Laivasse

What if...Scarlett Johanssen personally offers to escort me to the match with the promise of a night of untold pleasure at the Hyatt to follow? Because that, frankly, sounds more likely at this point. Unrealistic yes, but you can see his point? His point seems to be based on the belief that McLeish is still some kind of cupwinning genius, based on what happened with Small Heath. It's weird how nobody seems to remember how supernaturally lucky their cup run was, culminating in a final with a mentally fragile team who were right on the brink of a long slump. How's our Carling Cup campaign this season? Oh, right... Possibly our one performance which trumps the Spurs and United games for shittiness, against a team now in 19th. If the point isn't based on the idea that AMC is some genius biding his time for cups, I don't know what it's based on. What on earth makes you think we can finish 4th or win anything? You may as well ask 'What if we win the Prem?' We have identical points and goal diff to SHA at this same stage last season. 'What if...' is no point at all. What if you get tied up and your ST is the only thing nearby, and you flick it onto the deactivation button of a nearby nuclear bomb? Won't that make you want to renew?

I haven't tried for 2012, but for past Steam versions it has been the same method as for non-Steam. You simply need to put the faces in the 'graphics' folder of your data folder for the game. By default this is 'C:\Users\[your username]\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\graphics', although you may have to make the 'graphics' folder yourself. You can have a load of random subfolders within the 'graphics folder and it should still work. You can check/change the path of your data folder under 'Preferences>General'. Once you have the facepack in place I think you need to go to 'Preferences>Display & Sound' and untick 'Use Skin Cache' then tick 'Always reload Skin on confirm'. That's what the instructions always say, however my old copy of FM2011 has the opposite checkboxes ticked and the facepack still works.

I picked up this when it and DiRT 3 were discounted a little while ago. DiRT has been taking up all my time but I'm soon going to finish up all the events and move on to this. Is this much more difficult than Codemasters' other racers? I'm well used to their style, thanks to RaceDriver: GRID, and was able to jump straight into DiRT 3 with difficulty set to highest and most assists off, using a control pad, yet do well (nailed all the Platinum challenges). But I actually don't know F1 all too well and all the stuff about pit strategies and fuel mixes is confusing. Also the open wheel races were a nightmare on GRID. When I first tried the F3 at Spa-Francorchamps, that corner after the long starting straight must have wiped me out dozens of times.

Sessegnon's a really handy player though.

Really entertaining game.

Credit to everyone, at home or at the game, who managed to get through watching the full 90 minutes of that. That is dedication. Also masochism. We don't play football, we are like 2girls1cup reenacted through interpretative dance. 'Man of the Match'? What match?

Heskey's shot goes out for a throw. The commentary team are pissing themselves laughing at us.

Co-commentator at around 80 minutes had it right: "Well, you can boo him, but you can't blame him." That about sums it up. Although I'd flip it around - you can't blame him, but you certainly can ***kin boo him. Especially when his attitude makes him as irritating to watch as he was tonight.

I actually belly-laughed when Hutton miscontrolled and surrendered possession there. It's too bad to be taken seriously. Or is it.

We have not had anything even resembling a chance. Given pulled his hamstring. Young is getting deserved boos because he's a diving, fouling little arse.

I appreciate trying to stay positive but people don't just want to plant their eyes on the scoreboard for 90 minutes when watching a game. The whole point is to be entertained by some effort, skill or tactics. As a performance, there's really only one way to react to this game.

We weren't consistently this bad, but we were almost this bad fairly regularly. Part of what makes this so depressing is that we haven't been any good in so damn long, despite having the personnel to at least do something.

Did Collins just hoof it so hard that his foot came off?

Young hacking down Albrighton because he didn't get a call. Petulant little shit, as always.

All McLeish's 'passionate' shouting and gesturing is utterly meaningless as long as he plays that useless sadsack Hutton. You may as well set your house on fire and then stand outside yelling at it to keep cool. Clueless arse of a manager.

Predictably 0-1. Hutton was so far out of position he may as well have been in the bog.

Chicarito's managed to knobble himself. Not going to say it's nice to see people get injured but maybe the luck is going to be with us tonight.

Well, no I don't agree with you that people who slate Delph know very little about football. That was what I was saying. His ball retention has been poor every time he's played. He hasn't created anything. He isn't an especially good ball winner either. Added to that, his tackling is crazy rash. That tackling was what MON singled out as an area for improvement, it was what caused his big knee injury, and yet he doesn't seem to have taken anything on board.

I might have a flutter on Blackpoo.

So if someone's opinion differs to yours then they know very little about football? Oh God, we're back to the opinion thing again? By stating something on here, it is my opinion. Therefore, yes, if someone's opinion differs from mine, in this case, then they know very little about Football, in my opinion. I don't see how people can't get their head around the whole forum posting = opinion thing. It seems like it's you who can't get your head around it. People have some basis for saying Delph sucks. People also have some (probably different) basis for saying he is good. You, though, have pretty much no basis for saying that people know nothing about football, just for having a different opinion. Saying 'opinions differ, deal with it' is quite different to saying 'all other opinions on football are basically worthless'.

Having the wrong names was frustrating for me but I never bothered to fix 'em. Nogel Sponk always made me laugh. I've also just remembered Sega World Wide Soccer 97 and Sega World League Soccer 98 on the Saturn. I may have only had the demos, I think, but I played the hell out of them. Seemed to have potential while still being horribly flawed in so many ways.

I remember those. In particular 'Old Dear's Menu' where the players all had names like 'Nice bit of pudding', 'Nice bit of Roast Beef', etc.

Sensible Soccer was where it was at for me. Great crowd noises, absurd aftertouch, intricate passing manoeuvres, and dribbling where the ball didn't stick to your feet but which had to be managed carefully. They also had a system where each team would have 2-3 'star players'. For these guys you could just shoot with one button press and the ball would head towards goal like a heatseeking missile, but for everyone else on the team you had to manage the shot and apply aftertouch manually. Actually it was more satisfying to shoot and score that way. They never had the proper rights in the early days though, so the teams were full of 'Peul Gescoine' and 'Tuny Deley'. Of the early FIFAs I think I only had FIFA 94 or 95... wasn't there some absurd 'shove' button which would allow you to pretty much criminally assault opposition players, leading to a red card EVERY time. You could also run away from/shove the referee (again a red). Too tempting for me - most of my matches degenerated into that. And before that I had 'World Soccer' on the Master System. Terrible game by todays standards but I used to think it was the dogs nads, right down to the national anthems that played when you selected a team. The main graphics were typical 8-bit fare but the penalty kick graphics used to blow me away. Laughable to see them now: Also here's a link where a guy from RPS waxes nostalgic about Sensi Soccer. It's a bit verbose but his heart's in the right place.

Considering how little (other than possession) Swansea offered over 80 minutes we should have taken 3 points from this. Then in the last 10 they had the two best chances of the game, despite probably our best line up being on and our best football happening then. Lucky to get a point in the end. Very worried about where we're going to be in January. At this stage I'd take two Gabbies over our Gabby & Bent combo. I suppose I can't blame him for being demoralised, but Bent just isn't showing up. Yeah, we all knew he either scores or stays invisible, we all knew he's a tap-in merchant... but there's tap-ins and then there's tap-ins. Gabby is getting the crosses in. Even Warnock and Zog got a few in today. Bent just isn't on the other end. Last season he scored a couple out of nothing but the thought of that is inconceivable these days. Of course there were worse performers than Bent. Delph hasn't got what it takes and Heskey is a waste of a player. Eck's first 11 is always a headscratcher, or more accurately a facepalmer, and will always be as long as Hutton and Heskey are starting.

Commentator on Gabby: "You won't see a better cross than this. I don't think his team mates are expecting him to be able to get it across the face of goal." Also just picked him MotM. So what is Bent even doing on the pitch if he isn't waiting for those kinds of balls, anyway?