FLiam

West Ham 2-1 Man Utd (Sat 12.30pm, TNT) Fulham 3-0 Burnley (Sat 3pm) Nottm Forest 1-2 Bournemouth (Sat 3pm) Tottenham 2-0 Everton (Sat 3pm) Liverpool 3-3 Arsenal (Sat 5.30pm, Sky)

I know there’s been stories of a strained relationship with the owner etc but sacking him is a baffling decision to be honest.

Arsenal 2-2 Brighton (Sun 2pm) Brentford 0-3 Aston Villa (Sun 2pm) Liverpool 5-1 Man Utd (Sun 4.30pm, Sky)

Brighton 3-0 Burnley (Sat 3pm) Wolves 4-0 Nottm Forest (Sat 3pm) Aston Villa 2-2 Arsenal (Sat 5.30pm, Sky) Everton 2-1 Chelsea (Sun 2pm) Tottenham 2-3 Newcastle (Sun 4.30pm, Sky)

With all due respect - I think that’s a genuinely shocking decision to blow the whistle so early. He played advantage and then blew the whistle probably no more than a second later, that’s not how you call advantage. But, it was City - so, lol.

Brentford 2-0 Luton (Sat 3pm) Burnley 1-0 Sheff Utd (Sat 3pm) Newcastle 2-2 Man Utd (Sat 8pm, TNT) West Ham 4-0 Crystal Palace (Sun 2pm, Sky) Man City 5-2 Tottenham (Sun 4.30pm, Sky)

Patch is out.

Pep to leave next summer?

Must have missed it - don’t see it on the app. Darn.

For Ultimate? Where’d you buy that?

I picked up Control for $10 - I had played a bit of it previously on PC but never finished it. It’s better than I remember. The combat is so smooth, really enjoyable game.

Finished the Fall of the House of Usher and it was utterly tremendous. Mike Flanagan makes some really solid television. The whole series had me pretty gripped to every scene. So well made, the actors were all pretty great too. I am a big fan of the ensemble he uses in a lot of his shows. Still kind of odd to see the ET kid as a) a grown man, and b) a horrible bastard though.

Tottenham 1-3 Aston Villa Missed the deadline again!

I’d argue it was much more than a petulant flap. You can see from one angle his facial expression in which there’s clear intent to hurt someone by smashing their forearm unsuspectingly into the side of their head. It’s assault. In other sports - rugby for example, that would be a red card without hesitation. All I can gather from what they have said is that it can be open season now to do this on a weekly basis. I don’t see it as subjective at all. It’s by the book violent conduct and they completely ignored basic rules of the game. It’s no surprise that Howard Webb didn’t talk about this one on his vanity show.

https://x.com/gunnersc0m/status/1724796197792358487?s=46&t=ZVi2V0_ikaOx-8_TAekX9g Audio of VAR check on Bruno’s assault on Jorginho. ”It’s not nice but doesn’t meet the threshold”. So forearm smashes to the side/back of an unsuspected players head is now perfectly fine in the Premier League.

It has had a good couple of months after a slight dip prior. Two Like a Dragon games I want to play, but still not completed the last game. Then there’s Dead Space, Lies of P and the Lamplighters League - that’s before continuing Starfield.

Rumours of Baldur’s Gate coming to Xbox as soon as next month. Gamepass would be ideal.

Feeling nice and smug being the only one that predicted a Wolves win.

Goalkeeper injuries are getting a bit silly now though. I see a goalkeeper injured in a match seemingly every few games. Already had my starting keeper out for 6 weeks and then my reserve got injured for two weeks. I know it's an ongoing joke about FM needing a patch to be playable but this is the worst I can remember it being upon full release. Main issues I am finding are too many goals, too many goalkeeper injuries, not enough substitutions by the AI, and players complaining even more than previous games. It clearly has the potential to be a lot better than FM23 but so far, all I can see is that it needs a lot of work. Other than those things I pointed out, I am reading from people that have simmed multiple seasons that the AI are still not building squads as you would expect - clubs are stockpiling players in the same position, spending huge fees on players that don't play. Considering AI improvement was one of SI's headline feature announcements - I feel really let down by this release so far. That's not even including the shambles that is the Japanese league not being as functional as they claimed it would. But at least I can add facepaint to my manager now. I missed that SI put out a note: Might not be for at least a few weeks before it's properly playable for me.

I see the frustration with players kicking up a fuss about nonsense now. Started an AS Roma save, the day before the first game of the season (bear in mind I do have first transfer windows off), Pelligrini complains that we don't have enough depth at CB, cue 75% of the team now being unhappy and morale has dropped to almost the lowest level. Can't believe this made it past beta stage. Genuinely baffling. There is no realism in a new manager coming in and almost the entire squad being unhappy and against the manager who has no say in the current squad and cannot fix via transfers.

Wolves 2-1 Tottenham (Sat 12.30pm, TNT) Crystal Palace 1-2 Everton (Sat 3pm) Bournemouth 0-3 Newcastle (Sat 5.30pm, Sky) West Ham 2-2 Nottm Forest (Sun 2pm, Sky) Chelsea 0-2 Man City (Sun 4.30pm, Sky)

Oh yeah I forgot about this one. I presume they wanted to increase the probability of a goalkeeper getting injured but whatever they did was very wrong. I definitely had goalkeepers getting injured before though, so I don’t really understand the decision behind this one.

Played a bit last night and as far as FM releases go - I would say this one is pretty bad. The AI doesn’t make many subs, if any - they come in the final few minutes most of the time. It was an issue in the beta and hasn’t been fixed. I played a few games of the season and in five games, my opponents only made three subs across all three. One came in the 71st minute and the others were in stoppage time. All this will do is lead to teams playing a second XI by October/November time. One other massive issue is that one of their headline announcements being the Japanese leagues being “fully licensed and playable” are not fully licensed and there are 100+ missing players (including Juan Mata). Whilst I wasn’t planning on managing in Japan, this is a massive false promise by SI. They must have known they didn’t have full approval yet, so to announce it weeks before release is really dishonest. On a positive note - the Tato skin has been released.

Unfortunately as it’s Chelsea, I think they will.

On the subject of the goal, I still don’t see how this doesn’t prove the ball is out of play. It’s clearly out of play.