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Through the first act of Baldur's Gate 3 for what I would guess (conservatively) is about the fifteenth time, still loving it two years after full release and almost five after early access. Next playthrough will be Honour Mode I think, not usually one for ironman permadeath stuff but I want those sweet sweet golden dice

I too would love to notice what he offers

Not particularly I don't think but looking at their bench it might be more like it in the second half

****ing hell

I definitely wouldn't go as far as saying I disliked him but like others have said I struggled to warm to Schmeichel in the way I did with most of those successful teams, not entirely sure why. I don't think there are many players of ours good or bad that I've properly disliked, it would take a really sustained period of incredibly half-arsed performances combined with obvious off-pitch bellendry. I'd find it much easier to come up with players I had a soft spot for despite them being demonstrably not very good. I don't think I get as angry about football as a lot of people do and in a lot of cases it seems to be based on armchair psychology ("thinks he's better than he is" a classic of the genre) which is really tedious stuff.

He could score a hat-trick of bicycle kicks and I think my overriding emotion would still be relief that at least he's not "playing" for us anymore

Sweepstake on how many times he says "football club" in his first interview with them? I reckon four figures minimum

On penalties, I think I'm right in saying this tournament is very much an outlier and generally penalty conversion rate isn't much, if any, lower in women's football than it is in men's. I guess there could be any number of reasons why - there is obviously a lot more attention and thus pressure on these games than there used to be and it might be a self-fulfilling thing across the tournament where once a few get missed a sort of collective panic sets in. The thing I find interesting is I can't remember seeing any players watching the keeper and waiting for them to commit which almost seems the default technique now in the men's game for any regular takers. I'd be interested if anyone knows why that is because it seems like goalkeeping has evidently come on such a long way and maybe as a consequence penalty techniques have been left behind a bit.

Some header and some cross by Chloe Kellbrighton

Raw may be a bit of an overstatement but so is productive from day one given he put up one goal and one assist in his first dozen games. He definitely improved in the second half of the season

It's possible to simultaneously hold the beliefs that bringing academy players into the first team is really important and that Hamza Choudhury is not very good

I was in one of the tests a couple of months ago and came away cautiously optimistic, imo it plays like a mixture of BF3/4 and MW2019. In terms of feel and atmosphere it's an enormous improvement on 2042 which definitely comes across in the various leaks. I am however a bit surprised by the rumoured October release because even accounting for it being pre-alpha and potentially quite an old build at that, it seemed a long way off being ready - placeholder assets all over the gaff, loads of features broken, half-finished or just altogether missing. Another bin fire launch would not surprise me in the slightest but the open beta is allegedly happening next month (announcement with the multiplayer reveal next week?) so hopefully we will get some idea of what kind of shape it's in. I would dearly love it to succeed because done well there's nothing else quite like it.

I have tried this sort of fact-based approach before but unfortunately what you tend to get back is penalties don't count, goals from close range don't count, goals against teams in the bottom half don't count, goals when the team is already winning or drawing don't count, goals when you've come off the bench don't count, goals that aren't aesthetically pleasing don't count and so on. Easier to just agree that he's subhuman scum and the worst footballer to ever play the game and let them crack on.

I'm starting to wonder if he never properly recovered from an injury, or has just been really struggling for fitness since he got here, something like that because his reputation as a busy, all-action, energetic midfielder could not be much further from what you see when you watch him. Even putting to one side the fee, which I think is fair because that's an error on the club's part not his, he just seems to make so little impact with or without the ball. He wasn't done any favours today by Winks who looked incredibly half-arsed pretty much throughout but I think it's a real problem that so many of our midfielders are these safe, plodding types who add almost nothing in terms of creativity, goal threat or solidity.

Yeah been better this half definitely, looked slightly less like a player twice the age he actually is

Almost a year since Skipp joined and we're no closer to discovering what he's actually supposed to be good at. It's Dennis Praet part two except more expensive and somehow even less likely to score or create a goal

Lovely finish

No Patson no party

Good that it gets more players substantial minutes and from an entertainment perspective I like that it cuts down on those situations you get where both teams have changed their entire XI in quick succession and any fluency immediately drains out of the game

Where did he say he thought it would be "highly detrimental to squad cohesion"? He said not playing together won't help players gel, which is inarguably true even if you think - as I am also inclined to - the other benefits of split squads outweigh that. Questioning an opinion usually involves challenging the things a person has actually said.

There will definitely be some people who do believe that, largely on the basis that having a keeper who can pass the ball is modern tippy tappy nonsense and all that matters is making saves (which of course Hermansen is also very good at, but that has to be forgotten for the sake of the argument)

Maybe I am forgetting a lot of scuffs but I personally don't remember Mavididi being an especially bad finisher outside of the Leeds away game when he was not the only one guilty of that. Outperformed his xG that season (last season as well, and indeed 5 of the 6 seasons there is data available for) which, while certainly not definitive proof of anything, doesn't suggest he's stiflingly wasteful considering he's also not the sort of player who's regularly scoring worldies from improbable ranges and angles.

I'm inclined to agree it's similar to 23/24 and I'd be surprised by any radical departure from that setup aside from the obvious, enforced ones. Regardless of how exactly we line up, the lack of goals in the team is probably the biggest concern for me. I'm generally quite sceptical of the value of signing "pure goalscorers" or whatever you want to call them but I think I'm right in saying that of the current squad it's only Mavididi and Daka who have managed double figures in the last decade, and the latter's crisis of confidence now looks pretty terminal. The closest thing we have to a goalscoring midfielder is Ndidi which is a sobering thought.

Well yeah, it's really important that if you don't watch it you've got you let everyone know just how much you're not watching it. That's why I'm always in the Oasis thread saying I don't really like Oasis and the Nintendo Switch thread reminding people I don't have a Nintendo Switch

Fixed for you