Dreams of 1995

2 old fogeys

Man, one of the lads told me he was surprised that when he looked at the back of most chocolate the first ingredient was milk. In America it is always sugar. It was a 50/50 split between them as to which tasted better too which surprised me. It was unanimous between everyone else that our milk chocolate is way better. I guess I was blessed with American friends that are brilliant cooks then. I’ve never been to America. I am just saying jambalaya beats any English dish by a country mile imo...but I guess that isn’t truly “American”. More the range of spices on offer, some English flood is bland in comparison In terms of quality then American exports does itself no favours. American mustard and cheese in particular stand out as exceptionally crap

Funky Friday - Dave

Don’t get me wrong, the way they cook and prepare food means it’s delicious. Whilst at uni I had a fling with a girl from New Orleans. She made my 2nd year, 2nd semester a very happy place. American food in terms of taste is infinitely better than English food. Even they admit the standards it is produced in is shocking though. Funnily enough, the whole American exchange crew ended up having a thing for “John Smiths”. For whatever reason yanks could not get enough of real ales, IPAs, Guinness etc that kinda drink. Bit off on a tangent but it always confused me. As an Englishman you are not used to seeing a group of stunning girls turn up to a house party with a crate of John Smiths.

The food may have tasted nice but it’s how that food arrives at your plate that’s the problem. Beef slammed full of anti biotics, hormones for extra growth; chickens chemically washed because of the horrendous living conditions; E numbers and additives in almost everything. The taste will be amazing. The effects it can have on your body is a totally different thing. We should never, ever sacrifice our food standards for that of America’s.

Mike Tyson's comebacks has shades of Razor Ruddock. A 50 year old man should never get into a boxing ring, especially not as a heavyweight.

I know it's not boxing per say but did anyone watch the UFC? One helluva fight between Gaethje and Ferguson!!!

Shanks and Bigfoot - Sweet Like Chocolate

If it is all to be held at neutral venues it would probably be a disadvantage for them. They won't be allowed to put 10 men behind the ball, sit deep and narrow and let the small pitch do the work for them.

The Sopranos is easily my favourite series out there. Gandolfini morphed into Tony Soprano! I'm currently watching Vikings. I am 7 episodes in but it's been brilliant so far and lived up to expectation. Got the inspiration from watching "The Last Kingdom" on Netflix, which I think is a spin off from Vikings? The latest series of Top Boy was brutal television. Catches the actual mood in some of Britains more rougher estates right now.

My new wake up time is 9am. A whole 4 hours lie in for over a month. It’s been amazing.

Good luck. You are in for a lot of frustrating moments with that one ? The lack of money when you get to the Championship is chronic

I do think they have worked on the attribute system. It's definitely been brought to their attention. The weighting of the physical attributes is too heavy imo, meaning sometimes players can be brilliant simply because they are physically brilliant. Ryan Nyambe was case and point for me on this save. Also, due to his aggression being 19 he got way too many red cards for a professional player, and no amount of fining would stop him. Little tweaks here and there should solve that. Wages really irk me. I know it's just a game but I have absolutely no time for a player that comes wanting a double increase due to good form. I have had many barneys with some of my better players, but no player is bigger than the club! But....seeing a name like Messi at the club you are managing is worth 100k+ a week of any mans money. In truth I don't tend to stick around at clubs long. I always start with Rovers, do as much as I can with them and then move on to another club and so on. I like to pick clubs that have had a history, so this year I'm going to try and recreate the 70s/80s with Hamburg once I'm done with Rovers. I wasn't expecting to be sacked though so it's running later than usual! One of my favourite saves was Athletic Bilbao. You can only sign basque players but that led to me getting a vintage Xabi Alonso who is probably one of the only anomalies I've seen to the overpowered physical stats. According to the game he couldn't walk but he ran the midfield. Spain may be different, I don't know. Going off on a tangent here but I've always thought that football manager would be a game that could be adapted to virtual reality. It is almost becoming a mind in itself, if that makes sense. In FM20 the game can track the type of manager you are, ie: attacking, possession, defensive and that can then limit the type of jobs you can get, depending on what the board of the club wants their team style to be. There's also the added caveat of if you develop youth or buy big name signings. I can't say how well it works as I have skipped 2020. As it is just based on statistical data it wouldn't be crazy to assume in years time when VR kicks off football manager will be one of the games that can easily transition into that. That could border on dangerous though if this game keeps grown men awake late at night based on just numbers and dots...?

I make the same mistakes, I could never do it. The season I was sacked I sold Raya for 40m and cheaped out on the replacement. The has-been Hugo Lloris was the worst goalkeeper I've ever managed and definitely the reason I lost my job.

Definitely the way to go regarding loaning players out- some 2 / 3 star players can up their ability quickly if given a first team status for a season or two. In FM19 the market goes insane very quickly. I recently signed a promising 17 year old Midfielder from Leeds for 10.75m and thought I got a good deal. There's a striker I want called Bosma who plays for Valencia but he has a release clause of 316m and will want upwards of 300k a week. Mbappe for example is on 700k a week. I'm still only getting budgets of around £80m a year with an additional 100k-200k a week wage budget. It sounds a lot but it really isn't. Players go for upwards of a £100m every season. City recently bought a centre half for 163m in the first week of the transfer window. A good side story is I managed to get Neymar for his final 6 months in 2028. He'd been out of contract for 6 months so got him for 50-odd k a week. He got 4 goals and a handful of assists and played well against the big boys. Sometimes I think the fall of attributes is unrealistic, especially in goalkeepers. Pickford was the England goalie and Heckingbottom signed him for Rovers. When I went back he was 32/33 ish, can't quite remember. You'd expect to get at least another 2 years out of him but he was awful, would let almost any long shot go in and his agility had plummeted to 7. Even though all of his technical attributes were still amazing that lack of agility and balance meant he was always prone to a mistake. Dropping him for Rovers and replacing him with our youth keeper worked for a season; dropping him for England and replacing him with Freddie Woodman didn't and I lost my job on the back of it. There's also added importance to the squad morale and dynamics of the team. As Pickford was a Team Leader my broken relationship with him meant the rest of the team suffered to. It was a disappointing season that year and I had beef with two of Heckingbottom's senior players as I looked to overhaul the team back to the way I wanted it. There is also much more of a relationship with agents now. I have a terrible relationship with this French agent who has basically scuppered my chances of signing the best RB in the world atm, French fullback Madani Fofani. Every time I try and offer a contract he immediately returns with an almost-non negotiable offer back. I've had contract talks break down with him for a few players in the past and now I pretty much can't sign a player he represents unless I pay fortunes. I also asked my left back to sack him when he was trying to pressure me into giving him a new mega contract on the back of a couple of good performances. He also represents the best players in the world (Mbappe being one) who all play for PSG. Incidentally he has a "good relationship" and considered friends with the Director of Football for PSG....

Some good years for us there, DE. Talk about global domination! I'm surrounding myself with some ex-pros at the moment. Dunny and Johnson still running my U23s, who have just won back to back Checkatrade Trophies + the league. I'm churning out wonderkids like there's no tomorrow and the future of the England midfield 'David Eggleton' had a worldy first season! Elsewhere there's Dennis Bergkamp in my attacking coaching, Brad Friedel + Stefan Postma are my youth goalkeeping coaches, Johnathan Greening deals with ball control and David Trezequet my Central European scout. I've recently signed two Columbian players, a central forward and defender. Miranda the CF had a great first season and is becoming my number one choice whilst Cordorbá excelled at Monaco on loan so will probably fit him in with "the big effin German" Renhausan at the back this year considering my first choice, and fans' favourite, Portugese Djalo is now 32. Should definitely get a South/North American scouting team going. Them pair cost me under 500k each and look like they'll fill costly positions for the next 10 years. I think the beauty in the game lies in its simplicity. My imagination works overtime on these games. Without wanting to bore you all my final story for this save is a wonderful tale of Joe Rothwell's domination of...the South Korean league. After the Rovers' promotion a team called "Ulsan" lodged a shock bid of £4.2m for Joe, with add ons of 2.5m if he plays 50 games. He wasn't in my first team plans and the offer was too good to miss considering I had managed to get Dani Olmo in on loan from Marseilles. Anyway I thought nothing of it until about 12 years later on the game it sent me an inbox to say Joe had retried; a brief check of his history saw he had won 5 leagues in a row, the Asian champions league and had become a club icon at Ulsan. Over 250 appearances and 63 goals he stole the heart of South Korea....oh and his midfield partner? Sean Longstaff!!!

Just won two back to back Premier Leagues with rovers on FM19. Been my favourite career so far. Started with Rovers and won the Championship. Somehow in my third year in the Premier League I scraped 4th. The following year was a semi-disaster. Got knocked out by Monchungladbach in the 1st knockout round of the champions league, finished 8th and got to the league cup semi. The Venkys sacked me!! Paul Heckingbottom took over the club and it was hell watching him slowly go down the table season after season. I had 7 agonising years as West Ham manager, whilst being asked to be the England manager too. A europa league and super cup win with West Ham followed and I was offered the England job. Did that same time as West Ham. Won a World Cup but the following euros saw a shock 1st knockout round defeat to Denmark and I found myself on the end of another sacking. Horrified. It was penalties too With a point to prove I spent big as West Ham manager. I was 5 pts clear with West Ham when Heckingbottom was FINALLY sacked by Rovers and they sat in a relegation scrap. Venkys actually sacked me for an 8th place finish but watched as this bloke took them down year on year to lower table shite. At least we know it’s realistic. It was new owners that sacked Heckingbottom. The new Brazilian owners saw fit to bring me back and we have blossomed ever since. A new stadium is on the horizon. Kept Rovers up and luckily the hard work to the youth set up remained. 5 hard seasons after we won our first league. I could have won this on my birthday at West Ham away (unbelievable) but a Utd won meant I had to wait a week longer. This season I’ve just finished we won the league comfortably, won the league cup but got knocked out of the champions league by a semi final defeat to Liverpool. A 0-0 at home with Rovers having a red card after 37 minutes was followed by a hard fought 2-1 loss at Anfield, where the new “World Player of the Year” Graham Ridley stepped up to bang in two early goals. I knew I should have signed him over 10 years ago for West Ham. The only bad thing from last season was a shock 3rd round defeat to Bolton. I subsequently recalled 2 players they had on loan from me- both starters. Some call it bitter. Man City also stole the starting England right back and youth academy graduate Hilson from me in January so I need to spend money to replace him. We go again. What a game.

Anyone currently semi addicted to Warzone at the moment? 2 wins currently but in the top 10 96 times. The most frustrating game on the planet

If you have direct contact with anyone over the age of 60 then for their sake you have a responsibility to stay away. I won’t be going to the pub or any public place, except the shops and office, until we are advised otherwise.

Yeah the Telegraph has a lot to answer for in our early years of Venkys. Any real reporter would be looking at speaking to those with an inside track to try and uncover the goings on. Instead ours was obsessed with the status quo and did a sum total of 0 investigative work. Haven't bought it in years. The only time the club really needed it in my lifetime and it was absent. Nothing they print I can't get off the Rovers website anyway.

Nah, I'm probably inclined to agree with you on the ability side of it. I haven't seen much in any performance really and didn't buy into the whole mini-hype after a few decent cameos. I struggle to see what he brings to us unfortunately. When you compare it to the likes of Watkins, Benrahma and co at Brentford it is gut wrenching we've landed up with him. There are far better players out there for sure.

I'll be honest I didn't read it the same way as you. I think he acknowledges that last season Dack and Graham got goals and that's why he was perhaps not started often. His last quote: "his time is coming now and he has to step up to be the man". In fairness to Mowbray BB has been injured for most of this season so I wouldn't imagine he's trying to say the form of them this year has kept him out. He mentioned Dack and Graham, not Gallagher or Armstrong. The only mention of them players were saying they had goals in them, BB was included in that list. I genuinely didn't take that interview as him saying he's not performed because those in front of him have, except Dack / Graham. It's him saying his time is coming and he has to step up and he has faith in his ability.

Blue blood, I honestly think you should try and detach yourself from the situation a second before saying he's spouting lies. At the end of the day he's only protecting his player. Mowbray gave some stick to players like Nyambe when they first came on the scene and everyone, incl me, said it was wrong for him to do that. He's here now and he's trying to keep the players hopes up by backing him in the public press. Managers from all generations have done exactly the same. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Personally I'd rather see him backing the lad than sniping him down even if we all know it's probably misjudged faith.

So the game does matter then, yeah? I could be forgiven for assuming that comment meant the result didn't matter and our season was over, given the general theme of posts on here since Sunday.

Pretty big contradiction there. It does matter.