Honestly one of the things that bothers me about Taker's retirement is that he isn't going out looking up at the lights. It's a time-honoured tradition that you'd expect a veteran like Taker to insist on. Obviously they wasted the streak by ending it with Lesnar, who didn't even need it, but as you say the right storyline could have been built to have someone go over and be legitimised in a big way by beating Taker and retiring him for good. The most obvious choice would have been Bray Wyatt - whilst he doesn't technically need it either, it would have been a huge boost to his fiend character and in a lot of ways make sense as he is in many respects the Undertaker's successor as far as dark characters are concerned. Something about the way they've retired Taker just doesn't sit right with me. He's retiring long past when he should have anyway, but there were plenty of better ways to do it than this. It just seems really anticlimactic and boring.

@Bigdoggsteel have you been watching AEW recently? Quite a few NWA Powerrr alumi on there as of late, which is nice to see.

I was thinking more the way the match ended with Taker laying down his hat/coat and descending down into the ramp. I thought that was a very cool image and would have been a good final image for Taker. I don't remember much about the storyline or the match itself to be honest with you. His last great match was probably WM28, the 'end of an era' match with Triple H & Shawn Michaels. If we're talking the best way to bow out with a solid storyline build, great match and great ending, then that was it. Taker obviously wasn't ready to retire at that point, though. I'm not convinced this retirement will stick either. Wouldn't surprise me at all if Taker came back at some point in the future for another match, especially if crazy Saudi money is being waved in his direction. Even Shawn Michaels ended up coming out of retirement for some Saudi blood money.

People exaggerating points, especially on football forums, is nothing out of the ordinary. I'd hope nobody writing or reading comments like "we'd find better down at pleasy" would be taking it seriously. Whilst we still overpaid hugely for Brereton, the fact he's now beginning to contribute something makes it a little easier to accept. Fingers crossed he continues to improve and perform well.

Easy to have a good game against a team that bad in fairness. We could have brought Keith Andrews out of retirement and played him on the wing and he would have looked decent last night. SG on the wing remains tactical idiocy on Mowbray's part.

Lol. Won't get a game much easier than that at this level. Cheers PNE. Dolan getting on the scoresheet is the cherry on top.

Maybe, but realistically he could take a year off and just do this at the next Survivor Series & 2022 HOF. It just seems a bit strange to have such an iconic figure retire with no fans present, especially when there is no pressing need (as far as I know) to do so. Truthfully he should have retired after the Roman Reigns match. That would have been a great way for the character to bow out, and imo more fitting than the 'ceremony' we got at Survivor Series.

We'll see. Retirement in wrestling is rarely a permanent thing, especially when it comes to the Undertaker in recent years. I found the 'retirement ceremony' a little flat and feel like they should have waited until next year when crowds are back. It's not like Taker is going anywhere. I'm not sure what the sudden rush was to get him officially retired now.

7 points off 6th already. The team is there but they're crying out for a winner in the dugout. Until we get that (and it realistically may never happen under Venky's, it's been almost a decade now after all) we have mid-table at best to look forward to until they decide to pull the plug 2015 style again.

Two Welsh caps as well, with the most recent being in 2016. He obviously had the talent, but repeated injuries seem to have massively eroded his confidence and/or ability.

Everyone expecting GTA6 at the PS5 launch and instead getting GTA5 again was pretty funny. It's a great game but it's amazing how much blood they are drawing out of that stone.

I'll pick up a PS5 at some point, but probably not until either PSVR2 is announced or a new Persona game. There's no games on the new platforms that make me want to upgrade yet. I think the Quest 2 will be my main upgrade for the next year or two.

I still watch Raw and Smackdown but it's mostly out of habit. Raw is a genuinely awful show at the moment, for the most part, whilst Smackdown is better but is also helped by being shorter. Needing to fill three hours does Raw no favours. I stopped watching NXT a while ago - something just isn't the same about it since they moved onto network TV. The Takeovers are still decent but not what they used to be either. I really enjoy AEW, by far the most creative and varied product out there. Not having to do a PPV every month is a massive benefit to storyline pacing. Not everything they do is great - truthfully some of it is really bad - but by and large I find the show consistently interesting and well paced. Their main weakness is their women's division, which has been sadly neglected since day one. I don't watch any other promotion so can't really comment on Impact, NJPW, etc. I do miss NWA Powerrr on Tuesdays though.

Nitro was the show I first watched as a kid, starting around April/May 1996, and I watched far more WCW than WWE until around late 1998 when the roles reversed. As a result I saw a lot of Benoit before he came to WWE and remember more of his WCW stint (early Horsemen feuds, Raven, DDP, the Horsemen Reunion) than anything he did in WWE. Benoit's rise in WWE coincided with a general drop in interest to me in wrestling in general so I don't have a ton of memories from his WWE days and wasn't watching when he and Eddie had their WM moment. I can remember liking Benoit in WCW and thinking he was OK but kind of bland in WWE - before I stopped watching some time in mid-2002. I do recall exactly where I was when I heard about his death (outside a nightclub at something like 2am) and it definitely shocked me - especially when the details came out about what really happened.

You should watch the Dark Side of the Ring episode on Benoit, as well as the Lapsed Fan podcasts on the subject. It will give you a much better understanding of what Eddie's death truly did to Benoit. The psychological impact was far beyond any other deaths he had experienced.

Made even more tragic by the Benoit incident, which likely never happens if Eddie lived. Chances are Benoit would still have died before 2010 due to his heart, but he wouldn't have taken Nancy and Daniel with him.

It certainly isn't going unnoticed.

The article I read didn't mention how much Morris would be involved - but if the people with money want change, it'll happen, and you couldn't blame them for looking at Cocu's record at Derby and thinking 'we can do much better than this'.

Sounds like they will have new owners incoming shortly. I would imagine Cocu is gone once that is officially confirmed.

If we weren't so wasteful with our chances we wouldn't have to worry about a single penalty, soft or not.

A 4 year contract for Pears. Astronomical stupidity.

Every time we play a decent team we concede 3. It's a joke. No good "playing nicely" if as soon as we come against anybody remotely decent the defence crumbles.

Must've been a while since we recorded two 4-0's in a season, let alone by October and with a 5-0 in there too. Some cracking talent in this team. If we can find a way to keep the goals out against the better teams we have a chance of doing something special this season.

Has to be trolling us at this point. Repeatedly putting Gallagher on the right is total madness otherwise.

Please let us never see an Evans/Johnson midfield combo again. The pair of them together nuke our entire style of play. Obviously we're playing ten men here, but even so we're back to looking dangerous and mobile.