King Ellis

A 1-0 loss to Birmingham City, barely able to name a bench, Daniel "no final third" James highlighted as the creative outlet, Shackleton on the right wing, Gnonto (and possibly Sinisterra) on strike...not the most inspiring of starts to the season.

Looking forward to the social media announcements being like

"Gonna be a real shit one this year I reckon: win the league and FA Cup but out of the Champions League in the semis."

Just saw the Sky Sports News headline of Kane on a Plane. Pretty sure we invented that in that one topic like 20 years ago.

People like to talk about the sack race, poor fella didn't even get a chance to reach the starting line.

I'm curious about what would be different to the backwards compatible version on Xbox. I always hear about how that's 4k/60 or whatever on the Series X. Difference is you could have probably bought that for like $10 over the past few years compared to $50.

Quintuple is off.

Spend 25 mins dominating the game, opponent scores from their first sniff at goal. Different league, same story.

Who are you to doubt the United States of Barnsley?!

That Spurs kit feels more like a club polo shirt or something the players would wear when they're doing media. Also, Leeds away kit: The home shirt has grown on me slightly since it came out but I like the look of this one. I think the peacock motif works a lot better with some actual colour behind it.

I'm pretty sure Buffon retiring is one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

I've never played any of the Armored Core series but I am curious with the FromSoft connection, even though it's not not a Soulslike. Though, I did skim through a bit of VaatiVidya's latest video and he was alluding to it being more Soulslike than people might expect. Plus, I've always had an inkling to play something where you're a mech that can swap different parts in and out, just sounds cool. I've never played The Surge but I know that specifically is a Soulslike meets mech suit type thing.

That feels like a dangerous game with Maguire, it's plain for the whole world to see that Utd don't want him so they're naturally going to get low balled. Plus he's only got, according to Google, 2 years left on his contract. There's going to be a point where you price people out and they just say "Okay, I'm sure your reserve team is going to have fun with it's 80m white elephant in it's defence. We'll just go get someone cheaper." Like, what are they holding out for, 30m? 40m?

Was fully expecting Scott Parker with the Intertoto Plaque to round out this collection.

...sort of? Being from the UK it's not quite as ubiquitous as I'm sure it is in certain parts of America but it's still got a presence, like Radio 2 has a weekly program about it and there's the Country 2 Country festival that they cover. It's on Radio 2 that I heard stuff like The Shires and Ward Thomas, Ward Thomas I absolutely adore (saw them live a few years back) and I like The Shires but I've always found them a bit...commercial I guess would be the word. They come across to me like they're always trying too hard to market themselves towards being accepted in America by making references to certain cities or cultural aspects which always seemed weird to me. Boys Like Girls as well had this weird pivot into being a country-pop sound in their third album which made for a very niche thing that appealed to me, this mix of country-pop and pop-punk. They had a collab with a very early fame Taylor Swift on their second album as well. I guess I don't actively go out looking for new music from the genre, but then again I don't really do that for any genre. But I'm not going to judge a song just based on it's genre, if I like it then I like it. There's other random songs that I've taken a shine to, like I had that Blake Shelton/Gwen Stefani song 'Go Ahead and Break My Heart' come on my playlist today, 'Lost in the Middle' by Catherine McGrath or, speaking of Taylor, I should listen to more of her early stuff because I like 'Mean' and 'Love Story'.

So this whole Spongebob/Bubble Bass things has been doing the rounds today and...

Morals and ethics aside, I don't think a year out bumming it in Saudi Arabia is a big hit to his career. I get why people in their early to mid thirties are going but it's not as if Madrid are going to turn him down next summer because he's coming from a subpar league. It seems mad to spend however many hundred million just for 1 year but I guess it's nothing to them. If he ends up staying though, then it's a problem. Like SMS going there whilst in his prime, it's a waste.

Jordi Alba the next in at Miami. Forget Inter, shoula called it Barca Miami.

Given that he and his advisors will be completely aware of the optics of this, do you think they'll try to 'carbon neutral' (for want of a better term) the situation here by making a donation to a charity? Not that it would validate it or arguably even be accepted by a charity if they see it as dirty money, but I could see him being like "I know I've been a champion of this community in the past and I know how this looks but to help further the cause, here's 2m" or whatever. Though, I imagine that would be frowned upon by his new club (if not the state themselves, with frowned upon being an understatement at that level).

TFW you unexpectedly qualify for Europe on FM and have to scramble to find home grown at club players.

I don't mind that in theory, the blue definitely clashes with the rest of it but if you had more complimentary colour for the accents then that would help.

The fact that his loan army journey has taken in 3 successive relegations is a little bit of a worry.

My mates dad's postman's dog groomers next door neighbour works at THQ and they said that if you defend the AEW title 100 times in a row within the same play session, Stone Cold Steve Austin comes out to challenge you!

Does Dustin have one of those?

I saw WayForward are doing a port of Clock Tower as well. I know that was Japan only on SNES, not sure if it had an English release when they ported it to PSX. Obviously there's been fan translations over the years but something official is neat.