CardiffGreens

Been playing a bit on and off for a couple of weeks. Enjoying it a bit - waiting on a couple of ex-WoW-playing mates to get on it and take them on. Having read some of the community forums, it didn't take long for themed decks to make an appearance - though crushing someone with a ton of murlocs would be hilarious...

Watched that abject first half, went to play 5's at the start of the second - got back to the end credits of mnf, turned over to ssn to check the score before realising I only have the 1 sat feed so I can't rewind the live game... Doh! Good point though - did hope for a 2nd half comeback however poor we were in the first.

Can't see Albion keeping up their insane pressing all over the pitch - just hope we're still in with a chance with 20 to go.

So glad I did an evening on morse code at Explorers last week - who knew it'd have practical uses! Turns out I'm not very good at listening to it though - though thankfully it seems some other people have gone and translated it already for me - which is just as well as my ears were beginning to bleed from the beeping!

Got into the Hearthstone beta yesterday - seems ok, k'now for a card game you're playing on a PC against people you'll never meet and can't send abusive and highly sarcastic messages to.

Heard an interesting thought from someone last night - Chris Coleman could be in line for the Crystal Palace job - as it'd give him and FAW an easy way out of their current contract wrangles without anyone losing too much face. Having said that, would anyone else want to be seen to be 2nd choice after Tony Pulis though? (That would hardly be good for anyone's ego)...

Yeah and no. They do well in regards to maintain a top four presence whilst maintaining a healthy bottom line for the shareholders. Their stability left them in a great place after the upheaval around the other top clubs this summer (and don't forget how quickly everyone got very shouty and pointy after the 1st game of the season) - I remain to be convinced that they'll be in the mix come the end of the season, but I'll eat a healthy slice of apple pie should they take the title. I saw Sir Alan Sugar do a "documentary" (prior to a new series of the apprentice starting) on the BBC a couple of years ago - covering the topic of football clubs struggling due to finances and other money related woes (I'll leave the irony of the former owner of sky-box-making amstrad complaining about football selling out for another time). One of his "solutions" to football clubs being financially insecure was to follow "Arsenal's model". Which I can only presume was to move to North London, sell your old ground for housing developments for millions, build a 60k all seater stadium and charge a grand a pop for a season ticket. Somehow I can't see that model helping someone like Plymouth.

Take 2, now I've got the right thread (rather than following all the ManU talk in the WBA thread >.< )... In other news, the Observer today had an article in reference to an interview with Eric Steele's (the goalkeeping coach who left after Moyes' appointment) - in it he claims De Gea is/was a "poor trainer" - lacking motivation to come to afternoon sessions, or to do any gym work in order to bulk up. He mentioned he had to take to spanish lessons be De Gea was "too lazy" to attend English classes. Also he eats too many tacos according to Steele. The article didn't suggest if this was a euphemism or not.

Edit... Duhhh. Post moved to the right thread..

Quite the necro bump, so apologies there... But after having the fiver mention the new edition of "I am the secret footballer" every night for the past month, I bought a copy. In it he bemoans the lack of quality of tactical analysis, with many shows instead focussing on goals and individual performances. Case in point, last night's MoTD with Roberto Martinez - firstly stunning the world with his revelation that he had watched at least 3 games last season by mentioning us playing 3 at the back a number of times last year (despite Gary L. thinking otherwise). But then rather than giving him the chance to fully expand on his points about how our midfield 3 were working well for the first goal - and just as he sounded like he was going to reveal some rather nifty in depth tactics he got cut off to had to talk through the free kick instead. Cheers MoTD =(

Finally had my copy of Kingdom Hearts arrive on Tuesday, but then had work running late for super-fun data migration sessions so only had a chance to sit down a give a whirl last night. Only a couple of hours in, but yeah, it's kept a smile on my face =)

Yes, the playoffs for UEFA are seeded. Thankfully they told everyone first this time, rather than bringing it in as several big-gns failed to qualify properly like last time.

Unless Poland get something from their game against Ukraine, in which case a win against Montenegro and a draw with Poland will suffice. Foolproof, what could possibly go wrong...

Clicky - Top 8 2nd placed team go through to the play offs (though it's slightly more complicated as results against the 6th placed team are ignored for groups A-H to even things up for France). Top 4 in FIFA rankings are seeded and 2-legged matched will be played on the 15th & 19th of November (most likely with the seeded teams playing at home on the 2nd leg and each given a 4 goal headstart to make sure the right teams go through*). As for the match, I got back from a thing to find the skybox had "mysteriously" been changed over (i.e. someone else wanted to watch the bake off) so thus my crappy 1 satellite input wouldn't record the other channel so I had to resort to watching ITV+1, missing the 1st 20 minutes and having to endure the half time analysis. And so it passed that England did everything I feared, go for the jugular and stamp all over a 0-0 victory. Both centre halves I thought had a decent enough game - mostly because the full backs and midfield were too busy pratting about and causing all the attention to go to them. Still, nice to see another England manager attempt to shoehorn into another midfield setup - because clearly the other 4 or so managers who've tried this weren't doing it right or something. And I'll keep the criticism of Roy short as a lot of his selection issues have been well trodden - however I find it a little alarming that whilst Sven has a tendency to make England play lovely football right up to the point we'd score and take the lead (and then get everyone to retreat to our own 18yard area to see out the game), Roy's setting us up to do much the same, except skipping the bit about taking the lead. *Half of that sentence is probably not true.

I see Cape Verde have beaten Tunisia 2-0 in their final group game to seal top spot and a place in the play offs - quite an upset given both team's pedigree in WC qualification (having said that, I see CV have a current FIFA ranking of 36 - making them better than Gareth Bale and 10 other players combined!)...

I'd like to think we'd get 6, 4 is more realist - as many have said - expect Roy to put a team out in a fashion to make sure "we get the job done in Kiev" and leave us sweating on a result in the final game to qualify a la 2001, 03, 05, 07....

Well, the benefit of Johnson not being fit is that Roy might not feel the need to include Jimmy M. as the usual safety blanket to cover the right flank and we might see some of that fluid swashbuckling football we all long for. Having said that I'm not particularly confident of a result out in Kiev, guess it's seeing this team dominate the first half and then just fall to pieces in the 70th minute for the umpteenth time this qualifying campaign that's really beginning to grow tiresome.

Couldn't say I was over-awed at the beta of FF14 - core gameplay was as expected, but the quest chains had this awful habit of doing the following: "Hey you know that place you were in 15 minutes ago before walking halfway across the map to turn these quests in - can you pop back over there an kill 15 of the mobs that were getting in your way last time? kthx" ... Though the boss fights seemed a nice idea - I only gave up 1 day of play to get into it, I've just never allowed myself to really get into an MMO since I had most of my life stolen by WoW, Planetside and FF11 (whose ridiculous learning curve was something to behold, and yet there was something endearing about it - i.e. playing for 2 hours and managing to end up with more XP than when you started!). On the plus point Kingdom Hearts 1.5 is only a matter of weeks away! Never played the original 2, and I spent many MANY months badgering a old housemate of mine to buy it for his PS2, and I still never played it!

Well, the GF needed a paper, I needed the results and this way I stopped her from picking up the Heil on Sunday. So without further unnecessary padding, here are the results: 1. 2nd hit caught by close fielder. 2. Caught amongst the un-mown grass. 3. Smashing the bails off both sets of stumps from your own shot.

Not to mention reminding the player that a lot depends on the team getting results, and that they wouldn't want to let the team down...

I just hope this'll mean they'll be back playing in those tiger-striped kits of the 90's then... You're getting mauled by the tigers indeed...

And the blues missed a penalty! Had their chances, and given the greens history in this competition this game should practically be a bye for the opposition :-P

Get in, argyle get a injury time equaliser :-D

Stolen from yesterday's Fiver - if you thought that Venky's advert with Food&Drink's David Dunn was cringeworthy... mmm.... tomato juice... (insert obviously editing gulping noises here...)

Excellent, another year of scraping along the foot of the table awaits! Though I had to google Chesney Hawkes' discography after using "The one and only" last year to get this year's awful effort at a team name...