Ginko

Oh I’ll happily be proved wrong UTV.

Pretty much where I’m at too, I think he’s leaving. I had got used to the idea, and comforted myself with the fact we’d have a huge chunk of money to spend on some really exciting players in exchange, but if we’re really going to spend it on Tammy and JWP then I’ll be extremely disappointed.

Looks like they used a spreadsheet for the background pattern.

The whole reason to take off an attacking player was to defend the lead. Whether you agree with those tactics (I personally don’t like them, but that’s what Southgate went with and it worked) is entirely your own opinion, but that’s what the manager chose to do. It wasn’t about picking on Grealish, that’s a ridiculous notion. If that’s the case, why put him on in the first place? And yeah, leaving Kane on in case of a penalty shootout makes complete sense. His penalty may have been terrible last night, but would you really not have him among your initial penalty takers? He’d still be first choice for me. Conceding an equaliser would have been poor, but at that point Denmark had no choice but to go for it.

I understand why he took off Grealish, and didn’t really have a problem with it. He was never going to take Stirling off since his running caused them problems (even though he does lose the ball too many times when he tries to run through defenders instead of past them), plus he’d just won us a penalty. It was either Jack or Foden, and since Jack is slightly more of an injury risk, he just edged it. Better to ensure he’s fit for the final, as he’ll no doubt be needed more than Foden will. No chance was Kane going to come off with the potential for a penalty shootout. I don’t know how good Jack is at penalties, but I’m fairly sure he doesn’t take any for us, does he? He’s probably fairly far down the order in that regard. Not sure why so many here have a problem with the decision, to be honest.

Should have known you’d be hanging round here I’ll bow to your greater technical knowledge, but I always preferred Zeppelin over Deep Purple and Sabbath.

As in the drums are too loud in the mix? Personally I’m a fan of the drums being more prominent, and Zeppelin are a great example. As soon as ‘When the Levee Breaks’ kicks off I get shivers down my spine. Has your missus ever heard ‘Good Times Bad Times’? I don’t know how anyone could listen to that and not think Bonham was an incredible drummer.

I really think it’s more to do with the tactics and the fact he’s not ‘the man’ in the England setup. He’s at the heart of practically everything we create at Villa, and that’s how he likes it. He wants the ball all the time and he often gets it when playing in claret and blue. Obviously we can’t expect that to be the case for England, and I doubt it ever will be, though if he cements a place in the team he’ll get passed to a lot more and be able to do his thing. I don’t think he’ll ever reach the heights of what we know he’s capable of in an England shirt as long as Southgate’s in charge with his negative tactics and penchant for passing backwards.

To be fair to Scotland, they got so many men behind the ball it must have been impossible to shoot from range.

Exactly my thoughts. Couldn’t believe how positive the BBC pundits were in the studio after the Croatia game. We essentially just watched a copy of the first game without one player taking a chance and driving forward. Boring to watch and you’ll never win anything playing that way. Awful tactics.

What’s that got to do with it? Presumably you’re a Villa fan and therefore you should want our players to fulfil their goals and be happy.

You’re probably right for the majority of fans, to be fair.

Or he might think that he’s going to have to leave Villa after all as the only chance he has of playing for England is if he’s playing for a club that regularly qualifies for Europe. But that’s besides the point, really. Jack deserves to play for England, and I think it’s a bit poor form for any Villa fan to hope that he doesn’t for our own selfish reasons.

Agreed. I don’t think it’s a personal thing, I just think Southgate is unadventurous and has players he trusts implicitly, even if they’re in bad form. It seems he picks players who play for the big clubs and therefore have experience in European competitions. I can see the logic, even if I don’t agree with it. Everyone but Southgate can see that someone of Jack’s character, confidence and swagger would never wilt under the pressure of playing in the Euros, so it can only be because he plays for Aston Villa and has no experience in European competitions (though I’d argue Championship playoff finals are more high pressure/stakes than playing in the early rounds of the Europa League, especially when Jack’s future at the club he loves depended on the result). Southgate is just a boring, safe manager, which is why we’ll never win anything with him in charge. Maverick players like Grealish will never be his cup of tea, unless Jack gets a chance in an important game and does the business, then he’ll have no choice but to pick him, but then Jack will have proved his ability to do the business on the world’s biggest stage anyway. Southgate will probably always do the bare minimum in the Euros and the World Cup, but never anything more, though obviously I’d be delighted to be proved wrong.

I don’t even mind all that much that Southgate didn’t pick Jack or even sub him on. Obviously I think he should start, but if the tactic is to lump it up to Kane to knock down for the two wide players to chase onto, that’s not really Jack’s game. Fair enough. However, we didn’t wind up doing that. We lumped it up to Stirling of all players on the left wing, over and over again, and unsurprisingly, being 5’6”, he didn’t win those balls. When Stirling did get the ball on the deck and ran at players, he lost possession again and again — Jack would have done more with those opportunities. We also played a RB at LB, presumably because he’s trusted and due to his set pieces, so why not have the most fouled player in the league two years running on the pitch in order to win free kicks in dangerous areas to justify that bizarre selection? Again, baffling. We won, and yeah, Croatia were crap and didn’t really look like scoring, but we didn’t have that many chances either. And besides, the goal came from trying something different to the repetitive tactics we employed throughout the majority of the game. Who knew that switching it up might create better opportunities to score? We also couldn’t get a foot on the ball for the last twenty minutes of the game, which given the players we have is absolutely ridiculous. I can only believe that’s down to tactics, maybe the temperature if I’m being kind, but it’s no real excuse. We have the players to keep possession. I’m glad we won, of course, and obviously I wanted to see Jack on the pitch running the show, but my biggest problem was that we were bang average yesterday and the tactics made little sense. I can’t believe the media are being as positive as they are about the performance. Hopefully we move up a gear when playing one of the big boys, but from witnessing a number of England games under Southgate now, I won’t hold my breath. We’ll probably qualify, but I don’t think we’ll go much further than that. One of the big teams will beat us comfortably. Not embarrassingly so, but comfortably. Unfortunately I think that’ll be enough to justify keeping him around until the World Cup, which will be another wasted opportunity.

A bit ironic given your avatar, but I assume that’s more about the player than the shirt I agree, for what it’s worth - not a fan of claret and blue stripes. Wouldn’t mind an all-claret body again like with the Luke home shirt, though, or something else a bit out of left field.

Hopefully the only player he’s replacing is Hourihane, but if he does end up replacing Barkley, it might be to allow McGinn to play further forward in the Barkley role next season.

Today I joined the next generation I instantly regretted not preordering one, but to be fair that was before I knew I was getting a handsome Christmas bonus from work this year. As soon as I found that out a couple of weeks ago, I've been keeping fairly close tabs on the next wave of stock. I managed to snag a digital edition from Amazon yesterday and it got delivered an hour or so ago. I'm downloading Spider-Man: Miles Morales as we speak. I'm sure I'll cave and get Demon's Souls over the weekend, too.

Bit late to the party with this one, but this is my favourite thing he was a part of:

I love Star Wars and Souls games, but I just think this title was lacking a fair bit. The story had its moments, but overall it felt a bit weak and I think it fell into that trap that a lot of Star Wars media falls into when it's farmed out to other companies – namely that they're obviously not allowed to mine the depths of the existing lore too much, so they have to make up a lot of new ideas, most of which fall a bit flat. It was also buggy as hell and the combat lacked the finesse and weight of a From Software game. Oh, and 99% of the aesthetic collectibles looked crap, so I pretty much just stuck with the same outfit and lightsaber combination throughout. Let From Software do a Star Wars game where you get to completely create your own Jedi or Sith and set it before Episode One, well before if that allows more creative freedom.

I'd love these games if: a) They got rid of Quick Time Events – the worst thing to happen to gaming. and; b) Cutscenes didn't make up 90% of the damn game. I watched my girlfriend play Yakuza 6 a couple of months back and my GOD. I swear some of them went on for over twenty minutes. I realise that would essentially make them completely different games, however, though it sounds like the shift to turn-based combat might be more my sort of thing.

Watched this yesterday and it does look great, but the cynic in me cant help but wonder if it is actual gameplay or if it’s pre-rendered. The lack of HUD obviously doesn’t really mean anything, and if it is pre-rendered then they’ve done a great job, but it just doesn’t look quite like actual gameplay to me.

Arkham Knight is easily the worst of the three Rocksteady Batman games (Arkham Origins is actually the worst, but it wasn’t made by Rocksteady). Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are by far the best, so you should try them, though if you’re not a fan of the controls then maybe it’s just not for you. I personally think the combat system used in the Arkham games is the best I’ve ever played. Spider-man is good too, but honestly I think it’s a bit overrated. Combat is decent but nowhere near as weighty as the Arkham games, or indeed God of War. Story-wise Spidey is also a bit forgettable, and while swinging around a nicely rendered NYC is very cool, the city has nowhere near as much as character or detail as the eponymous sectioned off part of Gotham in Arkham City.

Which one, out of interest? God of War is a great game though, probably my GOTY for 2018. I've never played the previous games in the series as they seemed a bit cheesy, and hack 'n' slash really isn't my bag, but the 2018 game looked too good to resist, especially with the move to Norse mythology. Really need to go back and finish that final bloody Valkyrie at some point, but I may need to New Game + it just to familiarise myself with all the moves.

Feels a bit basic and unpolished to me. I was a massive fan of the Rogue Squadron games on the N64 and Gamecube, but so far this has yet to kindle the same kind of excitement. I played those missions over and over as a kid, but so far the missions in SW:S seem a bit dull. And the on rails point-and-click bits in between missions that are presumably meant to be inspired by the X-Wing/TIE Fighter PC flight sims are just boring. The characters are lame and the story so far is naff, which would all be fine if those bloody sections didn’t last as long. I assume you can skip them, so it’s probably my fault, but I just want to make sure I’m not missing something important. It just doesn’t feel like Star Wars, and it’s set in one of my favourite points in the timeline. It kind of feels like the people who wrote the story don’t really get it. Kinda wish you could change views so you could switch between cockpit or behind the ship, but obviously they’re gearing this heavily towards VR, so I suppose they were never going to make that an option. I dunno, maybe my taste in games is more refined than it was as a teenager playing my N64, but this game just feels shallow. I’ll concede I’ve only played a few hours here and there though.