METALMAN

I assume the Man Utd fans are jealous that the Glazers didn't give them a stadium with a pirate ship.

Odd, seeing as they just won the football world cup by playing as if it was the rugby world cup

Newcastle are lucky because they’re in a group with a bunch of diddy teams with reputations that far outstrip the quality of their current squads so they’ll qualify for the next round fairly easily but feel like they’ve really achieved something in doing so.

But I prefer a dumb transfer market that is easy to exploit : /

I always look forward to this one. Singapore might genuinely be my favourite race. I know it’s not for everyone but I love how it transitions between these long cautious phases and then the shorter periods where they go for it, as well as how the power of the undercut, the bunched of field and the frequency of safety cars can affect strategy. I was concerned some of the changes to the track might affect these aspects so I’m glad this one was really entertaining. Although to be honest, the battles been McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes (and at the start of the season) Alonso have been tight all year - it’s just that much more absorbing when it’s for the race win rather than the last spot on the podium.

Watching Red Bull get overtaken like this almost makes the last six months of tedium worthwhile.

Really getting my hopes up here

I read a feature on that lot in the Financial Times a few weeks ago and they seemed proper dodgy.

It's kind of weird that the leagues FM offers by default have been rigid for so long but it's nice that its so easy to activate the other leagues seeing as in pretty much every case the data is already there. You just need to turn it on.

Oh I was kind of hoping they’d get rid of him. He’s alright but I don’t see him going anywhere. Others are probably more deserving.

Got my ticket for USG v Liverpool in Brussels!

you should probably make this guy a billionaire too so he can afford to sack Stephen Kenny

I would like a feature to turn off 48 team World Cups and the upcoming Champions League nonsense that doesn't require dealing with the editor.

Wot? That’s amazing. Like a parody

They won the FA Cup! Or their alumni team did, rather.

Oh God imagine playing FM with a smart TV remote.

Could Pogo argue that his ban gets backdated seeing as he has pretty much sat out the last 2-4 years anyway?

I bet you £3 he will never play a first team league game for Tottenham

No idea why these teams need to stick to regional leagues to save travel expenses if they are all billionaires now 😕

You think those women being tortured and imprisoned are suffering? That’s nothing compared to the pain of supporting a team that hasn’t won anything in fifty years and was run by a fat man who vomited in a fireplace.

I look forward to going back to the days when Iceland’s only contribution to football was cancelling a load of matches because one of their volcanoes went off

I'm not a massive rugby fan but it seems like there's enough going on in this world cup to keep me interested, even if much of that is down to Scotland's horror group. Aside from that the person I share my office with is French and a huge rugby fan, so I'll probably watch to humour her if nothing else.

I wonder how Bastien Chalureau feels about playing a team that is All Black

Yeah, Fabrizio Romano is shallow and meaningless, and he demonstrates that by exclusively covering the most shallow and meaningless part of the sport in an uncritical way, usually sponsored by a dodgy crypto company. I'm not sure we should be expecting him to be the change-maker. Even if he did care - which I don't think he does - I would imagine a large part of his job involves maintaining his various contacts and sources. He's not going to risk pissing them off by applying a level of critical insight to anything he does. I mean, this is a guy who won't even dare go beyond a gormless "here we go" to risk pointing out that Chelsea's latest bazillion pound acquisition might be shit. He's certainly not going to get political.