Unless booing in Eastern Europe sounds like monkey noises it was certainly racism.

True, there may still be some fluctuations ahead. By and large I think 1-1.2m is AEW's current audience though, which is pretty good. TNA at their peak were getting somewhere in that ballpark and most of their shows were terrible, on a lesser channel and with significantly less promotion or money behind them. The wrestling audience has declined pretty sharply since then, largely thanks to WWE and TNA driving fans away with shitty booking and shows, but hopefully AEW can bring at least some of those fans back on top of what they already have.

I don't think you can choose to wait for a manager in the summer when it's October and you're facing a definite relegation battle. You have to assume Bowen was brought in with the intention of becoming manager, despite no track record beyond assistant manager at any point in his career.

Probably an actual manager with some (any) experience tbf.

So as far as viewership figures go, AEW dropped roughly 400k viewers to around 1.1m. I'm sure they expected this though as the debut was always going to have an exceptional viewership due to the hype and casual curiosity. They'e putting on great shows so I think around 1m is going to be their base figure going forward which is a solid position to start from. NXT dropped a little but not much. Looks like about 750-800k will be their average. Interestingly it seems like there is little to no crossover between NXT/AEW audiences, as one dropping doesn't seem to affect the other in any way. Smackdown meanwhile lost 1m viewers, falling from 3.8m to 2.8m last Friday, and I expect that number will be even lower this Friday. I think FOX wanted over 3m viewers regularly for Smackdown when they signed their deal with WWE, but unless the quality of the show dramatically improves I think they'll be looking at 2-2.5m being the regular viewership within a month or two.

I'm just glad I'm completely indifferent about the national team. It's enough to have Rovers continually disappoint me without having England compounding that irritation.

Could be seeing one or both of them in the first team pretty soon if Del or Tosin pick up another injury.

Catastrophic.

Another great AEW Dynamite show this week. It's on another planet when compared with Raw or Smackdown. Private Party/Young Bucks was an incredible tag team opener, a PPV quality match. Good on the Bucks for putting Private Party over. It looks like the Bucks are going to be more involved in the main event storyline than the tag team tournament so it makes sense for them to bow out early. Jericho's promo was brilliant. The difference between scripted and non-scripted promos is night and day and it's obvious which one wins. The way Jericho shut down the "we the people" chants was top notch veteranism. Allin/Havoc was OK, although I thought Havoc got too much offence in and I don't really buy Darby Allin as a legit world title contender. As a challenger to help put Jericho over it's fine though. The women's tag match & Moxley/Spears were both solid matches, and I thought the ending to Moxley/Spears with PAC attacking Omega and Moxley opting against doing any fuirther damage was well done. Main event tag match was pretty good and the ending brawl was much better than last week's. Have to admit Allin skateboarding down the ramp and then crashing into Jericho got a chuckle out of me. Overall another great show with the announcers already sounding very comfortable and adding to the product hugely. Makes a huge difference to WWE were in the past ten years it's been more enjoyable to watch the show on mute.

I'm not seeing any post hidden and we don't delete posts. Are you sure it went through?

Don't work yourself into a shoot, brother.

9th October and now three of the bottom four have already sacked their managers.

Love how they completely exiled Rollins and Wyatt from Raw and saved the "highlights" of the match for the very end of the show, lasting about 30 seconds. They know they fucked up really badly this time - the only question is whether they just drop the whole thing or try to restart it when people have had a little time to calm down. As an aside Raw was boring as usual. I'm at the point where I may just stop watching it and stick with Dynamite/NXT going forward.

Wouldn't that leave us with only Platt and Grayson as backups?

With Del and the Bell now back to being our first choice left backs we can at the very least only expect mid-table now. Teams with any sense are going to destroy us down that side of the pitch.

Literally the worst possible player to get injured, as our only remotely decent left back.

Frankly crying about "not getting what we deserve" is loser talk and symptomatic of the root problem at the club.

Have now watched HIAC and yowie wowie, what a fuck up. First two matches were great. Sasha/Becky had an outstanding cell match and the tornado tag was solid. Then the show began falling apart. Orton/Ali was OK, but it had no storyline build so meant nothing. Bliss/Cross Vs Kabuki Warriors - would have been better if Asuka or Kairi had been built up in any meaningful way. Match itself was fine but again, meant nothing due to lack of build. OC Vs Viking Raiders/Strowman - boring, throwaway match that should have been on Raw. Corbin Vs Gable - feels like we've seen it a hundred times already. Another match that simply isn't PPV quality. Bayley Vs Charlotte - match was okay but Charlotte wins the title again? Yawn. Seth Vs Wyatt - I don't even know what to say. What's sad is that I thought they did the first part of the match pretty well. The red lighting throughout was stupid and gimmicky, but the actual match during the first period was good. Bray was shown to be inhumanly powerful and Rollins was getting increasingly desperate, spamming weapons and finishers to no avail. Then came the part of the match where Bray was just laying on the floor for what felt like an hour. The crowd started to turn and once the bell was rang for a DQ that was game over. HIAC is No DQ and supposed to be utterly brutal by default, they literally build the PPV on it being the most brutal, destructive match a wrestler can be in. To stop the match due to a wrestler going "too far" just devalues the entire gimmick and to do it in the main event, practically the only match anyone was looking forward to (except maybe Becky/Sasha) ... I just shake my head at this company. Run by absolute buffoons and they couldn't have picked a worse time to once again enrage their own fans with a bullshit booking decision. On the plus side it was nice to hear some loud "AEW" chants as the post match angle played out. WWE did its best last night to get more people watching the opposition, that's for sure. Oh, I also thought the red cell looked rubbish. In fact the entire arena and setup looked poor.

I'll watch it in a few hours, but at least I'll be prepared for the disappointment. I mean, considering they only advertised 4 matches for the show I expected it to be poor, but it sounds like it went way beyond that.

Haven't watched the HIAC PPV yet but apparently the entire arena were chanting "we want refunds" at the end so I'm guessing they did their usual and buried Bray Wyatt. The sooner people start switching in their droves to Dynamite the better, as it's the only way WWE will change course at this point.

Just to note TAFKAP is banned for a month, so he won't be able to respond to any posts.

Apology not accepted.

Must have been a very unique attacking style that saw us register 0 shots on or off target.

Most of us with any foresight spoke about that being a problem. Our backline is held together by duct tape.

Mowbray has been very fortunate to be given a decent budget every year without being forced to sell a single player - even when we went down to League 1. For him to be throwing away both our budget and our chances of getting anywhere again this season is simply unacceptable.