Marcos

I hope when fans are allowed back that David Silva gets the send off he deserves. I'm not a massive fan of the English game but Silva has been one of those players that you just like if you have any interest in football at all.

You would guess it's been weighted on off-the-pitch reasons as well, because you could quite easily say he's not been the best player in the league (De Bruyne), nor the best Liverpool player (Mane) nor the best Liverpool midfielder (Fabinho) or even the best Henderson in the league (Dean)! However, given Marcus Rashford finished in the top five, I guess it's to do with non-footballing reasons as well.

First eight races have been confirmed.

If we were to go based on hours played it would just be five versions of Championship Manager/Football Manager, however, making things a bit more unique: 1: Championship Manager 01/02 - I could spend hours playing this without even noticing it. Since then I think I've bought every CM/FM release since. 2: Civ III - Reading the Twitter thread Benji posted it seems that Civ III was the 'bad one' of the Civ early games due to it not being done by Sid Meier, but I could still lose myself in the full game and no other Civ before or since has caught my interest like Civ III 3: Broken Sword: The Shadow of Templars - I was slightly late to find Monkey Island and all it's variants, so Broken Sword was really my first point and click to find clues style game. Plus as a youngster Nico Collard was my first video game crush! 4: Driver - Was my first real driving game and has always just stuck as being addictive and fun! Sort of when downhill after the first one though 5: Kessen - As you can see, outside of Driver, I was a kid that liked the nerdy stats and tactical style games! Kessen was another one of those and the first war style game that I played. Plus it has given me a weird knowledge of Japanese history Honourable mentions for Rollerocaster Tycoon 1 and Age of Empires 2 as well.

Outside of the two Mercedes drivers, Verstappen and Leclerc, Sainz is the best driver on the grid (outside of Kimi, but obviously with a lot more potential than Kimi!) so not a surprise to see Ferrari go for him. Still surprised that Sergio Perez is never really discussed when these top 3 positions open up. Will be interesting to see how Ricciardo copes at McLaren though, he was consistenly beaten by Verstappen in 2018, found more of a better level at Renault when he had Hulkenberg as his partner, but is now going back to a team with a young promising driver who will likely upstage him similar to Verstappen.

Bobby Firmino was a level above everyone else on the pitch tonight. Salah gets most of the credit for Liverpool this season but Firmino showed tonight how much of a worker he is.

They only have to win to be guaranteed a playoff position, so it's still in their hands. Very likely they'll miss out though with the Ecuador record being so poor but hopefully they turn up.

Was ridiculous to hear the commentator yesterday saying how Spieth is making his way up to the levels of Woods and McIlroy. Understanding the bias British commentators will have for McIlroy, I still fail to see how, in anyway, Spieth can be classed as 'lesser' than McIlroy

This is the issue, it's never a fair comparison to compare the Scottish game to the English game, we've got a tenth of the population, we've got most of that population who are football fans supporting one of two teams, we've got a very central based population so people are attracted to the big city teams and we've got the worst tv deal in Europe. We can't compare ourselves to teams like Coventry and Luton in league 2 who again have bigger populations than our second best team and likely have a better tv deal. The issue with the Scottish game is that we're always comparing ourselves to England, which is ridiculous as we're nowhere near that. We should be comparing ourselves with nations with a relative population to ours and from that we can look at some stats and see where we're ranking favourably and what we can be doing better. Always being compared to the English game is only going to hold the Scottish game back.

UCL is on BT. Would presume the one channel would be for English football, the other for the rest (Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Scottish and MLS). Think that's all they've got in terms of leagues outside of England. The Scottish rights will likely go exclusively to BT as well in the near future.

Poor Julio Arca!

Hate football at times

Robbie Savage on commentary in the City game..."City don't do draws away in Europe, 12 games, 6 wins, 5 defeats and ehhh....1 draw." Who decides that these people are fit to commentate on games?! He's just randomly shouting at City players now!

Cameron Jerome isn't a Premier League striker, not surprising that Norwich are looking for a striker because he's looked absolutely hopeless today. Watch him go and get a few goals now...

Ahh balls, must be the PL thread, I only checked this thread as it was transfer related.

Any idea how long Sky Sports News have been using Football Manager stats as a suitable justification for buying a player: I just took that picture there as it entertained me! Why is this a thing?!

Slovakia are top and have a 100% record in their Euro qualifying group which features Spain and Ukraine so I wouldn't say they are too bad. Scotland will always give England a bit of trouble just because of the rivalry. The other 3 shouldn't cause many issues, but it isn't the easiest group that England could have got, even if it's not the worst!

Partick Thistle's new mascot has went down well:

Dustin

Rory needs to calm himself, as I've got money on Dustin Johnson!

Relegation Prediction: Watford, Bournemouth and Leicester Top of the League Prediction: Chelsea, City, Arsenal, United Underachieving Prediction: Southampton (below 10th) Overachieving Prediction: Everton (top 6) Sack Race Prediction: Nigel Pearson.

I still think the best thing UEFA can do just now is announce that all their members will boycott future World Cups/FIFA altogether until Blatter resigns. A football governing body without England, Scotland, Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy, France etc is not a very strong one, and the World Cups would suffer as well (obviously discounting Scotland from my first list as we never qualify anyway).

Broken Sword, not sure I've played a game since that has kept me as entertained. I don't play many games though, so that's maybe why!

Such sad news. Easily one of my favourite authors over the last decade.