Oops.

It looks likely. Clearly I don't!

One of my Man Utd supporting mates started asking me about Buckley at the weekend, saying he'd heard a lot of top clubs were looking him, including United. It was news to me, but it going by your comments it sounds like there might be some merit to it.

In fairness Big Sam was very much into sports science, etc, and it always seems to work for him. I suppose the differences lies in understanding the data whilst actually being able to apply it in a real life situation. Not many are able to do it.

Make yourself a brew first, it's something like 30,000 words

@Bigdoggsteel really cool and lengthily feature on FF7 here: https://www.polygon.com/a/final-fantasy-7 - well worth a read!

I'm planning to get my dad a PS4 Pro for his birthday - partially as a thank you for helping me learn to drive at the ripe old age of 31. I might get the Red Dead 2 bundle package and cheekily ask if I can take RD2 not his kind of game really so I think it'd be better off with me!

Another defeat for Frank Lampard's Derby County.

Main issue for me is going to be the battle system. When turn based is done properly it's still great. I'm 99% certain this won't be turn based, which will definitely curtail my enjoyment. Part of the reason I loved Persona 5 was because of how well they updated and refined the turn based battle system. It might be out of date these days but it's still what I prefer.

I was really excited for the remake when it was announced in 2015, but yeah, now I'm kind of dreading it. All things considered I'm actually fine with the remastered PS4 version of FF7 + Advent Children. That'll do me. No confidence in Square-Enix doing the remake justice at this point, but I guess we'll see. They might surprise us.

Definitely get it, well worth the purchase. I think it's £12.99 at the moment but does fall under £10 every so often, so it might be worth waiting if you don't need it right now. Yeah you can turn off random battles, which is really useful at certain points. The other feature I really like is x3 speed, which makes battles, climbing ladders, running across the world map, etc a lot more manageable. There is also an option to restore your health and boost limit break at any point in battle, but it goes without saying that doing that pretty much removes any form of challenge. The only way you'd be able to die is if the enemy was able to one shot your entire team - possible at certain points (Midgar Zolom early on, for example) but generally unlikely.

Nowadays the PS4. It's got a lot of cool little optional features added in.

I've never really played tactical role playing games so it'll be interesting to get into. Right now I'm doing another play through of FF7, so it'll have to wait until that's done. No idea how many times I've gone through that game but it's at least once a year since 1998!

Yeah I finished it twice in fact, I've played nearly 200 hours on it overall. Up there with my favourite ever games, which I wasn't expecting when I bought it!

Aye, realistically if we're going to have a chance of promotion with Mowbray as manager than it's inevitable we will need better players across the pitch. The man himself has said so. The only other option is to get another manager, but that doesn't seem to be many people's preference, so we'll be waiting on Venky's benevolence to see whether we're in with a shot of a playoff place next season or not (no way we'll be good enough to go up automatically). Personally I'm expecting a relegation struggle next season, as I believe Dack will go and we will seriously struggle to replace his contributions. Graham and Mulgrew will be another year older, and both are already showing signs of being on the wane, although Mulgrew far more than DG. I would obviously love Tony to prove me wrong, but his recruitment over the past couple of years doesn't give me much cause for optimism.

As Merce mentioned a few pages back, at Mulgrew's age form and effectiveness can disintegrate almost overnight. Although in this instance I don't think that's the case, as he's been suspect most of the season. It's just getting even worse now. It's a bit of a catch-22 as whilst his defending is now a liability to us, his goals from set pieces are vital. He's only a couple of goals behind Graham/Dack. Hardly any of our other players score goals, so taking Mulgrew out of the team puts an even heavier burden on Graham/Dack to score in every match.

Yep, all except Rhodes sold by the time he was sacked though, with practically no reinvestment due to the transfer embargo. Bowyer obviously had a good squad at his disposal, but ultimately he was a reserve team manager thrown in at the deep end. We're lucky he was somewhat competent or even with that team we could have ended up in League 1 a lot sooner than we were. Steve Kean nearly relegated a team with the likes of Nelsen, Samba, Jermaine Jones, Santa Cruz, Dunn, etc. A team who had finished 10th only a season earlier. That's a very poor manager - and Bowyer wasn't that. He just wasn't good enough for what we needed either.

Considering all fees from sales under this lot disappear into a black hole never to be seen again I wouldn't be so sure of that!

Mulgrew's reaction after both goals worries me. Head down, moping, negative body language. Not how I would want my captain responding to conceding goals.

Unfortunately, I don't think many of us do anymore.

PS Store sale on at the moment. Ended up picking up Tales of Berseria, Tales of Zestiria and Disgaea 5. Not really heard of any of them before but they have good reviews, so will get around to them at some point in the distant future.

In a position only a couple of places lower than we are right now. I wanted Bowyer to leave by the end, but getting promoted out of League 1 doesn't make Mowbray better than Bowyer. We were never in L1 to begin with under GB and even when he was sacked we weren't in the relegation zone, we were 16th. I wouldn't say Mowbray has done anything yet to prove himself a better manager than Bowyer for Rovers. The only way he'll do that is by getting us into the playoffs. He's spent £7m on one striker and has the likes of Dack, Graham and Mulgrew on hand. He's not exactly working in poverty.

Probably unlikely at this point, a shame for them that they had such a terrible start to the season. Some great signings in January though - guess there was value in the market after all.

If he was a very poor manager we would have been in relegation trouble. He was if anything distinctly average, not good enough to get us into the playoffs but not bad enough to take us into serious trouble. If you take his lack of experience into account and the lack of support he had above him I think it's really harsh to shit all over his tenure. His best wasn't ultimately good enough but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. One thing I have noticed is that Mowbray gets cut a lot more slack than GB.

We rarely if ever come out fired up. I don't know why it always takes a half time team talk before our team wakes up. It's been the same since day one, Mowbray simply cannot prepare or motivate the team to be up for it from the first whistle. Our only hope is that the opposition are similarly blasé or overcautious and we cancel each other out (which leads to the all familiar 0-0 HT scoreline at Ewood). It's really weird that we only seem to be able to play properly for 45 minutes at a time. You can't even put that down to fitness as it's usually the second half where we're better, not the first. That's a bit disingenuous. We finished 8th and 9th in Bowyer's first full seasons, we aren't going to get anywhere close to that under Mowbray this season. We're looking at 18th or 19th which is lower than Bowyer even when he was sacked (we were 16th at the time, with a significantly worse team than Mowbray currently has).