Ayatollah Hermione

Oh aye, Gamez, fair enough. Hanley was only ever brought in as a dependable back-up and I thought he did alright when he came in, same goes for Murphy. For me, Yedlin improved as the season went on, to the point where I'd be willing to give him more time to come along this year. Loves bombing on, has decent partnerships with Ritchie and Atsu and got his fair share of assists.

Binging through GLOW (Netflix) atm and enjoying it. It definitely has the same feel as Orange is the New Black when it comes to the strong character writing, just with a bit less of a dramatic slant. Half hour episodes so it's easy to fly through

Lazaar and Sels definitely. Diame, arguably. That's a pretty good batting record when you're putting together a whole new team.

Wasn't Sels signed about this time last year? I.e. right around the time we're looking to announce our first signing this year

It'd be an entertaining car crash if I wasn't in the country sliding into the abyss.

Feel like people should be reminded of Carragher's article re: Rafa and his use of the press to enhance his position during transfer windows. Every window at Liverpool saw fresh "Rafa is leaving" rumours precisely because he uses it as a bargaining chip

If it gets to the 12th of August and nobody else has come in, then I think it's probably fine to panic a bit. I imagine the players and staff are all on their holidays, let them have some time off, man. It was always going to be slow until the beginning of July.

The one good thing about that kind of coverage is that it seems more and more like the last gasp of a dying style. I mean, papers aren't long for the world as a news source anyway but more and more people just simply reject that kind of rhetoric. I imagine most of it is purely fuelled by the desire to get trending on social media tbh

You could see it as soon as we were linked with some shitty arsed French winger on the last day of the January window when we were allegedly working our bollocks off on Townsend. Wonder who was in the ear of Charnley there. I also wonder who wanted his pockets lined by that agency again.

A shame that it didn't work out for him really but with Elliott and Darlow, you do have to wonder why he was signed. I know Elliott was injured for a lot of the time but Woodman didn't move until January IIRC.

Allardyce had a "Performance Director" I believe, didn't he?

Aye, possibly. That philosophy extended to the coaching staff under Pardew and McClaren where it seemed like there was about 4 coaches and then Beardsley working with the kids

Maybe they've cottoned on that they need more than one bloke trying to run every facet of a Premier League football club. I can imagine everyone there reporting to Charnley for everything under the sun.

Thank fuck for that. Identified some very good players, no question but his track record is littered with players completely unsuitable for English football, not to mention massive injury problems. There's that link with that French agency where he was definitely pocketing some back handers as well.

WELL, WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT?

This is FM 16 but I think I've clocked Scotland

Lee Ryder sez that Florian Lejeune is pretty much completed so that should stop some bed wetting for a bit.

They need to put her in the bin and get another Tory MP who can handle themselves with a bit of common sense and decency. A Boris Johnson, for instance.

There's a Korean player called Lee Bum-Yung It's got nowt to do with what we're on about but it's funny.

I saw them linked with a striker from Hibernian (I think) as well so if there's anything in that, it seems their player and manager recruitment is going to be using the bare minimum

Very nice way to tell him you can't be arsed banging on

Hes campaigning in the marginals too over the summer so that might well swing things. It really does seem that everyone is working under the assumption that there's going to be another election and Labour are the only ones with their act together

Depends if they get a second referendum or not

They're a lovely bunch. Though, I''m sure this all falls on the side of laziness rather than ill-intent i.e. it involved too much paperwork and arseache on a Friday at half 2 to get corrective action taken.

To take a more Gemmill slant on it, I'm honestly not surprised that Corbyn isn't cartwheeling into these things now. He was always winning before but now he looks like he should be doing it with a tab in one hand and doing an observational comedy routine at the end of it.