RandoEFC

Bottas looking fast. Shame he starts from the back on Sunday. Vettel and Hamilton very close but the Ferrari looks to have better pace on the mediums. Can't believe F1 is back already .

US Open starts this weekend. David Ferrer in his last slam has drawn his friend Rafael Nadal in the first round. Djokovic and Federer on course to meet in the quarter finals. Murray starts against Duckworth, could face Del Potro in the third round if he makes it. Stan Wawrinka vs Grigor Dimitrov is the undoubted tie of the opening round. On the women's side, Venus and Serena Williams seeded 16 and 17 are on course to meet in the third round. Jo Konta pays for her poor form by being unseeded and drawing 6th seed Caroline Garcia in the first round.

Christian Horner said they wouldn't want Alonso anyway as he causes disruption to teams. Someone is lying. Maybe we are biased towards Horner because he got in there first. But you're right, Alonso has limited reason to lie as he's leaving F1 anyway unless he's just being a dick. If Red Bull did indeed approach him and get turned down they might want to lie about it for the sake of not looking like a team that can't attract top drivers. That said, I still find it very unlikely with the Red Bull Honda deal that they'd want Alonso in the car after the things he said about them in recent years. It's not good PR. Its also not how Red Bull usually go about their driver recruitment regardless of Honda. Finally, I don't think it likely that Alonso would have turned down one last try in a potentially competitive car if he was offered it, unless he is 200% sure that Red Bull will be hopeless with a Honda engine in the back. For all we know they're both lying. Or maybe a conversation was had about potentially doing a deal and now both sides are exaggerating their side of things. Maybe they both genuinely think that it was them who walked away from the negotiation. Maybe it was Verstappen who doesn't officially have a veto but probably does in reality who said no thanks. Maybe someone at Red Bull like Helmut Marko made contact with Alonso on an informal level and was rejected so that it never got as far as Horner, who is therefore telling the truth as far as he's concerned. Who knows.

I also find this hard to believe. It's like they've tried to think of the most horrific name possible. Racing Point Force India. Even Force Canada would have been better .

Or Alonso does one early .

I have every certainty that @SirBalon types these entire articles out himself rather than copying and pasting because he just has to get his 20 minute typing session fix.

"Martial has said he wants to stay and fight for his job" i.e. someone, probably Pogba, is guaranteeing Martial that the manager will be gone by this time next year so he'll have a fresh start with a new coach.

That was certainly the feeling of many at the time, and when Koeman left before the January transfer window, there was a reaction of well maybe that means Barkley could stay after all. Unsworth publicly said he'd try and convince him to stay but obviously he nor Allardyce were able to. It's unclear whether Koemans influence ended up having an impact or not. It's a theory that had Koemans managed him differently he'd have signed a new contract and never gone on the cheap in his last year. Another popular theory is that Barkley isn't the brightest spark and pretty much did what his agent wanted him to do which was to take the better pay packet at Chelsea and delay the transfer until January due to his injury to save Chelsea some money and allow Ross and the agent a bigger cut. I don't know which it is to be honest.

He came into the team as your typical prospect, fearless and dangerous but unreliable and inconsistent. His problem was that several managers tried to mould the rough diamond into a midfielder you can build a team around. Moyes' idea was to loan him out as soon as he made one costly mistake in the first team which ruined his confidence and he ended up not even getting a game for Sheffield Wednesday. Martinez' idea was to give Ross trust and freedom. This saw him flourish in an attacking role for one season when we were flying forward with Lukaku, Deulofeu, Baines and Coleman but then when the team struggled in the next two years he didn't take responsibility and instead went missing most of the time and showed no ability to take a game by the scruff of the neck which was what we needed from him and by this time he's edging toward his mid 20s and still playing a bit like the new kid on the block. Koeman tried to turn Ross from the boy into the man with a bit of tough love. It sort of worked, he became more consistent and made less mistakes, but his attacking output was also far less, he made fewer things happen, while the likes of Alli, Loftus-Cheek and Oxlade-Chamberlain have usurped him in the England manager's thinking. You can make excuses for Barkley in that he's had so many different managers, had a major injury when he was just breaking onto the scene which saw him miss a year, and another write off season last year at a really costly point in his career. However, for a player who broke into our first team squad about six years ago, he just hasn't developed enough. When he was 18 he was a raw talent with huge potential that demonstrated poor decision making and inconsistent output on the pitch. As far as I can see, now, at nearly 25, he's a raw talent who makes poor decisions on the pitch and generally gets accused of having poor football intelligence. For me a really good player makes more progress than that and he's the type of player who will continue to tread water unless he hits the jackpot with a manager that can strike the right chord with him in a way that no previous manager has. My guess is that Barkley will continue to play 'not bad' for Chelsea and the fans will continue to give him time until they suffer a few more difficult results, realise he isn't that much of a game changer to be playing for a top six club that wants to challenge for major honours and identify that spot in the team as an area in which they need more quality. Sarri is meant to be a top class coach though so maybe he's the man to change the story.

To be fair I can't remember which chance it was, possibly the Iwobi goal, but it was Kante who should have been tracking the run and he just let the Arsenal player drift past him unchallenged. I think Chelsea were confused as a unit how to deal with Arsenal for that patch of the game. I wasn't analysing as closely as you guys will have and I certainly haven't watched the game twice but Arsenal seemed to be getting to the byline with consummate ease every time they came forward and if you allow a team to do that and pull the ball back there will always be danger regardless of how well your midfielders track the runners. A good pull back can just as easily go in off a defender as an attacker. For me that points to the defensive frailties of the full backs which is not surprising for Alonso but pretty surprising for Azpilicueta.

Still got two weeks off over here .

I think Idris Elba would make a good Bond personally. I don't see why it has to be an issue of skin colour at all. That shouldn't be a factor, and that includes that there shouldn't be a situation where you favour a black guy to play the role just for the sake of breaking new ground.

Wonder which team it is. It's not going to be Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, Toro Rosso or Renault. Could it be Williams? Maybe. McLaren? Doubtful but possible. Haas? He certainly fits their profile of past driver signings. Force India? Highly doubt it. Sauber? Doubt it again.

Ah yes because Red Bull have always had such great team harmony over the years. Vettel and Webber, Multi 21, Vettel being driven out by Ricciardo, Webber retiring without telling the team, Helmut Marko overseeing Kvyats funeral at the earliest possible opportunity and it's all been sunshine and roses between Max and Daniel . Alonso is right in his criticisms of the sport but it's a huge exaggeration to say you can predict the top 15. Perhaps he should put his money where his mouth is and join our prediction league? I'm very fond of the guy but his team radio messages often hang very close to the line of going from "driven natural winner" to "crybaby who feels sorry for himself". I hope he doesn't go on like this for the next few months and end up looking bitter on his way out of the sport.

I always think this thread title belongs in the FM forum.

Sainz to McLaren has been touted for a while. If it's to be Stroll and Perez at Force India that leaves a potential spot at Williams for Ocon, especially as he's still in the Mercedes stable and they have a relationship with Williams. Otherwise I can't see why Haas wouldn't want to replace Grosjean with Ocon.

Vettel Maldonado Hamilton Alonso

A shame though it's been inevitable for a while now that he'll end his career with just two world championships. It's amazing that he became the youngest ever world champion in 2005 and backed it up with a second title the following year, and now retires after 12 more years in the sport where he has generally been considered the most complete driver in the sport, without adding to his totals. He, along with Vettel and Hamilton are the greats of the post-Schumacher era. Generally I would have put him ahead of the other two but it's become very, very close. Still, I'd put him slightly ahead of the other two at this stage so it's a bit of a shame that Seb and Lewis will get remembered (rightly) in the Prost, Senna, Schumacher, Fangio tier of F1 champions while Alonso will leave with two titles and end up on a par with Fittipaldi, Hakkinen as far as the history books are concerned when really he's a cut above. I got into F1 properly in 2008 and I wasn't his biggest fan at the time but the way he drove to win the Singapore and Japan Grands Prix and just came alive at the end of that year showed me that he was really the boss while Hamilton and Massa were busy trying to hand the championship to each other and Kimi was nowhere to be seen. Since then it's just been near miss after near miss and bad decisions with awful timing. He's cursed every team he's joined. He was superb though in 2010 when he got within a race of winning the title when Red Bull had the dominant car, he won the 2011 British GP which is one of the two races I've been able to attend live personally, and he was the best driver again in 2012 when the Ferrari was an absolute dog but he pulled out two wins in particular in the rain at Malaysia and from about 12th on the grid in Valencia where he just bitch slapped his way through the field and got a bit of luck with Vettel breaking down. At McLaren we've not seen the best of him but he has become a lot more likeable. Too bad things end this way but a great driver and I'll miss him.

I can accept the red and I don't really care whether it's 1 game or 3 because Jagielka is effectively our fifth choice centre back now, but I don't think anyone can deny that it was an honest attempt to get the ball that ended up with an unfortunate collision. That shouldn't be a three match ban when you get players who deliberately cheat be handling the ball off the line or rugby tackling a player through on goal who just get a one game ban. For me, yes the tackle has ended up with studs in an opponent's ankle, but almost any slide tackle with a certain amount of misfortune can end up that way. Punishments should be doled out based on the intention of the player or how clumsy and dangerous their tackle was (e.g. you may go in two footed with no intention of harming someone but it's obviously not safe), rather than how the follow through contact happens to be. Beyond that, I found it laughable how many people accused him of excessive force or going over the ball. It's frightening how many 'experts' can watch that number of replays which all show that at no point during the challenge, was Jagielka's boot above the top of the ball or even close to it. For me it was a technically very good tackle under the circumstances. Both players are unlucky to have collided that way at the end of it. It comes back to the rules for me. The game has changed and the rules need to change with it. They need to find a way to allow the rules to be open to interpretation but also be consistent in their application. A very easy solution would be for an independent panel to meet after a weekend and decide whether a player should get a 1 match ban or 3 match ban, or whether the red card should be downgraded to a yellow card. One current referee, one former referee, one former player and one FA official or something. Probably far too sensible for football though.

What's a nuzlocke?

This is the Tennis thread mate. Think this is what you're looking for: https://talkfootball365.com/topic/20-formula-one/

How bloody often is he on pain pills then?