Please, excuse my absence, I’ve been ‘working’ towards the completion of a rather excellent trilogy, so feast your eyes on this:
A’Thank you. And not a gamesave used amongst them, unlike many of the 1k’d Football Manager game completions out there. Add that to LMA Manager and I’m 4000/4000. Only Championship Manager 2007 to go when I can afford to buy it.
Now I can get on with my review for Metal Gear Solid 4 amongst other things :p.
Metal Gear Solid 4. Done.
I’ve now completed Metal Gear Solid 4, watched all the cut-scenes and played all the areas. Twice.
Expect a full and honest review soon. None of that Konami silencing bullshit here.
Today was the first game of the season for Manchester United and this is the 4th game I’ve been to in 12 months and it’s the 4th game we’ve failed to win, despite last season being our second most successful of all time I still failed to see us win, in fact we only scored 1 goal in all that time and I was outside the bloody stadium when it went in.
I thought today we were guaranteed to see a goal having scored 11 goals in our two matches against Newcastle last season, but we were lacking a lot of our first team players such as Anderson, Saha, Tevez, Neville, Hargreaves, Nani and Ronaldo, so I wasn’t expecting an easy game.
If I’m being honest, the game itself should have been wrapped up within 20 minutes where we destroyed them but for Given who I rate as one of the finest keepers in the league who kept them in it, playing like a man possessed, first stopping Campbells header with his face and then double saving from Rooney and Scholes, then later saving again from Campbell’s long range effort. We also should have had a penalty, yet another turned down making it two in two games this season so it seems to be following on from the trend whereby we don’t get close to the penalties we deserve, but the season is long and there are 37 more games to go.
Campbell, Possebon and Rafael Da Silva all made their premiership debuts today, the latter two replacing injured players, adding to our woe. Campbell looked quite sharp but lacked the experience to make the best of his chances, as mentioned above he would have had a goal but for Givens face. Possebon came on late, but was played too deep, sitting in front of the back four – he only gave away one pass and was never tackled, so the future is bright as far as that’s concerned. Da Silva was a really late addition, unfortunately he wasn’t able to get involved which was a real shame, he could have given us the extra width we really needed.
Newcastle themselves had two debutants of their own, Coloccini the former Deportivo Centerback and Guitierrez, a pacy Argentinian wideman, both with great expectation on their shoulders. Coloccini looked slow, clumsy and unable to pick a pass. Upteen times he continued to pass us the ball with very poor clearances and almost got caught out by Wayne Rooney. Gutierrez was a different kettle of fish, in the first half he was none-existant, in the second half he was their star player and the Geordies have fallen over him claiming he was ‘beating our players left and right’, something which wasn’t true at all, it was merely a case of knocking the ball over the top and running really quickly. Sadly it caught Wes Brown out every single time.
We scored a rather lucky goal from a nice move, an equaliser to a goal we should have never conceeded due to woeful marking on a set-piece, leaving Martins unmarked three times on three consecutive corners. Terrible.
The highlight of the day was walking down the Munich Tunnel with my friend Stephen, arriving at the end where the staff carpark is and seeing a crowd form through which Cristiano Ronaldo walked right past me (literally right past – less than a foot). It’s not every day you’re stood next to undoubtedly the finest player on the planet right now. I gave him a cheer and my friend Stephen gave him a good old British pat on the back and a ‘Go on son’. A great experience.
Recently I’ve not exactly had much luck with my phone, a Pay-As-You-Go Pocket PC on o2’s network, a network which for the last 2 weeks has failed me quite consistently with many texts getting lost and getting ‘Network not ready’ messages, it became a real pain in the ass.
Not only was it failing me, but it was also far too expensive at 10p a text and 50p a minute call. It’s old school 02 PAYG, one of the reasons I much prefer and have always had contracts up until I left my job and as soon as I get another it’s the first thing I’ll do.
Last Wednesday I stayed at my friends house for a few days and he recommended I go ‘Blyk’, something which utterly confused me as I’d never heard of it. He told me his brother had been using it for quite a while and that he’d found it great, so on his recommendation I signed up in a ‘what the hell’ moment, and on Saturday my Sim and welcome pack arrived free of charge and so far it’s been great. In fact it’s been perfect. No loss of signal at all, something which my o2 PAYG and T-Mobile contract before that couldn’t claim and what’s more, cheap… and that’s because it’s free…
For those of you now interested, every month you get 217 text messages and 43 minutes of talk-time to any landline or mobile without any need to top-up, though you can if you wish and for £5 you will also get a further 150 text messages.
The catch? Advertising and Age Limitation. First of all, this is for people between the ages of 16-24 only. Second of all, when you sign up you select at least 2 categories that you like (Technology and Gadgets, Gaming, Movies, etc…) and for this you can receive up to 6 adverts a day, some of which my friend has told me are ‘actually pretty damn good’, such as Wallpapers, Ring tones and information, my friends brother has received wallpapers of one of his favourite bands, the Futureheads (tut) and some of the stuff you get it stuff that companies like Jamster charge for, other stuff is merely information or standard adverts, but when silly little adverts offer what they do, a free service for calls and messaging, then it’s hard to see a negative to it. My friend has also never received more than 2 adverts and in 2 days I’ve not received any, so it would appear to be win-win for the time being.
This new way or working could be the future for mobile phone contracts. It’s certainly interesting.
Find out more at http://www.blyk.co.uk.
With the release of the new X-Files movie, X-Files: I Want to Believe I’ve been wanting to finally complete the entire TV series, a series which I watched back-to-back within a few months last year, viewing seasons 1-7, aka The Mulder Years, but never quite felt the urge to watch 8 and 9, so I’ve been joined by my friend and fellow X-Files lover, Lee in trying to get through seasons 8 and 9 before eventually watching the movie.
Within a few days we’ve already watched 14 episodes of season 8 and my impressions of it, I must say are entirely positive. So much so, I would genuinely say I’ve not actually missed the presence of Mulder as a lead FBI detective alongside Agent Dana Scully at all because Agent John Doggett is a fantastic addition to the show and he doesn’t feel tacked on or out of place at all and that’s full credit to both the acting ability of Robert Patrick and the writing prowess of Chris Carter.
It’s a shame really that Doggett wasn’t brought in earlier, as an actor Robert Patrick absolutely oozes charisma in the role, an ex-marine and much like Dana Scully when the show started, a real sceptic. With his army background he gives a whole different character to those possible through Mulder, Scully or Skinner and a salutary addition to the program.
It’s actually a stronger season than some of those I’ve seen before hand and with the show re-capturing it’s ‘edge’ that I felt got lost in the seasons leading up to this. If you’ve put off watching them for petty reasons like I have, or you’ve simply not had chance then I really recommend you do (but not before watching the others if you’ve not seen them – obviously).
When you can pick up the X-Files so cheap these days I pray you all sensible enough to go out and buy 9 sets of some of the greatest story tellings of our time. Genius is perhaps a word that’s overused in our society, but I certainly don’t think it’s out of place when describing the standard of quality for the X-Files as a TV show.
Man Utd have some really promising talent at the moment, most noticeable is our trio of Brazilian talent, Rodrigo Possebon, and the two wing-back twins, Rafael and Fabio Da Silva, the latter of which has been touted as the ‘next Roberto Carlos’ since he was a child.
The twins haven’t played any football for almost a year with Man Utd signing them but unable to move them to England because of laws prohibiting the transfer of players under a certain age from South America, as a result of that Man Utd requested they not play competitive matches and only train with their team, however they have now moved and Rafael has shone in the couple of pre-season games he’s played, but it was Fabio, playing for the reserves that has really earned the plauditz after scoring what can only be described as an outrageous goal which shows true Brazilian flair and pace of which I’ve not seen before, it’s incredible… Just watch this:
Download (Right Click > Save As) (.flv)
I think it’s certainly save to say that these three are going to be something special with both Rafael and Fabio Da Silva being your electric quick wing-backs with flair and skill (but unusually they can tackle and are very strong on the ball) and Possebon who plays very similarly to Kaka, which is no bad thing.
I’m certainly hoping we see more of these this coming season!
Back on to our Televisions! Even with the Euro Championships it’s still felt too long in coming back. I, much like many Man Utd games have watched our pre-season games and our teams lack of ability to convert, waiting for the Striker we’ve needed for 2 seasons without much news, it’s been rumoured between many players though the media would have you believe Dimitar Berbatov is Sir’s first choice though that’s not the general concensus amongst the fans who all believe the touted price tag of £25-£30m is far too high, this fan thinking it’s double what we should be looking at.
Other reports are that we’re looking at David Villa of Valencia, Klaas Jan Huntelaar of Ajax, Karim Benzema of Lyon, Roque Santa Cruz of Blackburn and even Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto’o of Barcelona. Either way, we need a striker and as long as we don’t over pay (or get Santa Cruz) I’ll be happy.
However, on the topic of strikers I must say Carlos Tevez has been fantastic in pre-season, doing everything bar sticking the ball in the back of the net (even missing a penalty against Portsmouth), but losing Rooney to a virus in Nigeria certainly hasn’t helped the pre-season lack of goals, leaving us starting the season with many players missing through injury, illness or suspension. Very annoying.
The best news of the summer has undoubtedly been Ronaldo staying with us, however the way he’s treated the fans has been very disrespectful and something that could have been stopped quite easily with some official press quotes, but he’s young and immature, hopefully he’ll become someone who the fans can trust to stay like Ferdinand who did similar a few seasons back. Unfortunately he’s out for a while and without a striker signed yet it could be awkward infront of goal.
Here’s hoping we can score some goals in the Community Shield before the season starts to get in the swing of things.
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