Age Of The Lariat

I'm not sure who I want to stay up out of Sheffield Wednesday and Palace. On one hand, Sheffield Wednesday are still tainted by Brian Laws, whom I dislike, so it might be satisfying to see his incompetance lead to relegation, and it might humble Wednesday fans who have a view of entitlement and "we are a massive club and should be in the Premiership let alone the Championship". On the other, Wednesday is a great away day.

The Donny game looked like a thriller. I'm disappointed I couldn't make it in the end. Saw the highlights, which included our usual defensive mishaps. Cracking finish from Emmanuel Thomas though. The voiceover said that we have the highest goals (scored and conceded) to game ratio in the league, which sounds about right. It's never dull watching us. Hooper definitely on his way in the summer. We got 2.5 million for Sharp when he was only proven at League One level, and with Maynard being rated at 3 million, I'd be extremely angry if we didn't get 3/3.5 million for him. I'll also be angry if we don't give our out of contract players what they demand, as our revenue increases by 6-7 million for staying in this league compared to League One, and we've already messed the players about by waiting until safety was guaranteed to talk about new contracts.

We secured survival with a 2-2 draw against Reading tonight, with our two goals coming in the 83rd and 89th minutes to come back from 2-0 down. It was amazing, and I now hope we can tie up contract renewals with key players, as our chairman was waiting to see what division we will be in next season It's a really fantastic achievement.

Burnley are getting what they deserve for hiring Brian Laws.

This. Having had the displeasure of enduring 10 years of Brian Laws as a Scunthorpe fan, I'm bewildered at how he is managing a Premier League club, especialy after doing nothing at Sheffield Wednesday, whom he ditched us for. I look forward to hopefully being in the same league as them next season.

Amazing game. That was the Undertaker vs Shawn Michaels of football matches for this season. Arsenal can't be written off, despite having an incredibly difficult task in the Nou Camp next week. Even though Barca will be without Pique and Puyol, Arsenal will need to play much better to stand a chance, Nasri and Arshavin will need to shine and Diaby and Song will actually have to pass the ball properly. I highly doubt they'll keep clean sheet either, especially as there's no way Messi has two bad games in a row.

That is rather odd. I'm going there to watch Scunny play Donny at the end of April. Hopefully they'll come out to Yoshi Tatsu's music.

Sheff Wed won last night, which takes the sheen off Scunny's two wins. Was at the game on Tuesday, 4-0 win over Peterborough, and Saturday, 2-1 over Plymouth, and both gave me hope for surviving relegation and were entertaining games. We do play some really good football, and our defence (worst in the league) even looked good, probably because Rob Jones, record signing and worst player in the squad, wasn't playing.

Fair enough. When you compare it to other wrestlers, it seems too high a stat for The Miz, if the stat is based on athleticism and moves not how well someone can pull of a speed-orientated match.

I think that if Chelsea had any player that could create as much from as little as Wesley Sneijder did tonight then they would've found the goal they needed and got through. He was superb, as were Inter's defence, who blocked and headed away everything that was thrown at them. Having said that, they were lucky not to concede a penalty or two.

87-88 Charisma for The Miz is his ideal level I think. He's been consistently among the best, most natural sounding wrestlers on the mic on RAW since he was drafted there, shows some great mannerisms and crowd-heckling in his matches and always gets great reactions from the crowd. I'd also suggest his Speed gets boosted up to around 64-67, as he's had some great fast-paced athletic matches with the likes of Kofi, Bourne and MVP, and good performances in multi-man matches.

Takashi Sugiura needs a boost in stats as well, having been one of the best in Japan last year. His brawling should be upped from 60 to 76-79, and his Speed at 37 is too low for someone who used to be in the Junior division. I'd up it to 55-58 personally.

Also, I'm new to posting here but have been using these stat updates for quite sometime, so thanks to Bill for providing them.

It is a great achievement. Donny and Blackpool have both shown this season what can be achieved with a small budget in this division, and it gives hope to all us teams who come up into the Championship from League One. Though having said that, Saturday may well go down as the day Scunny were relegated by a 16 year old's goal in injury time.>_< I'm a bit worried that Plymouth won tonight. I shall be nervously watching on from the stands when we play them on Saturday. Also, Kevin Nolan winning the Football League Player of the Year is probably deserved, though Adam Johnson would've beaten him to it had he not moved to City, I feel. He's certainly the best player I've seen in this league this season.

Isn't that basically "If we can bring in someone better, he'll be let go. If we can't, he can put his hedge trimmer down and come back."?

That and "We don't really want to pay a severence fee to Phil Brown, thanks." I expect he'll get replaced if Hull stay up, but remain in charge if they go down to the Championship.

Mike Sydal is Evan Bourne's brother. Source - http://thewrestlingdaily.com/?p=3164

This is probably not the right thread, but I'm watching Liverpool vs Lille and Pool aren't playing well, but Eden Hazard is outstanding for Lille. I've never seen him play before, but he's got some talent. He's so quick on the turn and seems to have a great sense of positioning and what's around him. And he's awesome on Football Manager!

Agreed. Dislike would be the most appropriate if any relationship is to be added.

He did an RF shoot interview where he said after the 5 on 5 basketball tag match that Orton and Cena complained about his recklessness to Vince, which contributed to him losing his job. Take that for what it's worth. Whether it's true or not is debatable, but there is some ill feeling there.

Agreed. Bendtner seemed to learn how to use his physicality in the Championship, which is a much more pyshical league than the Premiership. Macheda isn't the same type of player obviously, but it would toughen him up, get him used to the physical side of the English game, and the pace of it, while also keeping his ego in check by playing at a lower level.

Finished my save of FF7 earlier. Just scraped past Safer-Sephiroth with an Omnislash while Cloud and Red were alive on yellow health. So much fun playing through it again. I doubt I'll ever tire of it. Also pleased I finished it in time to start ff13, which I've ordered off Amazon, so will hopefully arrive a day early like PES2010 and MGS4 did when I ordered them from there. Can't wait.

They have got a tougher run-in than us, especially in the remainder of this month. I can't see them winning at WBA, Swansea or Preston, all away, in their next three games, though their home games against Derby and Watford are definitely winnable. Looking at the table though, it's so close at the bottom of the league. Any team between and including Palace on 37 points and Derby on 42 points could be sucked into the relegation zone with a bad run of form. I reckon you're safe with 44 though, as you'll no doubt win the necessary few games to crack the 50 point barrier, including against us on the penultimate day of the season, which I will be at.

I mostly agree you with about Macheda. He's shown glimpses of real class and raw ability, but struggles for consistency in full games. I think he will become good enough to start for United in a few years, and agree a loan move to a lower-Premiership or Championship club where he plays every week would be a true test of his talent, as you say. I'm not feeling the Wellbeck praise though. I do think he's a very good player but when I watch him play there just seems to be something missing with him, and I'd put him on par with Frazier Campbell when he was having cameos with United.

Sheffield Wednesday won today and we're only one point clear of the relegation zone now. We need to get something from our next two games away at Ipswich and Newcastle now, or we'll be in the drop zone by the time I travel to Scunthorpe to watch us play Plymouth and Peterborough in the same week. Also, congrats to Donny for their 5-2 win. Always nice to see Sharp score.

For Attacking Midfielders, Alan Dzagoev and Sebastian Giovinco both do well in the Premiership in my experience. Picked up Giovinco for 14 million in my second season as Liverpool, while Dzagoev only cost 6.5 million. It takes him a season or two to develop though. I've always liked Matias Fernandez of Sporting too, and he'd be about 8-10 million. He always finishes near the top of the Assists and Player Rating charts in the Champions League in my games. As for your striker, if Edin Dzeko didn't go to Chelsea like he always seems to, he'd be a good buy, and I'd second the Milevskiy recommendation.

Warnock complained when we (Scunthorpe) beat Palace 4-0 earlier in the season, saying they deserved to win! I've never liked Warnock, and don't like how QPR get through managers so quickly, especially Magilton who I rate as a manager and didn't get a fair crack, so I'm reasonably content that Warnock won't last long there.

We're playing Reading, Peterbrough and Plymouth at home this month, and if we don't win at least two of those we deserve to get relegated. I expect us to lose our next two away games against Ipswich and Newcastle. Our saving grace at the moment is that Sheffield Wednesday seem marginally worse than us form-wise, and have a harder run-in than us.

In anticipation of FF13, I'm trying to finish the FF7 save I started at the end of last year but have left dormant for a month or so, to get into the FF spirt in time for the new game. I've logged 30 hours and just got onto Disk 3 and collected a few Ultimate Weapons and got Omnislash. I always forget how fun this game is when I come back to it, even though it must be my 5th or 6th playthrough. Annoyingly, the game froze after I beat Proud Clod, so I had to take out the disc and clean it and do that fight all over again. Suppose it's to be expected of discs that were bought when the game came out. About to embark upon Chocobo breeding before going to kill Sephiroth and finish the story. This is still my favourite game of all time.

Weird thing in my Man City game, I've just had Bridge and Tevez express concern about a lack of dicipline at the club, though I've only had one red card all season (I'm in mid January) not a huge ammount of yellow cards and there's been no off the field issues.

I'm having that same problem with two of my save games. In my Juventus game it's Buffon and Amauri that have had that Slight Concern for over one and a half in game seasons now. I'm not even in the top ten in the Discipline table for cards, and check the Team Talk Feedback page and those two never take exception to my team talks either, so I've no idea what it is. It certainly can't be a complaint about the on-pitch results, since I won the league in my first and second season, without losing a single game in season two! It's also happening with Gomes and Corluka in my Spurs game. I just tend to click "Expect a Performance" on those players who have that problem, thinking it'll make it go away if I'm more disciplined and harsh on them, but it obviously hasn't worked.

Great game thus far. Vidic's foul was a red card offence I thought, let alone a yellow. Park is causing Villa's defence all kinds of problems, but Carrick is having a shocker. Feel bad for Owen. He was having a good game up to that point. Interesting that he was the one dropping off deep to collect the ball rather than Berbatov. Still hopeful that Villa can pull out the win, as United's defence looks shaky and susceptible to pace.

I agree with those who said it was a 50-50. If you look at this pic I found below it looks like Shawcross is over-stretching for the ball whilst Ramsey flies in. Regardless, it's a horrible injury and I hope Ramsey can recover fully, as he is a quality player and nobody deserves that kind of bad luck. It's nice to have Arsenal back in the title race again also.