accies1874

Yip I thought it'd be McTominay, but I do remember hearing that McGinn was competing with Luiz for being Villa's taker so it might be something he's improved in. Pretty much all of our best penalty takers are backup players (Ferguson, Shankland and even John Souttar), so it's a good thing that we don't get them very often.

I think the general consensus going into these games was that we wanted to regain momentum and we wanted to see some experimentation. We failed in the former but definitely saw the latter: two different formations - both with a back four - a different goalkeeper, starts for a fringe left-back, a start for Brown, more minutes for Ferguson, a new CB partnership etc. It's ultimately felt like an exercise in weeding out shite as opposed to anyone playing their way into contention (with the possible exception of Shankland), though Armstrong and McLean have shown their value to the squad when folk might have considered them for the chop.

Yip last summer. I thought they were better today in terms of creating opportunities but absolutely terrible when it came to finishing them - or not even giving themselves that opportunity due to smashing the ball over from 25 yards. It was a brutal watch.

Probably a few too many changes but hey, it was a poor performance on Thursday and some of these changes improved us. Hendry was a strange omission so I'd bring him back in, Ferguson and McLean did alright from the bench the other night and I think Shankland will get rewarded for his goal. The rest are just changes for changes' sake to replace players who didn't perform to their best.

Everyone who saw them both in June came away in love with Kenny McLean, so I don't think you'll be missing out on much.

This is what I thought happened. The fact we conceded (because the players switched off) just gave them a reason to complain. On the game itself, I thought we were really quite good on the ball while it was 11 v 11, but the same off-the-ball issues we've had all season meant that we were always in danger of conceding. We can mostly get away with it in League One, especially as Rankin has improved them in-possession, however nights like last night shine a light those weaknesses.

I think I read that because those two have allegedly committed worse offences, it'll take longer for them to get punished - City in particular. It says so much about Moshiri's reign that he managed to f**k up even while bending the rules in his favour.

The Premier League yearly threads and the Champions League threads (whenever an English team is playing) are home to the worst posts on this site. Really crap patter and very little good football chat.

Yeah McLean did OK imo. I still don't like him as an option to hold the width on the left but he was fine at LB and when he drifted inside. I think it would be good to see Doig in from the start on Sunday, but I'm not really fussed about whoever starts there (even Taylor).

On the topic of fair play, I can't actually remember the last time we got a red card. Might be forgetting something obvious, but you've just sparked that thought in my head there.

The first half was a really abysmal performance, but the second improved to make it an even game imo (which still isn't good). I thought Porteous did pretty well covering for Patterson and McLean was a decent option between the lines at points. Ferguson seemed to link play OK too. Them, maybe McTominay and obviously Shankland were the only ones to emerge with more positive comments than negative. McGinn was anonymous until about 80 minutes, but I actually thought he was excellent thereafter. Georgia were pretty good at narrowing our shape and switching it wide, and in Kvaratskhelia they had an absolutely ridiculous 1 v 1 player up against quite a crap defender. Sometimes players just look a level above everyone else at this level (especially given we were without Robertson) and he was crazy good.

Yip. Was even worse when we got to the shared stairwells too. Just constant stuff getting chucked at Scotland fans and the hapless security team pretty much herded the Scots into one place for them.

Never been treated like that at an away game, club or country. A horrible group of fans.

Patterson going up against him is a scary thought. He'll need support from whoever's around him.

He was great deeper against Spain twice and away to France. Different kinds of games, obvs, but still good games there.

For what we've got, I like this team, though I'd have Hendry alongside Porteous. There could be a concern with players wanting to occupy the same space in the final third, but otherwise I think there's a nice balance to it. Gilmour could obviously come in for Ferguson too.

There's also the fact that we as fans don't always notice the experimentation. I've not watched the Turkey game back, and I didn't pay much attention to it at the time, but I remember Grant Jendo on Twitter talking about us doing some bolder stuff in terms of shape on the ball - particularly regarding Hendry's positioning. Clarke's tweaks aren't always as clear as deciding to play with two strikers, one holding midfielder etc.

Really no idea what to expect from these games. For the first time in years, we have no idea who'll start in goal; we're without our three best left-backs, two of whom are key to our system; on the (very) positive side, we've already qualified, so that also makes the lineup a bit unpredictable. Our shape against Georgia at Hampden was excellent, but it'll be hard to replicate that without Robertson and Tierney. I suppose we could flip the system and have Porteous bombing forward to support Patterson with Taylor on the left playing the role Hickey played on the right, but McTominay isn't as good a link man down the flanks as McGregor is. Hickey also didn't give Kvaratskhelia an inch last time out which, let's face it, just isn't gonna happen with Patterson in his place. I could see the benefits of going with a back four.

52. The Killer - Cinema I'd never seen a David Fincher film in the cinema before, so I didn't want to wait for this to come to Netflix, though I ended up rewatching it there after it dropped the next day. It was a wise choice to see it in the cinema as I can't think of a slicker director around, and he's especially excellent at controlling the audience's eyes. That slick editing and sharp camera movements are obviously present as you'd expect from him, but a touch that I appreciated early on was how he found ways to make the killer blend into the background. When I think of the look of Gone Girl or Mindhunter (which I only got around to watching earlier this year), I think of the protagonist wearing an outfit that stands out against a dingy set - something like a blue shirt against a brown backdrop - however, in the opening chapter of The Killer, the killer himself wears an outfit that has him becoming one with his surroundings. That sometimes changes throughout the film, to the point where it's flipped towards the end, and I haven't got a handle on all of the costume changes, but it's a minor detail that shows the audience how the killer operates and plays into the theme of individualism. It's also a clear Fincher technique applied to a certain genre, and those techniques were more than enough to see me through some of the more generic moments. I was initially a bit put off by the voiceover. At first, it felt like it might have been redundant due to the effective visual storytelling at play, but the longer it went on, the more I realised that it was essentially the killer trying to convince himself of what he was saying, convincing himself of his function in society and what it means or doesn't mean. He then eventually fucks up, which was a great payoff to that obsessive voiceover. It was also worth the trip to the cinema just to hear the voiceover, too, as it really boomed through the screening. Great sound throughout. Of all Fincher's films depicting mass killers, I think this might be the first one that has a killer as the protagonist, which was quite an interesting take, although I can see some finding the lack of an emotionally grounding character to be quite detaching. As a depiction of an assassin, I think it worked really well. It has a lot of the staples you might expect from this kind of film - scoping, hiding, fighting etc - but also plays into the boredom of the scoping, the paranoia from the hiding and the ramifications of the fighting. There's external commentary on modern society as well as the internal character stuff, though I've found it hard to pinpoint, so much so that it almost felt like it became what Fight Club criticised: an edgy take on consumerism. There's something comical about a master assassin who kills people with the help of products from McDonald's, Amazon and delivered by FedEx, but it's also an interesting idea to present them as key functions of capitalist society that can be flipped to kill the rich. There's an intentional dichotomy between what the killer wants to present himself as and what he really is, but I also felt that what the film depicted might have undercut its critique of him. Maybe it is just another Fight Club where it can work on two different contrasting levels, and this time, unlike Fight Club, I'm interested in the part that the creators didn't want the audience to be interested in. There's fun stuff to unpack for what seems on the surface to be a run-of-the-mill Fincher b-movie. Despite probably disliking as many of his films that I love, he still remains someone whose work I'm gonna be desperate to see as they're just so brilliantly put together.

If your technology isn't suitable for the people using it then maybe it needs binned. Considering the VAR apologists across the globe trot this line out since it came in, VAR should therefore be binned across the globe until it's suitable for the users (which would ideally, and likely, be never).

In the first half they had that daft effort from about 40 yards that was going about 40 yards wide.

First 25/30 minutes were v good, but dropped off after so the second was a relief - great play from all involved.

It's a thirst to see other people being punished or held accountable even if it makes absolutely no difference to the situation at hand. Strange behaviour but very prevalent.

It's Mo Salah bro