Naitch

Brighton signing a promising new left back? I look forward to him stinking up Stamford Bridge next season after paying triple whatever this fee was.

This seems like a flat out denial of reality, given that he's on loan for half a season at a club who aren't in Europe, went out of the League Cup in their first game in the competition, have incumbent Treble winners Man City in the next round of the FA Cup, and are 6 points of the pace in the most competitive league title race I think I've ever seen.

Man Utd proving that "you win some, you lose some" is actually a viable tactic as long as you don't draw often.

I believe the modern vernacular is "mid".

Understand AI high on list. Non-native remains also an option.

Any other Sly Cooper fans out there? Someone please tell me I'm not imagining the similarities between the beat in these two songs!

I think it's clear we can't rely on James and Chilwell staying fit, so something needs to be done about that. Playing Disasi and Colwill out wide isn't the answer... I'd be looking to tie Gallagher down to a new contract and loaning out some of the teenagers so that more experienced (and apparently taller?) players can come in to create a more confident engine for the team. The sheer length some of these kids have on their contracts means that loaning them out for development sounds like a good idea, although the Andrey Santos at Forest debacle shows that doesn't always work as intended. Oddly the player I'm missing the most is Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who could quite easily slot in basically anywhere on the pitch. Also he would've brought that height factor we're supposedly missing.

Back in October I decided I'd be satisfied with 4 points out of 18 from the run of games Chelsea have just had. We've come out with 8 points so I'm doubly happy. Given that all the criticism for Pochettino seems to be "boo hoo, we won't make the top 4 now so dump him", I think it's clear that the reality of a complete club reset still hasn't set in for a lot of online fans. Being competitive for any European spot was a lofty goal this season in my opinion, never mind the Champions League, and the 7 point gap to those positions demonstrates that. The remaining games this year will be more interesting as they're all against lower half teams, so really need to be taking at least 10 points from the 15 available. Hopefully it also allows Nkunku and Lavia to get some minutes in, as 8 games in 31 days means that rotation will be vital.

This is the first game I'd want on release day since GTA 5. Shame I'll need to get a new console just for the privilege.

Just broke the Serie A all-time goalscoring record with Francesco Totti at Roma on FM14! Between 1929 and 1954, Silvio Piola scored 274 Serie A goals whilst playing for Pro Vercelli, Lazio, Juventus, and Novara. He scored a further 16 goals in a post-WW2 season that wasn't a proper Serie A, but I'm not sure Totti's legs will carry him through that many more goals... In real life, Totti hung up his boots at 250 goals, a tally I was able to surpass two seasons earlier using tactics literally built around racking up the goals. Indeed, we've been the highest-scoring team in all three seasons so far and currently sit 8 points clear atop the Serie A table with the most goals scored so far. 2013/14 Totti was my top goalscorer with 19 goals, primarily playing as a Complete Forward as my only striker. Usually I played a 4-5-1 but occasionally switched to a 4-2-3-1 or weird 4-1-2-1-2 formation with wing backs and a Daniel De Rossi as a half back (so I guess close to a modern 3ATB with two strikers). Totti played in all 38 games. Roma hadn't qualified for Europe the previous season, so I didn't have to worry about overplaying and Totti was able to get plenty of rest. We finished in 2nd, nine points behind Juventus after conceding quite a lot. I've been using quite attack-focused formations to try and encourage more Totti goals, so this was probably why we were 1st in goals scored but 10th in goals conceded. 2014/15 At 38, Totti was starting to drop off in quality. I decided to drop him back into a CAM position playing Trequartista, with Mattia Destro taking over as the lone striker but Totti's position being set to shoot more often. This worked quite well as it led to 15 goals across the season, despite the fact that Totti missed the tail end of the season through injury and only played in 29 games. I chose not to include Totti in the Champions League squad so that he could rest up for league games, allowing me to switch to the 4-5-1 formation that had De Rossi playing in his preferred CDM role. Somehow we made it to the semi finals before losing on aggregate to Man Utd. We finished 2nd to Juventus again, this time falling 13 points behind after they only lost two games and conceded just 17 goals all season! We did manage to win the Super Cup against them though. 2015/16 With Totti's skills dropping off hard I switched the CAM player role to an Enganche. This reduced his goal output to just 11, many of them coming from the penalty spot. Despite this, Totti managed to play in 35 league games. This year we dropped to 3rd, although only 8 points off winners Juventus this time. Inter pipped us to 2nd by a single point. Despite the hiccup in the league, we were able to win the Italian Cup and the Europa League 2016/17 Now 40, Totti is mostly just sitting on the bench waiting for opportunities to come on and have the odd chance at taking penalties. The CAM role is still set as Enganche whenever I've chosen to start Totti, but I've switched back to the 4-5-1 and 4-2-3-1 formations from the first season now that he isn't featuring often. He missed out on his 273rd goal during a 6-0 romping at Inter Milan because Lucas Ocampos was on for a hat-trick. That goal finally came from open play against Chievo Verona in a comfortable 3-0 win. Record-tying goal #274 came just a week later when he scored a penalty in a game we eventually won 3-2. The magic record-setting goal came against Ternana the following weekend, marking goals three consecutive league games for the veteran. Initially, I'd considered leaving Totti on the bench as Ternana went into the game in 6th place, despite yoyo-ing up and down between Series A and B for the last few seasons. But that gamble paid off when Totti put us 3-1 up in the 51st minute! The record-breaking goal marks three goals scored in seven appearances. Totti might get the occasional run out throughout the remainder of the season but my focus now is on winning the league title, and I'm not sure playing a 0.5 star player regularly is going to help me achieve that.

Basically this ^ The Wiki page says that Portugal through Albania is group winners by overall performance and Austria through Switzerland is the same for group runners up. I know Pot 2 is five group winners and the best runners up, but you could've told me that was Pot 4 and I'd have believed it. It also looks like one goal difference in either of the Belgium/Austria games (in Austria's favour) would've swapped them round.

@Bobfoc It was Estonia who only got one point, which makes it more baffling that they're in the Path A playoffs - presumably because they "topped" League D? This bit claims to explain how these paths were drawn. If anything it sounds like Finland were the most screwed over in drawing the short straw between themselves, Ukraine, and Iceland. It also almost guarantees that the three teams drawn with the Path C playoff winners' group will advance to the second round next summer. I'd like to see Finland, Ukraine (although Israel would be an acceptable alternative), and Luxembourg or Kazakhstan as the qualifying teams, solely because these are the teams who were most competitive in their qualifying groups. The group seeding looks interesting too 👇

Bellingham and Colwill out through injury too. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/football/67408326

This is more like it: Maddison, Wilson, Dunk out and Palmer, Konsa, Lewis in. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/67401609 EDIT - Beaten by seconds by the inside man xD

In fairness, he isn't even Chelsea's best English attacking player (it's Palmer) so obviously shouldn't be getting picked. I'm glad that Reece James and Ben Chilwell haven't been picked. Those men need to be wrapped in bubble wrap and kept in a controlled environment whenever they aren't playing! Dissapointed that it's more of the same (particularly Maguire, Henderson, Phillips) given that England have already qualified. This is the kind of period where fringe players and U21s standouts should be getting opportunities to challenge for the Euros squad next year.

Don't tell him about Young Sheldon...

Great commitment to improvement PGMOL are showing by giving him arguably* the biggest game of the weekend. *based on league positions Liverpool/Brentford could be seen as bigger

Football Manager 2024: How the franchise made millions (BBC News)

An unrealised cinematic project for Doctor Who supposedly had Alan Rickman close to playing the Eighth Doctor in the early 90s. This is slightly different, as he was cast and then cut, but I yearn for the footage of Rik Mayall as Peeves the Poltergeist.

Twin Dilemma is almost worth watching for how bad it is... I have a soft spot for Paradise Towers for the same reason! There's a Fifth Doctor story (Black Orchid or something similar?) with no sci-fi but it's more like someone just dropped the TARDIS into an Agatha Christie story than an actively historic setting. The Ark is a great shout for a low key serial. I prefer the first episode over the second but the grander story is quite an intriguing one.

Add Spearhead from Space for the Third, and City of Death and the Talons of Weng-Chiang for the Fourth, and that's a pretty comprehensive list. Each Doctor's first story is always a good way to get a feel for the evolution of both the Doctor's personality and the show itself, although not the best stories besides Troughton and Pertwee. My hope is that Marco Polo one day gets animated or, even better, rediscovered in some abandoned archive. Those early history-focused serials, with no elements of sci-fi beyond the arrival of the main character, are all super enjoyable!

@Colly https://doctorwhomagazine.com/news/the-top-10-doctor-who-stories-of-all-time/ That's a fair line, I'm on season 25 of 26 of the classics after starting in December 2021...

I'm looking forward to the eventual corruption charges/case against Infantino and friends. At least Sepp Blatter seemed self-aware of how slimy and unlikeable he was.

Read through his tweets and he seems like a self-righteous bellend, harping on about "vengeance" and using an unnecessary amount of words to tell people he doesn't care what they think of him. It's notable that he keeps referring to a "reasonable amount" he wants to be paid for the rights but won't specify how much he asked for, even when called out on it.