Straggler

It's like they gave the management of the England team to the Goes Wrong Show team. It's so bad it's funny.

The thoughts of Cole and Lescott on the way, so that should really clear things up....

Yep, 100% a pen, especially as he gave the foul by Walker seconds later, which was almost exactly the same contact

You're gonna get a bridge named after you

Was she at work? You should probably give that outfit a go, then everyone would be clearly able to see youre nuts.

Straight up the most sexist comment I have seen on this site. You have asked for a woman to be reprimanded by her employer for wearing an outfit on a night out that you have deemed indecent. That is some Sharia law, morality police bs. You are 100% entitled to have your opinion on her fashion choices, but wanting her to be punished for wearing something you deem too revealing is the definition of sexist. It is how in some countries women end up having to wear head scarves or the burka. The policing of women's clothes is one of the most common forms of oppression and one of the main causes of harassment globally. Amnesty international have a paper called: Women’s right to choose their dress, free of coercion I'm going to quote a bit of it here, you can decide for yourself if you have fallen foul of any of it. Amnesty international

Tonight for the England game we have Cole, Defoe and Lescott. It's the perfect hatrick of awful punditry, thick, boring and humourless. None of them have said anything interesting or insightful ever. The mute button has been a blessing.

Ferrari did report damage to the monocoque, engine, and battery fairy early after the incident. I'd imagine it would not be that hard to prove physical damage should they be challenged to, but with F1 shenanigans who really knows.

Must be borrowing the officials from VAR on a quiet weekend.

He can be correct and a whinging little shit at the same time. If you whinge about everything sooner or later you'll be on the money. But yeah today I agree with him too. I'm off to gargle bleach as I feel unclean

In theory yes. In practice they are moving forward very very slowly. In no way a criticism of the effort, what they are doing is incredibly difficult, but they won't cut supply lines advancing 10s of meters a day.

Well they have only just appointed a minister for common sense, so I imagine she will need to get settled in first before sorting all this sillyness out.

Yes, I also understand it perfectly.

Please not even in jest! It doesn't even seem that outrageous after what came before him.

I know his recent record is poor, but I also think he is a very good player in an environment almost designed for him to fail. I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt that his output is a product of the madhouse that has been man u for a few years now. I can't help but think how many of our existing players were written off as useless under Gerrard that are considered wonderful now. I still think that Rashford could blossom again under the right conditions. I suppose my conjecture will remain just that if his contract will prevent us finding out, it's just a shame to me that he seems to be a genuine talent suffocated by a crappy club.

It says way more about the manager than the player. It's a poor decision made by a manager not coping with the pressure. Rashford needs to get out of that club ASAP. He is such a gifted player and could be a great club ambassador outside the club. He is wasted at United

Finished the main storyline of Valhalla last night. So overall conclusion. It was good enough for me to sink 100 hours into to finish it. I can see why people say that it suffers from its size. To get to 100 hours I've probably had the game installed for a year. There are characters that die, than I'm sure are supposed to be impactful, but the cast is so large that often I can't remember who they are so it falls flat as a moment. The combat is decent. You can have fun with it. I've seen on this thread it described as better than ghost of tsushima, on that I would disagree. Ghost was more satisfying and technical, which I suppose suits a Samurai game. Valhalla is simpler and brutal, which suits a Viking game. There is nothing in Valhalla that came close to the duals in Ghost though. A fun enough romp, Odyssey was WAY better too, looking forward to Mirage next.

What really grinds my gears is that there are really excellent pundits out there, but we end up with joyless clearings in the woods like Danny Murphy getting airtime. As an example I give you Stuntpegg A lot of you will remember her from he coverage of Villa when we were in the championship, as she was one of the very few non Villa related channels to actually do the research, watch the games and actually provide some interesting analysis. She doesn't stray out of the lower leagues much, which is to her credit as it is clearly a passion project for her. She also appeared briefly on the Wrexham documentary. Her videos are always well researched, full of insight and display a love and understanding of the game conspicuously absent from the average Sky pundit. And she is funny. The only thing she does not have is the professional footballing career behind her, but to my mind you really don't need that if you can evidence thoughtful, accurate analysis that fans actually crave as Nieve can. There is real quality out there, but we still have to suffer the old boys network of junk on most forms of high profile media. It's the same attitude that allows Gerrard to become a manager. Elevating people to positions beyond their capabilities because of profile and reputation in a different field. These days I hardly watch the pundits on TV even for the games I'm watching live. Most people watch TV with another device or two Infront of them and I'm no different. At half time I'll mute the TV so I don't have to suffer the 13 minutes of adverts and 2 minutes of bland platitudes. Instead I'll probably be on here or joining a live watch along on YouTube or something. At the final whistle I'll do similar. Post game analysis I'll watch on YouTube. And MOTD is rendered irrelevant as Sky publish all the highlights pretty quickly anyway. I'm still consuming an awful lot of football content, but very little that involve Danny Murphy, Graham Souness, Micah Richards, Joe Cole, and the rest. They are an awful long way from drawing me back in.

I flipped on my ps5 last night to find that at some point over the weekend I had purchased Mirage whilst tipsy enough to have forgotten that I did it. I was always going to get it but I wanted to finish the Valhalla main storyline first (I am most of the way through, but kept avoiding it as the main person you are supposed to want to rescue is to my mind the most stabbable character in the game). This is the second game I have ordered this year whilst drunk incharge of a ps5, which is becoming an expensive problem (eafc being the other which sober me was really pissed off at drunk me for). Anyway I am actually looking forward to jumping into Mirage, but am sticking to my guns and finishing Valhalla first.

Yep, gave up months ago. As an anyone other than Max fan this season has been an unbearable procession.

I've been using them for a while now. I found the game as it shipped unbearable. Same as you I had regular 10 goal plus games. If it wasn't for the sliders I would have binned the whole thing off already.

Us the Operation Sports community sliders. They will prevent the cricket scores and will slow the game down significantly.

I believe it is a combination of desperation, delusion and simply being wildly out of touch. I can imagine them brain storming how to win back the votes of the British public, but they have so many red lines (some they are conscious of and others they are not) narrowing their options. The red lines are 1. They cannot build anything. Consciously they know they don't have time, what they won't admit to themselves is that they have none of the will, talent, capability, or motivation to build anything of value to the public. 2. They cannot promise anything. Consciously they know that a promise simply won't move the dial as it will remain intangible. Unconsciously they know that the British public would not believe them anyway. So they are restricted to cutting or destroying. They can cut taxes, which is the go to Tory tactic, but my bet is they already have that in mind for closer to the election and need to keep that powder dry. So what do they have to aim at to destroy that they think the public hate that they have not already had a massive go at? HS2 is going to be on that list. It is expensive, it probably polls as unpopular and the bit they won't admit to themselves, they have no idea how to deliver it so would love to have it off their theoretical to-do list. So there you go, they sit in a room and talk themselves into believing that binning off HS2 is the best option they have. They lack the intelligence, insight and care to know it won't work combined with the narcissist tendancy to believe that any decisions they make must be good ones. The surprise it didn't work is the same surprise that Liz Truss had that her economic vision didn't work. It is the consequence of unearned confidence meeting reality.

There is a lot wrong with this game. I didn't intend to buy it, but one night I accidentally drank a bottle of wine and woke up to find it downloaded. The game breaking when you try and fire a coach is unforgivable. The disrespect this shows to EA's customers that they released with this very obvious bug in a headline new feature is overwhelming. Fortunately the coaching feature adds so little to the actual gameplay that not using it makes no noticeable difference. The player models are weird now. Everyone has been to the gym and have massive upper bodies. I would have said in previous generations that the player models were a little skinny for some of the larger guys, but EA seem to have overcompensated and turned everyone into cartoon superheros. There are so many visual bugs that I can't mention them all, but a few notable ones are.... Invisible players on the pitch (doubles up as a gameplay bug and another absolute shocker from EA) Handing over the match ball to a hatrick scorer fails so the player walks away holding a ball that isn't there. When it's raining, during the halftime cut scene it is still raining on the manager whilst inside the changing room. The news feed occasionally features players that are clearly time slipping like Loki or extras from Jacobs Ladder. Transfer cut scenes frequently feature players showing off a generic placeholder club shirt not that of the club they are joining. I've done some pretty shameful things whilst drunk and buying this game is up there with the worst. EA made the decision to release this broken sack of shit whilst stone cold sober. They should have to do the walk of shame. What a bunch of spunk trumpets they are.

I'm happier now they have released the audio. It brings no satisfaction regarding that one decision, but I am happy that the substandard decision making process that I suspected was there is in fact the case. It seems the main reason the live process isn't broadcast is because the officials don't want to expose how bad they are at their job. This goes right to the top, it is not a matter of knowing the rules, it is organisational, process, training, communication. There isn't really an excuse for how badly handled this moment was. Yes it was human error, but given the time, money and experience that has been plunged into VAR the atmosphere and confusion evident in the audio should not be possible. I don't feel sorry for them at all. Calm decision making under pressure is the job description. Loads of professions do this sort of thing every day. Think of a Dr working in A&E. The actual consequences of a poor decision from VAR in the big scheme of things is hardly life or death, there is no excuse for any hint of rushing. It should be calm, precise and clearly communicated. If they were confident in their work and their processes there would be no problem with having them visible. At the moment it looks like the lack of scrutiny has allowed them to build an organisation that is fundamentally flawed.