era Rock can be the highest grossing star in Hollywood for basically playing a blander version of himself in every single movie, I don't doubt Reigns could be successful just basically playing what he's done in the Bloodline for years now. Is an interesting choice for them to plant the seeds for Reigns to eventually come back for Rhodes. Rhodes is somehow still supremely over, but if Reigns keeps on the upward trajectory, can they book it so that neither loses that momentum?

In a world where wrestling is full of tepid dives to the outside where someone briefly brushes the face of their opponent, I'll never not pop for Darby Allin flying into someone at a ridiculous speed.

Fair enough, got you wrong. There's not really much you can do about that unfortunately. All you can do is put the feelers out and hope that you can persuade them to be a star for us rather than a bit-part player (if that in some cases) for England. If they don't, then that's fine, it's purely personal choice and I'd start feeling a bit more against it if we kept going after them even when they weren't interested. On McTominay though, even though he's been brilliant for us, would he have had much of a chance of an England call-up? It's not like he'd be a must-pick by any means. I'd put him in that little sweet spot you're talking about.

I mean...pretty much any other player who has represented us who was, for all intents and purposes, "English"? Unless they've come out and talked about how they're only representing us for the cap and couldn't give a shit, you're going to be filling in the blanks on their reasons. International football isn't the draw it once was. With the compressed calendar we now have, anyone eligible for both, who considers themselves English, probably isn't going to give up their time off to jet off around Europe for a country they don't care about. Particularly when, until the past couple of years (and maybe now again), we've been pretty shit, and not exactly a glowing prospect for players. Them turning up and performing to the best of their abilities in a Scotland shirt should be enough.

The awkward part with Bryan is that it's probably not your traditional retirement. You're not so banged up you have to stop immediately like Edge or WWE Bryan, and you're not OK enough that you can book out this long process. You're never quite sure with him how much is selling and how much he's genuinely f**ked, but I suspect he's pretty close to his limit. Do you just book it relatively short, let him run off into the sunset and move on, or do you risk extending it knowing he could break down at any moment? For me you have to have this run longer. Although they've said in passing that he retires when he loses, it never seemed to be focused on leading up to the match with Jack Perry. Although it wouldn't have mattered if it was, as he was never losing, but I'd like to see them rack up defence after defence, ratcheting up the tension until he finally reaches that last match and you either have him put over a face, or build one of the greatest monster heels you could possibly think of. Be a bit of a shame if he just drops it to Moxley or Darby in the next month or so.

I've more respect for someone that comes out and decides either way than those that sit on the fence until later in their career. And to be honest, even those in the latter camp aren't much of a problem as long as they come in and actually seem to want to be there and give it their all. There's an extra wrinkle with him seemingly wanting to be involved, then totally changing his mind, which is unfortunate, but he's come out and made his choice, good luck to him*. * not good luck to him

I can only imagine how much of a farce a conscious decision to tank a league would be when you're Scotland. We'd 100% be caught doing it.

This. Sony are getting the ol' social media kicking over it, but as always with these things, I Imagine they'll still end up with the last laugh by selling a fair few to people who can't say no or simply don't need to care about the money they're dropping. They've probably got entire teams deciding what kind of price-point to come in at, so I doubt it's based on nothing. Of course, I'm not going to be one of them. The PS5 itself was a bit rich for my blood at the time, but Covid depression (a work mate of mine managed to get a second unit, remember driving over to his against regulations to pick it up...good times) made it more palatable. I couldn't even bring myself to begin caring about picking this up. I built one a few years ago thinking it would open up this world of gaming and that I'd rarely look back. It was the wife's work machine until she got a laptop through them, now it sits under a desk gathering dust and any gaming is still done on the PS5. I think there's always going to be a sizeable market who would rather just have a console they can fire up, no matter how cost-effective getting a PC is

So what I'm seeing from that is that we should have had some kind of best of 7 series against Russia.

Saw that. Weird decision, although I'm sure there's some boring reason behind it. Maybe they're genuinely testing the waters to see if 2 hours works better for them. Things are certainly better than they used to be with the product, but I still don't see any reason why they need to keep putting out 3 hour RAWs. Smackdown is fine at 2, and Dynamite always fires in at a fair clip too.

To be fair, my experience with Thistle encrusted glasses is almost entirely negative for club and country.

It's the same attitude that rears its head whenever we're not doing very well. The answer is never who is currently playing/managing, the answer is always who isn't playing/managing. Patterson is just the latest example of it. He'll be clamored for until he comes back, then lambasted when, amazingly, the problem still exists. You can see it with Clarke too, with cries of absolutely anyone being a better option, conveniently forgetting that we've been through this routine before, and likely will with the next guy that comes in. It was most glaring, from memory, around Jordan Rhodes and Steven Fletcher. The former, similar to Gauld, wasn't getting a game despite scoring for fun. He was the saviour, the one who'd definitely score a bucketload and solve all our problems. He eventually got a shot, and he was...fine. A return of 3 goals in 14 caps shows he wasn't the one everyone claimed he was. More notable with Fletcher, as when he was in a huff with Levein you got the double bubble of him being a good striker not involved at a time when we didn't have many, and him being opposed to Levein who everyone hated. He eventually came back, and did pretty well for us, but ended up getting some pretty ridiculous abuse for his efforts. I don't blame people for wanting to be better and grasping at anything, but I think ultimately we're just not very good at the moment and the player pool is very limited. That's not to say we can't do better with what we have, we absolutely can, but there isn't some rich vein of quality we aren't mining. We're largely playing the best players we have available, and there isn't some quick fix available to us. Particularly as, when Clarke is inevitably punted probably next Autumn when we fail to qualify for the World Cup, we'll hire whatever Scottish jobber is available rather than picking the manager who can specialise in getting something from nothing.