https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/48268140 Grim stuff. The PFA managed to get the players paid though, so that was the important thing.

I can remember seeing Silver King on Nitro back in the 90s - Juventud Guerrera too. The video of him collapsing is strange. The guy is literally laying there for minutes before somebody finally comes out to help.

It's pretty old-fashioned to still see computer games as childish. Of the three big companies in console gaming I'd say only Nintendo market more towards children than adults, and even then most of their sales probably still come from players 16+. There's big money in adult gaming and has been for literally 20 years now.

Granted I haven't accounted for the mythical flex, but even so I doubt all of those players are on huge wages. Some of them, for sure. The loan players in particular are probably on a decent wedge plus any loan fee that was paid, but even so, you tend to get what you pay for as far as wages are concerned. Even if some of those non-loan players are on, say, £20k a week, that's a flat rate of about £1m a year. Add in bonuses, etc, and you may get up to £1.5m or maybe even £2m. Over the course of a 4 year contract that's still around the same kind of money we paid for Brereton alone. Add in his wage which I'm guessing is around £10k p/w and you're looking at adding another £2m to his transfer fee on top of the initial fee, and that's not including anything like bonuses, signing on fees, and so on. Obviously you can adjust the figure up or down depending on what his wage actually is, but even so, over the course of 4 years it's unlikely he's going to cost less than the likes of Maupay, Pukki, McGoldrick, McBurnie or Sharp, for example. At the very least it'll be pretty close.

The graphics look gorgeous. Not sure about the battle system, will need to see more of it before judging. Looks similar to FFXV which I wasn't a massive fan of, but we'll see. Hoping there will be an option for dual Japanese/English audio tracks (with subtitles obviously), although the mouth movements at first glance seem to have been created for the english track, so... we'll see. June will be very interesting!

It's very rare that this type of appointment works out. Lampard has done alright at Derby this year but it's not often that rookie managers get promoted out of the Championship. I wonder if they're struggling for cash after their £100m spending spree in the PL? I'd say unlikely considering Khan is funding a ridiculously expensive wrestling venture (AEW) in the States, but maybe FFP comes into it? I don't know. I'd be worried if I was a Fulham supporter.

If you look at the Championship players who got fifteen or more goals this season, very few of them cost close to 7M... Pukki - 29 goals - free Maupay - 25 goals - 1.6m Abraham - 25 goals - loan Sharp - 23 goals - 650k Gayle - 23 goals - loan Rodriquez - 22 goals - 12m McBurnie - 22 goals - 315k Adams - 22 goals - 2m Bowen - 22 goals - £0 Grabban - 16 goals - £6m Dack - 15 goals - 750k McGoldrick - 15 goals - free Wilson - 15 goals - loan Now I know part of Brereton's fee was 'for the future' and because he was young and had potential, but at the same time should a club just promoted from League 1 be splashing £7m on players 'for the future' when there are positions in need of attention in the present? To my mind, the answer to this is no. That type of money should only have been spent on a player who could have an instant impact, irrespective of their age or potential. Literally the only player to cost more than Brereton in the above list was Jay Rodriguez, who WBA bought when they were still in the Premier League. I don't think there is any real excuse for the fee we paid for Brereton, especially when you see that the likes of McBurnie only cost £315k, Maupay was £1.6m, Che Adams £2m, Billy Sharp £650k and even our own Bradley Dack was only £750k. It's very hard to argue we did anything other than massively overspend on Brereton, almost to the point of total madness.

Mulgrew's contract isn't up until 2021 so unless somebody else picks up his wages we're stuck with him.

I won't be devastated if we keep Mulgrew, I'd only be concerned if he was a starter come August. He should definitely be a bench option, and perhaps even as a DM/CM rather than a CB. I wouldn't expect him to be able to play the whole match in midfield but I'm sure he could manage 10-15 minutes.

As soon as he was out of the team we noticeably improved and went on a run of good form. If people want to chalk that up to coincidence then OK, but it's a fact that we had much better results with Lenihan and Williams at the back. To say the rest of the team is the problem is burying your head in the sand and ignoring evidence, imo. Mulgrew has been a good servant for us, no question, but his time as a first teamer is over. If the midfielders contribute more to the goals scored column and the defence tightens up we will be fine without Mulgrew's set pieces. That's where we should be aiming.

Not sure about last season, but this season it wouldn't have made any difference as I think we only gained 2 or 3 points from the games he scored in.

I would rather we didn't focus too much on it in all honesty. 0 assists for Mulgrew this season so his set pieces are only useful if they go in. 10 goals sounds good but considering we picked up very few points in games Mulgrew scored in, I'd be happy to go without!

Big wage for a backup defender (who can't defend). Unfortunately I imagine that wage will be the reason we can't shift him.

An all English CL and Europa League final! UEFA will be devastated.

It applies to domestic leagues, yes, but the point of the CL is to bring the elite teams together to eliminate that kind of thing! If it's happening even in the most elite European competition then they've got it wrong. I do agree that straight knockout would be better, with less overall teams. Elite competition should mean elite competition, not try to include everybody so nobody feels left out and/or we can make more money out of TV deals.

For me it's more that the same teams always inevitably end up going through. There's an upset once every few years but whoever gets through instead always gets knocked out instantly in the next round. It's a bit like world cup/european cup qualifying, largely predictable and stale. Obviously the Nations League was introduced to try and combat that, but I'm not convinced it's the right idea and obviously wouldn't work for the CL anyway.

It's just a grand sounding title. It's all it's ever really been. It doesn't bother me. The only thing about the CL that bothers me is the fairly boring group stages. Find a way to make those more interesting and for me the format is all good.

I don't tend to start watching the CL until after the group stages are over. That part of the format doesn't really work for me, but the knockout stages are fine.

The name "Champions League" doesn't really make much sense nowadays when a significant portion of the participants are not champions of anything. It's just what the brand is now, though, and I can't see them changing it.

Yeah, I think football clubs cases are always judged in the context of the impact on the wider community, etc, should they disappear. That obviously gives chancers like Anderson and Bassini an opening as they know that even if things don't go to plan they can probably make their escape with relative ease.

That was Tadic I think. Pitiful attempt to keep the ball in the corner! I guess they aren't used to trying it?

Credit to Ajax for trying to play football right until the end. No shutting up shop or stifling the game, they went for it right until the end trying to counter and get the third goal. Whether it was the right thing to do, considering the result, is up for debate... but that was another great game.

Did @AllRoverAsia really go to bed?!

Absolutely incredible. What a ridiculous two nights of football. Wow.

#GiveThemAChance ! Hogan was on loan to Sheff Utd from Villa btw, I reckon he's on a pretty hefty wage there. Probably out of our price range.