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Wasn't that exciting mate but whatever gets you going

Yeah exactly. I'm not concerned about the performance and result, I'm concerned by the stark reminder of how many crap players we've got in and around the first team

Younger than I thought he might be, seems to have been around a while. Good how we went ages without having any depth at all on the wings and now we're stockpiling them, presumably only for us to end up playing a formation that doesn't actually use any

You might want to let him know then because he's played and scored for Forest today

In a perverse sort of way I would quite like to see it because he's very funny to watch, but at some point this season we are actually going to need to score some goals and signing a striker who in his two Premier League spells averaged one every 1100 minutes would not fill me with confidence

Even by our usual low standards, that is ****ing crap

I would be very surprised if they went for someone as limited with his feet as Donnarumma while Pep is there

I've done more or less this but with a twinblade - most of the time it's like you're running over everything with a combine harvester

Big three points, we are staying up

Definitely a concern. Our top scorers last season: Vardy 20, Mavididi 13, KDH 12, Daka/Fatawu/McAteer 7, Iheanacho/Ndidi 6, nobody else scored 5 or more. A 37-year-old whose last Premier League campaign yielded 3 league goals, two players who have left, Mavididi, Fatawu and Daka you would expect to chip in with a few and same for Decordova-Reid, McAteer is probably not quite up to it and Wilf I doubt will/would be able to perform the role he did last season.

Yeah I wonder what the appeal of international football is for any good club manager and particularly an obsessive football pervert like Pep. If he just fancies a change then fair enough but he could have his pick of basically any job in the world

And I love it to bits but it does make you do some other quite strange things and, unsurprisingly for a game that's nearing its 20th birthday, has not aged all that well in a few respects. But yes, if you want a pirate game that doesn't suffer from also being a Ubisoft game and are happy to do a bit of fiddling to get it working properly on a modern system, you'd struggle to do much better than good old Sid.

Black Flag is the best in the series because it's the least like an Assassin's Creed game. When it plays like a big budget remake of Sid Meier's Pirates it's good, then it remembers its Assassin's Creed obligations and has you climb towers to paint the map with pointless collectibles/tail some **** at a slow walking pace for five minutes/traipse around a sterile lab environment in the modern day sections etc.

For a lot of our fans the most important thing about a manager is whether or not they can imagine going for a pint with them

I didn't think it was a foul either but the thing for me is, even if it was, there is absolutely no way a penalty is a proportionate punishment. I'm biased because I don't like penalties at all but there are so many minor incidents like the one last night, or really unavoidable "deliberate" handballs where the defender just gets the ball blasted at them, where I think it's insane that because it's taken place inside the box the outcome is essentially an 80% chance of a goal. Obviously I have no idea what the alternative would be and for situations like DOGSO then it's fair enough.

Second half was pretty rank and massively fortunate with the penalty but first half was the best we've been by a mile and maybe you can afford to be a moments team when you have as many players capable of producing those moments as we do. We have a chance which is not something I thought watching the first four games

I love Hummel in a way that is probably quite unhealthy

Structurally and mechanically it is very similar. The combat is still broadly about patience, dodging and stamina management, and you still progress through the game by navigating labyrinthine dungeons full of tossers and then fighting against one big tosser as many times as it takes for you to learn their attack patterns. If you fundamentally don't enjoy Souls combat or level design then I think the odds are fairly good that you might not enjoy this either. And of course, all of the classic From Software idiosyncrasies are present and correct, like lore that is doled out almost exclusively through item descriptions and cryptic dialogue followed by weird laughter, or side quests/entire areas of the game that you'll unknowingly lock yourself out of because you didn't attack an illusory wall in some hidden corner of the map and peform a specific series of emotes while disconnected from the internet and Mercury is in retrograde etc. Where I think it differs and is a lot more accessible is that, while the problems the game presents you with are as challenging as usual if not moreso, it also gives you a much wider range of tools with which to solve them. Magic is very strong and versatile, there are NPC spirits you can summon and upgrade to help with tough encounters, stealth is a viable approach in a way it isn't really in other From games apart from Sekiro and you have a horse which allows you to bypass and/or trivialise a lot of fights. And although the combat is broadly quite familiar, there are things like jump attacks, guard counters (block an attack and immediately respond with an extra strong one of your own) and certain special weapon abilities that if used smartly can basically bend most of the enemies in the game over your knee. Most importantly, the fact it's open world means if you run into something on the main path you can't handle or is obviously meant for a higher level character, you can just turn around and do something else rather than just slamming your head into the brick wall until either it breaks or you do - there are a couple of pretty bruising encounters early on that are intended to demonstrate that exact thing. Go somewhere different for a bit - and there is no shortage of alternate paths, caves, catacombs, ruins and so on to explore - then come back later stronger and wiser for the levels and loot you acquired. It is definitely not for everyone and there's no way to say this without sounding like some zen weirdo but I think the Souls games cease to be really "difficult" if you just change how you think about dying in them. Cycles of death and rebirth are baked into the lore and I think there is a reason the message displayed is "You Died" rather than "You Failed" or "Game Over" - dying is not a fail state but something your character is expected to experience as part of their journey, just as you are expected to experience it as part of the process of mastering the game. All of which is to say - you might like it, you might not

I'm not sure it is a great deal like saying that but regardless, as I think is the case for pretty much every Leicester fan I have very little idea how good Kristiansen is or will become - I can nonetheless see the train of thought that might see Juve being interested in him as a makeweight. What I'm not saying is that I think he is definitely good enough for Juve because I don't, in the same way that I don't think KDH is definitely good enough for Chelsea and yet there he is, presumably in part because he has just enjoyed a good season under the manager they have appointed.

Immensely satisfying coming back later in the game and teaching that big golden bellend a lesson

He seemed Bologna quality who finished three points behind them so I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility that they'd be interested in him as an alternative to Cambiaso - who also spent a season on loan at Bologna prior to breaking through at Juve - particularly given they've appointed Motta

Glad you enjoyed, it's a masterpiece. Official cross-platform mod support coming in September so if you find yourself hankering after a second playthrough you should be able to do so with more classes, spells, equipment etc.

Aside from maybe a couple of Champions League games this tournament is the first I've actually watched Olmo and he looks outrageous

It's given as a foul and Madders' resulting free kick sneaks in at the far post, deceiving Danny Ward