I used to do a variation of this with Burnley, but it went more along the lines of selling all their best players dirt cheap, signing a bunch of terrible free transfers on huge multi-year contracts, wasting the entire transfer budget on somebody like Andrews or Lowe, then resigning and watching with satisfaction as they sink into both league and financial oblivion. Good times.

We haven't been linked to anybody I think would seriously improve us yet - but as far as I can tell it's all guesswork at the moment, largely based on likely destinations for free transfers and players we've been linked with in the past or former players out of favour at other clubs. Mowbray seems to be keeping his cards close to his chest for now. Fingers crossed we're looking at a lot better than what's been rumoured so far, but I'm not holding my breath. I get the feeling we're in for another underwhelming summer. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

Mulgrew in midfield would be a disaster and he'd be injured before the first match was over.

This is a common fallacy on here. Go through the games where he scored last season and you'll see we don't need his goals, as we barely won any of them. We need somebody who can defend in defence, and let the attacking players do the scoring. Oh, and I don't think he got any assists, so we aren't missing those either!

This is like what WWE is trying to do with Sami Zayn, but far better.

Creative freedom shines through in everything AEW does. It's such a nice contrast to the robotic lifelessness of modern WWE. Not everything will be a home run, but even then it's still better than watching WWE's talented but shackled performers go through the motions every week. The Cody/Dustin promos before Double or Nothing were awesome. Dustin in particular went from being a parody of himself in WWE to being totally reborn and rejuvenated in AEW.

What a spiral that boy's career has gone into. Still only 25 but has gone from being a Welsh international and a regular at a fairly big Championship club to failing in a minor football league in the USA and now playing in League 2.

The reason the 24/7 title is enjoyable, other than R-Truth just being entertaining in anything, is because it's different from the same old shit served up across the rest of the show. It's the same with the Firefly Funhouse - it's like being given a sip of water after walking through a desert for a few hours. As you correctly say, everything else is insanely boring now. Raw has been boring for literally years but the wildcard rule has ruined Smackdown. Granted Smackdown never returned to the level it was at during the second half of 2016 and early 2017, but it's always been better than Raw - if only because it's two hours rather than three. Since the wildcard rule was introduced Smackdown is now just an extended version of Raw, essentially, with THE BIG DAWG and Shane McMahon all over both shows. I still can't believe that WWE have already managed to book Reigns so badly that some people are beginning to boo him again. Their booking is so bad that fans are booing a cancer survivor. Meanwhile Shane McMahon, who was very recently one of the most over characters in the company, is now getting chants of "boring", "CM Punk" and "AEW" during his promos. Very good job.

I don't think FOX have much wriggle room in their WWE agreement. As far as I've read that's 5 years of guaranteed mega cash for WWE no matter what happens. As for Raw and USA Network, if it was regularly dipping below 1.5 you have to imagine the situation would start to become untenable. Apparently USA have already been meddling due to alarm over the current ratings slump, and the stupid 24/7 title was their idea. If that's the best they've got they're probably better off leaving it alone.

Honestly you could post practically anything from the 90s through to the mid-00s and it would almost certainly be more entertaining than the shit that gets served up by WWE on Mondays and Tuesdays. Raw posted a 1.54 rating this week, which I believe is the lowest in modern history outside of holiday shows. TNA was getting 1.4/1,5 very briefly when they switched to Mondays, so it's now that bad.

As a kid I really had no idea how the junction system worked. I basically tried to play the game the same way as FF7 and I remember getting stuck around the part where you fight Cerberus and that was as far as I got. It was only a few years ago when I replayed it again (on an original PlayStation!) and read a walkthrough that I realised how insanely unbalanced the junction system is if you spam drawing spells from enemies. It's also kind of funny that the game is easier to complete if all of your characters are underleveled, due to enemies levelling up with you. Another mechanic that is a good idea in theory, but wasn't quite implemented properly.

The new FFVII remake and FFVIII remaster trailers below:

Yeah, I guess it'll be similar to the remastered version of FF7 that was released on Steam/PS4. I wonder if they'll tinker with the junction system at all? It was a decent idea in theory but fell apart in practice, as you could basically make yourself invincible very early on in the game through drawing the max amount of spells from enemies and junctioning them accordingly. My guess is they leave it as it is, but if it was ever to be properly remade then I imagine the junction system would be gone. As long as Triple Triad is in the game I'll be happy. For a mini game it was crazy addictive.

There's a new 4 minute trailer out which looks pretty good. Even better, they announced at E3 that Final Fantasy 8 is getting a remaster! About damn time. Being released some time this year.

FF7 Remake announced for 03/03/2020... another 9 months. Still on the PS4 by the looks of it. Kind of weird that it's going to be launching around the time the PS5 will be on its way.

They should have ended it at the botched tombstone. Goldberg obviously kicked out on instinct, knowing the match wasn't meant to end there, but somebody should probably have called an audible and ended the match at that point. A few years ago I'd agree with you on Taker, but not now. He's seriously broken down and none of his recent matches have been good, in fact they've been outright dangerous at times. The last good match he had was probably with Brock at WM30. He should have stuck to his retirement at that event. I wouldn't even say character-wise Taker is that interesting anymore. He comes out and cuts the same old "rest in peace" promo and has a staredown with his opponent, sometimes with teleporting involved. That's about it. Except with Wyatt and Cena where he just didn't show up at all until WM, meaning the "feud" was carried entirely by one person. It's just not worth it anymore. There have been some fantastic women's matches in recent years, although not so much recently. People weren't moaning about there just being a lack of women's wrestling, anyway, it's the fact that on these shows the women don't even have the opportunity to perform. It's ridiculously hypocritical for WWE to push their "women's (r)evolution" so hard and then do shows in countries where women are treated like dirt - especially with the first Saudi show being a disgusting propaganda-fest. If you're going to go all in with PR over your female empowerment (which is long overdue in WWE anyway) then you should rightly expect backlash when you do these kinds of shows. They made a rod for their own back with this one I'm afraid. What's strange is that they seemed to think they were going to get the go ahead to put on a women's match, as they flew Alexa Bliss and Natalya out to Saudi Arabia, but when they got there they were told no. Interestingly when the women's matches for Stomping Ground came up on the screen you could hear the Saudi crowd cheering loudly, so they clearly want to see women's wrestling even if their backwards government won't allow it. They probably do. I've certainly been highly critical of both. AEW haven't made a statement either way so there's no point bringing them into the discussion at this juncture, but I guarantee if they did sign a deal with Saudi Arabia they'd receive the same level of criticism from their fans. Probably more, actually, as it would be a much more hardcore audience who are watching AEW precisely because they aren't WWE and expect higher standards. Should AEW go the WWE route I'm sure they'll lose a lot of fans in the process. There was an audible called for the finish (you can hear Taker say to Goldberg "stay down"), but I don't think it was called before then. Taker was definitely asking the ref on more than one occasion if Goldberg was OK. There's a point just after the turnbuckle spot where Taker raises his hand for a chokeslam, but Goldberg falls back into the ropes. You can see Taker looking concerned for a second, and the ref ask "are you alright, Bill?" ... at which point Goldberg obviously said he was alright and the match continued. That's the moment they should have said enough and called for it to end. Unfortunately they didn't, so instead we got the botched tombstone, the botched jackhammer, the botched tombstone reversal and the worst chokeslam ever.

It's SO THEM PAL. Seriously though, if Goldberg was concussed then he wouldn't have been thinking clearly. He was probably just trying to focus on keeping himself mobile, let alone whether he should call an audible on the match itself. That's exactly why other people are around to make those decisions. I can remember in 2013 a match between Daniel Bryan and Randy Orton was stopped because Bryan suffered a stinger during the match and Triple H made the call to end the match before the finish. Bryan was furious afterwards, but it was absolutely the right decision. What was the difference at Super Showdown, other than the Saudis wanting their money's worth? You can't make these types of decisions based on money or whether it's a PPV main event. If somebody is seriously injured the match should be stopped immediately, no matter what. Goldberg could have been paralysed or worse from that botched tombstone, and the same for Taker when Goldberg botched the jackhammer. That all happened after Goldberg was quite obviously concussed and WWE would have endured an absolute shitstorm should anything really bad have happened. It's only through pure luck that both Goldberg and Undertaker are okay, and it didn't have to be down to luck. It shouldn't have been down to luck. WWE will get away with this, like they always do, but if the Saudi event in general didn't make them look bad enough, allowing the main event to continue with one of the competitors clearly concussed really shows how rotten the core of that company is.

Yep, neither of them were ready for anything other than a couple of minutes. A few spears, a chokeslam, snake eyes, old school, a jackhammer... enough. All anybody really wanted to see was the power moves and finishers anyway. Goldberg should have gone over as he has way more mileage in him than Taker at this point. He's still in incredible shape and his promo skills nowadays are far better than Undertaker's - which is surprising considering before he returned in 2016 his promos had always been garbage. Not sure what happened during his time away from wrestling but Goldberg is a much better promo now than he was in his heyday. It feels like last night kind of ruined whatever mystique Goldberg had left though. It's going to be tough to come back from that.

Undertaker "liked" an instagram post that lambasted WWE for putting those two out there at 50+ years old each, and telling them to let Taker retire in peace. Have to think that's the last time Taker will allow himself to be put into a position like that. With the right opponent he's still a passable showpiece attraction, but he needs to be looked after. So many things about that match were wrong. For a start I can't believe they expected those two to go out there and perform a 10 minute plus match in that heat. Goldberg was barely able to wrestle more than three minutes in his prime, let alone now and in those conditions. Undertaker is so broken down he can barely walk. As soon as they realised Goldberg was concussed the match should have ended. It was obvious as soon as he hit that turnbuckle and started bleeding that something was badly wrong. It sucks but the match should have been ended there and then. Instead they let it continue and both Goldberg and Taker nearly got seriously hurt because of it. Really disgusting behaviour from WWE, but considering where the show was taking place, I guess that's a given with this company. How anybody thought the reverse tombstone spot at the end was a good idea was beyond me. Goldberg had already botched his jackhammer and didn't tuck his head in for the tombstone, smashing his head and neck on the canvas, so who thought it was a good idea to continue with the reverse tombstone spot? How could they have thought that would work? It would have been difficult even if neither man was injured, let alone in the state they were in. I don't blame Taker as he'd just been dumped on his head from the botched jackhammer and was clearly still groggy, but the ref or somebody in gorilla should have called an audible there. Terrible decision making all around. An embarrassing night for WWE all around, but that match in particular was just horrendous on so many levels.

My God that Undertaker/Goldberg match was bad. It started off okay, save for that TERRIBLE kneebar Goldberg attempted, but as soon as Goldberg ran into the corner and busted himself open the match fell apart. I think he might have legit smashed his head and concussed himself. If not then, he almost certainly did when Taker managed to botch the tombstone and dropped Goldberg on his fucking head. Jesus Christ. Then Goldberg nearly drops Taker on his head with the botched Jackhammer. So, so sad to watch. Taker looked both incredibly pissed off and majorly disappointed afterwards. That was really brutal.

The answer to this question is always no.

What's funny (and so typical of WWE) is that they've been totally schizophrenic about The Revival situation. They try to entice them by giving them the tag titles when they refuse to sign a new contract, but then do the usual of having them lose multiple non-title matches as champions and basically be treated like a joke. Unsurprisingly Dash and Dawson say fuck this and still refuse to sign a new contract. Vince gets pissed and decides to bury them. OK. Not the first time it's happened, just the usual childish, petty shit from Vince and his cronies. You get the back shaving, ucey hot, insinuations that they are gay, etc. Yet now all of a sudden two weeks ago they beat the Usos, and this week they helped McIntyre beat Reigns & the Usos, now apparently being presented as a genuine threat again. It sounds like it was pretty much the same with Dean Ambrose. Their original plan, which they started going through, was to bury him by having Nia Jax go over him in a program. Yet for some reason they decided to change direction and even though Ambrose lost quite often on the way out, he was still treated pretty well for a guy leaving the company, and even beat an up-and-comer in EC3 (who is now being buried for not getting a reaction against Ambrose, LOLWWE) as well as having a decent last run with Reigns/Rollins as The Shield. Oh btw, one other thing I noticed on Raw - no Electric Chair segment. It was a stupid idea anyway, but it's so LOLWWE to drop it after just one week. I guess they could bring it back sporadically but I get the feeling that's the last we've seen of it. I didn't even understand why it was an electric chair. There was no electric shocking involved or indeed even suggested, so what was the point?

In fairness Vince has always preferred the PG, kid-friendly product. He only briefly broke away from that in the mid-to-late 90s because the company was going down the toilet and they had no choice but to adapt or be left behind. As soon as WCW died the product began morphing back to PG, but the non-PG era had left behind too big of a legacy and fanbase to completely dismiss it. So ever since then we've been left with a product that doesn't really know which audience it wants to target and so just alternates between both. I expect AEW's target audience is going to be the older, smarter fans. If they become "cool" that way then kids will follow, as at the end of the day kids want to watch what their older siblings are watching. Their perception of what is cool is usually fuelled by what people older than them find cool. WWE is definitely not in that bracket. AEW could be.

The Saudis still seem to think it's the 1990s as all they care about are the wrestlers from that era. At the first show they requested Yokozuna, who's been dead for nearly 20 years. That's why WWE had that random sumo guy appear in the Greatest Royal Rumble - close enough, I guess. How WWE can possibly mesh with Islamic culture I don't know. I can't think of two things that are more opposite, but hey, it's religion so I suppose hypocrisy is a given. Ah yeah, the good old "put all the baddies together" shtick. Not because they're part of a stable or have mutual goals, but just because they're so eeeeevil and evil people apparently gravitate towards each other to concoct even more evil schemes. Of course. With that said, I've felt for a while that WWE is basically written for children, and this concept in that context makes sense. It's just weird because some segments and characters are obviously not meant for children. Randy and Triple H talking about each other's balls this week wasn't exactly PG. WWE is stuck at this weird halfway point where they have to try and appeal to both audiences and it just doesn't work. As for Lio Rush, dead in the water. He's got a lot of heat backstage, basically another Enzo Amore but the sounds of it. Doubt he'll be seen again.

Theoretically the cash in is on Friday at Super Showdown (don't even get me started on these odious Saudi Arabia events), but nothing big or memorable ever really happens on these shows, Titus WorldSlide aside, so I'd be surprised if Brock actually cashed in and won the belt. Another thing I don't understand is the obsession Vince seems to have with Baron Corbin. He's good in certain roles but he is NOT a main event player, yet for so long now he's been pushed as one of the centre pieces of the show, regularly appearing in main events. Also, if he's now back to being a normal wrestler WHY IS HE STILL WEARING HIS GENERAL MANAGER ATTIRE? It looks terrible and makes no sense. It's a small thing, but the same time a perfect example of how logic and continuity just has no place in current WWE. They have no idea what they're doing.