David Kelly

Enjoyed Joker a lot. I thought it was a bit slow for the first 40 minutes or so but Phoenix was superb. After that it cranks up a notch. More like a cross between Taxi Driver and King of Comedy than any other comic book film that's gone before it. Surely there's been multiple origin stories for the Joker character? Jack Nicholson's version had an origin and the Killing Joke (which I think this film takes some bits from) given an origin to him. The fact that none of these origins taken as the definitive one means you don't really lose any of the mystery,

I don't think you can really keep both of them in the team if Butler is going to bat at 7 and not take the gloves. The solution has to either be Butler keeping and Bairstow at 5 or Bairstow keeping at 7 and Butler not in the team. Of course you could Argue that Foakes should keeping whatever is decided with those two.

The possible problem you have with limiting Stokes to just batting is he seems to want to be involved all of the time and this inspires him to do better. If you took the bowling away from from (which I realise you're not totally suggesting) would his batting actually suffer. Totally agree about Bairstow and Buttler though, they need to be deserving of their spot as batsmen on merit and they've both only averaged mid 20's this series. At the moment I don't think you can justify them both being in the team.

I'm not much of a horror fan either. I thought the best aspects of the two films were the friendships between the kids. Those bit were a bit like Stand By Me and much more interesting. Watched Booksmart the other night. Billed as a sort of female Superbad. I don't think it was a regularly funny as the likes of Superbad but it did have some really funny stuff in it and was boosted by a cracking Dan The Automator soundtrack.

It Chapter 2. Another film that's a good hour too long. It's ok but just like the first part you can spot the jumps coming a mile off. How it's getting five star reviews is beyond me.

Can't see anything online about Hameed retiring, just about the release from Lancashire. He's actually averaged towards 30 this season which isn't great but is a massive improvement on his 9 from last season. Durham are still struggling with their batting so maybe they can take a punt on him. Canny drop of Root by Siddle.

Surely it's a good thing that they don't do convincing brummie accents? It's comfortably the worst accent in the world.

Should the main core of players be the same though? Is picking too many white ball players instead of red ball specialists weakening our test team? Or is it just that we don't have the quality in red ball players. We'd hoped the likes of Stoneman, Jennings and Hameed would come through and be fixtures in the test team but they've not been able to step up.

There's not many batsmen showing it at test level at the moment, whether that's down to conditions, bowler or (my personal belief) the focus on white ball cricket around the world meaning batsmen aren't used to playing the way they need to. As Stokes said, the flip side of that is we're able to see innings like he produced at Heddlingley. Mind the way it's going we aren't going to be able to see the first part of that innings from many players. I definitely think we should be splitting the red and white ball coaching duties. I don't blame the ECB for focusing on white ball these past few years because winning the world cup was massive for us, but it does feel somewhat overdone when you look at how are test team are performing now. And what happens now? Do we switch it back around and lose our standing as the top odi team or fail to prepare for the T20 world cup? Surely having someone focusing on the white ball game solely would be the better option. Obviously they need to be looking at the make up of the county championship season too but with the hundred starting next year I don't imagine there's going to be any immediate changes with the program.

Don't think the weather will save us. We need Stokes to dig in for another 300 balls.

The talk yesterday morning was that the pitch suited the taller bowler so that's why Overton was picked instead of Curran. But that opinion seems to be on the way the Old Trafford pitch used to play rather than how it does now. It seems obvious that once Wood and Stone were ruled out and Anderson was struggling, the selectors have been all over the place. Fucking sick of Smith now like, we were desperate for Archer to hold onto that caught and bowled.

It's an odd film for sure. All of his other efforts have been clear genre films but I'm not sure this one knows what it wants to be. But I did enjoy it, particularly Pitt and particularly at the end. That Weinstein documentary that was on BBC2 last night was really good. What a horrible cunt he is.

Denly has apparently confirmed he will be opening and Roy will be at four. Personally I'd like to see him in after Stokes but they obviously don't want to put too much onto Stokes with his bowling as well. Hopfully the top three will be able to take the shine off the ball before Roy comes in. Two new umpires in for the last two matches too.

Given the team we had available and the team they put out, we played fairly well. We were organised at the back with them not really creating anything, and Longstaff made a decent impression in his first professional game. I thought Willems was getting better and better as the game went on too. It's nice to see someone making runs to get in behind the opposition. We didn't really look like scoring ourselves though, Muto looks like he might have something about him but he's clearly not up to leading the line in the premier league. He's just too small and at that size you need something exceptional about you to do that job. But when we're hamstrung by the owner we have and in turn the squad we have, it would have been madness to risk Jo and Miggy. I couldn't really understand why Perez was getting booed. I mean, I've been slagging him off for years so I could have felt justified myself but it's moronic for those who were gushing over him a few months ago to boo him now. But to be fair it probably had as much to do with the amount of kids and morons there last night who don't usually go to games as much as anything else.

Watched the Boys over a couple of days when I was off sick last week. Best thing I've watched in ages despite Urban's awful accent.

Woakes hasn't really been at his best this series so if Jimmy's fit then he would be the obvious candidate to miss out. Yes it theoretically lengthens the tail but given that the Aussies seem to know how to get Woakes out fairly easily, it probably doesn't make much difference. And the key thing will be getting Smith (and possibly Labuschagne) out so we need to give ourselves the best opportunity to do that. Id be seriously considering dropping Roy too. He's not looking close to being up to opening at test level so far. God know who you'd replace him with though. There has been some talk of moving Denly up to open again and bringing in Pope at 4. Not really sure that's much of an answer though.

I lost my wallet at the weekend so I had to go up to the ground today to get a new season ticket. The lass in the ticket office told some old fella that they were expecting it to be about 20k tonight.

I certainly think there's no one else in our team that has the ability to play in both those ways. Root can defend and then move up through the gears but he couldn't get up to the six hitting point that Stokes reached. Buttler or Bairstow could twat the ball all over bur would never have been able to start off the way he did. There's very few in world cricket who could even contemplate pulling that off.

Two days later and I still can't believe this happened. Stokes just seemed to bend the match to his will. They should find a spot for him in the new Matrix film.

I've no doubt whatsoever that if he can get and stay fit he'll do well. But that's a massive if with him, he's only managed over 20 league games in 3 or 4 seasons in his career. But if Joelinton get's injured there's now at least a possibility we have another striker who's of premier league standard to cover.

Say what you want about his fitness record or the fact both his exit and return are down to the horrendous problems caused by our current owner, but personally I love that and would love it if he can get back on the pitch and contribute.

Same as always, keep the wages down as much as possible until the season is just about to start. It makes no difference to them that bringing in players at the last minute who aren't yet match fit means it takes much longer for the team to get going. Things like this are the real reasons Rafa has left rather not being given enough money to spend. He was just sick of them fucking him about so he's took the opportunity to earn a shit load more.

He could but it wouldn't surprise me if Talksport have some sort of contract which allows them access to premier league players as part of their package with the league. Anyone Sky/Talksport/Papers are all going to ask our players similar questions and none of them are going to say what we'd like them to say about the fat cunt who owns the club. If he was a bit more intelligent he might have been able to come up with something that didn't piss our fans off as well as not pissing off his bosses. But he's a footballer and no one has every accused them of being intelligent.

I think anyone who expects a current player to say anything particularly different is kidding themselves.