Whilst I am looking forward to the FF7 remake I don't think it'll be a patch on the original game. They seem to have gotten whatever affliction George Lucas had and are unnecessarily messing around with the source material when all anyone ever really wanted was a graphically enhanced version of the same game.

Ratings for this week: AEW 940k with a 0.38 demo (5th overall for cable), NXT 700k with a 0.21 demo (31st overall). Three weeks of 900k+ viewers in a row for AEW now. Haven't watched NXT yet but have to say I really enjoyed AEW's "Bash at the Beach" episode of Dynamite this week. It was a huge improvement on last week's effort and it's good to see they are retaining viewership after a rocky end to the year. Apparently they're getting over a million viewers in DVR ratings as well so combined with their new TNT contract things are looking pretty good for them right now. The opening four way tag match was a great way to open the show. Page/Omega going over was a good decision and they played into Omega/Page's storyline well, with Page being a little out of control with his actions and Kenny trying to reign him in. Solid interview from Cody afterwards, much better than last week's damp squib. Nightmare collective stuff was shit as usual and is dragging down Statlander and Shida. They need to get rid of this faction ASAP but I don't think it's going to happen. Cruise and Brandi Rhodes didn't look good in the ring at all. Very clunky and one of the only low points in the show. The Dark Order vignette was well produced as usual but hokey as hell. I wish they and the Nightmare Collective would go away tbh. I don't think they're adding anything to the show. Moxley/Guevara was a good match although I felt Guevara maybe got a little bit too much offence in. A minor criticism though. The post match attack on Moxley was well done although I thought the spike to the eye was a little much, especially as it was obvious Jericho got nowhere near Moxley's eye. Good heat nonetheless and a solid post-attack promo from the Inner Circle. The six man tag between DDP/Dustin Rhodes/QT and MJF/Butcher/Blade was actually better than I expected. DDP looks great for his age and can still move really well. That DDPY stuff clearly works! MJF getting the pin on QT makes sense although I'm a little surprised MJF took a diamond cutter already. Nonetheless, enjoyable segment. The segment afterwards with Hangman/Omega and SCU was well done too. Main event of Darby Allin/PAC was pretty good, with Darby looking really strong in defeat. AEW are obviously trying to make Allin into a star - he has that Jeff Hardy kind of appeal which could definitely put him into that higher tier if he continues to develop. Meanwhile PAC is just a solid worker and a great heel. Ridiculous how WWE neutered him and had him in a weak babyface role followed by a limited cruiserweight heel role for so long. The match between PAC and Moxley next week should be a banger. They're building to Jericho/Moxley for Revolution so I expect Mox to win, but his eye injury casts some doubt over the result for casuals watching. So overall a very good show. AEW are finally pushing the Elite more seriously which no doubt is helping them retain their viewers, as many of them are interested in AEW because of the Elite. Jericho and Moxley are both incredible talents to have, whilst the Inner Circle is a superb faction. AEW has so much going for it right now and it feels like they're only scratching the surface of what's possible for them. I'm back to looking forward to Dynamite after a few rough weeks at the end of last year, and next week's Jericho Cruise edition should be a lot of fun as well. Got to say as an aside I enjoyed the announcing in this episode too. JR/Schiavone/Excaliber have great chemistry which is getting better each week. I've been so used to hating commentary on WWE broadcasts that I almost forgot commentary can actually add to the product rather than take away from it. The genuine enthusiasm from the AEW commentators is so refreshing compared to the sterile, forced commentary we hear Raw & Smackdown.

There have been various reports about us having scouts at European games so you'd assume we already have some kind of structure in place.

For me FF6/7/8/9 are the peak of the series and the ones most people are most fond of. The ones after that have been hit and miss, and whilst the ones before those games have their fans they aren't in the same sphere in terms of popularity. I think I have every FF excluding 11 and 14, but none of them come close to the FF6-9 era.

Considering the amounts we spent on Gallagher & Brereton, plus what it would have cost to extend costly contracts like Mulgrew and Evans I can't believe the money isn't there to afford a good manager if we were so inclined to do so. Unfortunately Venky's have always had it backwards in this respect, continually going for the cheap option for the management position even when spending decent money on players at times. Fair to say if we'd used to combined £12m it cost for Gallagher and Brereton and instead used it on a top Championship manager we'd likely be in a much better position right now.

The problem I have with Mowbray's comments re: our players isn't so much what he says, but how he says it. All he had to say here was "Charlie asked to come back, he knows he'll be a squad player needing to fight for his place and is happy with that". I don't understand why TM feels the need to go into warts-and-all detail with these things in public. There's some things that should be said in public and others that should remain private, and it feels like too often Mowbray reveals a little too much. With all that said as far as the manager goes I only care about the results he gets on the pitch. What he says outside of that is still up for discussion but ultimately if we're winning I can let questionable interview etiquette slide. When we're struggling it obviously adds to the frustration.

I certainly agree that a Sporting Director/DOF style approach would make more sense long-term than having the manager 100% dictate our scouting and transfer policies. With the average time in the job being relatively short for managers these days it makes far more sense to have certain elements of the club run at a higher level leaving the manager to deal largely with the training and matchday duties. It was clear when we were in L1 that the aim was to get straight back into the Championship, evidenced by spending on the likes of Dack, Samuel, etc and not selling any of our players, so I don't see why Venky's would balk at a long-term commitment of improving our scouting network. Who knows though, making sense of their decision making is beyond me.

Rocky Johnson was before my time but judging by the reaction he was much loved across the wrestling sphere.

We seemed to do fine under Bowyer. Granted mostly domestic transfers but we brought in a lot of good players during that period, just didn't have the manager to get the best out of them. Mowbray has been here just under three years now, which is plenty of time to get a decent European scouting network up and running. With that said it shouldn't be up to the manager anyway, it's the type of thing that should be sorted out far higher up the chain. If Mowbray does leave and the next manager decides European scouting isn't important, do all these plans go into the bin? It's such an inefficient way to run things. The thread won't be shut, although I don't think Gavlar was literally saying we should lock it tbf, just noting we might as well for all the activity that's likely to occur between now and the end of the month.

All the best to Corry on his recovery. Sounds like a bad one.

I have an N64 Everdrive now which is cool, but honestly I hate the N64 controller. The analogue stick is horrible and after being used to using two for so long it's awkward only having one. Looks like AEW have signed Taz. Imagine he'll commentate on the second show and when Schiavone isn't available for Dynamite. Also apparently Dark is going to be the show that moves to TNT. Probably with a new name and slightly retooled format. I'll miss Dark in its current format as I enjoy watching it, but it'll be interesting to see what they do with it.

Lol, even Jason Lowe has a couple of strengths on that website.

Yep, somebody on one of the Wigan forums said that Evans and another whose name escapes me were ahead of Mulgrew in the set piece pecking order. Personally I don't know as unless they were playing us I wouldn't watch Wigan if you paid me, and even then I'd have to take it under advisement. Interestingly though for all talk of set piece prowess Mulgrew didn't have a single assist for us last season either. Suggests to me that he's only really adept at direct free kicks which is a fairly small part of the overall set piece package.

Warzone had Ahmed Johnson but he wasn't quite as good at talking as Pope, to say the least The mechanics in modern WWE games look horrible tbh. I didn't mind WWE 13 too much, but I realised then that those games weren't really my thing anymore. Here Comes The Pain on the PS2 was the peak imo. That game is a ton of fun. A lot of people like the N64 wrestling games but I never had an N64 so I didn't play them at the time, and nowadays the graphics look so bad it's hard to appreciate them without any nostalgia filter to smooth the rough edges out. Instead I had to put up with WCW Nitro and Thunder on the PS1, which I played a lot of at the time but in retrospect, even with nostalgia glasses on, are fucking shit. I had Warzone and Attitude too - both were slightly better than the WCW games but still pretty bad, although again I played them both a lot as a kid. Smackdown 1 & 2 on the PS1 were great though. I pretty much liked all the Smackdown games. SvR was where I started losing interest as the game mechanics started to become more annoying than fun, and it doesn't seem to have gotten a whole lot better since then.

With the way we play we really need both CM's closing down and working hard. A Tugay-esque player doesn't fit into our current setup. Part of the reason Evans/Travis go so well together is that they both get around the pitch - Travis roaming a little whilst Evans sweeps up behind him. Mulgrew hasn't got the legs for either role so I don't foresee putting him in midfield going very well.

From what I read on their forums they didn't have him on set pieces.

Problem is whether we like it or not we now have a player in the squad on big wages potentially contributing nothing. If the Mulgrew recall came as a surprise to the club then we won't have him lined up to go anywhere and his options will be limited in terms of only being able to play for two clubs in a season in Europe. So our only options are to pay Mulgrew handsomely to play in the u23's or sit at home for at least six months, or try to get something out of him by playing him somewhere in the team - whether that be as a starter or a substitute. Fair to say it's not a great position to be in.

Apparently the second show is going to be a taped one hour broadcast, but AEW Dark will continue to run on YouTube as its own show. Both shows matches will be done on the same night as Dynamite, so that'll be almost four hours of wrestling for that live crowd... will have to see how that goes. It's a lot to sit through. At least the talent will still only have to work one night a week, so their schedule won't be compromised by the second show in the same way WCW & WWF employees were back in the day with Thunder & Smackdown respectively. I can see it being similar to something like WCW Saturday Night or WCW Pro. Not essential viewing but worth watching for storyline explanations & small progressions here and there. Pope was in WWE around 2007ish and Warzone I think was 1997 so definitely not that one! I think he would have been in Smackdown Vs Raw 2008 though. I'd stopped buying wrestling games by that point, I skipped a ton of games. I had Smackdown Vs Raw 2006 on the PS2, but didn't pick up another wrestling game until WWE '13. Haven't bought any since then. Those games just don't interest me much anymore.

We never had the second disk drive, although from memory my uncle had one for his. I can remember we used to be subscribed to an 'amiga club' which would send you a couple of games each month for a subscription fee (no idea what it was). My dad stopped paying it eventually but they still kept sending us games for some time afterwards! I never played Champ Manager on the Amiga but I do remember the Amiga Club sending a game called 'Tracksuit Manager 2'. I played it for about a week and really liked it, but then one night we had a powercut and the game never worked again. I guess the magentic strip in the floppy got damaged. I was proper gutted! I had the original Sensible Soccer but never had SWOS, unfortunately. The original was still fantastic though. You could list the great games on the Amiga for hours... all of the ones you mentioned there were great, along with the likes of Worms, Soccer Kid, Zeewolf, Colonization (played this one for hours and hours when I was younger), Hired Guns, Cannon Fodder, Superfrog, Pinball Fantasies (another amazing game), Zool, Alien Breed, Body Blows, Monkey island, Flashback, F1 World Circuit, F1 Grand Prix, Gunship 2000, Stardust, Super Stardust, Jump 'n' Roll, Robocop, Lamborginhi American Challenge, Transplant, Jimmy White's Snooker, The Adventures of Robin Hood (amazing underrated classic game, I loved this one!), Micro Machines, Super Skidmarks, Crash 'n' Burn, Bump 'n' Burn... I really could just go on and on. It had something for everybody. Incredible system.

Indeed, which suggests we did want him here until something happened between the Charlton game and deadline day. Charlie did have a stinker in that match but he had plenty before then too and we were in no rush to move him on in the summer, so I'd be surprised if it was as simple as his performance at Charlton being the reason he was pushed out.

That was on deadline day wasn't it? I don't remember reading about it before then.

You can when they keep hiring cheap managers from the scrapheap rather than going for the best possible option (eg. selecting Coyle over Warnock). Lambert the exception in some ways but was without a job at the time. I think the only manager we've taken from another club was Appleton and he was very cheap to steal as well.

Agreed, although you have to admit it was quite strange for him to start and be named captain on the opening day if we didn't want him at all. There was no rumours of him leaving before roughly 4.30pm on deadline day either.

None of us know without seeing the contract, but since it was done last minute it wouldn't surprise me if something like that was put in there to hasten Charlie's exit.

Some big news just come out: Dynamite has been extended to 2023 on TNT and the network has greenlit a second show to be aired. They must be very happy with how it's been performing so far. A second show should help them with fitting all of the stories in and not having half of them on BTE or Dark. I do wonder how the roster will react though as many of them signed on to do just the one weekly show and PPV once a month - I'm sure the extremely light schedule was a big part of many wrestlers signing. Now they're looking at two shows a week plus PPV. WCW expanding to two shows with Thunder totally killed them, so I hope AEW learns from those mistakes and rotates the roster between both shows to avoid burnout. They've certainly got a big enough cast to do so.