forameus

Is that them removing the U16s go free thing they used to have or am I reading wrong?

I did worry had we gone up that Doolan would go from looking like a very impressive young manager that could really build something with us, to a useless no-hoper with calls for him to go from the fickle elements of our support. Another year in the Championship could have given him a chance to get a couple of transfer windows under his belt, build his team rather than just adapting McCall's, and really settle into the role. That was before we learned how fucked the finances were. I'd have obviously taken promotion and immediate relegation to pocket the money in that case.

I think probably 90% of the 100% run is pretty enjoyable. I saw bits of the game I'd never seen before and really felt like I was getting a full view of something put together with a lot of care and love. But the remaining 10% was utterly fucking miserable and I never want to see it ever again.

I think Bannigan's been a net positive this year, although that may just be rose-tinted given what he's been through. I think having one of him and Docherty in there is probably the best option, and I'd be inclined to pick Bannigan. However, having him involved at all after his injury has proved to be a terrible decision. He didn't look at it at all when he came on in the home leg, and the team definitely fell away in general at that point. Maybe he's not fully fit, maybe he just didn't fit in with how we started to play after he got injured, or maybe it's both. Or neither. But in any case, I can't see them releasing him, nor can I see him really wanting out (can't imagine there'll be clubs in a better position queueing up). Docherty I'd be more inclined to let go. I've never really seen him do anything that sets him apart from your standard comfortable, "safe" midfielder.

You'd like to think there's at least some work already done behind the scenes for either eventuality rather than starting fresh this morning. Obviously you're not going to have approached anyone seriously, but you can still draw up plans. Ha. Planning.

Sitting after the Raith game, I said we'd probably get to the final and lose to the Premiership team. Unfortunately, I didn't imagine us doing it in this way. Massive missed opportunity to have a near-perfect 340 minutes of playoff football, only to f**k up the final 20 minutes, and then not manage to turn it around in the extra 30 plus penalties. There's no excuses for today. Certain things went against us seemingly, but we should have scored more on Thursday, we should have taken chances today, we shouldn't have turned into complete shitebags, and we certainly shouldn't have allowed certain ones of those shitebags take penalties. We got what we deserved. Very interesting summer ahead. I think we've seen really good signs under Doolan that can give hope going forward. If we'd gone up, we'd have a higher budget obviously, but would it have been too early? But at the same time, a year in the Championship might be less challenging and give more opportunities, but what budget is out there, what players are sticking around, and - the old problem - what is our recruitment going to be like? If Doolan can nail that, then for me there's just one more thing he needs to address, and that's how to stop us from absolutely falling apart when we come up against any kind of adversity.

The Dundee/Queens Park title decider was pretty good on the BBC. And if we're talking about two teams of absolute diddies using their combined diddy-ness to serve up something good, the Rangers/Celtic youth cup game was absolutely tremendous entertainment. In an ideal world, BBC get allowed to show more games, have really enjoyed their Championship offerings this season. And at least we'll be involved again. Silver linings and all that.

Is that not kind of what the police are there for though, to anticipate stuff like that and make sure it doesn't happen, rather than hand a massive advantage just because they can't be arsed? But I'm beginning to sound all "aye, but". We didn't lose because the penalties were at the wrong end. We'd likely have lost anyway.

Believe me, I'd agree. That was a stupid thing had we gone up, let alone how it looks now we're staying there. But then Graham does seem like that kind of guy.

I'm not going down some Old Firm conspiracy hole, but the f**k was up with the police deciding they couldn't use one end? What the f**k was happening in there?

Getting all kinds of "the graphics don't matter" comments around this. Which is...true, I guess, but it does look pretty ropey for a new game. Looks even worse in motion. Going to have to really go some with the gameplay to make up for that if it's absolutely perfect in terms of bugs, which no game really is nowadays.

I think he's definitely not what he once was in the ring, but of course he isn't, he's been away for a very long time. It's noticeable that he isn't quite at the level of a lot of others in an industry that now values work rate so highly. But the charisma he holds is always going to push him higher than his pure inring ability can. Even when he was (at the time seemingly) torching his own career in the scrum, he was putting out perfect promo soundbites. I'd still be very interested in watching his feuds because I value actually having a story amongst matches rather than just "these two guys are good, let's wrestle" I think the decision to have him come back is a face is fucking moronic though. He should come out in Chicago to an ovation and then spend 30 minutes being a complete c**t. Having him come back as a face now will be at complete odds with...well, absolutely everything we know about the guy.

Everyone's favourite miserable c**t back to lead his very own show with zero real punishment for his transgressions. Top work. Very interesting reaction too. Big pop and a lot of people clearly happy, but brief shots of people very much the opposite that were quickly cut away from. Guy needs to come back as a proper heel, otherwise I can see it all going sour very, very quickly.

Admittedly it's largely down to AEW's very strong track record, but I thought that was a largely average show. Nothing really jumped out as particularly memorable, and it felt more like one of their special Dynamite events, rather than something you're spending a whack of money on. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing really bad on it, but just nothing truly great either. I still think they need to slow things down particularly between matches, as they still have that tendency to let the camera settle for a few seconds post-match before charging on to the next segment. and that's compounded by them not focusing on the sort of big pre-match promos WWE does. Matches just sort of run into each other when they're all just good. At the risk of sounding like I'm yelling at a cloud, I don't think the anarchy in the arena matches really work either. Again, not at all bad, but it feels like 8+ guys killing themselves to do something that they simply cannot present properly. So often they're cutting to the middle of a spot, or missing things entirely. Omega dropping Moxley into a barbed wire covered poker chip would usually be the sort of spot you'd build a match up to, yet they cut to him already lying on it and have to catch up on a replay. I know it's kind of the point of the "anarchy" bit, but it all just seemed like a bit of a mess. Particularly if they're going to insist on running a shite cover of Wild Thing over the top of it every time.

It'd be absolutely fucking hilarious if in the 3 or so weeks they've got until this first collision show, Punk makes such a c**t of it (again) that they roll back and he never appears. Although given how much they seem to be bending over for him, I doubt that'd happen. I for one am very interested to see the absolute car crash this could be.

I'm really getting into Days Gone. Was hyped up a bit when it was released, but seemed like despite having some cool stuff, it wasn't quite what was promised. Fairly recently came to PS Plus so gave it a go given it was "free". Voice acting is pretty awful and story isn't exactly revolutionary, but it's dragging me in. Gameplay is also your pretty standard open-world-but-linear survival-ish style game, but being so tied to your bike and making sure you've got enough fuel is a nice little gameplay loop to add. And they've clearly put a lot of effort into making the zombies in the game the most troubling since Left for Dead. I don't think I've gotten towards any of the large hordes yet, but the first time you hear the rush of them chasing you and turn around to see the entire view almost completely filled with them is quite something.

Obligatory "if the roles were reversed" comment needed. If a fairly high-profile 21 year old female player was getting that treatment the stalker would be getting (rightly) castigated and (again rightly) getting all the support she needed to make sure it didn't escalate. Shouldn't be any different here just because she's a woman and fairly nice to look at.

Only disappointment was that it wasn't more. Should have been 5 with the sitter Graham missed, and Fitzpatrick going for territory by booting it onto Firhill Road in the second half. We shouldn't need to look back on that, but feels like a missed opportunity to basically end it before we even get to the second leg. Hope everything was alright with whoever took ill in the John Lambie around the time of our second goal. Seemed to be a bit of a rush to get someone some attention, but I'm guessing after that the lack of urgency hopefully means it wasn't anything too serious.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one, the return of CM Punk continues to be an absolute minefield by the sounds of it. All set up for him to be the face of the new Collision Show, then at the 11th hour, they completely scrub him from all the promotional materials because (allegedly, it's the dirtsheets) he demanded that Ace Steel return. The guy that bit someone and threw a chair. He then threw a strop when they countered by suggesting he could come back, but he'd have to work from home and not attend any tapings. What a fucking mess. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he comes back and is gone again within months when someone says something completely innocuous and he goes off again. Probably scanting Tony Khan on the way out literally as well as metaphorically just like last time. They're managing a near sell-out of Wembley Fucking Stadium, yet this stuff makes Khan look like a complete and utter dildo, and risks alienating some pretty important people to their overall product, all to please someone at the end of his career who a lot of people seem to actively dislike.

Yeah, agree with those on the side of thinking this is more than a little misplaced. I can understand the anger right after the demotion. It was a shit decision (although in unprecedented times, and it's hard to be too angry getting put down when we were so fucking shite at the time), but we then went straight back up, and did our little huffy protest when we got the trophy. After that, it should've been largely forgotten about, and going on about it now will look fairly mild if we somehow make it up, but look highly questionable if/when we come up short.

Brand splits themselves aren't great, but AEW is really crying out for one. So much talent in there that could really put on a show, but most of the TV time (at least the bits that matter*) is taken up by a small number of people. If you're in the JAS, good for you. If you're in the BCC, then bully. The Elite, Hangman, Starks, the Outcasts/Britt and Hayter, whoever is in the main event scene...outside of that you're scrambling for time. Bit of a meh episode I thought, at least by their own high standards. They have a real habit of painting each week like it's going to be this momentous show that will change everything, but I'm not really sure what that achieved other than being a pretty solid lead-in to the go-home show. Matches made for the PPV, feuds advanced, all seemed pretty standard. Sure you had Tony Khan actually managing to blink during a promo, but it was just covering something that had already been released, and then announcing they'd be going to Canada a few times. Didn't really strike me as being that huge at this stage. And then hyping up this big reveal as to why Callis did what he did, and all you get is a pretty generic heel performance, followed by the same type of brawl we've seen for what feels like years now. Still, Double or Nothing shaping up to be another really good show, even if it will be about 8 hours. * I don't count Rampage, as it clearly doesn't matter. There's very rarely anything that happens there that makes me think that I need to carve out time to actually watch

I've only really worked my way past the first three shrines, so I imagine that's basically tutorial-level stuff. As someone who thought BOTW was just good and could not understand why it was talked about in such glowing terms (and indeed someone who doesn't really have any pre-conceived biases towards any other Zelda titles), TOTK is...good. There's nothing bad in there, it's a very competently made game, pretty much zero noticeable bugs (which is sad to triumph as a positive, but these days...), performance is silky smooth even on the limited Switch, and you can tell that there's a lot of thought an love put into the making of it. But outside of that, with the best will in the world, it feels a wee bit lazy. Like a (admittedly very good) fully-featured DLC for BOTW, rather than a new game. The new powers are a lot of fun, and the fusing stuff really open up possibilities. But all the bits that really got to me about BOTW are still there, and a lot of the presentation is just completely unchanged, which is something I wouldn't necessarily expect from a big sequel years in development. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't make the game bad by any means. Just would have liked to have seen them take a few more risks and a bit more of a freshen up. Maybe once I'm further into the game I'll hit this big vein of stuff I think is brilliant and that complaint will erode, we'll see.

Also interesting given it's in Saudi. Zayn was historically not even allowed to compete there, had he wanted to, and Owens dropped in solidarity. Either there's a big chance in policy on all sides or we're getting shenanigans and it's never happening.

I completely missed the Game Boy era, and opted for the far superior fire hazard that was the Game Gear. Then managed to completely avoid Nintendo up until getting a Switch so BOTW was my first exposure to Zelda.

It's WWE, he's lucky he was facing someone from closer to Cardiff than he's from, otherwise he'd have been getting a "homecoming" too.