Michael*

No fighting!

Wow, that Messi chap is a bit good, isn't he? Or maybe not, if you believe many an English football fan on many an online forum at the moment. It seems little Leo is playing in an inferior league in foreignland and would find it much harder to achieve such incredible things in the mighty English Premier League. So naturally, I'd now be very interested to see what would happen if a player from La Liga tested that theory by coming over and giving this Premier League lark a try. He wouldn't necessarily need to be a star from one of the perennial Spanish giants, a mid-level side like Rayo Vallecano would do, and he could join a so-called 'unfashionable' club like Swansea (we don't want to make things too easy for him) for a modest fee. I bet he'd be bloody rubbish.

Poor Carrie. People always die when she listens to Miles Davis.

I use Firefox with the Adblock plus add-on and I never see a single ad on BZ, pop-up or otherwise. But generally speaking, yeah - advertising revenue is what keeps us alive.

So that was pretty much what I expected. A spirited effort, a few decent chances created and the odd goal scored, but only after all was lost. Must, must, must beat Reading on Tuesday evening now. If Martin can somehow manage to convince the players that we're 2-0 down before the match starts, we might actually be in with a chance.

Anyone heard the Melody's Echo Chamber album? It's a mixture of sweet and airy French pop and, since Tame Impala's Kevin Parker is on production duties, the psych-rock sound of 'Lonerism'. Pretty sure everything he touches turns to gold.

Good call, I think 'Ride' may be a late contender for best music vid of 2012. She's actually not a bad actress either. Speaking of possible late entrants for best of the year, the Rachel Zeffira album is out Monday. The more I hear, the more I look forward to it.

^Actually, scratch that first part. It seems you get a little bit extra at the end of the Japanese one...

Yeah, it looks the same to me. From what I understand, there's an 'announcement' trailer doing the rounds now and a 'full' trailer to be released on December 17th.

Cumberbatch's voice sounds fantastic there. Counting down the days now.

Edita Vilkeviciute [5] Emily DiDonato [4]

Chelsea back amongst the goals, I see. I wouldn't want to be their next opponents... D'OH!

Noise Not Music / No Fucker

I agree, I'm not feeling that last set quite as much. Overly exuberant Photoshopping abound. Love the others though. Thanks for posting, Mahi!

I'll take this one too, provided there's room on the bandwagon for one more. Congrats!

^ I can appreciate that the post-Van Persie/Fabregas/Nasri Arsenal are a seemingly constant source of frustration these days, but I believe their detractors got it rather skew-whiff after the Olympiakos game. Looking at the teams who are now safely through to the Champions League knock outs, there appears to be no real advantage in finishing first or second in your group this year, apart from the obvious benefit of raking a few extra quid in. Finish first and there's a strong possibility of drawing Madrid or Juventus. Finish second, you could end up with Dortmund or Barcelona. Equally daunting either way.

In all honesty, I doubt we bought Wickham for any other reason than to sell him for a huge profit a year or two down the line, he just hasn't developed at the speed the club would have probably hoped for. The daft thing is, while Bruce stuck two injury prone over-30s (O'Shea and Brown) on five-year contracts at roughly the same time, he only signed Wickham up for three. Which means that if he actually does start to look like a player at some point in the next year or so (and there were encouraging signs when he came on against Norwich at the weekend), there'll be big clubs sniffing round him faster than you can say 'can we at least have our money back?'

Topics merged.

Very poor the way he left, shame for the club that the manager and owner couldnt have come to some sort of agreement, at the time it was reported that it was all about money, yet within a year they splashed £20m+ on Bent. Interesting to see Darren Bent mentioned there, because for me, our current problems can be traced back to a series of decisions made immediately following his exit. Attempting to tough it out without a decent replacement until the summer, coupled with injuries and loss of form meant that our season ended up dying a slow and painful death, which in turn put serious pressure on Bruce for the first time. His response, a complete overhaul of the squad with a record number of new signings, fell completely flat. Most unforgiveable of all was to sign the untested Wickham and Ji as back up to a bored and decidedly overweight Gyan (who quickly did a runner) and the occasionally brilliant but often face-punchingly frustrating Sessegnon. We’ve hardly been a genuine attacking threat since. Which in part brings me to one of O’Neill’s biggest failings this season. He’s placed far too much trust in Bruce signings (only six of our current 24-man squad are O'Neill's - Fletcher and Johnson were signed for admittedly large fees but three were freebies and Rose is a loan) who simply aren’t up to much. Most of them served him well intially, but it’s clear now that they were simply running on adrenaline. Until Martin has more of his own players in, it is of course extremely harsh to call for him to be sacked, though there’s no doubt that massive improvement is urgently required, both tactically and in terms of team selection. And while sticking resolutely to tactics that have worked for you in the past is understandable, he also had far better players to work with back then. I mean, who could even begin to place James McClean in the same solar system as Ashley Young or compare Jack Colback with Stiliyan Petrov? Looking at the upcoming fixtures, there’s surely a strong possibility of finding ourselves somewhere in the bottom three come January, and to get out we’ll need a minimum of four decent new players and a change of tactics. Will it ever get any better? Who knows…

Bump for confirmation.

Well, we lost again. Absolute rubbish in the first half. Much better in the second, but still too little too late. That’s one point from a possible nine in games against West Brom, QPR and Norwich. Chelsea up next and Man United, Man City and Spurs to come over next four weeks or so. Gulp...

Charlize Theron [7] Angelina Jolie [7]

There's a BZ Facebook group (http://www.facebook....ups/2274390583/), but as far as I know it hasn't been active in many a year. If memory serves, there was a change in the way group pages worked a while back, and consequently most of the membership was lost.

None, I'm not in the least bit religious.

Lana Del Rey and Palma Violets from this week's show. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L30iV2mtDe0&feature=share&list=SPE4858B103CB8EA3D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JezmmjxtSo&feature=share&list=SPE4858B103CB8EA3D