Just to note I wasn't criticising Samuel, just saying either Mowbray is to blame or Graham/Nuttall aren't doing enough to warrant a first team spot.

The fact he starts ahead of Graham and Nuttall suggests either Mowbray is a poor judge of talent or the other two aren't working hard enough to earn a first team spot.

Yeah Conway is pretty much done, but doubt we could have dumped him even on a free considering his wage. Similar situation with Graham. Not too worried yet as I think we can come back into it, but we can't keep conceding two goals and expect to win, so that really needs to be their only goal of the afternoon.

I think this could be where our winning run comes to an end. Would take a point.

Unfortunately Lenihan starts this game off injured and is out for months, Wharton also starts off injured I think. Actually Rovers start off with a lot of injuries! Fortunately there's a lot of bargains to be had in the free transfer market that are capable of doing a job in League 1 My last FM was FM15, so I can't say whether 18 is a worthy upgrade for last year's game, but it's definitely added a lot of interesting features since 15. The Social Media feed is a nice touch, squad dynamics adds good depth, and the 3D match engine is much improved. As a heads up you might want to check eBay for this one. I got mine for £20 (strangely directly from Tamworth FC ) and it literally arrived within a day of ordering. Obviously if price doesn't bother you the fastest way is via Steam!

I've spent a few hours on FM18 so far and it's pretty good. Interface and general layout is very similar to FM15, which is nice. There was a period between FM07-FM11 where they were constantly changing the layout and it was frustrating to have to re-learn every year. Nice to see the interface remains in tact. UI is a bit more crowded but that's to be expected. This game really does reinforce that Rovers are in League 1. Some of our players are just terrible. After starting the game a few times with different tactics, I ended up dumping Graham and Conyway at the beginning of my final run. I couldn't get either of them to adapt properly to any of my tactics. Graham in particular was useless. Getting rid of those two on a free saves roughly £22k pw in wages which gives you some more room in the budget. Rovers start off with about £200k transfer budget and around £150k pw left to spend in wages, which is actually quite generous for League 1. For me, best players from the original squad have been Ward (!), Mulgrew (best player in the team by some distance), Evans, Bennett and Dack. Meanwhile Smallwood, Caddis, Williams, Conway, Graham and Samuel have all been disappointing. The rest I either haven't used or are good enough without being outstanding.

The controls on games for older hardware (particularly during the 8 and 16 bit eras) are very rigid. Because a true 3D landscape isn't being rendered on games like FIFA, your players are essentially locked to a grid and there is very specific collision detection. It's possible to adjust but probably not worth the effort. I loved FIFA 95, 96 and 97 when I was a kid (Mega Drive versions) but I didn't know any better. It's tough going back to those games now, they seem so much more primitive than the platformers, shooters and RPGs from that era.

Just bought FM18, having squeezed pretty much everything I could out of FM15.

Hah no, we would have just been told to get behind the lads, ffs.

https://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/sarcastic-cheers-aimed-at-steele.1399488/

Indies are doing well in the VR market at the moment as well. It's a good time to be an indie developer. Upped my SNES Classic games from 21 to 115. Should be enough to work through. The latest hacking software allows you to load an additional emulator called retroarch onto the console, so anything that doesn't play on the native Canoe emulator will play through retroarch instead. Adds compatibility for games like Terranigma and Star Ocean.

At the time the vast majority thought Murphy and Etuhu were great signings, the only issue with Etuhu (which was brought up by people at the time) was a four year contract for a 30 year old. As it turned out, we just loved handing out long contracts to poor players and then terminating them half way through. Why pay somebody under contract when you can pay them for literally nothing?

I don't think it was a massive issue. Our main problem was Shorts McDonut on the touchline. Regardless, Smallwood is giving us exactly what we wanted from the likes of Lowe. He'll need better players around him if we get promoted (very unlikely) but for this league he's a solid professional who knows exactly what he should and shouldn't do.

In fairness Lowe was captain in name only. It was obvious nobody else saw him that way. It was possibly a ploy from Venky's to try and inflate his value so that somebody would actually pay some money for him in January before his contract expired. If so, massive fail.

I think our problems ran a lot deeper than that, but Smallwood is a perfect addition for this league and a very astute signing by TM.

Loans are useful but they can't form the spine of your team. Fortunately the majority of our first eleven are all on permanent deals. Our loan players are generally either fringe players or youngsters wanting the opportunity to impress. In terms of basic squad building TM has done it the right way.

Couldn't disagree more! The 8-bit games, sure, but 16-bit stuff still holds up well for me. Final Fantasy 6 is timeless. Super Mario World is still a lot of fun, F-Zero too. Secret of Mana and Earthbound are only a step below FF6 on my list. I guess it depends on what games you enjoy though. If you're not hugely into RPGs or Platformers then I can see why the SNES mini might underwhelm a little. As for FIFA... I got 17 for free with my PS4 and it was fine. Not remotely interested in ultimate team and all that nonsense though. I just hope they've improved AI difficulty a little. On FIFA 17 "Legendary" was just tedious. The CPU never scored but half the time I didn't either... I had a ridiculous amount of 0-0's. Might get 18 when the price drops but realistically 17 will do as I don't have that much time for FIFA anyway.

Not "new games" as such but received the SNES mini today. A lot of games I haven't played on there like Earthbound and Secret of Mana, and it'll be nice to play a non-CD version of Final Fantasy 6 (I have it for PS1 but the loading times, particularly for battles, are horrible). Am sure it'll be hackable very soon too, so will be adding Turtles in Time, Chrono Trigger, etc...

Sunderland fans aren't hugely impressed with him

Okay. Back to lurking then.

The penalty issue in the Playoff semis is a weird one because he was always a really solid penalty taker for us. He seldom missed and always looked confident when he stepped up.

Similar to how Josh King and Mo Barrow weren't used as they should have been.

So far this campaign has been eerily familiar to a Bowyer campaign, just a league lower. An overall slow, plodding style, fast and creative players either left on the bench or shunted onto the wings, slow full backs and a general inability to impose ourselves on a game. We're good enough to hover around mid table but will never get into a playoff position.

Sunderland now in the bottom three. I had a feeling Grayson would struggle there.

Forgot this was happening, but nice to get a win anyway. Samuel finding the net can only be good for his confidence.