Obviously a shit result and performance, but we already know most of these players have it in them so not really a surprise. The big test will be what happens going forward. If it's the beginning of a downward spiral then we'll know the mentality still isn't where it needs to be. Bounce back positively and maybe we can have some genuine belief that Eustace has changed the team beyond streaky purple patches of decent form.

I mean, yeah, in an ideal world you wrestle safe without getting head trauma - but I don't believe for a second that Austin didn't have at least half a dozen concussions in his career, if not more. Sometimes it's nothing you do - if you get put in there with someone green, mistakes can happen. Look at Bret Hart. One of the safest workers of all time, but one kick to the head from Goldberg and that was his career ruined. It was weird because the way Austin phrased it was like CTE doesn't exist, when it clearly does. Maybe it was just bad wording on his part.

I thought the documentary was a good general overview for casual fans, albeit there was nothing new there if you've been following the business regularly. It did a good job of chronicling all the key events, although it was very much the WWE-version of history which isn't the entire truth. Vince largely came across as an unlikable, arrogant sociopath who is either very comfortable with lying or outright delusional. One imagines if the scandals hadn't come out, the documentary would have been very different. Probably the weirdest part to me was Vince contending that Undertaker never had a concussion during the Lesnar match and was just "traumatized" by the streak being ended. Vince went to the hospital with him ffs, he knows full well that Taker had a concussion. I have no idea what he gets out of pretending otherwise, especially when Calloway has been his most loyal soldier for decades. I think for more hardcore fans the hype wasn't justified, but maybe for casuals it was. Netflix being the imminent home of WWE obviously meant the documentary was never going to go too deep, but it certainly went harder than it would have when it was originally scheduled to be released pre-pandemic. Most of the talking heads were pretty pointless and had little to add. Hogan was his usual bullshitting self. Pritchard knows where his bread is buttered and behaved accordingly. The past and present wrestlers were largely reduced to vanilla soundbites. I'd say Shane came out of the series looking the best - he was portrayed in a really sympathetic manner. Heyman was as always very captivating when on camera. Tony Atlas was the most honest and transparent, to the point of absolute bluntness. I can only imagine what was left on the cutting room floor from his interviews. Meltzer came across well - balanced and knowledgeable.

Scoring just after half time was pivotal. Completely changed how the game would play out from that point. A home win, another clean sheet and Cantwell showing glimpses of what he can do. Solid wave of momentum building behind us at the moment.

Early days but results went very well for us today.

I also did end up getting a pretty hefty PC upgrade with a 4070 Super Ti and the AMD 7800X3D... runs everything in VR very nicely indeed, the PSVR2 does indeed work on it, although I've found it to be a tad glitchy at times. I bought a Rift S for £50 from eBay and have been using that more simply because it's so easy to just plug and play.

Walkabout is one of my favourite games on the Quest! My dad and I have played it a ton. That and Wander are probably the two apps I've spent the most time in on the Quest.

Not the first time Pears has had a purple patch. I wouldn't drop him whilst he's in form and we're getting results, but the moment it starts to slip, make the change. History shows it isn't going to just be a blip.

A confidence player who can be useful in either Prem or Championship in purple patches, but won't ever be consistent in either division. Think he barely got an assist or a goal in his last 5 months here, and it was similar the season prior where he had one good half of the season and one useless half (from memory injury did play a factor there, though, so perhaps a bit of mitigation). I don't really think he's PL quality. Maybe for clubs that are destined for the drop but those clubs aren't PL quality either, hence being relegated. He's Championship quality when confident, but pretty much useless when he isn't.

The most bizarre post I saw was on a Preston forum where a poster (seemingly seriously) suggested that Beck had gotten another Rovers player to bite him to make it look like Osmajic had attacked him. This was after the Twitter video blatantly showing the incident had been posted. In fairness most of the other posters were laughing at him, but yeah, there's some major levels of delusion out there.

I'd guess there's a good chance he'll go in January, and if not then almost certainly next summer, so you can understand prioritising other players - especially when Siggy has proven to only ever really be useful in 10-15 minute bursts per game.

Unfortunately when you loan young players, part of the deal is that they'll be learning about the men's game whilst playing for you. Regardless of talent level, there is plenty to learn, especially when it comes to behaving smartly on the field. Some players never really learn, but it's rare in the modern game that they get very far. Think Beck will learn from his sending off and hopefully be more in control in future. Not much to learn from the biting incident other than some players are dickheads and the officials are rarely of any help.

He did well with them last year, but an awful start to this season. Figured the end was near for Bulut after he came out and criticised the fans. That rarely ends well for the manager.

Knew as soon as they went down to 10 that was our chances of winning down the drain. Can't remember the last time we took advantage of being an extra man up. Same old from the officials mind. Preston reverted to the dark arts and the ref was hoodwinked throughout the second half. With that said, almost all teams in the division will do this when they go a man down and the quality of official will be below average at best, so we need to find a way to win in these situations. Whilst Beck probably deserved a red for kicking out, Preston obviously should have been down to 9. Hopefully retrospective action taken. Don't think him going off in the game would have made a difference as we can't take advantage of being a man up anyway. Disappointing performance. Pears the only player who deserves credit. Still, despite our worst performance of the season, mostly against 10 men + referee, we didn't lose and got a point, so... forget about it and move on, I guess.

So, Google Notebook LM now has the ability for you to upload a PDF ot TXT file and have AI generate a 6-10 min conversation in a podcast style discussing the contents. I'm not floored by too much in the AI sphere anymore, but this is absolutely amazing. It sounds totally natural and real. https://notebooklm.google.com/ Really scary - and this is just publicly released stuff. One can only imagine what exists behind closed doors at google, OpenAI, etc.

Plymouth fans won't care about that, and nor should they. Their love is for their club, not Schumacher's reputation or bank balance. As a neutral you can understand him taking a chance, but Stoke seems like a poisoned chalice these days. Something very wrong at that club.

I'm sure Plymouth fans aren't feeling too much sympathy for old Schuey. Could see him back there if Rooney doesn't work out, mind.

Probably the most pleasing aspect of yesterday's result is our first clean sheet of the season. It will hopefully give a boost of confidence to the defence.

In regards to JDT, as a rookie manager I felt he did an outstanding job in the first 6-7 months. First season finish was still excellent for a manager with his experience and working in this environment, but there were many signs that things behind the scenes were going wrong. Bad ownership combined with bad recruitment hobbled the end of JDT's first season, to the point where he wanted out by the summer. He offered his resignation, and at that point it should have been the end of Tomasson's time here. Anything after that is solely on Venky's for not allowing him to leave when he had made it clear he didn't want to be here anymore. We started his second season bizarrely well all things considered, but when it again started going badly wrong around November time, JDT was unable to arrest the decline. His departure at that point was inevitable. He refused to change his style and evidently lost key parts of the dressing room. Man management is something I think JDT still needs to work on. In the modern game you simply have to keep the players onside and he wasn't able to do that. In regards to how rigid he was with our playing style, I'm not sure whether this was because he couldn't change or because he felt betrayed by the owners and thus was continuing the originally promised 'project' out of spite, even when we clearly no longer had the squad to achieve that initial ambition. Only JDT would be able to answer that, but it was clear we needed to change how we were playing, but between November 2023 to the end of Jan 2024 we never really did, and we saw the same thing happen time and time again as we racked up an embarrassing goals against column with diminishing returns up front. I hold no ill-will towards JDT and under different circumstances I think he could have been a great manager for us. Under the current structure, however, it was never meant to be. I think Eustace is more pragmatic, a better man manager and a bit more shrewd in his relationship with the club compared to JDT. He seems to be a better all around fit. However, time will tell whether this is yet another false dawn. We had good starts under JDT in both seasons as well, only to catastrophically fall away once things started going against us. It'll be interesting to see whether Eustace will be able to evade the regular slumps we've experienced going all the way back to Mowbray's tenure, or whether ultimately the rot at the top of the club means such declines are just part of the fabric of Venky's version of our club.

He came into a bad situation last season with the team in free fall. Got the results necessary to just about get us over the line. Not the greatest first impression, but first objective achieved nonetheless. So far this season we look far more like what I was hoping for from a Eustace team. Working hard, mixing up play, rotating players based on performance and merit. It's early days but the signs are good. Cheers to Big Club for their ridiculous decision to get rid of him and replace with Rooney.

Competition for places is never a bad thing. We've had a long stretch where many of our first eleven have been default selections, due to our bench being so weak. We're finally in a position where a number of players have challengers for their spots, and that can only motivate everyone to perform better - and it'll weed out any who can't handle the pressure of competition and shouldn't be starters anyway.

Ohashi's first goal was a superb finish, but lots of credit to Dolan for a fantastic assist, Second goal was all Yuki. Picks it up in a fairly unthreatening position, charges into the box, befuddles the defender and then curls a picture-perfect shot into the corner of the net. Brilliant stuff.

Yuki taking his chance with Gueye suspended. You love to see it.

We look very solid. Bristol City so far totally nullified. Can't deny that Eustace is doing a fantastic job so far this season, and Park/Rudy seem to have really come through under difficult circumstances as well. Eventually Venky's will pull some rabbit out of the hat to wreck our momentum, as they always do, but if we had decent owners I'd be very optimistic under the current setup.

One imagines he goes out on loan to a couple of PL clubs over the next few seasons to get him regular game time and see how his progression goes. Worst case scenario, based on the current market, he doesn't improve as hoped and gets sold - most likely for more than the club brought him in for. Best case scenario he fulfills his potential and becomes a regular fixture for the club he originally signed for. Barring a catastrophic injury, which is a risk for all players, or a sudden attitude problem, I'd say buying a talent like Wharton for £18m is very low risk. If the Man Utd version of Casemiro and McTominay can be regulars at a supposedly big PL club, Wharton definitely can be.