Roster Depth Sicko No. 2

Fuck me I never thought of it like that, they really fucked that last season huh?

Well that's terrifying.

Bucky, Sam, who's the third man?

The new Avenged Sevenfold album is absolutely brilliant.

Wanna do it as a split?

Marco Asensio is apparently close to a move to Aston Villa.

Went to South and didn't have any issues, but most of the complaints I've heard were around driving (stayed a short train ride away) and the water points (refilled once early with no queue and didn't use them again) so for me it was great.

Yeah I loved it, thought Tennant in particular was brilliant.

That Switch-esque thing looks neat, I love it already. Spider-Man 2 looks so dope!

I agree, re-cast Kathryn Hahn as Kang.

Well, that could have been a smoother ride, but we've qualified for the Champions League! We had to settle for 4th in the end. Cristian Romero got injured for 3 months right after the January window closed and our form tanked. We only took 15 points from the last 14 games as a result, which was annoying after such a good start to the season. Think I'll have to invest in a good striker and re-jig the formation, Petkovic and Omotoye were both very average and Bowen's 12 goals was the peak, and he's playing hardball on contract talks so might have a battle to keep him. Regardless of any of that, 4th is a huge overachievement for a team who got promoted via the playoffs, so it's a success of a season. City couldn't maintain their title charge and bottled it to United in the final three games, whilst Chelsea had some good fortune and jumped from 7th to 3rd on the final day due to other results going their way (it was really tight between 8th and 3rd, so I got lucky). No play-off to worry about either, I think, so I doubt there'll be any great expectations for the Champions League itself - I'll take third spot and a backdoor Europa spot happily - and they only want a top-half finish in the league. I think there's a little project to build here, so might stick around for a few more seasons, but we'll see. Around the cups in England, United took the Carabao earlier in the season to make it a double for them, City lost the FA Cup final to Norwich, which is just wonderful. Elsewhere! Sporting settled for second in the Liga Portugal so could potentially be a Champions League opponent, no cup success so a bit of a dud season. Kobenhavn ended the season 2nd again, but they have retained the cup! Cardiff devastatingly lost the Championship play-off final to Swansea of all teams, and likewise Chesterfield couldn't get the job done against Gillingham in the League 2 play-off final. A shame for both.

According to Fightful, release date is June 27th.

It does the download beforehand so it's immediately ready on release.

Yeah, so Chelsea, City, Burnley, and Arsenal were all losses, which has thoroughly derailed momentum before the January window. Beat Everton and Newcastle to stop December being a total write off, but it made me do something drastic early in January. We've signed Naci Unuvar for 58m. Curtis Jones' form dropped off through November and he was ineffective in all the big games, and it was the only position I didn't have real cover in (Davies ended up playing a few games there for me). That 58m might rise to 84m - big money, which saw a 34 year old Kostas Manolas and three regens leave for about 30m to facilitate. So far though it's paying off; in four league games he has four goals and two assists, which has been a great start. The only blemish on a near perfect January was a stunning 5-5 draw with Southampton which Jarrod Bowen rescued with an 88th minute free kick. 14 games to go, 50 points and still sat third despite the poor December form, and we're 16 points above 8th, so a European spot is looking good against our original mid-table prediction.

Dunno, don't have one. Just saw pictures on reddit of people preloading it.

Seth Rollins has apparently been cast in the next Captain America film.

The game is now preloading on Xbox and the achievement list is out there. Surprise imminent release coming?

I've gotten back into FM20 again because I still haven't bothered buying a newer version, might finally take the plunge for 2024. Back to the journeyman save it is! Kobenhavn was a mixed bag overall. So, so, so many draws. I think the second season I drew half the games I was there, and typically the only league game I actually lost was to Midtjylland, who won the league. We took home the domestic cup though, so I managed to leave Denmark with one of each. Looking back at the past clubs at the end of the 24/25 season, Sporting *stunningly* won the league by a point after Benfica lost to Porto on the last day of the season. I'm taking credit for the building blocks being put in place. Chesterfield have settled into being a mid-table League 2 side with a 9th place finish, and Cardiff came 7th in the Championship and missed out on the playoffs by one point. Now, the playoffs are important here, because once it became obvious I wasn't winning the Danish league I took a punt at heading back to England and applied for the team who, at the time were 8th-9th and I thought would be a nice rebuild project, ultimately finished 5th. And then won the playoffs. What luck. So, the 2025/26 season is being spent with West Ham. Nice budget on the table after getting promoted and a lot of work needed to upgrade the squad. Enter... New starting goalkeeper Jordan Pickford from Everton for £16.75m Jude Bellingham from Birmingham for £20.5m (Stunned he A. hadn't left Birmingham yet and B. was that cheap) The man, the myth, the journey-so-far legend Ethan Laird for £28m (potentially £36m but worth it for me) Journeyman Bruno Petkovic on a free as I had one striker option Denmark Season 2 Loan Star Tyrese Omotoye from Norwich for £10m (Potentially £24m but this man is the only reason I won any games in the second half of the 24/25 season) Cristian Romero from Boca Juniors for £17.5m Alphonso Davies from Bayern's Reserve team (?) for £12m (No idea what was going on there but fuck it sure) All sorts of mid-table mainstays left to balance the books (Wilfried Zaha, Seb Haller, Felipe Anderson, that sort of level) leaves me stacked in defence and light up top so I did something I wouldn't normally do and broke away from my normal formation choices, going for a 5-2-2-1 (wing backs, 2 CMs, 2 Wingers, 1 striker) to focus on Issa Diop and Romero as lynchpins, with Bellingham and Szoboszlai (love that he was already here) running things in the middle, Curtis Jones and Jarrod Bowen on the wings (both surprisingly good) and one of the two striker signings up top. Neither are really Prem level so they'll do for now but I'll have to improve on it. SO, where does all of this new fun and excitement leave me? I'll tell you readers: 3rd. Somehow, some way, the new system is working. 15 games down, Pickford has kept 11 clean sheets, and we've only conceded 4 goals total. Not going to get too excited as I've got Chelsea, Man City, and a return trip to Arsenal in December, along with Burnley who Sean Dyche has somehow turned into a team that consistently qualifies for Europe? Fully expect we'll fall out of the Champions League spaces given we were aiming for mid table but I'm gonna enjoy it whilst I can.

I'm surprised how much I like The Damned's new album Darkadelic. Absolutely wasn't expecting good that to land in my top 10 for the year so far but it does feel like it's been a slow one. I'm only up to 51 releases though so probably missing plenty of good stuff.

Wait I missed that the first time, we still have Bakayoko too??

...why?

There's no way we still have Baba Rahman, surely.