Fierce_LiNk

I've tried to do my best with following all of the games, due to the timings of the games. We managed to put the England vs. USA game on in our Sports Hall at work for the kids to watch, which was fantastic. Brilliant atmosphere. Mammoth performance from Itoje today, especially in the first half. I originally thought that New Zealand may have a bit too much, but England's passing game (first half especially) was too good. I thought seeing those two tries being ruled out might come back to haunt the side, but luckily that proved to not be the case. Tomorrow's game will be a close one. I'm part English and part Welsh, so I would love an England/Wales final! Hats off to Japan for running a tournament like this and for doing it during such difficult circumstances. It says a lot about their culture and their country. Brilliant Rugby side, too. Gutted they didn't manage to make it through for another round, but what a run that they were on. Some great performances along the way and to do it against such personal adversity. Remarkable.

Unfortunately, that's not us! We are both on the sofa in wet and windy Bournemouth. Haven't moved off the sofa after watching the Rugby earlier today!

Just caught the highlights for the Southampton game against Leicester. Losing a player that early on is tough, but Leicester were all over the Saints and Southampton were so, so poor defensively. It really was like watching two sides play in different leagues, or even a friendly between an A and a B team. Borderline training game. 9-0 against anyone in the Premier League, especially away...hell of a result. Leicester look to have all of the right parts to do well this season. For them, it'll be down to how hard they can keep playing for the entirety of the season and how lucky/unlucky they get with injuries. Top 6 finish is a big possibility, perhaps even higher.

I'm all for backwards compatibility. Purely for convenience. It would be awesome if you could jump from something like Horizon: Zero Dawn to something earlier like one of the older MGS games, all on the same system. Having to switch out hardware and rummage through cupboards for discs doesn't appeal to me. But, I don't want to have to go through the issue of rebuying or repurchasing my old games over and over again. I don't want to have to buy a whole load of PS3 games on the PS5, and then find that I have to do it all again when the next Playstation comes around, anyway. I'm expecting there to be some sort of magic with the account system, where you can purchase an old game once and then you're sorted for future systems. How that works on a hardware level, I don't quite know. I'm keen to move away from discs and go to digital only. I half expect this to make things like backwards compatibility easier, in some way. Maybe. I'm not technical enough to know it offhand.

Why is there the assumption that Brexit will suddenly end on 31st October? This is realistically only stage 1. There will be many more discussions to be had after this around future trading arrangements and so forth. This is meant to be the easy bit. If you're suffering from Brexit fatigue and are tired of the mess that has already been made, then I'm afraid that I have some bad news. Brexit will dominate at least the next 5 years of news, probably more so. When you factor in that we're already 3 years in, that will bring it close to (if not) a decade.

That's amazing. Horrifically brilliant. It's like something you'd find in a Channel 4 sitcom. One of our pupils called the lockdown procedure "murder drill".

Thoughts on the Johnson deal? I'm expecting it to go through, either today or early next week.

I'll most likely wait about a year or so into the Playstation 5 generation before diving in when a good deal pops up. I bought a PS4 about a year in and it was that sweet point where it was still very new and exciting, the launch games had come and gone and we were just starting to see the next wave, and the deal was just at the right point where it felt like a bargain given that point in time and how early on into that generation we were. Not very excited just yet because I'm still satisfied with what is currently available and there are still several games that I'm looking forward to.

Saw Joker on Sunday evening. It was...fucking amazing. Came out of the cinema and wanted to go back in to watch it all over again.

The perfect word to describe the football that Manchester United play hasn't been invented yet. I think if it were to be a sound, it would be meeeehhhhhbluuuurrrggghhhhhthatwasshiiiit. Football is a game and we are horrid at playing that game.

See you later, everyone. I'm going into hibernation until February!

@Blade, well done on Sheffield United's success, so far. I have to say that the standard of football played by the promoted teams has been good. Norwich look well coached, too. We've got West Ham away today and I honestly think we'll do well to get anything from it. The trouble is that I just can't see where the goals are going to come from, aside from Dan James and Rashford capitalising on a mistake or some sort of solo effort. After seeing City destroy Watford yesterday, we are so far away from being to put in a performance like that or create as many chances as they do. 1-1 or 0-0 today.

This is an absolute shitshow and a waste of about 4 years. There are STILL no credible plans for leaving. The original leave date was the end of March, yet there are still no processes in place now. There's still nothing on the Irish border for example. It is the duty of our own government to actually show something credible with how "Leaving can work" and not to just point fingers to blame the other side. I have not seen anything tangible to suggest that the country will be in a superior position once we leave the EU compared to staying in it. Where's the evidence that this is in our best interests? I find it slightly/very amusing that we seemingly want to give more power to our Government or "take back control" of this and that, yet the people that continuously get into power don't actually have a fucking clue what to do with it. Some of the gaffes that have been made over the last few years and the lack of expertise shown by our officials is downright poor. Is this really the best our country can muster or do? I fully expect Boris Johnson to just attempt to do whatever he wants, whether he succeeds or fails. The rules don't apply to him. It is also rather sickening how he is "lovingly" referred to by some as "Boris" in single name only, as if he is some cuddly pet or loveable rogue or harmless friend of the family. That could not be any further from the truth. This man will lie and cheat to get his own way.

I was surprised at the final score. I noticed that Chelsea were 2-0 up and thought that they were good for a win. United were pretty bleeeeeeh against Southampton, even when they were down to 10 men. We don't seem to be able to create chances that easily and our set pieces and crossing were just as woeful as last week. A pretty disappointing performance.

It looks awful, in my opinion. Genisys was absolutely rubbish and probably one of the worst films that I've seen in the cinema. I'm not getting a great vibe from what I've seen of Dark Fate either. It doesn't look like bucking the trend of shit Terminator films. We're already in negative equity with the ratio of bad Terminator films outweighing the amount of good Terminator movies.

I've followed the Bury situation on the news and it's simply awful hearing the stories from all of the local fans and residents who live close to the ground. Disgraceful mismanagement by the owners. The rules for those who run clubs needs to be so much more stringent than they currently are, because this sort of situation should have been avoided. It must have been preventable on some level. It looks like Bolton may be getting out their situation, so that's good to hear @Dog-amoto. But, I think we'll hear more and more stories in the next 10 years of this happening to other clubs.

The album went live on Spotify at around midnight, so I've listened to it once already. First impressions are that it's gooooooood.

There has to be more to it than that, surely?! That fine is pathetic. That's not a deterrent or a punishment.

I'd love to know what the logic is behind City getting such a pitiful fine compared to Chelsea's ban. Did Chelsea break this law repeatedly? That must be the only difference, surely.

I think we'll have an alright season, overall. I've predicted that we will finish fifth, although I don't think we'll be far from a top four place. Having said that, if we can get Martial and Rashford upping their goal tallies, we might sneak fourth.

Delighted with that performance! Martial and Rashford scoring, Pogba assisting, Maguire and Wan-Bissaka looking great in defence on their debuts, James coming on and scoring...and a clean sheet! Couldn't really have asked for any more than that. I want us to stick with this back four for every game.

That's pretty cool. Good going, @Goafer! I grew up in a Muslim household and so the only meat we ever ate had to be Halal meat. It's something that I've carried on with into adult life, probably mostly out of habit rather than anything else. When going out for a meal with friends, I would usually go for the vegetarian or fish option as a lot of places didn't do Halal meat. These days, I would still most likely prefer to go for the veggie option, or occasionally fish. Every time we go out for a burger, I go for the veggie option and it's been quite interesting to see how the vegetarian choices have improved considerably since I was a kid. It used to be that you only had one or two options and the quality of those options was often quite poor or inferior to what else was on the menu. The choice that there is these days is far superior and vast to what I had growing up. I would highly recommend the falafel burger if you ever go to Gourmet Burger Kitchen. My favourite all-time burger and it's just absolutely delicious. Falafel burgers in general are the absolute business. I eat a fair bit of chicken for the protein, but I rarely eat lamb or beef. I'm very interested in hearing about these synthetic meats that are in development as I think that could be a great alternate choice for the future. Even if a person doesn't go fully vegetarian 100% of the time, simply cutting down is a good thing. There's the moral aspect of animals being killed for food, but also I think society is becoming more aware of the environmental impact of having a meat-based diet. It's an interesting time that we live in.

@Eenuh also had him in as her keeper. She let out a huge "fuuuuuuck" when I told her that he was giving off injured. Probably will be the most swapped player this weekend. Have you got a fantasy team, brah? Good luck for the season! Although, as I've been down here in Bournemouth for the last decade, I do hope that you get smashed this afternoon. I'm excited at having Maguire in our side. He automatically becomes our best centre back and I think he'll be a good presence to have at the club. Seems like a nice guy, too. We need more likeable players at the club.

So, I recently bought the TC Electronic Hall of Fame 2 reverb pedal. I've basically got a list of pedals that I'm interested in, and this one just about won out ahead of the Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi fuzz pedal and also the Ibanez Tubescreamer TS-9. I was leaning towards getting a reverb pedal as I want to start doing some post-rock stuff and this seemed to be the most natural choice to make. The pedal arrived the day before yesterday and I managed to put time aside to give it a whirl. All I have to say is that I'm in LOVE with it already. It's soooooo good. I particularly like the church and shimmer settings as you just get this wide and deep sound that makes the space that you're playing in seem absolutely huge. The finish on the pedal itself is absolutely gorgeous and it just looks stunning straight out of the box. The "mash" button is quite interesting, which isn't something that I knew too much about before buying the pedal. You hit the button to turn it on or off, but by holding the button down when it is on, it almost turns into an expression pedal, meaning that you have a bit more control of how much reverb you're getting out of it. It's similar-ish to the analogue shoulder buttons on a control pad. The mash light that appears right next to the decay knob tell you how hard you're "mashing" the stomp button down, e.g. if you don't touch the pedal, the light is off. If you mash down a little, you get a weaker yellow light. Mashing down harder gives you a deeper yellow light. This is all as well as a red light which is on the bigger mash button itself to indicate whether it's on or off. All in all, I absolutely adore this already. I had so much fun with this yesterday just mucking around and I can tell that there's so much depth within this pedal waiting to be unlocked. Would highly recommend.

We've got 8 teams registered for Fantasy Football now. Let's have some more! I'm a bit mixed about Man United going into this new season. One area that I am really happy about is the defence. We look a lot more secure there with Maguire and Wan-Bissaka. I'd love to see a consistent back four of Shaw, Lindelöf, Maguire and Wan-Bissaka, with De Gea in goal. However, it's when you look further ahead that we look so light in midfield and up front. We're badly missing a quality attack and at least 1 central midfielder. I think we'll fall just short this season due to these deficiencies. Maybe only a few points missing out on top 4, but I don't think we quite have enough to secure top 4, let alone challenge for the title. Another worry is that Rashford and Martial are so inconsistent. Asking them to provide most of our goals is a huge risk, imo.