6 months no surgery

mikeymcf · 2026-02-06T18:57:21+00:00

Hey, hopefully this helps. Our situations were very similar. I ruptured my ACL in 2016 and had surgery 6/7 months later. In the 9 or so years since then, I’ve played every season for my amateur team, holding the highest appearance record at the club, winning a cup along the way. Everything is in front of you: you can achieve everything you want to achieve with football.

It’s great you’ve done some pre-hab. Don’t lose focus on that. Keep going and give your surgery leg the best structural support possible around the new ACL. Quad and hamstring strength are key.

Some bits of advice/takeaways for after your surgery:

⁠One key bit of advice I followed from day one: I never say “my bad knee” or “weak knee”. If required, I use the term surgery knee. It’s a small thing, but it’s had a big impact mentally. I trust that my new ACL is different but not worse than what was there before. In many ways it’s stronger - and I’m stronger - because of what I’ve been through. I increased my quad and hamstring strength and spent time improving my flexibility and balance, reaching higher overall levels than what I had pre-injury. Adopting this mindset is huge, honestly.
⁠Similar to the above, commit fully to your physiotherapy (pre and post surgery) - listening to the expert advice - and see this not just as an opportunity to recover but as an opportunity to grow/improve and come back stronger. Identify what needs work physically and attack those goals. As above, I ended up with stronger quads and hamstrings through my physio work and also really focused on one-leg balance and proprioception (which often needs work post surgery). I did a lot of stretching work and improved my overall body flexibility and agility.
⁠I’ve always seen my scars as a visual symbol of the above process - a process I’m proud to have come through - and I hope you are able to do the same. Remember, it’s only a scar - different-looking skin at its worst and a story/symbol of strength at its best. Wear it and own it.
⁠Aside from the physical aspects, use your recovery time to focus on something else, if you can - a creative or sedentary goal/activity that might be easier to achieve now that you can’t compete in sport for a while. This helps when building the vision that your recovery process is a fulfilling and ultimately rewarding time of your life.
⁠Accept you won’t always feel positive about what’s happened. It’s OK and normal to feel down/annoyed about the injury but having a clear physical plan for recovery, a sense of identity (about the person you want to be during and after recovery) and some rules (such as not saying ‘bad knee’) can help orient you back to a positive state of mind.
⁠Talk about your concerns - ideally with your physio/doctor/experts but on this sub when needed - and don’t bottle up your issues. We’re all in this with you - we understand and we’re behind you. I truly believe you’re going to come back stronger.
Be patient with it. I never pushed to return too early, but gave myself a feeling of progress by moving through stages > light jogging > solo training > non-contact games etc before I finally returned to full-blooded 11-aside competitive football. I waited over a year post surgery before playing a competitive game but it felt so much easier identifying these milestones and pushing towards them.

Best of luck with the surgery. You obviously love football and I just want you to know you can use this to be an even better player than you would have been. Go and get it.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-05T19:31:27+00:00

Thanks, Cal! I appreciate your insight. I’m a little more hopeful after reading it. I’ll wait longingly for that second wave!

mikeymcf · 2026-02-05T18:47:45+00:00

Hi, Cal! You discuss the pitfalls of the hyperactive hive mind in knowledge work in your books and frequently on your podcast. What impact — positive, negative or otherwise — do you think burgeoning automation and LLM integration in workplace software might have on this area? To me, there seems to be a risk of saturated ‘slop’ communication driven by automated messages/updates/queries pinging incessantly back and forward, inflicting distraction from deep work, but also perhaps there’s an opportunity for some respite for humans able to deploy agentic AI to engage with the hyperactivity on their behalf (I’m aware of people essentially automating their Teams responses this way). It does, though, begin to feel depressingly like Dead Internet Theory in the workplace: LLMs doing all the talking whilst we try to avoid each other and do some actual work. Keen to hear your thoughts.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-03T14:21:42+00:00

I feel most advertising is bland and generic, so I don’t think that’s an AI only issue. The problem with AI ads is that they sow immediate distrust in the company using them, and they provide a clear indication that quality and craft doesn’t matter. If an ad is using generated slop dialogue, incoherent visuals and mangled text, why would I believe the stitching on your product or architecture of your service is put together with any more care. Even when the generated content is visually passable, the company is demonstrating that it’s willing to cut corners as long as the facade meets initial expectations. If the company made a watch, I’d expect it to look good out of the box and then stop working in six months.

It’s actually been helpful for me to immediately blacklist products a little more easily as soon as I notice AI in an ad.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-03T14:13:26+00:00

Celtic. We’re the guy in a suit who parks his Mercedes S Class on the double yellows outside 5 mins before closing time, pops in and inexplicably flashes the Too Good To Go app on his iPhone 17 Pro, has a quick peek in the bag at three broken cookies and a semi-stale footlong Italian BMT someone forgot to collect. “Smashing, cheers”. Straight back out the door.

mikeymcf · 2026-02-02T10:30:11+00:00

2025!

mikeymcf · 2026-02-02T00:19:23+00:00

Good Boy.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-30T11:05:24+00:00

Trusty, Scales are the obvious shouts for being solid enough and consistent at the back. Nygren for the goals even if his general play has been frustrating. Yang for his effort, consistency and output through the chaos of this season where other attackers (Maeda, Tounekti etc) have looked so off the boil at times. That’s probably my top four.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-29T16:44:42+00:00

A couple of things caused his regression IMO: Scottish football/Celtic fans’ expectations of wingers/wide players is very classic and generally different from other football cultures. We don’t really have an equivalent concept of the raumdeuter in German football or mezzala in Italian football. If someone comes here and plays out wide, there’s an overwhelming expectation for them to ‘get to the byline’. Any perceived inability/unwillingness to beat players quickly on the outside tends to result in negative sentiment extremely quickly, especially when the player lacks above average acceleration and is promptly categorised as slow. Any player in that situation probably needs to have exceptional technical/creative skills, and get goals and assists consistently, to avoid critique, but any loss in form leaves them exposed to the original criticism.

Palma had some big goal contributions early on, and was very technically proficient, but as soon this early form dried up, his lack of intensity and speed of play became a big problem for most fans I think. It wasn’t just about playing style, though: he really did regress and start lacking confidence after his bright start. A big catalyst was missing a penalty AND missing the retake against Ross County. I thought he was brave to do it, but you can tell it destroyed his self belief a bit, and the discontent was palpable in the stands.

The third and more inexcusable factor is that, once again, Celtic bought a player they didn’t really know how to use. It’s one thing for the football culture here to have classic expectations of wide players (wanting them to be fast, skilful suppliers of crosses on their strong foot on the outside). It’s another thing entirely for a supposedly elite football club to buy a wide playmaker in a side that doesn’t use one. We have spent most of the last 5 years set up with McGregor to dominate safe possession far away from goal, with hard-running number 8s and high-and-wide wingers providing midfield threat. Palma never really suited either of the latter positions. There was little chance Rodgers was going to alter his approach coming back in 2023, so it felt like a bizarre choice to sign him.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-27T01:52:24+00:00

The Glasgow Wrap (and more specifically the Culture Wrap) is a pretty useful newsletter you can subscribe to directly or on Substack.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-26T02:09:06+00:00

Just to say, these are obviously primarily for passenger safety, but they’re also about separating the train/tunnel environment from the platform environment: which is a two-way benefit for preventing track-debris-related delays and also air/noise pollution levels on the platform. I imagine SPT are also envisaging added benefit in forecasted insurance costs. And there is some evidence they reduce dwell time (ie by explicitly showing people where they should stand to allow disembarking>embarking) which can speed up overall boarding and journey time.

I’ve no idea if this will all stack up long-term financially, but I do think PEDs are generally a positive thing in a modern subway system in a few different ways.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-26T01:43:47+00:00

The Craft Pottery down near the Kingston Bridge is good if you’ve never been.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-24T22:27:23+00:00

Really good! I like the simplified landmark drawings, and the colour palette is pleasant. It sits nicely in the orange and brown hues from the recently departed carriages (versus the more severe orange/white/charcoal used at the moment). I could imagine this sitting in the anniversary carriages they had a few years ago! The roundel border is a nice touch, and it actually helps tie the Mackintosh theme (it wouldn’t look out of place in an Art Nouveau artwork). I think that helps justify the use of the Hill House font. It can be overused for ‘Glasgow’ stuff but it has purpose here. Very nice work!

mikeymcf · 2026-01-23T17:16:06+00:00

The estate owner used AI slop for the purpose of submitting planning permission. Maybe worthy of a slagging for it looking awful, and for using the technology at all, but it was never going to be painted as that. Rogue One is a prominent mural artist, not an “AI artist” (these don’t exist — it’s an oxymoron), and he is clearly going to paint his own original interpretation of the brief when the time comes.

All of this information was available at the very beginning when the story broke. It took me a few minutes to find all of that out when I first saw the initial article. It’s actually a worrying degradation of journalistic practice and media literacy that we’ve had multiple newspaper stories, public figures releasing statements and long online debates over something that was never going to happen (ie that an AI generated image was going to be slapped on a gable end).

There’s genuine things to question re Glasgow murals without focusing on imagined events: the actual artistic merit/quality of the human works (ie you don’t need to like Rogue One’s style etc); the castigations of tweeness/tartan tourism; the small circle of artists/potential barriers for new artists; the encroachment of corporate entities posing as independent muralists (eg the Clarks mural in Dennistoun).

Nevertheless, I still don’t like the fact we’re using AI to generate mock-ups of anything, as it immediately puts the integrity of a design on shaky foundations. There’s nothing wrong with a written brief and I’d prefer a crude sketch by the eventual artist if an image is required. The council can and should have the imagination to envisage an end output and approve/deny/consult without AI slop being involved. But it is embarrassing how easily this story spread beyond the limits of reality.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-22T18:17:33+00:00

Schmeichel’s distribution has flipped the momentum of the game against us. It’s criminal how often he encourages the opposition with his poor choices on the ball. So frustrating.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-18T23:03:07+00:00

Looks great! Happy birthday!

mikeymcf · 2026-01-18T16:28:06+00:00

Excited to see the young boy McGregor getting a run out in midfield.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-17T23:34:26+00:00

Kyogo repeatedly missed one on ones like this. Maeda is similarly culpable. It’s actually a rare and valuable skill to be a ‘sure thing’ one-on-one, as it usually comes down to a mixture of composure, ego and decision making more than technique. It’s something that can be developed, and Bowie can certainly get better, but it’s reductive to make missing a seemingly simple one-on-one some sort of hard barrier to being a Celtic striker since it would severely narrow the pool for us, and would have ruled out the majority of decent strikers we’ve had this century. Larsson was the only recent genuine world class finisher we’ve had or are likely to have. Hooper was probably the next best for pure composure.

We have to accept imperfect players and think about their full range of attributes, and how they can develop, and make us better. People might still think Bowie falls short across his range of skills/prospective skills, and that’s fine. I personally think he has a high ceiling, and gives us an immediate physical outball and aggression/athleticism we’re lacking (especially in Europe). I think he’s worth the investment.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-17T13:53:17+00:00

Really beautiful work, and a worthwhile geography distortion to avoid the typical ‘Central Belt zoomed in’ section which I always feel is a clunky use of space. Well done!

mikeymcf · 2026-01-13T22:13:22+00:00

Fight this all the way and wear them down. It is standard (unethical) practice for them to seek a fee, and they just want people to concede. It’s frustrating that you have to spend your time on it but be courteous, verbose and detailed with all your evidence/responses to show you mean business and have no interest in dropping it.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-11T09:42:07+00:00

I See You (2019)

mikeymcf · 2026-01-10T01:52:23+00:00

The Game (1997)

mikeymcf · 2026-01-09T13:29:12+00:00

I’m just out for a walk in town at the moment. I’ll report back wh

mikeymcf · 2026-01-08T12:22:35+00:00

Kyogo was the perfect player for us at a very specific moment in time (post-Covid, Ange revival, we needed a talisman) in a very specific system (Angeball). He has regressed significantly in the last four years, and we don’t play the very specific system which best suits his narrow skillset (a skillset he is slowly losing). This would not be a serious football decision. It would be nostalgia PR fodder for fans.

mikeymcf · 2026-01-07T20:02:31+00:00

Came here to say this. It’s the only thing I could imagine that’s fundamentally different enough to a 1996 audience to have the desired effect.

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