Murrr

Yeah, totally agree. A lot of people have been laughing at the guy like he's going away to manage Real Madrid or Barcelona, not the current second worst team in La Liga. A lot of people hold La Liga to strange standards, like it's some kind of mythical dream league in which every player is a tiki-taka ninja and every team plays free-flowing, artistic football that most neanderthals over here in Britain just cannot comprehend. I reckon he'll do alright.

Awww min. I adore Illmatic, and don't think anyone's ever made a better hip-hop album. I think it's a perfect marriage of beats and rhymes, thought it took me a long time to fully appreciate its beauty. I took a strange path into hip-hop and started with experimental artists like Aesop Rock and a bunch of other Def Jux/Anticon dudes, and for whatever reason it took me a good few years before I was able to fully enjoy "traditional" hip-hop like Illmatic, Ready to Die, Reasonable Doubt, The Infamous, etc. I obviously won't make an objective case for the album's quality, but (judging from your posts) you were into things like Cannibal Ox, El-P, etc. before exploring the classics, right? Maybe you'll take a similar path to me.

Magic/Nets game was pretty bland. I thought we were going to eek out a result thanks to Vucevic's monster performance, but he was completely shut down in the 4th quarter thanks to KG's defence (smart move from Brooklyn's coach, as Lopez was getting ethered by Vuc) and Vaughn's decision to stop running plays through him, which was odd to say the least. Still, we'll be alright. It'll be another long season, but the foundations are in-place, and the interchangeable veteran plodders won't be around for long anyway. Big game for LeBron last night capped with a triple double. They'll be fine as soon as LBJ and Blatt can convince Irving and Waiters that they need to embrace less-selfish roles going forward. They have big defensive issues, but they'll get it together offensively soon enough.

I'm about to watch last night's Nets/Magic game with three Nets fans. Can't wait...

Rudy Gay just feels like a mini Melo to me. He's obviously a good player and a great shooter, but he doesn't seem to do much to make his team-mates better. A great shooter and not much else, but definitely an asset. I say this as he's coming off a 23-10 game, but whatevs. I think OKC will be absolutely fine. The current period is all about damage limitation, and it sounds like they did a fine job against a very good Kings side last night. Losing both KD and Westbrook is absolutely horrendous, and they won't win many games without them, but the likes of Jackson, Ibaka and Jones are good players who, if they step-up, can stop the rot. They'll make it to the playoffs, IMO, and will be immediate title contenders when their superstars are back. Can you imagine drawing a fully fit, 8th-seed OKC in the first round of the playoffs? Horrible.

I think that Cousins is the anchor of that Kings team, but yeah, they've looked excellent. Pretty interesting that the Lakers and Clippers are probably the worst two teams in California at the moment. Angry Kobe is going to be great entertainment this season. My Magic have been pretty fun. We're not going to win a lot of games, but the young core is excellent. Elfrid Payton's shooting is wonky, but his playmaking and decision-making abilities are excellent for such a young guy, and Aaron Gordon has shown flashes of genuine brilliance despite being the youngest player in the league. Then there's Vucevic, Harris, Fournier... the future looks good. I'm really enjoying the Warriors at the moment. Great team basketball: the polar opposite of what's going on in Cleveland at the moment. Curry and Thompson might be the best backcourt in the NBA, and involving Andrew Bogut in more offensive plays really helps open the floor for the guards.

Obertan out for five months. It's a real shame for the guy, as he was getting a run in the team and has actually looked quite dangerous lately. Think it's a purple patch rather than true progression, and he's still a honking footballer, but he must be pretty gutted at the moment. Hopefully this means more Cabella and Aarons rather than Sissoko out wide.

Not well. Pardew is incredibly streaky, and it's pretty weird that the commentators failed to note that. He's often gone on solid runs of about 3-5 games, such as this one, followed by months and months of awful badness. Just when it looks as though he's about to get the chop, he gets a couple of results. It's totally daft to say that he's turned it around, because three good results doesn't erase two years of pure boke, but he does deserve a bit of credit for the past few weeks. His cautiousness causes him a lot of problems. At this point, it's pretty clear that he understands we are at our most dangerous when the likes of Aarons, Cabella, Sammy (though he was poor today) and Perez are on the pitch, but he's just far too reticent to take a risk and deploy them. John Carver came out a few months ago and admitted that our primary focus is "stopping the opposition": our training is exclusively defence-based 4 days out of 5, then, on the last day, we work on attacking. I think this is why Pardew struggles with unorthodox attackers like Cabella and Ben Arfa: he spends 80% of his time trying to instill defensive qualities into them, instead of letting them focus on what they're really good at. He's just too conservative. This week has shown what the time can do when he grows a set, abandons his "two defensive wingers" approach, and plays exciting, imaginative players who play without shackles. It's unfortunately, but he will inevitably shit himself and go back to 4-5-1, Tiote, Gouffran, two defensive wingers and an isolated centre forward.

Another cracking result for us today. I'm glad that Pardew showed some balls and kept faith in Mehdi Abeid, who was the best player on the park by some distance and, for the second time in a week, completely owned one of the best midfields in England. I can understand why he started Cisse, but he realised after 45 minutes that it wasn't working, and bringing Perez on proved decisive. Horrible mistake from Moreno, but that's what you need in flat, slow-paced games like that. It'll take a lot more work to undo two years of utterly shite football, but Pardew has got a lot right over the past couple of weeks. Credit to him for that. Perhaps the "Sack Pardew" campaign has forced him to have a good long look at his managerial style and made him realise that something had to change?

I like to think that I'm a pretty zen guy these days, but the word "foodie" and everything associated with it really makes my urine bubble. This word is usually adopted by pretentious faux-intellectuals who are good at no things and see following the instructions on the back of an Old El Paso fajita kit as a grand accomplishment. "Yeah I'm like, *such* a foodie, yeah?" Tarquin said, adjusting his thick-rimmed, lens-less glasses. Well done, you like food! So does everyone else on the planet, you dipshit. If you didn't like food, you'd be dead. It's a bit like calling yourself an "oxygen enthusiast". You're really into food. *That* is your big thing?! Be more interesting, you bores.

A great set of results for us against Spurs and City, but I fear one of my biggest Pardew gripes will re-emerge this weekend. The takeaway from these games should be that the likes of Sammy Ameobi, Aarons, Perez, Haidara and Abeid, though raw, are utterly fearless, and are at the age where they need to be playing regular football. We need to learn from the lessons of Haris Vuckic, Adam Campbell, etc., who have rotted away in our reserves following endless short-term loan deals. Gael Bigirimana, for example, has looked like a boss almost every time he's played, but he's practically been exiled at St. James' Park. There is no reason to exclude Aarons & co. in favour of completely listless players like Colback, Gouffran, Obertan and Dummett. Pardew, like Hughton is a very cautious man, but Hughton was a quick-learner who'd throw chances to young players when they'd earned them. I'd love to see these kids take a more prominent role, particularly Aarons and Abeid (who was absolutely colossal last night). I hope he's learned something over the past couple of weeks. It'll take a lot more than a couple of good results to reignite my lost passion, but watching these young lads play with reckless abandon is pretty thrilling. You obviously don't want to throw a bunch of young heads in there alone, but we definitely need to do more to get them in the mix. What is the point of Colback and Gouffran at this point? Seriously.

Last night: RUN THE JEWELS 2. Today/tonight: RUN THE JEWELS 2. Tomorrow: Last night's UFC, Hearts vs. Hibs, whatever NFL games are on, United vs. Chelsea, whatever NFL games are on after, RUN THE JEWELS 2. Sports and raps. Totally fine with how this weekend is unraveling.

Run the Jewels - "Run the Jewels 2" This is audio cocaine. Same as the first record, but different. Two of the most skilled rappers in the game spitting hot venom over thumping production laced with El-P's trademark eccentricities. I just love it. This tag team has probably become my favourite thing in hip-hop, particularly after the slew of disappointing, farty releases that have come out of the Black Hippie camp this year. As MCs, they're almost perfectly complimentary. They're both hitting you with vicious shot: Mike's just straight-up Tyson smacking you in the face, while El-P's coming at you with surgically-precise blows from crazy angles that you can't even figure out, like a ginger Anderson Silva. I fucking love this thing. It gets all of the stars.

Anyone on here involved in a regular game that's looking to add a regular, reliable player? I already play twice a week but organise both games, and I occasionally get asked along to a couple of other games when they're short of bodies. I'd love to get a game every week that I don't have to bloody organise myself!

Gloating, being a cunt, cunting people, and cunts getting cunted. I condone and fully-endorse all four. Football, in general, needs to lighten the fuck up.

My boys defeated Goa 2-1 last night, with former Man City midfielder Elano scoring the decisive goal. Matrix didn't even give himself a game, and hoyed Mendy and Silvestre in at centre-back.

Chennaiyin FC for me. I've never heard of the city, but MARCO MATERAZZI is their player-manager. He's 41, hasn't played since 2011, and has never been a coach before -- let alone a manager. Their squad includes ex-Hull person Bernard Mendy, Elano, and a couple of ex-Man United goobers in Mikael Silvestre and CLUB CAPTAIN Bojan Djordic. To be honest, I'm only picking them because I love Materazzi. You other teams are all the sons of terrorist whores, AND YOU WILL LOSE.

HALF PAST DEAD. Steven Seagal is in jail again, this time with 50% more hair, 30% more body fat, and 100% more do-rag. Seagal is apparently Russian, though you'd never guess it from his fucking stupid voice, and co-stars with Ja Rule. There's an adorable/borderline racist scene near the beginning with Big Ja teaching Sensei Seagal the best way to say "aight." Other than that, Ja Rule is pretty gash, but not quite as shitty as Kurupt, who's supposed to be comic relief. What a wonderful plot. Fake Russian Seagal is an undercover FBI agent who infiltrates an Eastern European criminal organisation so he can't get sent to jail to kidnap a supreme court judge before some shady criminal dudes kidnap her first. Oh yeah: the prison is fucking Alcatraz and all. Not sure what the judge was doing there, but it doesn't really matter. There's also a weird subplot about Seagal's dead wife, and a scene with Seagal and chief bad guy MORRIS CHESTNUT swinging around on massive chains, trying to kick the shit out of each other. The fight scenes are just wonderful: it's honestly like something out of the WWE. Sensei will punch a guy, and said guy will go flying across the room, do a couple of flips, hit the ground face-first, then get up and fall into a trash can. Extra shout-outs to Ja Rule's stuntman, who takes an absolute battering throughout. Great stuff. The ending is one of the dumbest things I've seen in a long time, and given that I've watched two Seagal films in two days, I think it's safe to say that I'm pretty well-informed on dumb things at the moment. This thing was an absolute treat.

I'm in, provided there's a first-aider. Give Moon Moon a ring and tell him to bring his wooden spoon.

NINE Steak - "Slab City" Pure desert rock. Sounds like a modernized Kyuss, and that's probably exactly what they intended. Their influences are very apparent throughout, particularly on tracks like "Liquid Gold" and "Slab City." "Rising" is the kind of track that comes on halfway through a long, arduous roadtrip and suddenly makes everything in the universe seem right again. The guitar tone is mega fuzzy, and they're pretty content to just ride a colossal rock riff at times: there's a real sense of looseness through this thing, and you get the vibe that they could drift into a massive jam at any point. The drums could use a bit more breathing space, and I'm not sure how this thing will stand-up to multiple listens, but my first impression is that it's a ripping album. ****

Have you gone into your PayPal account and manually transferred the money from there into your bank account? Think the option's labelled "withdrawal," or summink like that. I'm not sure if it'll apply to your situation but that's what I've had to do when receiving dough on PayPal.

EIGHT Electric Wizard -- "Time to Die" I love it when a band I really adore follow-up a relatively disappointing album with a total face-melter. Not that I thought "Black Masses" was necessarily a bad album, but it definitely lacked a bit of spunk: the thing felt kinda mechanical and limp, especially after the gorgeously-warm hook-fest of "Witchcult Today." This is the filthiest, nastiest Electric Wizard record in years. The guitars aren't quite at "Dopethrone" levels of fizz, but it sounds like their using rusty nails for plectrums again, and Jus Oborn just sounds bloody miserable. I'm not sure how much more I could've asked from a new Wizard CD, to be honest. Catchy riffage, droning psychedelia, horrible fuzz, ladles of misanthropy. Great. ****

SEVEN Quest -- "Searching Sylvan" The best thing about post-GKMC hip-hop is the splurdge of informed, articulate, conscious storytellers with great songsmanship and genuine rap skills that have started popping-up all over the place. This thing is absolutely fan-fucking-tastic. It definitely reminds me of Kendrick's seminal album, in that it weaves a consistent narrative that's mostly focused on the rapper's rise from obscurity to relative success. I'm not going to reveal too much on that, because just listening to it unfold is one of this project's real joys. The guy can spit his ass off, the beats are nice and smooth and the subject matter is engaging. Can't ask for much more than that. This should've been an album, though -- he deserves my money. DOWNLOAD LINK! *****