Michael*

I can already hear Big Al's weekly soundbites on Match of the Day, each one starting with "no disrespect to Steve, but...", although I'd imagine Bruce will be given roughly about as much time as Steve McClaren was, perhaps even more. Dave Whelan appointed him twice too of course, maybe he's just catnip to downmarket sporting retailers. Hardly surprising though that so many thoroughly average managers keep getting such decent gigs when the best thing some pundits can manage on the subject is "I thought Moyes might have been a better fit." The lack of insight borders on painful sometimes.

March 2020: Newcastle part company with manager Steve Bruce following a home defeat to Norwich. Bruce blames it on Newcastle fans being unwilling to accept his past as manager of Sunderland.

It promises to be a bit of a web of intrigue, really. We'll likely see a natural progression of the game where it becomes more difficult to establish lasting dominance, although it's possible that sides like Germany, Norway and Sweden could begin to feel the effects of that as well. Those nations have benefited quite a bit from being around since the early nineties, albeit not as much as the USA has. Not to say that American players couldn't improve, adapt or even benefit from a stronger Europe too, of course.

Some of the European nations have enjoyed such a meteoric rise as of late that it seems to have highlighted a few of the others perhaps resting on their laurels a little. USA though were in a class of their own from the outset this year, and while we as fans do tend to love an underdog, I've always regarded it as important that the best team at a World Cup wins it. There can be no doubt at this point that they were exactly that. Still, perhaps in the future, with increased investment and presumably more young girls taking up the game, we'll see the gap continue to close. It should be interesting to see where we stand in four years' time.

Absolutely sensational, Fred.

Yeah, I'd go along with that. I even caught myself craving just a straight-up road movie with Samuel L. Jackson and Brie Larson at one point.

Yeah, it certainly retained all the good things about Homecoming, even improving upon some of them. The cast is great, particularly Zendaya, and of course Holland embodies everything an actor should to play the role of Parker. I liked that the real visual highlights were almost all built around Beck. One sequence in particular had some of the most imaginative set pieces that I've seen in a Marvel story.

The opening segment of S3's first episode may have been the show's strangest scene yet. And considering the show, that's really saying something. Overall though, I'd say as an episode this was superior to most of S2. Surprisingly forthright in its structure and pacing, and seems to be playing a little fairer with its audience by giving up fun payoffs a bit faster, while still leaving room for future stuff.

Thought it was a major leap forward for Marvel and the MCU as we push into the next phase of movies. Performances that were very heartfelt, surprisingly dark themes, thrilling and funny in all the right places and sets an overarching tone and perspective for the stories that are going to be told in the future. Can't say fairer than that.

Noice.

There's a chance, I suppose, that the Falcon/Bucky show could at least partially tackle the aftermath, but I really feel like a standalone Leftovers-style show retooled into a Marvel product could be an amazing thing. It's possible too, although it probably won't happen for a while, that one of the newer heroes might have an origin story set during the five-year gap.

Perhaps a grand for Avram would be out of reach to the somewhat depleted ranks in our football thread these days, but we could easily crowdfund a Bellazon shout-out from Jesper Blomqvist or Adnan Januzaj, surely. Mark Lawrenson would be the dream for me, I think. You just know he'd be dying to end all the greetings with "not" in order to contradict his previous statement, a la Wayne's World in 1992. Which Lawro no doubt still considers cutting edge humour.

I think you're right, it just feels like we're at a point now where Marvel could be sitting on an opportunity to do something really incredible with their TV shows. Having, in canon, a five-year period where the world is recovering from something so devastating would be such fertile ground for their street-level heroes to explore. But, unfortunately, it probably won't be happening.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which rather sadly, given that it was intended to wrap up such a long-running and relatively successful franchise, wasnae very good.

Sounds like Rafa has received a better job offer than continuing to work under Mike Ashley so the possibilities are endless now, really. We could see him managing in the Chinese Super League, as a post-festival litter picker, possibly even Boris Johnson's PR secretary.

I wasn't expecting to hear that either. Admittedly though, what with them coming off a very long and relatively decent run with the property, I wouldn't be too put out by them not touching the X-Men for a while yet. I'm so ready for a good Fantastic Four, but more than that we need a good Doctor Doom. He fits the mould of an MCU villain perfectly and Spider-Man's world would be the ideal place to launch him.

For me, Holland has been by far and away the best version of Parker, and if Gyllenhaal is half as good as Mysterio (one of my favourite comic book characters ever) then honestly, Marvel should be onto another winner. What I'm really intrigued by though is seeing them outline how the new, post 'snap' world is going to work.

I guess it's safe to assume, with the release of Super Endgame: Turbo Edition evidently now in the pipeline, that Feige really wants that record. I imagine some folks will consider the whole thing a bit of a cheat, but given that Avatar's official box office total includes an extra $30m raked in after its own re-release, I suppose you'd have to say there's no reason why Marvel couldn't or shouldn't do the same. Apart from anything else though, it's the movie of the year with more stuff, so hey, I'm in.

The marketing for it has basically amounted to "remember how great Thor and Valkyrie were in Ragnarok", which won't have helped things. I'd still be down for Hemsworth and Thompson to take over more random 90s franchises, though.

I consider Milla pretty underrated as an actor, albeit one who doesn't always do the right stuff. However, I get the impression that she genuinely enjoys making movies like this one rather than it being something she just does for a pay packet. So hey, who can blame her?

Yeah, although I probably wouldn't put it up there with the very best of the MCU, it didn’t really need to be for me, it just needed to be good fun and it was. Not everyone cares for the origin story formula or Marvel's brand of humour, so sure, there are going to be people out there who have legitimate criticisms, but in no way are they close to being in the majority or the loudest critics. The fact that there were two review bombings and a bot attack of the Rotten Tomatoes page is evidence of that too. Meanwhile, on lower traffic audience score sites it's sitting in the same 75-90% range as the vast majority of Marvel's output.

Overall, I'd place it roughly in the middle of the MCU pack, but the fact that it was structured more like a 90s buddy cop adventure/road movie would push it towards the top end for me. It was undoubtedly pitched at a younger audience than I would have expected, though. It's half for the young'uns, half for their parents who were about the kids' ages in the 90s. I don't think there's anything else quite like it, origin story or not.

Enjoyment of S3, I suspect, will depend entirely on how much you still care about the characters after all this time. For me, it's been a reminder of just how good Marvel's Netflix stuff can be at its best. Forgive the slight tangent, but the thought occurs that if all this takes place before 'the snap', and Marvel can't use the characters again for a number of years, they could bring them back later and really delve into the consequences of Endgame. So following the timeframe of the movie would more or less line everything up with the real-world timeframe when Marvel gets the rights back. Coincidence?

Doesn't sound like the movie has performed well at the box office thus far, taking $10m on Friday and now looking at an opening weekend of around $27m. By way of comparison, the third MiB movie opened to $54m.

You could write what I know about MMA on the back of a stamp but I do think that's a good shout about renaming the thread. Consider it done.