Guest

Ah I've not done much shivving yet, might have a dabble next time I play. I think all my good runs on Silent I've ended up with basically the exact same deck, loads of poison and then using draw/discard/sly to pile on the block. No idea how viable that will be at the higher ascensions but for now it seems to be doing the job.

Enjoying it despite not having played the first one or really any deckbuilders, so a steep learning curve for sure. Silent is the only one that's really clicked for me so far but I did just about scrape a win last night with Ironclad for my first non-Silent success so trying to branch out now.

Jordan AIyew looking good there

I think there are just so many things fundamentally wrong with us at the moment, and consequently it's so difficult for players to actually do well here or look anything like their best, that it's become basically impossible to tell how good (or bad) most of our players are from watching them play for us over the last couple of seasons. Choudhury doesn't look out of place in a Sheff Utd side fighting for promotion, comes back here to play at the same level - shit. Kristiansen qualifies for the Champions League with Bologna as their first choice left back, comes back here - shit. Skipp wasn't really a regular starter for Spurs but was still a decent enough squad player for a team regularly getting into Europe, comes here - shit. We have an uncanny ability to extract the very worst from players. There are so many who have either been signed or broken into the team and not only haven't really improved since then, they've visibly - in some cases dramatically - declined. I'm sure some of them are just genuinely crap but lots of them are victims of this weird malaise.

I think it's probably more the case that there are some posters who can hold two - sometimes opposing - ideas in their heads at the same time, like this: I am happy we won and kept a clean sheet, and I am unhappy with the club and its ownership. I think Oliver Skipp was a dreadful signing and has been very poor for much of his time here, and I also think that more recently, particularly yesterday, he's improved. That's not going overboard with positivity or thinking everything is suddenly great and all our problems are solved, is it? Dissatisfaction with the state of the club doesn't mean you have to sit there frowning with your arms folded every time we score a goal or win a game. If you think that's the best thing to do then great stuff but I can't see what good it's going to do you or anyone else.

Disappointed but can't say I'm hugely surprised. Knows he's here for the short-term and knows we're desperate to get some wins on the board so in come the experienced, "proven" players because we all know how reliable they are. He'll probably see it as the safe bet whereas in reality it's a huge gamble and one I really hope pays off, for his and our sakes.

If you'd told me that was a Conor Coady quote from last season I'd have believed you 100%, except obviously he'd have said football club instead of just club. What a leader, talks so well, he just gets it - honestly, who gives a shit. If it's going to be backed up by performances and results then great but we've had so many players and managers say one thing and then do another that I'm surprised anyone pays any attention to these soundbites anymore.

Yeah I've only played a little bit so far but my early impression is that Marathon is pretty great

Stoke aside, which he had about three days to prepare for, he couldn't have had a much harder start to be fair to him. Granted none of them are exactly world-beaters but Boro and Ipswich are both competing for automatic promotion and Norwich are one of the form teams in the league. Unfortunately we're not really in a position to write games like those off as free hits anymore, which isn't his fault. Maybe it depends what you were expecting him to do? The guy's not a miracle worker nor an unknown quantity. Realistically I thought he'd probably get us working a bit harder and make us more difficult to beat, which seems like basically what has happened. It was never likely to be either free-flowing stuff with us scoring goals for fun and blowing teams away or flawless defensive football with clean sheets every game. There are reasons to be concerned, of course there are. It would be nice if we could actually win a game at some point and it would be even nicer if he'd stop bringing on Ayew. Nobody is happy that we're 22nd and we're managed by Gary Rowett but it's not hard to work out why people are slightly more optimistic now than either when or before he was appointed.

Together we can endure any hardship so long as we always back the lads and make doubly sure to be careful what we wish for

My instinct is that the playoffs are inherently a pretty silly way of deciding who goes up anyway and it's not that much sillier to have the team who finish 8th going up than the team who finish 6th. Maybe it'll prove to be a slippery slope though and you could then make the same argument about it subsequently being expanded from 8th to 10th, then 10th to 12th and so on. Had a look over the last ten seasons to see what sort of impact it would have had because my assumption was that there's never really much, if any, difference in quality between 6th and about 10th - generally the team in 8th have finished four or five points behind 6th. Some outliers in both directions e.g. in 16/17 Norwich were ten points off the playoffs and more than twenty behind the automatics but would have had a chance at going up under the new system, which doesn't feel great. On the other hand in 14/15 and 22/23 there was one point between 6th and 8th.

Like Andy King if you took away the goals and then made him worse at everything else as well. Warra player

Loving new Gorillaz. I thought the singles set a high bar but most of the rest of it is right up there and Delirium is an absolute banger

Connections Puzzle #990 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨

Because he wasn't (and still isn't, really) very good, probably. There are a lot of decisions we've made over the last few years on transfers and other things that you can look back on and say "what the **** were we thinking?" but the sale of George Hirst really isn't one of them I don't think.

Warmed my heart to see Mukasa and Winks losing it with him when he dwelled on the ball for about five minutes with his head down before shooting straight at the keeper yet again. Awful.

Ayew needs turning into compost

Trying to comfort myself with the thought that at least in a fully fit squad he'd probably only be fourth or fifth choice but it's not working. He's so shit.

My no-nonsense approach to tackling criminals with coeliac disease

I think they probably should have just edited that bit of the broadcast and I don't really see what the benefits are of it not having been cut. Must have been a pretty awful experience for all three of Jordan, Lindo and Davidson.

That is the only sensible way to interpret it, really. Promising though they may be, I doubt anyone seriously thinks that someone like Page for example is going to be among the very best players in the world.

All the bits of Taylor Sheridan's shows I've seen have been like this. Sicario is one of my favourite films and I enjoyed Wind River and Hell or High Water as well but his TV stuff is really not for me.

Got it on in the background and both times I've properly looked up to see what's going on, he's been beaten by a low shot essentially going through his arm. Don't know if he's injured or just completely finished, or both. Now sounds like he's getting booed by the Celtic fans which is not ideal

For certain, probably not unless my dreams of a Pearson memoir come true. There are still a number of reports from the time (and from some reputable journalists, not just gossip merchants) that Vichai made/was about to make the call and was dissuaded by Top, and none that I have ever been able to find claim that the opposite happened - nonetheless, whenever the subject comes up you will still get people who very confidently make exactly that claim. I get why because it fits a lot more naturally with the romantic ideas we now have about Vichai being (comparatively) sensible and competent, and the less romantic ones we have about Top being a clueless dildo who regularly makes bad calls.

Connections Puzzle #984 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 Couple of mistakes in yesterday's but we are so back