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Yeah exactly. The feeling of immense shame that washes over you after a KFC is a huge part of the appeal imo.

I think a lot of people are too emotionally invested in the owners and specifically Top (which I can understand to an extent) to countenance the idea that they don't really know what they're doing and are basically making it up as they go along. If you imagine that e.g. relegation was all part of a genius strategic plan to regroup and rebuild in the Championship rather than a totally avoidable disaster, or that we're in the financial shit because everyone in football hates us rather than because we've been continuously mismanaged and wasted loads of money on players we don't use and can't sell, then you can also imagine that this is all just a little bump in the road and we're in good hands.

If it was just the MTX people were complaining about I might agree but given the absence of really basic quality of life features (can you even call the ability to start a new game a quality of life feature?) and the performance apparently being pretty rank on everything from consoles to the highest of high-end PCs, it sounds like it deserves at least a bit of piss. I think it's reasonable to expect your full price single-player game not to run so badly that it's giving people motion sickness or to arrive riddled with microtransactions, however inessential they are. It is very funny however that a couple of months ago its director was saying that if your game needs fast travel then it's "boring", and now it's seemingly so vital to his game that Capcom expect people will want to pay for it.

Vini Jr. played on by Rice and then Endrick behind the ball for the rebound

Conor Gallagher's ability to single-handedly ruin any game he plays in warrants further investigation, the man is an absolute marvel

Rubbish. Watch and analyse the game properly and stop writing headlines like that which you know makes fans pile on with negativity. Play like that and we’ll be absolutely fine. Created numerous brilliant chances and win comfortably on another day.

I agree he needed bringing in for Faes a few weeks ago but more generally, I assume he was brought in to be first choice in the middle of the "three" in a similar way to how he was used at Wolves, which made sense. Unfortunately for him, he then picked up the first injury of his career and Vestergaard surprised everyone by turning out to be actually very good in that specific role. In an alternative universe where either he didn't get injured or Vestergaard had left/was shit, he'd probably have been playing all season. The Cannon signing I think continues to look a strange and unnecessary one but I can absolutely see the logic behind Coady coming in even if it hasn't gone how we'd expected.

Yeah they definitely were and I agree 100% with the sentiment that this back line as it is would struggle big time but I don't think that's a Vestergaard specific issue. Him, Coady, Faes and Doyle all have little to no pace and they are all going to be exposed by good opposition unless we get some around them. I don't think Vestergaard or Coady are brilliant players by any means but I think either of them flanked by a couple of defenders who can actually run would be perfectly adequate for a bottom half Premier League team.

Even accounting for blue-tinted glasses I am sort of amazed anyone could think it's anything other than a foul and a red card

Can I ask why today is the definitive proof and not e.g. the Bournemouth game?

Because if it was a penalty it couldn't have been a red card, those are the rules

If you foul someone who is very obviously clean through on goal, it is a red card

Well in the summer you reckoned we'd be mid-table and didn't have enough quality in the squad to play possession football, so which is it?

Interestingly, Vardy, Daka and Iheanacho are all scoring at or above a goal every other game. 0.94, 0.73 and 0.52 goals per 90 respectively. Cannon not a million miles away on 0.43.

Bear in mind you're talking to someone who was convinced that our relegation was part of a deliberate "tactical retreat" strategy by the board

I had a dabble around the initial release and enjoyed it, though the game show trappings didn't do much for me. The destruction in particular is genuinely pretty amazing and felt like a rare instance of genuine innovation in multiplayer shooters. That said, I found it very hard to come away from it thinking anything other than "this is fine and all but I really wish you lads were still making Battlefield instead". Trailer looks fun mind and a big new injection of guns and gadgets may well see me having another look - one of the problems I had with it was that it felt like each class only had one or two weapons that were actually worth using, though I imagine three months or so of balancing and patches may well have changed that. It will be interesting to see what becomes of Arc Raiders, which was initially meant to be their first release but was pushed back in favour of this and has since been retooled into an extraction shooter. Nobody else seems to be able to make one of those that appeals to a wide enough audience without also sacrificing the things that make stuff like Tarkov compelling.

I don't think anyone is under that impression. The general consensus seems to be that the reason he left for Everton was because they offered him that position which he saw as a step up, whereas we wouldn't/couldn't because we already had the immovable object that is Jonny Rudz working his magic

I think it would be more unfair to take it away from De Zerbi given he arrived in September and was in charge for 32 of their 38 games. They also finished three places and 11 points better off than they had under Potter the previous season, which I mention not to discredit Potter or the job he did at Brighton, rather to emphasise that De Zerbi definitely took them up a level. It's hardly unusual for non-elite teams to struggle to balance Europe and domestic football but they've not been anywhere near relegation like e.g. West Ham were for much of last season with a much more experienced manager and much more expensive team. If he does get a "big" move then I think he'll have earned it personally.

My favourite part is definitely when we decided we had to risk it and not spend any money in summer 2022, then realised in January we needed to spend money if we wanted to avoid going down, then went down anyway

Good work at Sassuolo, took Brighton to their highest ever league finish and Europe for the first time after a summer/autumn where they were raided for both players and staff, track record of playing decent football and trusting/improving young players

I wouldn't say he was constantly hoofing it long at all. A lot more than we're used to from Hermansen, sure, but he's not as good a passer, he didn't have Winks (or Ricardo in the first half) always making himself available like we've become used to and we were playing against a much better team than we have all season apart from Liverpool. The winner came from a move started by him playing a risky pass under pressure. I would be very surprised if we sold him. If we go up we'll have more than enough work to do on the squad without adding a backup keeper to the list. Stolarczyk has proved himself a capable deputy and Enzo evidently has little to no faith in either Ward or Iversen.

Faes is only quick in comparison to Vestergaard, Coady and Doyle

Outrageous player

For those of us who've never seen one in action, what is a helicopter gesture? I'm imagining either you spin around on the spot with your arms out or you twirl your finger around your head like one of those hats with the propeller on top