the_eristic

These commentators sound like they could not care less about the match and just want to go home and take a nap. Must've spent last night out on the town.

See avatar.

Use your heads, boys. Keep the ball!

And that's Joe Hart for you.

It's no use playing a big target man to win flick-ons and such if nobody is going to get near him.

Nobody is picking up those overlaps at all.

Hey, look, we conceded from a corner.

Looooooooooooooooooooolllll.

Playing the hell out of Dust 514. New patches have got it going in a really good direction, got a mic and have been running with reasonably well-organized squads, which always makes the experience in this type of game exponentially better. The meta game becomes more interesting with every update, too. Whatever you do, though, don't go on the Dust forums. VT is positively uplifting in comparison.

Only way to get a permanent supply of Red Eye Orbs is to deal with a semi-hidden character you're probably nowhere near ready to access yet. If you want consistent PVP and don't care about fights being honorable, you'll have to spend 20k souls for an item to access an area not far from (in fact, partially connected to) the Undead Parish. Otherwise, just go human everywhere.

Having Dunne, Collins, Cuellar and company virtually standing on his goal line at all times didn't help, either. Most of the problems in the Blackburn game occurred because you had all of our defenders and all of Blackburn's attackers in the 6yd box, Guzan tried going up for catches or punches but had no room to maneuver and had ALL those players bustling about and contesting the ball with him. Until the current manager, our defensive line was always as deep as possible and just looking for clearances. Whether that was a function of Friedel and Given hardly leaving their line or that entire set of defenders being a bit slow and pretty much useless on the ball or the hit-and-hope counter attacking "strategy", I can't really say. Bit of all three, in all probability.

Should he get his early crossing back, he'd be a good option to deploy with our big strikers. Don't know what could've happened, aside from injury or pure lack of confidence. It's like his technique and pace just vanished.

Mata + 30M for Benteke?

Poofs. Good TV though, Walt has turned into one of my favourite TV characters. So evil and twisted, I hope Skyler and Jesse get £$%ed over at the end of the series. I concur. I was soooooooo happy when On the subject of Todd, he's a weird dude. Who knows what'll happen with him.

Both a creative attacking player and another good defender have to be priorities if we're to make any progress, honestly. We are hopelessly blunt behind the front line. He's still not *exactly* an AM, though. Kind of a hybrid forward/AM/winger.

So above we have a 100m player against a cheap defense, here's a free transfer against a 100m defense. PSG still won, but you have to laugh at 'em a bit.

Who needs those three when you've got Barry Ba... oh, wait. Nevermind.

Bit of individual genius by Vladimir Weiss vs PSG. Guy has far too much skill for the Greek league.

Really? A past it footballer, doing the rounds for the last shillings at the fag end of his career. He will be going againist everything Lambert is planning for at Villa, a old player wanting a fat wage before he retires. No chance of Gallas at Villa. No chance at all. I'd rather risk it with Clark and Baker. Have him on a pay as you play deal, if he has been good enough to play for Spurs for the last two season im sure he can do a job for us when called upon. He has vast experience playing at this level and it would take the pressure of Clark and Baker and maybe even Vlaar. I agree with AndyM. It's not ideal but we have to make the best out of an awful situation. Are there any better options out there? Manuel Friedrich? Not used to the league, obviously, but a very good player, would be cheaper and is a little younger. Khalid Boulahrouz is also available, and is *only* 31. Onyewu was mentioned earlier, but he'd probably be injured within the first couple weeks, too. Would add some physical presence, though.

Well, on the bright side, Villa defender with busted knees? Sounds like a legend in the making.

The more important concern is the type of pitch we need to cut down on early goals.

Just played my first match, Bayern vs United. Looks great for a demo, plays quite well as far as passing game and movement, excellent animations, can actually employ different styles of football and see them playing out. Players feel quite unique when under player control and it's a nice challenge adapting to what they bring and making them all work together. I'm going to fiddle with the game speed and learn some of the new controls tomorrow. Shooting seems a bit different, I played on Superstar difficulty and drew 0-0, had 75% possession and created some chances but couldn't get anything on target, placement seems even more sensitive than normal for PES. Pace also seems to be implemented differently than previous versions, but I can't quite describe how yet. Immediate thing that stuck out as a negative is the AI's seeming obsession with dribbling, I guess so the developers could show off the "independent ball". Every single AI player will dribble basically until he gets clattered or otherwise dispossessed, doing little turns and feints no matter who it is. That really loses any "cool" factor after Michael Carrick has dribbled out of his own box all the way to yours doing 14 fake passes and sidesteps along the way. This will be hell against the Barca/Madrid abusers online. Strength Stat-based strong-arming opposition off the ball looks to have made a comeback, which should be great for any of us playing as Villa, but perhaps a bit too effective (though similarly strong players can hold each other off and properly battle, which is nice). Assisted player switching seems touchy, but that's a problem in every sports game ever, imo. Will eventually go unassisted, I'm sure, though response to click seems a little slow and the player you want to switch to will often perform AI-queued actions (in response to your last action) before you take over, a couple of which seem potentially exploitable. There are, however, a crapload of AI Assisted settings that I haven't found/disabled yet.

He was probably around 29 at that time and already a slow player with inconsistent technique, has had some bad injuries since (in fact, has a broken leg right now, I think), so he just couldn't keep up with the pace any longer. Surprised he didn't retire, but I guess it's the proverbial last big paycheck.

Really? I'm surprised so many people liked it as much as they're saying. The more I think about everything, the more I feel it the worst of the season, maybe the worst of the whole series. Intense and action-packed, yes, but disappointing on a few more significant levels for me.