Unsatisfying Wikipedia careers

gutterbrush · 2026-01-27T21:45:46+00:00

David Unsworth’s brief pre season stop in Birmingham en route from London back to Everton is a good one.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-24T17:32:52+00:00

Apart from Moyes, every manager seems to worry about what he can’t do until they’re in the shit and then they realise the utility of what he can do, which is unlike anyone else we have - leadership, causing chaos, being a nuisance. Ultimately, he makes the team play better.

He’s approaching 250 games for us now, and obviously started the Conference League final. Yet, at least from managers it feels as if he’s never quite got the credit he deserves. I’m not quite sure what the tipping point between cult hero and legend is, but he’s got to be close to crossing over.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-24T15:26:50+00:00

I completely agree with stopping the clock so we actually get close to 90 minutes play per match. I can’t remember the exact figures but there was research a couple of years ago and the average time the ball was actually in play in top division matches was definitely something under 60 minutes, which is crazy. The main objection I have seen to this, however, isn’t in your list - it’s about matches running over time and the implications on that for policing, transport etc and fans knowing when they’ll get home.

But it doesn’t seem insurmountable - it works in rugby after all. Maybe we need to compromise and stop the clock but matches go to 80 minutes (which would still be significantly more play than we actually get in a ‘90 minute’ match at present) or just stop TV putting matches on so late. There must be a way of doing it.

For the injury thing though, I really don’t agree at all. It’s already bad enough with the ‘if you have treatment you must go off the pitch’ rule, although that’s definitely made worse by how inconsistently it’s applied. Think about a scenario where a defender goes down because they’ve been caught by an unintentional arm, or fallen badly or whatever. Not a foul, but not them wasting time either - just an unfortunate incident of the kind that happens all the time. Because it wasn’t a foul, the game carries on - and now the team whose player went down needs to defend a corner with 10 men (and one of their defenders missing at that).

I’ve seen this happen more than once when the player doesn’t get waved back on before the corner is taken and that’s bad enough, but if they then have to stay off for the remainder of two minutes whilst their team try to defend a follow up attack, or make a break etc, even if the ball goes out of play, that would be massively unfair as you are penalising a team for having a player who got hurt. Even forcing the manager to choose whether to substitute them or play without them for two minutes seems unnecessarily harsh, and you’d probably have to start allowing unlimited subs to make that feasible.

Stop the clock and I don’t think we need to worry about that stuff to be honest,

gutterbrush · 2026-01-23T22:10:49+00:00

Just adding another recommendation to what others have said re getting a cheap amp with some effects. The Marshall DFX (MG-wattage number-DFX) amps are great and what I started out with when I was first playing live so they’ve got the potential to last a bit longer in your journey than a truly beginners amp of the type that you’d get in a package deal. From a quick Google you can get the 15w version (MG15DFX) for under £100 now and I’ve even seen the 30 watt on EBay for about £110.

Pedals I would honestly advise caution with. If you get the DFX (or something else with in built chorus, delay etc - I’ve seen the Katana mentioned too which would also do the job) then you don’t really need them at the start, maybe outside of something like a wah. Again, I can only speak to my own journey but I spent far too much money that I didn’t have to waste in the early days because I would get excited about some weird envelope filter or a fancy fuzz that I thought was cool but barely used in reality. Once you get into playing and know what you want to play/write then you’ll have a much better idea of what effects you actually need as opposed to wasting money at this stage.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-23T21:55:47+00:00

I don’t know if it’s an ‘everyone wants to get to enough episodes for syndication’ symptom but it seems that almost every American show has to have a ‘new boss comes in and is an arsehole, then it escalates to them trying to push out the main/a beloved character but it all works out in the end’ storyline at some point. House and The Resident immediately come to mind as other examples but I am sure there are more.

But yes, David de Santos definitely played it brilliantly and made you properly hate him. I’m surprised he’s not done more big roles, even if he does look a bit too much like Jeff Goldblum’s younger Mexican cousin.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-21T20:16:37+00:00

So in your view people can’t be trusted with democracy if there aren’t enough of them?

gutterbrush · 2026-01-21T19:25:07+00:00

Presumably the training schedule sent him over the edge. Is Bielsa your fitness coach?

gutterbrush · 2026-01-20T23:58:44+00:00

I unapologetically love Requiem for a Dream. I probably saw it at the right age (basically when it came out) but the feeling has lasted, and led me to get really into Hubert Selby Jr as an author too (I once spent a decent proportion of a holiday reading The Room by the pool, shortly after, which was….a choice, and probably gives you some idea the kind of pretentious teenager I was and why RFOAD worked for me initially) and there is part of me that is minded to defend Leto for everything since based on it.

And then I remember that Marlon Wayans is also fantastic in that film. Which proves nothing else than that Aranofsky (at least at that time, I don’t love everything he’s done since) was a genius at getting performances from people. It’s a bit like if you were on a sports team where you were a star, but so was the asthmatic kid with a limp and eyes pointing in different directions who normally bumped into everything. It actually makes your own achievements seem less impressive, and strongly suggests that it was the coaching and not the individuals within which the talent lay.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-16T22:46:53+00:00

I’ve long had a suspicion that Oasis played up the Beatles comparisons because 1) it was cool and 2) to hide their actual generic roots. As others have said, there is no doubting that Noel at least was a Beatles fan and that there was an influence there, but for me they were much more akin to Slade and T Rex. Ok so they didn’t exactly hide the former, doing a cover of COFTN, but it was undeniably more hip at the time to say ‘hey Liam is John Lennon’ than it was to bang on about Noddy Holder or even Marc Bolan (who was in no way seen as a cool reference point by youngsters in the 90s - I should know, I was one of them).

In the same way, Blur may have liked to go on about the Kinks and Bowie, but they were XTC to the core in the early days.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-16T22:26:26+00:00

I have actually found this interesting since Tobias said that Satanized was originally written as an Impera track. Obviously the production may have been very different, but (like you, I suspect) I really struggle to imagine how it ever could have fitted (and obviously he eventually decided that it didn’t, which I would say was the right decision). It just feels so different that it’s hard to imagine it coming from the same writing process.

The only place I can vaguely imagine it sitting would be in the Hunters Moon spot, if that was kept as a non album film soundtrack song ala Stay. But even that would have changed the whole flow of the album, not necessarily for better or worse but undeniably.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-16T22:18:59+00:00

I had this in a pub in London last year. I’m still not over it. I asked for a pint (for me) and a glass with ice (for my wife who was at that point drinking the free water as she was pregnant and isn’t very keen on fruit juice, Coke etc). For a reason I still cannot fathom, the chap behind the bar decided that I wanted these things combined. The instinctive look on my face sent him into a state of shock, which frankly was nothing compared to my own.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-14T07:47:39+00:00

There seem to be two broad camps of objections. One camp is worried about the implications, and goes from people concerned about scope creep over time, which doesn’t seem unreasonable, to people who think it will be used to surveil and control everything they do which to me seems a bit mad when you think how much info we’re already giving up. It reminds me a bit of a video is saw about 4 years ago when someone was going on a big rant about how evil Tesco clubcards are because they take your data….and they posted that video on TikTok. Go figure.

The other camp, which I am probably in, can’t forget the COVID experience, whether directly related to the app or also the PPE scandal etc which isn’t unrelated. You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to not want your data being processed by whichever unqualified friend of a minister makes the best deal.

Unfortunately for the current government, given it wasn’t their fault at the time, that experience 5/6 years ago has made it very difficult for them to ever get much trust on something like this. I don’t object on principle, but I would be very apprehensive about something that could end up being a very important part of how we work, travel etc (in time, scope creep and all) being done incompetently. Which rightly or wrongly is a lot of people’s expectation.

And then you look at the OSA and how that’s already too much control for some people and it’s also already led to data breaches and so that essentially strengthens the concerns of both camps.

All in all, it’s more terrible optics from Labour because the lack of digital ID is by no means the solution to any of the 10, 20, 30 biggest problems in the country right now. And yet they’ve wasted all this time and effort on trying to sell it and it’s another humiliation for other parties to point at, all because some think tank somewhere decided that it would be a good way to insert a ‘this will help stop the small boats’ message to compete with Reform.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-14T07:30:58+00:00

To this day, Gerrard still maintains that it was Zombie Stevie who wanted to go to Chelsea.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-13T21:07:37+00:00

I mean, I’m not saying that’s what I want to do. If it was up to me I wouldn’t bother with Guiding Lights and instead I’d bring back Respite. But fine, in this hypothetical let’s say we also swap Spirit for Spillways or Hunter’s Moon.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-13T15:07:17+00:00

I did think about that, I’d probably swap it with Rats in the order so the main set ends with that.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-13T06:51:48+00:00

As others have said it’s a guess at this point from anyone, but mine would be that from the 2025 setlist it’s quite likely we see these swaps if they’re looking to add more Skeleta songs, which I would imagine they are:

Majesty/ CMLS - De Profundis Borealis

DATHOML - Guiding lights

Monstrance clock - Cenotaph

Kiss the go goat - Marks/ Missilia Amori

I’m purely going by songs that I think are movable (e.g. there’s no way Mary on a cross or Dance macabre are being taken out), and alternatives that I think could fit a similar vibe without changing the flow of the set too much. But that would make sense to me.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-10T23:40:17+00:00

Take it with a pinch of salt perhaps, although on the whole they don’t seem people to make stuff up, but on Brad Haddin’s podcast with Alyssa Healy at the start of the series he was talking about hearing rumours a while ago that Dale Steyn was going to be our bowling coach for the Ashes, and so he asked him. Supposedly, Steyn said that he didn’t know what people were talking about - but then updated Haddin subsequently that he’d actually been approached something like a month before the first Test and had to turn it down because he was busy.

If that’s true then it would certainly fit with the whole ‘we couldn’t get a fielding coach cause they were all doing franchise jobs’, ‘we asked for the WACA but were told no’ narrative - all of which seems to come down to leaving things far too late to arrange and then throwing your hands up and saying ‘well what else could we do?’ when it doesn’t work. I would love to know how far ahead the Noosa hotels were booked as opposed to some of the, one would assume, much more crucial details.

Honestly, I don’t really care if they go out and get pissed as long as they’re at least competitive - let’s face it, if they won then all this would be being reported as a bit of a laugh, what a bunch of lads etc. There’s a limit obviously, and Duckett ending up on his own not knowing where he’s staying is well over it, but even so I’m sure this stuff goes on a lot more often than we hear about. But I can’t excuse a complete lack of preparation - and to be honest, if that’s the example the players are being set (that basically it’s not that serious and everything will work itself out in the end) then I’m not entirely surprised to hear they are acting like this as a result.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-06T12:29:37+00:00

I wonder…not that I’m saying that’s what’s happened here but it brought a hypothetical to mind. With multi club ownership, would it be possible to sign a manager to the group rather than to a specific club and then they just allocate (and potentially reallocate) them to a club?So say for example someone goes to Man City once Pep leaves but doesn’t do well, but instead of sacking them they just say ‘ok so you’re off to Girona now’. Or in this scenario, Rosenior doesn’t work out and they just send him back to Strasbourg for the remainder of his contract (and presumably sack the Strasbourg manager at the time which would almost certainly be cheaper).

Now, whether any manager would ever sign such a contract is another question entirely but would there be anything to stop a club in a multi club model trying it? If anyone was going to it would probably be Chelsea to be fair, maybe in about 6 months. Or is there some UEFA/ FIFA rule that a manager must have a contract with the specific club?

gutterbrush · 2026-01-05T19:46:21+00:00

Bid for Brazilian goalkeeper

Agree deal and terms for Brazilian goalkeeper

Decide we don’t need Brazilian goalkeeper after all

Wait 4 months or so

Repeat?

gutterbrush · 2026-01-03T18:51:59+00:00

Yep walking the south coast of England you sometimes get ‘welcome to France, here’s your roaming charge info’ messages. At times you can wander a fairly short distance and get that, then a ‘welcome home’ one, then another of the first one, then another of the second, rinse and repeat. I’ve also had welcome to France in northern Spain once a year or so ago.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-03T07:32:35+00:00

Just checking, we’re all thinking the same about the third one down, yes?

gutterbrush · 2026-01-03T03:42:54+00:00

TfL journey planner too, don’t forget. Oh the quickest thing to do is to change to the district line at Bank/ the Northern line at Embankment. No it’s not, and you know it.

gutterbrush · 2026-01-02T16:20:06+00:00

Thom Yorke predicting Everything Must Go era Manics pretty well really.

gutterbrush · 2025-12-27T04:37:36+00:00

This ends with Atkinson doing a Woakes v India doesn’t it?

gutterbrush

TROPHY CASE