DE.

In fairness Lowe was captain in name only. It was obvious nobody else saw him that way. It was possibly a ploy from Venky's to try and inflate his value so that somebody would actually pay some money for him in January before his contract expired. If so, massive fail.

I think our problems ran a lot deeper than that, but Smallwood is a perfect addition for this league and a very astute signing by TM.

Loans are useful but they can't form the spine of your team. Fortunately the majority of our first eleven are all on permanent deals. Our loan players are generally either fringe players or youngsters wanting the opportunity to impress. In terms of basic squad building TM has done it the right way.

Couldn't disagree more! The 8-bit games, sure, but 16-bit stuff still holds up well for me. Final Fantasy 6 is timeless. Super Mario World is still a lot of fun, F-Zero too. Secret of Mana and Earthbound are only a step below FF6 on my list. I guess it depends on what games you enjoy though. If you're not hugely into RPGs or Platformers then I can see why the SNES mini might underwhelm a little. As for FIFA... I got 17 for free with my PS4 and it was fine. Not remotely interested in ultimate team and all that nonsense though. I just hope they've improved AI difficulty a little. On FIFA 17 "Legendary" was just tedious. The CPU never scored but half the time I didn't either... I had a ridiculous amount of 0-0's. Might get 18 when the price drops but realistically 17 will do as I don't have that much time for FIFA anyway.

Not "new games" as such but received the SNES mini today. A lot of games I haven't played on there like Earthbound and Secret of Mana, and it'll be nice to play a non-CD version of Final Fantasy 6 (I have it for PS1 but the loading times, particularly for battles, are horrible). Am sure it'll be hackable very soon too, so will be adding Turtles in Time, Chrono Trigger, etc...

Sunderland fans aren't hugely impressed with him

Okay. Back to lurking then.

The penalty issue in the Playoff semis is a weird one because he was always a really solid penalty taker for us. He seldom missed and always looked confident when he stepped up.

Similar to how Josh King and Mo Barrow weren't used as they should have been.

So far this campaign has been eerily familiar to a Bowyer campaign, just a league lower. An overall slow, plodding style, fast and creative players either left on the bench or shunted onto the wings, slow full backs and a general inability to impose ourselves on a game. We're good enough to hover around mid table but will never get into a playoff position.

Sunderland now in the bottom three. I had a feeling Grayson would struggle there.

Forgot this was happening, but nice to get a win anyway. Samuel finding the net can only be good for his confidence.

I assume the "one outcome" they mean is actually that the player is going to miss, because he never seems to score once that comes up!

When I do play FM15 I still only use commentary. Helps the game move along quicker. Still waiting for FM VR, then I'll be going in full time

The best one on the new ones is "There's only one outcome here!!" ... ... "It's a goal kick."

I'm not really interested in the Switch, but will definitely be picking up the SNES mini. Looks like Nintendo are producing significantly more stock than they did for the NES mini.

Yeah that's pretty much it. I'd say this is probably the default way of getting games these days. It's not any different to downloading a game from the PS Store, really. I don't do much FM these days, but when I do I'm still on FM15 I was on FM11 before then, so I tend to skip at least four or five iterations before finally upgrading. Usually because the small upgrades or changes (usually just for the sake of it) don't justify paying full price again. Plus when the newer FM's are released there are inevitably huge bugs which then take until January to patch properly.

What, you aren't excited to see us go to battle with the likes of Northampton, Gillingham, Walsall and Plymouth? get behind the lads (metaphorically speaking, ffs).

Lines such as "at that point you had to question who they were booing" underlines the blatant agenda against our fans at that time. No, Alistair, you don't have to question anything. We were booing Kean before, we were booing Kean then and we were booing him afterwards. Nothing else, no dark forces at work. We just wanted that absolute charlatan out of our club, and weren't short-sighted enough to see only our second win of the entire season in December as a reason to start singing "Stevie Kean's Barmy Army".

You're not wrong in suggesting VPN's are very difficult if not impossible to regulate. But what if you didn't have easy access to VPN software? What if the internet was regulated to the extent that you only paid for access to certain websites (much like you do with a Sky subscription) as opposed to being able to type in whatever you please into the address bar and be taken there? You'd basically be looking at something similar to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiered_Internet_service Do I think this is likely? No. Not so much for reasons of technological feasibility, but more due to the severe reaction I think it would provoke. With Corbyn and Labour on the rise this kind of thing should be pushed firmly into the background - but that's why there needs to be a strong opposition to keep the Tories on their toes. Otherwise they waste time working out ways to erode what's left of our privacy with disgusting legislature like the Snoopers Charter.

Thought he was older than 32. In theory should have a couple of years left playing at a decent standard.

As far as I'm concerned people can share and spread these articles as they wish. The more this information is spread the better. The problem is people tend to prefer reading smaller, concise articles which condense detail into the smallest possible chunks. The aim of this is in many ways to do the opposite - to chronicle and glean as much information as possible. It's almost like a giant reference book as opposed to an article, although I am trying to insert a sense of narrative to try and avoid it being a copy and paste of quotes from media sources.

It's funny, I was always under the impression that Kean's ramblings were largely ignored by the press, but there actually were a number of articles which pointed out how deluded his comments were. Even the BBC - who are generally quite neutral in their match reports - picked up on it and were questioning how a manager with Kean's record could still be in a job. There was actually an air of distinct contempt across the media for Kean until the events of Dec 20, which is covered in the next installment. I have considered creating an eBook once this is done. I'd have to research a few legal points but it's definitely something I'm planning to look into. Hard copies are a little more difficult logistically, so I'm not sure how viable that would be. Still worth considering though, as not everybody has an eBook reader.

His statements get even worse in the upcoming installments. If he genuinely did believe what he was saying then he must have been on a very strong substance most Saturday afternoons.

Don't worry, it will be! Incredibly it gets a lot worse.