RandoEFC

Sounds like your typical shy, retiring South American attacker.

They were great at the showpiece episodes and the major battles but when it came to the satisfying conclusion for the characters they didn't have the goods. I don't have that much sympathy with them because the budget they were given for Battle of the Bastards, The Long Night, The Bells should have led to movie-like production values. Hardhome in season five was still the best episode of all for me. Did not see that coming at all and they deserve credit for that one as it wasn't in the books, at least not 'on-screen'. The season six finale was also a good one.

They're always filling time. The thing is with the Walking Dead is that it's based on a comic where they can get away with ignoring significant characters for a long time because it's a comic book. In television you can't go several episodes without significant screen time for Michonne, Daryl, Negan etc. because they're the leading actors. Therefore you get the comic book which makes sense because it follows 2 or 3 plot threads at a time and in the TV show they can do the 2 or 3 plot threads but then have to add loads of filler and sub-plots to give screen time to the major characters who aren't involved in the main plot. See the Ezekiel movie theatre episode last year. Season 9 was really good by the end. We didn't have the slow start last year because they put Rick's final episode around episode 5. I imagine there will be a significant climax on episode 8 as usual although I don't think it will be the complete ending of the current plot thread. They appear to be following Negan's comic book storyline though. And if you look at the teaser from next week's episode you will see a scene with Eugene that supports your theory.

Gave my ankle a good rattling playing football on Saturday. Still not got full flexibility back in it so safe to say I'll be giving this weekend a miss. Got that weird bruising around the bottom of my foot even though it doesn't hurt there.

I seriously worry about Arsenal. Having seen Xhaka's kind of apology and had his side of things, and read and heard a lot about it in the last few days. I think this is an absolute howler of a decision to be honest and a massive sign of weakness from Emery. Arsenal aren't the only club but they are the worst for it, their fanbase is really doing them damage. Platforms like Arsenal Fan TV have been criticised before in these parts for almost wanting their team to do badly because it gets them extra hits and views. There's a culture there where "a few idiots but every club has them" is somehow more legitimised at Arsenal. It feels like there's an element of people deliberately stirring up ill feeling amongst the fans which is causing a rift between them and the club itself. You should never boo off your own players and certainly not the captain. Was his attitude shit? Was he not trying? Or did he just have a bit of a shit game? I genuinely don't know so correct me if I'm wrong but he probably was committed, just not performing. You can't go booing your own players mid-game unless they've done something properly disgraceful. Regardless of the circumstances, even if Xhaka did deserve to be booed off on some level, what have Arsenal fans achieved here? All they've done is managed to make their club look stupid, provoked a reaction from one of their own players which has undermined the manager, attracted national attention and forced the club to change their captain mid season. I doubt we'll see Xhaka in an Arsenal shirt any time soon now either so you can add alienating a first team player to the list too, and probably discouraging a bunch of other players from wanting to play for them too, so I hope they're happy with themselves and what they're doing for their club. Emery at fault too for not backing himself or his players on this one. It's when he gets sacked now, not if.

A very special effort here from Paul Joyce. The Times publish an article on how Richarlison going down easily is punishing Everton as he isn't getting decisions when he is actually fouled. I don't deny that Richarlison goes down easily and it pisses me off but the picture captioning the article has widely been agreed as a penalty by most experts, when he was brought down by Sanchez in the penalty area. Like I say, Richarlison spends far too much unnecessary time on the floor, but that doesn't mean when he doesn't get decisions, it's his fault. Especially now that we have video replays, the officials making correct decisions is the responsibility of, and this will blow your mind, the officials, not Richarlison or any other player. It isn't his fault that Sanchez wasn't penalised for this foul or that Sanchez again wasn't sent off for bringing him down as the last man in injury time, though in that instance you could argue Richarlison had knocked the ball too far to get it back. It's also a cracking effort from Joyce to print an article criticising an Everton player for diving at his team's expense, when the other team he is responsible for covering literally had a player booked for simulation this weekend.

It's a relief. Sounds like his ankle took the brunt of the damage, which is not as bad as if the break had occurred in his lower leg like Oviedo, Coleman, McCarthy all had. I'm glad he will make a full recovery. We can't take it for granted that he'll be the player he used to be though. This is a guy who openly admits he struggled with mental health issues at Barcelona so it's easy to see him taking some more time to feel comfortable fully committing to every sprint and tackle when he's back on the pitch. This also isn't a given though, he could be no different to any other player in that sense.

How are the government allowed to just refuse to publish this report about Russia's involvement in Brexit until after the election? If this was Labour the media would be absolutely all over it (rightly) calling them corrupt and hiding it from the public, but because it's the Tories it's just getting vague lip service from a few outlets. Dominic Grieve should just come out and tell everyone what it says. Appalling.

Did they actually get sacked? It was reported that they weren't doing it anymore but I didn't see any confirmation that it was a sacking.

Been average this season and slows down the attack too much when he gets the ball in the number 10 role. He is more than capable of playing a bit deeper though and I'd like to see it. I think Silva is worried about his mobility in a more box-to-box role.

That leaves us with Schneiderlin, Delph, Davies and Sigurdsson as our possible midfielders. Iwobi too if you count the number 10 role. The thought of Schneiderlin and Delph playing in the same midfield is AIDs. I'd like us to give Sigurdsson, Delph and Davies a run as a midfield three. Davies is finally becoming a man with his last few performances, thought he stood out today.

I'm not saying that referees should get everything right all the time and I never have but I don't see how you can defend what we've seen from VAR this season. I've defended it from very early on against waves of criticism and I do believe the technology has a place in the game, and been adamant that they'll improve it, and that it will get smoother, but at the moment, if they are making changes, they aren't making the right ones because it's causing more and more issues every week. There has always been a lack of communication between the officials and the fans which causes issues, and again in this case, if they're making tweaks to VAR they should make that information accessible to those who are interested. It would create an awful lot more public sympathy if they communicated more. They are starting to clarify after matches why some decisions have been made which is a start, but about that... Today's excuse for not giving a penalty on the Alli handball is that both players were under pressure because they were challenging for an aerial ball so it doesn't count as a deliberate handball. If that's the rule then fine, but it just feels like they make it up as they go along. Is that a rule you've heard before because I haven't? If that was given then they'd use another rule to back up the referee, "his arm was in an unnatural position" would have been the line. If those are both actually in the rulebook then which one takes precedence? I honestly have no idea, but it seems like the referees don't either. Aside from the consistency of decisions, it took over three minutes for them to decide whether it's a penalty or not. How does it take 3 minutes? Again, they said that it wasn't given because he was challenging for an aerial ball and the ball hit his hand. I don't think you need 3 minutes and 15 replays to spot that the ball hit his hand and he was challenging for it in the air, I could have spotted that for you in 5 seconds. I get that a couple of extra angles is useful for them in case another angle shows he's looking at the ball so it was intentional or something but 15 replays is ridiculous, there's a football match going on, get on with it. The easy solution is the one that many people have already noted and it's the obvious one, if it takes that long to decide, then it isn't clear and obvious is it. As for the teacher comparison, I could get very wound up about this but suffice to say I strongly disagree. You won't find me telling a referee how to do their job for one thing, here I'm only suggesting issues with VAR. Teachers get criticised by people who don't actually have any idea what they do at work whereas what referees do we can all see. Most people respect that they will make human mistakes like any person in any job. The fact that decisions are more inconsistent and sporadic than ever with the benefit of endless replays that should mostly eliminate that human error is a different thing to complain about.

The technology is very good and necessary in the long run. The implementation is not so good. Across various competitions VAR has been a very mixed bag but the Premier League iteration of it has been ridiculous. I've posted at length about the fact that silly rules and the Premier League trying to be too clever with VAR are the major issues and I can't be bothered repeating myself. It's getting so bad though that they should genuinely shelf it for the rest of the season and come back with a competent version of it in August. They won't though because of this hypersensitive culture that exists around referees and officials ever admitting mistakes in English football. They will just stubbornly continue with it telling us that it's working fine and we'll get used to it instead of actually reacting to the feedback they're getting on it and using constructive criticism to make it better. I wish I was surprised that the Premier League has made such a bad hash of things when they've invested the most money and time of anyone into launching their version of VAR but it's actually the most Premier League thing ever that it's been a disaster.

I was going to start a separate thread for the election. I think it would be better that way as well.

I've played for a few weeks now. The gameplay is decent for me to be fair, tackling and defending much improved for the most part. You can attack with more variety than spamming through balls to Rashford, Jesus, Martial, Sane, Zaha up front. The heading nerf is a big negative plus the amount of patches that they keep saying it's now less likely when you tackle someone they'll inexplicably be able to carry on with the ball while the player that tackled them is the one who loses their balance more, annoys me a lot.

Thought episode 4 was still decent, waiting for this season to really kick off to be honest, a lot of slow build up so far.

If they put their deal against Remain in a referendum and the people choose Remain then why should they take Brexit off the table?

It doesn't need to be a coalition, Libs and Labour just need to stop attacking each other in the news and focus on the Tories. Especially if Farage steps aside for the Conservatives which is starting to look possible.

Disgraceful that that's actually allowed to go to print in this day and age.

Didn't Farage say that he'd rather Remain than accept Johnson's deal? I think a lot of people are assuming that Farage will step aside for the Conservatives but I'm sure he'll want something from Johnson in return. It's a hell of a leap for Farage to go from being dead set against Johnson's version of Brexit to stepping aside to help his party gain a majority so that they can get Johnson's Brexit through parliament.

@SirBalon James O'Brien makes some good points sometimes and is good at making ill-informed know it alls look stupid but you don't half rim the bloke on here .

Have there been any "magical money trees" headlines in response to the Tories planning to open more schools, hospitals and employ more police yet? Lefty media . The Guardian fair enough but the rest have been running a coordinated smear campaign against Corbyn for about 4 years.

At the moment we look best with Iwobi at #10. Sigurdsson is a bit off colour and if he's not contributing many goals it becomes harder to ignore how much he sometimes slows the play down when we go forward.

Cannabis asked his account to be deleted for some reason so you can all just gang up on me now. @SirBalon is active again now but spends all of his time posting Remain propaganda in the Brexit thread if you need to find him.

The Tories crying now that it would take 6 months administratively to put in place the 16/17 year old vote amendment. This is the party that wanted to get the entire withdrawal agreement bill through the house in 3 days.