The Lusophone

And of course we'd go onto win 111 games... and get swept by the Cardinals in the playoffs.

The Bills have picked a guy who the term 'physical freak' seems to have been invented for. 6 foot 7 inches, 303 lbs, ran a 4.79 second 40 yard dash. Former Rugby player who interested the IPP, just turned 23. Could be great, and as a 7th round pick and that extra practice squad spot for IPP players, very little pressure.

22 hours ago, Mick said:

Tampa (Bay) Buccaneers:

Speaking of Buccaneers, using Loiw's fictional sets, I expanded the MLB and took over one of the teams, the New Orleans Buccaneers. First season saw a visit to the wildcard game (bloody Mets) and the second season is going alright: 

I like the logo, but it's not the best one in the pack, that's definitely this: 

He's just what happens when you try to make a trendy, forward thinking manager in a video game but you've got the quality settings down too low, so the beard hasn't rendered.

9 minutes ago, Bobfoc said:

Slot to Liverpool for £9.4 million seems to be agreed. Is that a good price to pay for a manager these days?

Graham Potter's move to Chelsea set a new record at the time, at £20 million. Ruben Amorim, linked with Liverpool prior to Slot, held the record prior to that when he moved from Braga to Sporting Lisbon for £15 million. He was rumoured to have a release clause of at least £20 million though other reports suggested it was actually closer to what Liverpool are paying for Slot.

1 hour ago, Hobo said:

Salah is still Mo Salah. It would be weird to sell him. Unless he really didn't want to stay.

There's lots of "X Saudi Arabian team wants Salah" stories flying around, though the Athletic pointed out a few months ago that the messaging being put out by the Saudis is quite confusing - the focus for this summer is supposedly younger players except the top targets are guys like Salah and someone else whose name escapes me but is equally old and accomplished.

Not a single defensive player has been picked yet.

Do you ever see a bit of news that just makes you tilt your head like a confused dog?

Think the owners probably given an instruction, both to the Twitter admin and Clattenberg to go off.

Is Onana banned for the final?

A Man Utd goalkeeper saving a penalty? Football is rigged.

1 hour ago, Colly said:

Ruddy council.

Makes the local council elections a bit spicier at least - a full third of the council is up for re-election on May 2nd.

It's a very bad day.

41 minutes ago, Colly said:

Presuming they've not done anything sensible like having the lower ranked side being able to choose the venue?

It wasn't in the press release.

7 minutes ago, Bobfoc said:

They're officially getting rid of FA Cup replays from the first round onwards next season. It's the end of an era unless you're a non-league club.

They're also changing the date of the FA Cup final to the penultimate Premier League gameweek, with no Prem games on either the Friday or Saturday.

It's such a shit deal and the FA have rolled over for the Prem.

History will say they were "roommates"

Still a red sponsor so it's a no from me smh.

Tweet's almost a week old and I think Philladelphia is number 1 now but what on earth are Dallas doing?

We are fucking massive.

2 hours ago, Naitch said:

So do those charts mean that Chelsea need to sell £71.5m worth of players to avoid a points reduction and £153m worth of players to play in Europe (even if they managed to qualify)?

It would mean that, if the rules the Premier League are bringing in were in place for this season, Chelsea would probably need to find £71.5 million (or £153 million) from somewhere to avoid being over the cap and incurring whatever sanctions there would be. These new rules won't be in place until 2025/26, so there's time to sort this.

Kinda mad that being in Europe would more than double Chelsea's cap issue.

19 minutes ago, gunnar hendershow said:

As always, I'm mostly curious how the big clubs will continue to find a way to circumvent these rules.

They mostly don't have to, given that five of them (and Brighton) make up the 6 teams furthest under the squad cost cap.

Bayern should've had a penalty there - I don't think the Saka is a penalty, but on first viewing I though it was. This angle changed it for me - Saka tries far too hard to initiate contact here.

Kane should've been sent off for his elbow on an Arsenal defender though.

3 hours ago, Szumi said:

It's been reported his buyout clause is only €10m recently

That's fucking wild.

It will be interesting to see what kind of figures come out about the compensation Sporting will get for Amorim. When he moved to Sporting from Braga, they set a then record for a manager's compensation/transfer fee at 15-20 million euros. That's only since been beaten by Potter to Chelsea and either Tuchel or Nagelsmann, in one of their moves.