Laivasse

Warnock MOTM for screwing up but having the grit to put it right with the goal. One of the few players who didn't appear to have a defeatist 'well, it's Man City...' type attitude beyond the first quarter of an hour. Also came close with two first half efforts. Some may paint this as a gulf in class due to oil money, but the fact is we lost to 3 cheap goals and a screamer. None of that was helped by our poor passing, poor subs and sitting too deep as the game went on. We could have had a better go at this game than we did, 20-ish minutes of positive play doesn't cut it imo.

FFS Milner... At least it wasn't a cheap one. Lovely strike *cries*

Probably he realises it's better to try for 3-1 than defend 3-0? And he's been proved right by scoring?

Good lad Warnock, atones for the howler.

I don't buy this 'they're just much better' rationale. We demonstrated early on that we could give them a game. Our ball retention then turned shocking. All their goals have been very cheap. We've looked much worse after half time when we should have come out at looking more focused and energised. Ireland's off despite promising attacking play, and Heskey is still on despite being a liability today (and I'm a fan of his). So much of that is stuff which we bear responsibility for, and has nothing to do with a billionaire sheikh.

Suddenly we're looking nightmarish from set pieces again. No way Heskey should have been put back on after half time, he's sleepwalked through the whole game. Now Ireland's off for N'zog instead, after backheeling to Bent to create only our second chance of the game. Clueless sub.

TBH I think we were the authors of our own misfortune with the goal. It was less about City stepping up a gear than it was about our lads suddenly forgetting how to string two passes together, so possession constantly turned over. Before the match I would have considered 0-1 a predictable HT scoreline, but considering how we got at them at the beginning it's disappointing.

I thought that too but it apparently was Kompany who committed the last one.

Yeah, good to see. I remember he was tucking his hands behind his back when blocking against Wigan too. Refreshing sight when defenders nowadays go in like a scarecrow and then use ball-to-hand as an excuse.

Whatever we were doing for the first 20, we've definitely stopped doing it.

We need to retain possession better. That's about three times in 2 minutes that the ball has gone straight back to City within seconds of Given taking possession and just now they got a chance from it. Keep giving it away and we'll suffer soon. edit: ... and there it is

The Hitman games, particularly Hitman: Blood Money. Not predominantly stealth, more like disguises and subterfuge, but it's that same schneaky atmos. The Thief series of games are idolised by stealthy game fans, but I haven't played them.

I don't know, it was an amazing strike, albeit under zero pressure. What makes it less entertaining for me is watching the idiot defenders and linesman appealing for offside. Apparently the ref is the only one there who understands the obvious fact that you can't catch an opposition player offside by kicking the ball to him yourself :|

I don't like them. As a PC gamer I try to avoid Games For Windows Live so the whole 'Gamerscore' thing means nothing to me, but I still encounter achievements due to the way they're incorporated into Steam. Personally I get no sense or very little sense of fulfilment from obtaining them, because they're either ridiculously easy or ridiculously hard while being pointless in the context of the game. I could try completing The Witcher 2 using just my index fingers, which would be tough and a kind of 'achievement', but at the end of it I'd still be asking myself 'Why the hell did I just bother to do that?' It's a kind of tacked on challenge, rather than one that's been designed as an integral part of the game... They just don't suit the way I game. I'll never forget playing through Half Life: Episode 2 for the first time, being excited at the experience because it was a game I'd been psyched up for for ages, spending some time exploring the environment of White Forest, looking for little details and easter eggs in it under my own steam... all of a sudden 'ACHIEVEMENT PROGRESS - Cache Checker, find all the hidden arms caches! (1/5)' popped up. Total immersion breaker. So the only difference they've made to me is that I now play new purchases with the Steam overlay turned off.

Doesn't the database usually get updated with a patch around release time? Or is it a longer wait?

On first viewing I thought Phil Jones got some of the ball there, but on watching the replay that was a pen any day of the week...

If I get this I won't be playing as Villa again. I have my FM2010 save for that, where we're undefeated in 100 prem games and Lerner gives me a foot massage every night. I'd rather take a team from the very bottom to the very top. Anyone got any recommendations for Blue Square teams which are entertaining to play as due to being especially well researched, having special circumstances, or anything like that...? EDIT - One bit of feedback for the demo so far: I don't like that there is no wider 'News' section (or if there is I can't find it). I used to have my Inbox for essential stuff and in addition I could subscribe to various bits of News which was semi-relevant or non-essential. Now it seems I have to subscribe to everything if I want to read about it and it all comes to the Inbox. For all I know this was a change brought in for FM2011 so it's old news... but I dislike it.

Actually Collins strikes me as someone who takes pride in his game and tries to give it his all. Little things suggest this like his apology to fans over Twitter after the 7-1 drubbing from Chelsea where he said he was ashamed to be a footballer or something like that, or that gif where he couldn't watch Gabby taking the penalty against Blose (incidentally the penalty which McLeish said 'wasn't a penalty in a million years' ). The problem with Collins is I just don't think he's very good. I'd say his game-reading ability is probably the weakest of all our back line (barring maybe Hutton), he makes bad decisions and he has too much of a license to hoof. Even playing with heart, he doesn't quite make the grade. Still, I wouldn't drop him just now. For his standards, he is playing fairly steadily and there's no sense in breaking up a CB pairing when we aren't conceding many. Maybe later on when he starts having nightmares, switch him for Cuellar (who I'd like to see in for Hutton asap).

I checked out the demo but I'm coming from FM2010 so I don't know exactly what's new or not. Sampdoria are wondering if their mysterious new manager - Fabrizio Pizzagliatelli, an Englishman (I got confused) who said in his first press conference that he hates football management - is the man to get them back into Serie A, or if he's just taking the piss all round. Still, I beat Cardiff 3-1 in the opening friendly so I know 4-2-4 still works and that's all I need. Still not sure if I'll be getting this on launch. With each new FM it's like you have to scrape away the added gloss and new interface dongles to get at the knobs which make the game work in the way you're familiar with. That takes ages, then once you do it it's like you're playing exactly the same game as last time. The match engine certainly looks swankier than I'm used to, and I do like the new team talk mechanic, but deep down I'm dubious that the 'tones' will be useful. Will a line delivered 'calmly' sometimes fail while the same line delivered 'cautiously' would have got a response? That's the type of silly trap that FM has laid for me in the past...

Bannan is indeed wasteful and hurried with some of his passing, that's a weakness he needs to grow out of his game. He's played a few people into trouble in the games before Wigan, iirc. The stats don't tell the whole story though, since it depends on what type of pass goes astray. Bannan does a lot of deep crossing into the box, which is more likely and forgivable to end up as an incomplete pass. He couples his wastefulness with genuine threatening creative play. Petrov - stats wise, maybe the last 3 games have been uncharacteristically bad for his passing, but all I know is he's one of the players I least expect to give away possession. In comparison, often when Delph has given it away so far it's been short passes or in situations of little pressure, and he hasn't made amends with any impressive attacking play that I've seen.

Yeah, I took down the Weapons in FF7 using the tactics hogso mentioned, although I think I also used Hades against Ruby because he's vulnerable to 'stop' magic for some reason. Incidentally, I saved the most fantastic html walkthrough of FF7 back in the day - easily the best fan made guide I've seen for a game - so if anyone's going to revisit FF7 you can pm me for it if you want. Anyway, if you thought the Weapons in FF7 were hard, try the Dark Aeons and Penance from FF10. My friend and I sank over 100 hours into knobbling them. It was a massive amount of work but I didn't list it among my proudest achievements because I'm not so proud of having racked up so many hours on that game We pissed ourselves laughing at the way we ended up taking down Penance: normal tactics all failed because he was so tough, so we summoned Yojimbo and gave him every single penny from our (by then gigantic) wallet. Yojimbo turned round and one-shotted the bastard.

Portal 2 is also 50% off today through Thursday, in order to coincide with the first DLC update for it (some coop maps and stuff). Kudos to Valve for keeping all their DLC free.

Bingo. This idea that Delph is looking bad because he's having to play holding DM to support Stan's roaming role seems to be gaining traction. It doesn't explain why Delph is so unreliable in possession, which is the main reason he's been a disappointment so far. Watch the Wigan game and see how many positive moves break down with a shoddy pass or decision from Delph - there's like 4 in the first 30 minutes alone. Nothing to do with Stan. I'm not busting on Delph btw, I think he has potential, but at his current level he's alongside Zog and Hutton as one of our least effective players.

A referee from Mars, that's how. Even the Chelski mouthpiece commentators on Chelsea TV were laughing in disbelief and saying it should have been a red card for their keeper and a pen.

Which one you should play first depends on what sort of games you tend to go for, I think. Ico is essentially based around platform puzzles, with crazy vertiginous architecture, so whether or not you end up loving it depends on how bowled over you are by the environments. It's pretty sedate compared to all the dramatic stuff that goes on in SotC, which is more of an adrenaline pumper although it does have plenty of sedate exploration bits of its own. Ico is marginally my favourite of the two and I'd recommend playing that first, unless the description turns you off and you want to dive straight into the action of SotC. Ico is pretty short (maybe 6-7 hours if you don't get badly stuck) and the story probably comes together in a more intriguing way if you play them in order of release; Ico sets up some mysteries then SotC (prequel) sheds a tiny bit of light on them. Both of them are up there among my favourite games of all time, but having said that there might be something to the idea of forgetting some of the hype before you dive in. Neither of them are quite the type of game that will blow your head off from the first moment. Instead I think it's more about how the atmosphere and the game world gets under your skin and leaves you thinking about them even when you're not playing. They are 'artsy' but not in a pretentious way IMO... in fact there's something charming and sincere about them. I still don't own a PS3 but this re-release plus the release of The Last Guardian are sorely tempting me.