charlierc

Confirmed last night that Spurs & Conte have parted ways. Perhaps the only surprise is that it took over a week of deliberations to come to that conclusion after his rant at Southampton after their last game. Can't say I blame Conte either really - I got a vibe of that rant being an expression of burnout, seeing as the mood with their suspect form is probably not helped by missing a fair bit of time after gallbladder surgery and losing 3 close friends in quick succession. If Spurs can get Nagelsmann after he was unexpectedly booted out of Bayern last week, that would be quite the hire. Not that I'm sure what it makes for this season tbf. It's an interesting top 4 fight now with Spurs having had late-season managerial dysfunction like when they dumped Mourinho in the lockdown season, Newcastle have games in hand but lots of injuries in attack and Liverpool's defence/midfield seems prone to poor displays.

Tbf I mainly remember that for seeing a clip of Alex Turner and Miles Kane being in the crowd for The Strokes merrily singing and dancing along. As they do aha. I genuinely wasn't aware tix were only available at that price point. Blimey.

On top of previously announced UK dates in Brighton, Bristol, Edinburgh Leeds and Liverpool is this one. EDIT: Just noted Somerset House announced a load of other things yesterday to go with Interpol

I think Crystal Palace fans have a right to question if this is really a positive step, given they seemed happy to move on from him at the end of 2020/21. I know Vieira was in poor form and that if you choose to sack a manager with 10 games or so remaining, you can be at the mercy of what's available (although ironically Rafa Benitez was someone we turned to at this point in 2016 and is available after the misfire at Everton). That and tbf the fact he just didn't fit Watford in their survival hopes at all didn't help. It may well be that such a chaotic relegation battle where Palace still have to play all of the teams below them might be a saving grace as there's a ton of opportunities to get decisive points.

It's equally bizarre as that was absolutely handball. Silva can be a hyper-critical one - I recall him being outright furious with the refs as Everton manager a lot, not least a game at Newcastle I was at 4 years ago (admittedly one where Newcastle's winning goal was offside, but then Everton were lucky not to have a player or two sent off). Mitrovic absolutely has no excuse. I know there's arguments over Bruno Fernandes shoving the lino during Man United's demolition at Anfield the other week, but that's its own questionable case. His was with a very aggressive intent.

This was BST Hyde Park 2015, aye? I've still not seen Beck. Really wanna tick that off soon. Plus PSB sounds dope as a support too. I did enjoy APE 2019 with Interpol and Courtney Barnett, although would've preferred it without the oddly quiet sound, but I guess I'm yet to be as in love with their APE line-up this time. Either that or maybe I don't know enough Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

I genuinely wasn't aware Twin Atlantic were still a thing until I saw they'd got the gig opening for Muse in Glasgow due to Royal Blood being busy at Glastonbury. Been a while since I saw them opening for Kings of Leon and Haim at the Milton Keynes Bowl.

The FA might have noticed I'm not sure what they were hoping to achieve either. That was definitely a penalty and red card against Willian, and they seemed to react by going nuclear. To say nothing as well of this being a weekend where Wolves' manager claimed there's a reffing conspiracy against them, which is one way to react to recent disappointments.

Since the loss to Sheffield United in the FA Cup at the start of the month, it's felt like the interest in continuing a contract due to expire at the end of this season had dwindled. Now it just reads like Conte wants to be fired.

Hmmm... Verstappen having a driveshaft failure in qualifying when pole seemed guaranteed to be his does at least make tomorrow slightly more interesting. Could well end up being like Spa last year when he won from P14, mind. As long as the first few laps are predictable and something else doesn't break.

Depth is an issue coming up imo and is now getting a little worse given top scorer Almiron will be out for six weeks with a thigh injury, Saint-Maximin had to be taken off at half-time with hamstring damage, Wilson wasn't fit enough to come off the bench and Gordon has some kind of unspecified problem. Joelinton returning from a ban will help a little, but it is the case that we're going up against teams with more problem solvers in reserve. Last night was one of those things - Anderson's irritatingly disallowed goal aside, we seemed to need a lot to break down what was at times a fairly disorganised Forest backline. At this stage of the season, I'll happily take the win. Not every game is going to be like when we put 5 past Brentford and 4 past Villa back in October I guess. Still 12 games to go tbf. Plenty of twists yet. Spurs at home imo is the one that could be pivotal, although be nice to get something off Man Utd as well. But that's a post-internationals problem.

So Antonio Conte's reaction to Spurs blowing a 3-1 lead to draw at Southampton was quite something, first saying his players don't play as a team, then effectively saying Daniel Levy is a specialist in failure. Though it almost feels like a Spurs thing to do that he might still be about for their next PL game in 2 weeks time.

On the basis of last night, there's cause for optimism and pessimism for whether I think Newcastle can make top 4. We had the drive to get the win and Isak seems to have now got to grips with the league and teammates, but with Almiron and Gordon injured, our lack of depth up top is a worry, as is the fact it took an injury time handball to break down a flimsy Forest defence. Still, 2 wins in 2 gets our arses back in gear. It genuinely puzzled me as to why Anderson's goal was disallowed last night. I accept Longstaff was offside but the ball was played by one Forest defender off another without touching Longstaff. It just seems as though the definition of interference is one that refs seem to inconsistently give on, not least after Rashford in the Manchester Derby seemed to indicate more of lenience on that one. Guess we won so I'm less annoyed about it.

Yesterday morning they announced Patrick Vieira was being binned off after the Brighton loss made it 12 games in a row without a win. I'm not really sure what I make of the thing tbh. There's an argument that 12 games without winning, a dreadful performance at Aston Villa with zero shots on target and boardroom tension between manager and board are the kind of thing that don't help, but equally, there's 2/3 games where they nearly won and they had the misfortune of playing a fixture list composed exclusively of teams above them in the table. An early rumour is they're bringing back Roy Hodgson, which feels like a bit of a step backwards tbh.

I saw people in the APE thread saying Haim wouldn't sell that well, but in comparison to this...

One of AC Milan, Inter Milan, Napoli or Benfica is in the final. That's quite a cool combo tbf, not least given that Napoli and Benfica have both been in brilliant domestic form.

Watched the first episode, found it good, then forgot to get around to the next ones. Not a slight on it though as this has been something I've unwittingly done a lot of late.

A let's play of Last of Us 2 that I've referred to clocks in at 20 hours, so condensing that into a 9 hour flow aping series 1 of the TV show would be a lot. My experience was longer but obviously that's through repeatedly dying and having to repeat certain levels, which if nothing else is something that won't be true for the TV version. In saying that, the showrunners have said they will be splitting the story of TLOU 2 into two separate TV series, which might be the best approach given how much Part II had and indeed if they want to explore the lore behind Seattle.

It's fascinating to see the TV review discourse mimicking that of the gut-punch ending to Last of Us when it first came out 10 years ago, and whether it was right to go all John Wick at the end. Makes one wonder how the Internet is going to react when the various kind of acts committed in part 2 come along.

While true, Muse sold 70k+ tickets when they played London Stadium in 2019. Could well be that the expense of the thing is counting against it when we have the ol' cost-of-living crisis and the show is inconvenient for London-based types.

That MCR gig was a Thursday but yeah, kinda the same principle. Can guess that was similarly messy. MK does tend to get congested for Bowl shows in particular - after Foo Fighters in 2011, getting home was quite chaotic and busy.

Crystal Palace going down is an odd one given that in the first half of the season, it seemed as though they'd successfully absorbed the loss of Gallagher back to Chelsea, and since the World Cup, they've just collapsed. Most of their games are just one goal losses or a bounce against them - not least in conceding a 97th minute equaliser at Brentford - but they just seem to have stalled. Leicester being relegated would be an almighty surprise given they've got some exceptional players, yet their defence has seemingly just been woeful all season.

Five points split the bottom 9, so I think calling it one way or another is difficult. From what I saw yesterday having watched Wolves, they do a lot right but their strikers just keep letting them down. Thing Hwang's goal was the first a striker scored in a PL game for a whole year, and they are still the league's lowest scorers. But I do think when the final whistle of the final game is blown that there'll be 3 worse teams. Who those 3 are, I don't know. In such a close fight, anyone could still make a case that they are staying up.

A few suggested the incident with Jimenez and Pope was instigated by the Wolves striker jumping into Pope, or played the what-about game as we had an equally valid penalty shout rejected in the reverse fixture at Molineux. I can be sympathetic tbf as I think that if it was at the other end, I'd have wanted it given, plus we clearly aren't learning that Pope is not exactly the best at playing out from the back. That, and if it is given as a penalty, I doubt VAR is overturning it.

As someone local-ish to Milton Keynes I found it kinda funny. It was also oddly less bad for traffic, but then it had the advantage of being on a Saturday. I went to the first of the 3 MCR dates, which saw rush-hour and gig traffic coincide on the roads around the stadium and fuck me it was awful. Maybe it's also why there's still a decent number of tickets available for Muse in Milton Keynes by the look of it.