DE.

Agreed, to progress we need a new manager who won't lead us into long periods of poor form and who can win games at home against weak opposition. Get that sorted and playoffs would be achievable with smart recruitment and keeping hold of our best players, for sure.

A significant portion of the booking is being done by Tony Khan and I doubt that is going to change! One thing that's for sure is that AEW are really connecting with their audience, producing excellent TV numbers, solid PPV buyrates (at $50 a pop!) and getting incredible crowd reactions wherever they go. I don't think they need to change too much at the moment. Once they've built a solid foundation with their core fanbase (which they are will on their way to doing already) then maybe they can look at things that need to change for further expansion. As it stands they seem to be delivering exactly what their fans want, which is a very welcome change from WWE's stance of "you'll take what we give you and like it".

Holtby was surely brought in as the successor/backup to Dack's no10 role. His injury leaves us largely with makeshift replacements, including BB. I don't think Brereton has in any way been seriously considered as a permanent replacement for Dack's position - whether he evolves into that is another question, but I don't think it's ever been the plan. I would say Rothwell is the obvious natural replacement but he's not often played there and honestly has failed to impress even when he has.

I don't think you'll be disappointed. Dynamite is one of the highlights of the week for me. Literally the only gripe I've had with it recently is that they don't play the opening anymore, which is a shame as I thought it was really good. I loved the mash-up Nitro/AEW opening somebody made before Dynamite started.

Speaking of Dynamite, strong rumours that Matt Hardy could debut tonight as the leader of the Dark Order, and also a potential debut for Brodie Lee aka Luke Harper.

The commentary on AEW is indeed awesome. You can tell the guys are having so much fun calling the action and just being a part of the experience. They've added Taz to the rotating announce team too which is pretty cool. Hearing Tony Schiavone after so many years especially is a real treat for an old school WCW mark like me. He's still got it too! Compare the commentary on AEW to WWE and it really is night and day. WWE's announce team all sound like robots reciting lines. Booker T is the only decent commentator they've had in recent years, and that's just because he was batshit crazy and didn't follow the script. I remember almost being in tears of laughter at 03:24 in this vid, Booker's smug laugh, "what do you got to say now Corey?" "ILLEGAL TACTICS" ... Booker was the best. It was a dark day when they replaced him. Agree that Stu Bennett is great, and imo actually better than Cornette. You've gotta start watching Dynamite regularly man. They had an iffy ending to last year but they have been knocking it out of the park every week in 2020. It's easily the best weekly wrestling show around right now.

I don't think the current players have the mental strength to do it tbh. Luke Chambers was apparently in tears after getting some stick after the game from the fans that were left at Portman Road last night, and that's their veteran captain! A lot of kids playing due to injuries/general lack of fitness amongst the senior pros as well. It's funny but the vast majority of Ipswich fans still can't accept that binning Mick was the wrong decision. Still hear the classic "his time was up". Except Mick wanted to stay, the owner wanted him to stay and the players wanted him to stay. Time was up though, apparently!

Yeah tbf there were legit people asking for us to sign MGP, although I saw it more on those ridiculous FB groups than on here. Was quite funny seeing Mowbray shoot it down with a 'come on now lads, he's 38'.

There is a Kairi Sane/Brock Lesnar meme which is pretty hilarous. But yeah, Impact basically trying to be woke but also desperately doing anything they can to get eyeballs on their product. They can't compete with WWE or AEW on production values or talent, so the only other thing they can do is try to be different in some way. I don't think this is the right way to go about it though.

The local paper linked Warnock last week so there's definitely something to it. Too late for this season I feel, but if he's offered enough he might take a crack at it next season. Marcus Evans isn't exactly known for splashing the cash though, so I'd be surprised if it does happen. Usually teams who get relegated struggle initially to adapt to a new league but then get into their stride after a few months - basically exactly what we did. Ipswich have done the opposite which is very strange.

Personally as far as wrestling is concerned I prefer the genders separated. Nothing against either gender but it just doesn't look or feel right to me when a man and a woman are matched against each other, save for a very few occasions when it's believable. I don't mind women main eventing - in fact some of the best matches of recent times in WWE, particularly NXT, have been female matches, but my preference is for each gender to be kept separate. Fortunately there's no sign of WWE or AEW following Impact's lead, anyway.

Hah, yeah... he doesn't quit because his career is essentially over if he does. Funny to think that just a few years ago he was walking away from the Rovers job. He'd be lucky to get a sniff of anything similar now.

I guess they want to be seen as 'woke' or whatever. Personally I agree that it's stupid. Same as NXT renaming the women's title as the NXT title. Just confusing and unnecessary. To be fair I have no issue with women who look like they could compete in the men's division doing some stuff there (Chyna back in the day, and in modern times the likes of Awesome Kong, Nyla Rose or Kamille) but if there's too much of a size/weight difference then it totally ruins the immersion for me.

I don't think I've watched Impact since 2013 or 2014. I pretty much totally checked out when AJ left. I've heard they have done some good stuff since then but I have to say their current product doesn't interest me in the slightest. I've got so much I already struggle to watch during a week (WWE, AEW & NWA mainly) that adding Impact to the list is just not feasible unless they were putting on an incredible show.

Yeah for sure. Impressive athleticism but zero promo skills which is a problem.

I find the 24/7 stuff pretty boring to be honest. It was good at the start when they were being creative with it, but now it's just dull. At least we don't have the crowd of jobbers chasing the jobber with the prop every week at the moment though. Honestly I don't think Ricochet has the kind of support behind him to rally a crowd DB style. This week he came out to crickets. People will just stop caring about him, if they haven't already.

Ipswich lose again, at home to Fleetwood this time. 4 wins out of 24, still not beaten a single team in the top 8 I believe. I don't think they're even going to get into the playoffs - 6 points behind 6th now with at least one and sometimes two games more played than all the teams above them. Wonder if Lambo will walk? The five year contract might not count for much if he can be sacked with reduced payout based on league performance (I assume that means he'd need to get into the playoffs at the very least to be safe).

So Ricochet gets squashed by Lesnar at Super Showdown and then gets beaten clean by Riddick Moss (who?) on Raw. What in the world has he done to deserve this treatment?

As long as the Saudi shows are paying mega bucks Taker ain't going anywhere!

I played the demo last night, impressions are that I'm pleasantly surprised for the most part. Other than the one big problem I have with changing the story at the end of the bombing mission, the rest of the demo is very good. I notice that in this demo the opening is a lot shorter than the one Square-Enix officially released, starting in the same place as the original game with Aerith in the alleyway. I assume the full game will have the longer opening, maybe this demo is from a build that was created before the intro was expanded? Either way the new opening gives me goosebumps every time I watch it. Graphics are just amazing. They've done an incredible job with that. It really blew my mind seeing the game portrayed in such vivid detail. The overall atmosphere of the reactor is spot on as well. The music is basically remixes of the original themes as it should be, and it sounds great. Voice acting was on point too, although some of the dialogue was... meh. They've tried to keep to the spirit of the original translation for the most part though which I do appreciate. Another thing I found curious was that the mouths seem to be synced to the English voices rather than Japanese. Not sure if they've purposefully redone this for the English version of the game or if it's just been made this way on purpose. Honestly I don't mind the combat system as much as I thought I would. It's cool that you can switch to 'classic' mode which essentially has the AI attack and defend automatically whilst you select commands (spells, summons, items, etc). I tried both combat modes and didn't mind either of them. Random side note, the first FF7 demo released back in 1996 was also the bombing mission ending at the same place :') although in that one you could play with Aerith in your team from the start, which you obviously can't do in the original. I believe there was a second demo released, also of the bombing mission, which had Tifa playable instead - although she was also unavailable at the beginning of the actual game.

Lesnar will still be champion going into Wrestlemania 50 at this rate.

Probably wouldn't have been so bad if DG hadn't brought the article to so many people's attention tbh.

He released a video saying he's a free agent: https://www.sescoops.com/matt-hardy-officially-announces-hes-a-free-agent/ But it's wrestling so he might well be on Raw monday.

FFVII remake demo is apparently now available to download on PS4!

Reigns can be very good but he's booked in an extremely boring way and has been for 95% of his WWE career. I reckon he'd shine in NJPW or AEW. Matt Hardy has left WWE now I believe - there are rumours he is going to be revealed as the leader of the Dark Order in AEW.