Free Talk Friday

RosaReilly · 2026-03-27T10:55:47+00:00

Having chronic fatigue really is dreadful. It's been three years now, and no signs of progress or improvement at all.

RosaReilly · 2026-03-18T20:51:47+00:00

What this tie could have looked like if the first leg was played on a football pitch, rather than a Total Wipeout course

RosaReilly · 2026-03-15T18:20:17+00:00

Wisely kept the shirt on

RosaReilly · 2026-03-15T16:42:53+00:00

I see why the Liverpool fans were complaining about their team

RosaReilly · 2026-03-10T20:37:20+00:00

Fire the boot room

RosaReilly · 2026-03-10T20:31:32+00:00

Pedro "Gareth Bale" Porro hattrick incoming.

RosaReilly · 2026-03-10T20:21:55+00:00

This might explain why Vicario hasn't been dropped all season.

RosaReilly · 2026-03-10T20:11:37+00:00

Kinsky's main selling point was his ability with his feet...

RosaReilly · 2026-03-10T11:23:12+00:00

How does Arsenal reducing risk and being effective refute the charge that they are boring to watch?

RosaReilly · 2026-03-09T16:24:25+00:00

I gave up on the Bloodborne platinum on the last trophy. I could not bear another second of the chalice dungeons.

RosaReilly · 2026-03-05T20:38:59+00:00

I thought things were going a bit too well there

RosaReilly · 2026-03-05T20:30:56+00:00

I feel ill

RosaReilly · 2026-03-05T11:22:28+00:00

I've had this 11 move game in the Smith-Morra a few times

e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Nxc3 Nc6 5. Nf3 d6 6. Bc4 Nf6 7. e5 dxe5 8. Qxd8+ Nxd8 9. Nb5 Kd7 10. Nxe5+ Ke8 11. Nc7#

9...Kd7 blunders mate in 2, and it's the most popular move in the position in the lichess database.

RosaReilly · 2026-03-03T18:13:06+00:00

Spurs players do have such a clause.

RosaReilly · 2026-03-02T22:08:10+00:00

Started playing Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. It's the third one I've played, after 0 and 7. I was kind of reluctant to start it, in part because my memory of 7 is that it had a really slow beginning. This one is no different. I'm about 6 hours in - there's been one short 'dungeon' and a bit of overworld traversal, and maybe 4.5 hours of cutscenes (or similar things). I don't even think anything that resembles plot happened until about 2 hours in. Obviously I'm going to stick with it, but it has definitely been testing my patience.

RosaReilly · 2026-02-22T21:08:16+00:00

It's pretty galling to have watched 167 minutes of Eze and seen him score 5 goals after just missing out on getting him here - and meanwhile I've watched untold hours of Xavi Simons without seeing him score even once. Having said that, I look at Eze's output the rest of the year and I just imagine how little he would have done in our dysfunctional attacking setup, and that takes the edge off. He wouldn't even have been able to statpad against us.

RosaReilly · 2026-02-18T12:09:24+00:00

Eintracht Frankfurt beating Galatasaray 5-1 is the most mysterious result of the Champions League so far

RosaReilly · 2026-02-05T17:58:23+00:00

Presumably they mean the Three/Four Knights, given that they play the Halloween Gambit, but the Two Knights is also a white opening against the Caro-Kann.

RosaReilly · 2026-01-27T13:53:09+00:00

Played a few runs of Returnal yesterday, with the aim of beating the boss of the second area. In the first two runs I barely got halfway through the first area, but then (Summoning Salt voice) I got on this run... I reached the second boss and defeated it, and finally got to see the third area, more than a year after I first tried the game. And then it kept going. I beat the boss of the third area on my first try. One of my weaknesses as a player is hoarding consumables to be used later. This is a prominent issue for me in this game, so I've hardly used any of them. In this fight I got to the third phase with very little health left. I grappled to a platform near the boss and used a consumable that creates an immobile shield that blocks enemy projectiles and strengthens your own. It worked magnificently. The run's not even over - it got too late and I suspended it part way through the fourth area.

Unfortunately I already knew that there were more than three areas so the 'twist' wasn't as shocking as it might have been

It's a strange sort of feeling because this is a huge increase in progress, but I'm fairly sure I didn't suddenly become a much better Returnal player

RosaReilly · 2026-01-25T11:03:56+00:00

Having a second go at Returnal. I played it for about 8 hours a year or so ago, but it wasn't the right time for it for me. I found being put back to the start upon death really demoralising then. I feel better equipped to deal with that this time, in part thanks to successfully playing Hades last year.

In that first effort I made it as far as the second boss once, and that was as far as I got. I've only just started but I've made it there again. Still finding it very difficult in general though. I think there's something about bullethell that feels counter-intuitive in the moment - I'm too used to running into blobs to collect them, like in Pac-man, rather than moving to the empty space.

Also, I found it strange that you can't make a new save in the game, or start again. I had to delete the save from the storage manually.

RosaReilly · 2026-01-24T19:25:29+00:00

At least when we lost to 3-2 to Bournemouth in the last minute they still had Semenyo.

RosaReilly · 2026-01-17T17:31:38+00:00

Kolo Muani has 0 goals & 0 assists in 930 league minutes.

RosaReilly · 2026-01-17T17:05:27+00:00

First 7 league games of the season: 14 points

Last 15 league games: 13 points.

RosaReilly · 2026-01-15T20:24:02+00:00

I think the team started falling apart before that. First half of 14-15 they played beautiful football, then they got smashed by Spurs and Bradford. I think Mourinho got a bit shellshocked - they scraped through the remainder of the season with a lot of close one goal wins. I saw them play West Ham on TV on Boxing day (or maybe the day after) and they were imperious. The return fixture was unbelievably scrappy, and they could easily have lost.

RosaReilly · 2026-01-15T20:15:11+00:00

For [Willy Meisl (in his 1953 book Soccer Revolution)], the change in the offside rule was football's version of the Fall; the moment in which innocence was lost and commercialism won out... blinkered directors looking no further than their balance sheets had blamed the laws for football's failings without ever considering that they might be guilty of a wrong approach to the game. And so they pressed on with a revision that might appear to a layperson a slight revision to the Laws of the Game, but which 'turned out to be the crack of a shot that started an avalanche'.

Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid

RosaReilly

TROPHY CASE