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Finished Death Stranding last night after about 60 hours, not without its flaws but pretty wonderful stuff on the whole. Very keen to play DS2 but I think for my own sanity I need at least a short break from deliveries so will likely either have a crack at something relatively short from the backlog (your Preys, your Pentiments, your Neon Whites) or start a new Baldur's Gate save now it's had its final update.

Totally buzzing for the new season

Yeah but it's usually something like Eddie Howe going to study Simeone i.e. there has to be someone worth learning something from. I'm not sure Dyche is going to have been in touch asking if he can shadow Andy King (no offence Andy) and even if he did want to do that, the rumour was that he had been at Seagrave before pre-season had started. Unless he just really fancied a tour of the place or was dropping in for a catch up with his old mate Rudkin it seems a reasonable assumption that if he was indeed there it would have been as a candidate for the job.

I think it probably does bode well for his coaching career (to an extent, I know there are a lot of things that determine whether a coach is good or not) that he made it essentially to the very top of the game without being hugely gifted either physically or technically. Must be pretty difficult for a player like that to win three league titles including the Premier League, play in the Champions League and win 50 international caps without a combination of intelligence and lots of hard work.

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Well he's got to get off somewhere hasn't he? Would be more weird if he just stayed on the train for the rest of his life

Maybe he doesn't have the same level of access he used to, I've no idea. Even if that's the case I've still got more faith in a tentative link coming from him than I have in the dozens of "my source, who is definitely real, says it's 100% guaranteed to be [manager name] 👀" we get every day. Realistically with how opaque the club is I'd be surprised if more than a handful of people know for certain whether we've spoken to him (or indeed any candidate) or not, but if Percy doesn't count as a reputable source these days then there aren't going to be many answers to the original question that would prove satisfactory.

From the one after Ruud left, same one in which he said Dyche was unlikely. Didn't offer any guarantees of course but I think it definitely counts as a link from a reputable source

John Percy has done and he's about as reputable as they get when it comes to us

If you can carry it comfortably enough and the delivery isn't going to send you miles out of your way then you might as well. One thing you should always try to pick up is chiral crystals (if you can't collect them yet you'll be able to do an order that changes that very soon) because they're weightless and you will probably want an awful lot of them before too long.

BBC: "The Foxes have been referred to an independent commission after being charged by the Premier League for an alleged profit and sustainability (PSR) breach for the year 2023-24" Sky: "Leicester City have been charged by the Premier League over alleged breaches of the EFL's financial rules for the 2023/24 season" Athletic: "Leicester City have been referred to an independent commission by the Premier League for an alleged breach of the Championship’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) for the 2023-24 season" Guardian: "Leicester City face a potential points deduction in the Championship next season after the Premier League charged the club with breaching profitability and sustainability rules. That is one of three alleged breaches relating to the 2023-24 season" As of about a month ago it sounds like we might not have passed

Percy said about £5m, Tanner said £6m, Danish press reckoned there was an extra 500k or so paid when we got promoted and also a sell-on clause of about 10-15%

Didn't it turn out he'd basically been playing through that same injury? Hard enough playing behind those dossers without also carrying a groin injury

Bring back the good old days when Glastonbury was about truly apolitical acts like Rage Against the Machine, Joan Baez and Sinead O'Connor

I've been enjoying it. Wet Leg and Franz Ferdinand back to back yesterday was pretty good stuff and caught bits of some acts I wasn't at all familiar with like CMAT who put on a great show by the looks of it. The headliners aren't necessarily my cup of tea but never mind, there's plenty else on. This occurred to me as well. As someone not overly familiar with them I thought they were pretty good but not in a way that made me think "yes, these are obviously one of the biggest bands going" and I don't know anyone who would cite them as one of their favourite acts. We must not be travelling in the right circles.

Was about as good the first time as well. The sooner there's some sort of forum rule against unfunny AI shit the better IMO

They did not. As far as I can see the players likely to be there are El Khannouss, Daka, Ndidi and Coulibaly, none of whom I would be at all surprised to see leave before then anyway. Okoli I believe is eligible for Nigeria and though he was called up by Italy he hasn't made his senior debut, so I guess theoretically he could switch allegiance in time?

No problem mate, just make sure it never, ever happens again

Are you thinking of Eddie Howe? Dyche has been sacked from all three of his jobs

He is as inflexible as those managers he's criticising. If his Burnley team went on a bad run I can't remember there ever being any suggestion that he should or would change his style of play, because - to use the football fan's new favourite word - rigidly sticking to a philosophy is "pragmatic" as long as that philosophy involves playing defensively and hoofing it.

Reading an article about the UEFA Pro License course and among this year's group, alongside the likes of Nuri Sahin, Gael Clichy and Dante, is our very own Andy King. Includes set-piece sessions with Tony Pulis and a guest appearance from everyone's favourite manager Russell Martin.

I voted anti because I think he's a cock but all things considered I think I'm probably right in the middle. You have to take into account the people making the decisions so it's not like it's a choice between Dyche and some really exciting, progressive, upwardly-mobile manager because there likely won't be any of those on the shortlist. It's more like a choice between Dyche and keeping Ruud or getting some other dosser off the free agent pile, in which case he becomes a more attractive proposition. In short, there's no doubt we could do worse. My concern about his style of play is less about entertainment and more about to what extent it's going to be the best way of getting promoted from a league in which more or less every team is going to be parking the bus against us. We are probably going to be heavy favourites for the majority of our games in a way that I'm not sure even his promotion-winning Burnley sides would have been (maybe people with better memories can correct me on that). His achievements at this level a decade ago with a very different group of players to ours and, I would suggest, a very different level of expectation don't necessarily fill me with confidence that we could expect similar results.

"Never went on to make it anywhere" is just quite an odd thing to say about players who are 20 and 21, that's all

I was only half paying attention but I think Joe Cole and/or Jermain Defoe made that comparison in the studio beforehand. Wout and Coads will pocket him no problem of course

Visions of one of those passing network graphs and it's just a solid, straight line drawn from Asmir Begovic to Andy Carroll