David Kelly

Fingers crossed.

The Rock for me, Cage was on a roll at that time with that and Con Air being two very watchable action films. Even Bay's better ones have gaping holes in them mind. But if you can just turn your mind off to them there's a bit of enjoyment to be had.

You can't possibly say I was wrong when I said I enjoyed it more than anything else. My enjoyment is a totally personal thing. As it goes, I enjoyed it much less than Guardians, Logan, X Men and Deadpool, a bit less than Dr Strange and Ant Man but more than the second Avengers, Civil War, the last Batman, Wonder Woman (apart from the sheer pleasure of looking at Gadot) and Suicide Squad (apart from Robie's arse). It may well be that my expectations were so low for the latest transformers that it allowed me to enjoy it more than the superhero films that I actually have some investment in the characters but whatever the reason I did enjoy it more. It is without doubt a poor film though and Bay is a poor director. The only films of his that I would ever consider rewatching are The Rock, Bad Boys and maybe The Island and The First Transformers. Edit: The new Spiderman looks horrific btw.

I don't think they're really thinking about promotion. Staying in the division will be their goal next season. There's nothing in his history to suggest he can do much better than that. Hes took teams (ones that should have went up) into the championship but I think 7th is the highest he managed with Leeds. They desperately needed a manager that could ignite the town like Rafa did to our city and he isn't the man to do that.

But what of what I said was wrong?

Lost interest in Legion a bit after about 4 episodes. I'll probably go back to it after I do Saul.

In what way? Saw Baby Driver last night, stylistically it's different to Drive but there are a lot of similarities, not least that it is also in some ways style over substance. Thoroughly enjoyable though.

I'd like to think that given the fact that Rafa is there and the level of work needed, they know what they have to do and how quickly they have to do it. But as HF has regularly pointed out, it's daft not to be concerned given Ashley's history.

Does it need any more work than it did last summer? The quality certainly needs to improve more but I'd argue we needed just as big a turnaround last summer as we do this. I do think that given the amount of work needed, we need key players in as soon as possible though. If we only needed one or two we could maybe afford to wait until August but the team is going to need to look quite different to last season so we need to get a move on to be ready for the kick off.

By my reckoning we signed Sels when I was in France for the Euros and I arrived there two days after the Wales game. So it was probably about a year and a week since we signed Sels. At the time I'm pretty sure everyone was raving about us making early signings too. Edit; actually looking at his thread on here, he signed on the 29th so we're not even at a year yet. Was he our first signing last year?

I think it's 11 of the other premier league teams that have a higher transfer record than us and off the top of my head at least two of them only went above us last season (one being the newly crowned champions at that time). I would guess that up until a few years ago it was probably only five or six teams that had a higher record than us as the fee paid for Owen was massive at the time. Clearly Ashley's tightened the reigns but I think the reason we've went longer than usual to break our record is more to do with the fact that we had a high record up until a couple of seasons ago. We certainly had a massive record fee relative to the success we've had recently.

It sounds about right. Owen and particularly Shearer were records that were much higher than most premier league teams and probably still above a few teams (Watford, Bournemouth, Brighton, Huddersfield, Burnley) but when you see Palace spending about £30m on a player you can see we're falling behind now.

We definitely need to break our transfer record this window. If we don't it will be clear sign of a lack of ambition from the board. It's a bit concerning that most of the alleged targets so far seem to be in the bargain basement bracket again. I understand that we need to try and get some value for money as there is clearly going to be limits on how much money their is available. But when you see the money being spent by Everton (the highest team that I think we can realistically have a hope of catching in the next couple of years) and being suggested about the likes of Bournemouth (£20m for Ake) it shows we aren't going to get anywhere if we're looking sub £10m. Of course last year our targets weren't widely known at all before we signed them so I see know reason why the papers should have any more accurate knowledge now.

Went to see Transformers last night (wasn't paying obviously). My expectations were really low given the reviews but aside from being at least half an hour too long and Hopkins being awful in it, it was a reasonably enjoyable blockbuster affair. Enjoyed it as much as most of the recent Marvel/DC films.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned American Gods but I enjoyed that. No idea of how it compares to the book but it's worth a watch.

I don't listen to much TMS as I usually have them on the telly but whenever I'm in the car listening to it, it's Blowers I want to be on. Aggers is good but Blowers just sounds like cricket.

It'll be good to see if Rashid Kahn can have any sort of impact act test level. He looks amazing in T20's.

That does sound like it might rival The Room in the brilliantly awful stakes.

From what I've seen of him in the U21's there's nothing to suggest he'd be a better option for us next season than anyone we already have.

I think the reason to be pleased by this isn't that Rafa is some sort of supreme talent spotter, but that it removes a potential cause of conflict that could cause him to fuck off.

Ireland and Afghanistan given test status. Happy to hear that.

The fact that he recommended Riviere as a signing even if he was well down the list, should have been enough to get him sacked. You can't tell me that even for the price we paid for him we couldn't have signed many better players.

I saw the new strip in the airport shop last week. The material looks fucking awful. Looks like it will get clicked just walking down the street. That alleged green away strip looks pretty decent.

Aye Big is another one that's the same. Did you watch Warriors? If so what did you think?

Again I love it but I'm not sure if you saw it fresh now you would feel the same. Some films came out and hit a generation and zeitgeist and capture the hearts of people who seen it around that time. But if you see it after films like American Pie and Superbad or whatever it's hard to go back to that time and feel the same way about it (even if you were of an age to have seen it at the time but just missed it). I'm just relieved that I did see it when I was in my teens and still have the love for it now.