TAFKA Castroneves

Yeah and that brings with it a more biased view, he’s under more criticism than most due to that in my opinion. We wouldn’t have won an FA Cup without him in goal - seriously While I agree he’s had the spotlight because of his dad it does make it more difficult in someways - and no about the move, it’s mostly because he was loyal to us and was treated right by our owners. He is paid well, but deary me he earned it, we’ve won so many things with him in between the sticks. He, like Vards has integrity about where he hangs his hat, a rare thing in football - and you’d prefer him to have gone? 😂 mate come on, I appreciate your comment but it’s just very much balanced on the idea that if a player is very good they leave us 😆 that has been the case but here (once again like Vards) he didn’t

Goodness me, he’s an absolute legend for us - and also more recently Denmark. I’ve always felt he’s been under the radar which has helped us no end in keeping him here, we’d never have attracted a better keeper and he in effect after his service is one of our own. Cost us very little and has given so much over the years - I remember the days when Walker was my favourite keeper and he had some absolute shocking moments. We’d have been lucky if the same was said for Mahrez, Kante or Youri, he’s one who also has been very loyal to us. I hope he wins it as he’s deserved awards before 🦊

😂 fair shout, there’s a endless amount of possibilities that make anything possible in the final two races, exciting stuff. From what we’ve seen so far though in the same equipment is how Hamilton and Verstappen are the two quickest drivers in two different machines - if one of Perez or Bottas can step up that bit more in the final two rounds then they could be the difference. Actually thinking about it Mercades would be clever to chuck Russell in ironically for the last two rounds over Bottas, he’s proven already he’s quicker than Valteri in the same equipment with less time, he will happily support his new teammate and would probably pose more of a threat to Verstappen (and could you imagine the drama off track if they did that 😂)

What we do in the Shadows - Series three is now on BBC Iplayer and I loved it. It’s still an incredibly underrated comedy series over here but utterly fantastic 😂 well worth a binge watch, Kayvan Novak and Matt Berry in anything I’m sold anyway but they are all excellent from top to bottom. Matt Berry’s best lines from series one for ya:

100% this for all the flack Kepa took (and he wasn’t great) his defensive organisation was shambolic, they played the wrong system for players like Silva, now look at them under Tuchel - it’s night and day the difference with the same players. Lampard would be worse than Rodgers the writings on the wall there.

If we hadn’t heard there had been a meeting today - id totally agree - hopefully that talk has cleared some issues and everyone comes back focused in training and ready to go. We can’t get someone in before Thursday anyway - and the immediate names mentioned aren’t much better at core value than Brendan 🤷‍♂️ if it goes down Thursday we know it’s over, if not we’ve got more time behind the scenes as well to start thinking. What is interesting to me is Wilf has come back and hasn’t looked great, however for all the talk of Tielemans being missing and a big loss - Wilf can play as B2B instead, he’s done it well for us in the past and also for Nigeria in the World Cup. So why we changed the shape rather than had Wilf try that out in the circumstances I don’t know

Was an utterly boring race 😂 however in the bigger picture the Championship is fully on still, which means with two races to go no mistakes can happen either side. In theory Mercedes and Hamilton should win at Jeddah looking at the circuit - and they will go back to the other more fresher engine as there will be a lot more fully maxed out moments there than at Qatar. The key will be Bottas has to get second then it’s down to a one race shoot out for the title, which will be epic. Credit to Verstappen as well today, I’ve not been impressed by his driving at a few points this year - Imola/Barcelona and Brazil stick out as him overstepping the line, but today he drove very smart and was supremely quick, his positioning into Turn 1 at the start was very intelligent and meant he maximised himself. The two quickest drivers were quickest today and let’s hope it goes to the final round in a fair way (which will probably be the hardest challenge - either on the track or off it)

I’m late to the party on this one, but talking Full Gear I thoroughly enjoyed it, well done to AEW again 👏 I’ll say that most matches were **** star plus encounters, but I’ll pick out a few thoughts for some. MJF and Darby opened the show with an utterly fantastic match, it’s great to see some intelligent booking again that makes MJF looks an evil genius and really helps build him. The six man Tag Team Street Fight with the Super Elite/Jurassic Express & Christian I utterly loved, some could say it was overbooked but it felt an utter war to me where they both just went nuts, the spots were great and the result was right for Jungle Boys growth in the same way to MJF previously. Punk and Kingston was fantastic, such a change of pace to everything else we’d seen, they just beat the piss out of each other. I’d hoped they might use a rare DQ win here - for Punk - due to Kingston getting himself disqualified from his violence towards him, then we could have had a rematch as well for what was hot stuff. I felt that would have protected Eddie more as well who is without a doubt one of the most over guys on the roster now, hell he was getting Punk booed in the promos 😮 The only match I really didn’t like was the Inner Circle one, it wasn’t that it was bad (and if it was on WWE TV it would have been awesome) but it felt it was too similar to other stuff and actually it wasn’t needed, still enjoyable of course but it’s a little pick against what was a great show. The main event was perfect. We all knew Hangman had to go over but what a match they had as well, Omega deserves a lot of credit for being very limited with his shoulders going into it as well, they had the perfect balance of wrestling ability and storytelling. What a pay off. its gonna be interesting now it’s Danielson/Hangman for the title at Winter is Coming (a guess but makes sense for AEWs booking) I think Hangman will retain somehow as I think the next champion will be MJF somewhere down the line, it’s a close one though as Danielson is a name that would draw attention with a win, going to be some good TV

You can tell we’ve all felt this loss big time after a few months now of just scraping by a bit. It’s really concerning how it’s the same problems cropping up again and again and it seems to take a while for us to get back. Bearing in mind how dreadful we’ve been at the back this year it’s surprised me how quick we’ve dropped the second striker for Wilf - at least then we could score and have a go - we’d concede but we’d score, now we’re back to just conceding 🤷‍♂️ He’s still got time for me, however it is disappointing knowing now realistically I can’t see us keeping Youri and a few others - our only chance was Champions League and we can’t get top 4 or win Europa League unless we were to gamble and bring in someone else - but on the same notion - who? Lampard couldn’t get us there for example 🤷‍♂️ Mancini might but we don’t have the quality his Man City team all those years ago did, we are very, very snookered. Im very much on the fence, if he did go - or did get snapped up by United I wouldn’t lose sleep over it now. But the next appointment would be so critical as if we went wrong (ala Peter Taylor) we could be properly stuffed and looking at utter disaster. Its very romantic of us to think of O’Neill or Big Nige (the second of which I’d only consider if he had Shakey as well in the same way of how Clough couldn’t do it without Taylor at Forest) but realistically it wouldn’t make us better. Legia is is a must win for me, and even beyond that we’ve got to show more fight and intelligence in our game, if we don’t - then serious questions need to be asked

Almost at Full Gear now, looks like another great show is gonna be on the cards. I personally loved the end to Dynamite this week (it divided some people as they don’t like the Bucks and the Ghostbusters comedy element, but I love the total and sheer Heel arrogance to do what they want and not care 😂) - and man how over is Hangman Page now? 😮 surely he’s going over Omega for the title after the two years(!!!) of build. I’m really sensing a Backlash 2000 Triple H/Rock vibe to this match - with the two factions involved I can see it descending into Chaos with a ref bump and Page finally going over in an epic moment. Looks like as well even though it’s not announced yet they are also gonna do CM Punk vs. Eddie Kingston on the show as well which should be a stormer, countless others as well. I’m also thinking Moxley will go over Danielson as it makes more sense to give Page a first title defence against someone who can help elevate him further, Danielson then probably returning to the Omega feud, which in itself is going to be something after that 30 minute draw. Dare I say it - looking around the wrestling twitter world Im also firmly believing now Windham Rotunda aka Bray Wyatt will probably debut on the show as well, lots of little hints being dropped from people like Matt Hardy and they love a debut on a PPV. How you guys enjoying it? Know there’s a few of us AEW marks on here 😂

He ended up in the Championship with Reading (is he still there I’m not sure 😆) not the first time we’ve done this to people in the game - Tim Sherwood when he was Villa manager and 0-2 up in the title winning season...only for us to win 3-2 and he looked utterly shellshocked after the game, he couldn’t work it out, pretty sure he hasn’t managed since which is quite an impact 🦊

Yeah very good points 👍 I hope they don’t go for anyone in the end and stick with Ole (like the rest of us 😂) Simeone would tick a lot of boxes for them if they wanted a longer-term appointment who could sort them out - get them playing both decent attacking and defensive football - and he would sort the egos out. But hopefully nothing happens it just stands out he’s the guy to make them into the Man Utd they wish to be

I think our edge here would be the attraction of European football, Potter has managed in Europe before back in his Swedish days, I’d lean on that plus our squad and potential would be very attractive to him. Brighton have a project though so it wouldn’t be 100% cut and dry and it would all depend how far he wanted to see that project through as it could still potentially go further. Rodgers I don’t think would go to United. Saying that knowing the Glaziers I imagine for the money involved they wouldn’t want Conte as the way they’ve stuck by Solskjaer strikes to me that they don’t want to be chopping or changing managers every season - Conte has a history of being a one/two season manager before getting a payoff and going off again. Uniteds best shout if they could persuade him would be Diego Simeone by far. Zidane would probably lose the dressing room very quickly looking at his history of dealing with stronger characters. As for Rodgers - long term going to Man City makes the most sense to me logically.

Is Amartey someone we’d now classify as having been retrained or redeployed as a CB for us long term? DM for Copenhagen, been with us for years and we’ve tried that under Claudio, then he was RB for a bit which didn’t work and a lot of fans got on his back - now he’s revered as being one of our better CBS this season. Just a thought 🦊

Got a strong gut feeling we might just shock Arsenal a bit tomorrow 👀 They’ve been on a good run but if we show up as we have been the last few weeks our system should be enough to keep them at bay with how they play. They are a funny club as well after a few games they are riding the crest of a wave, but they have history under Arteta of doing this and then falling off the surfboard. Hopefully they underestimate us a bit as well which will also only help. Hopefully we get at them, work hard - the full backs are going to be key in how we operate, they’ll need to put a shift in defensively to halt the likes of Auba - and also choose the right moments to support the attacks. The midfield battle hopefully as well will be in our favour, we need Madders to win those set pieces to relieve any counter attack pressure immediately and we need to stop Partley from being too involved. Going to be a good match and a great result will really put us back in business for a top four potential finish 🦊