u/GMD3S1GNS

Very noticeable that in recent months Disney has started involving itself with football, particularly the premier league. Biggest one being the partnership with Gary Neville.

On one part given modern day Disney in how they destroyed Star Wars, ruined marvel, keep releasing crap sequels and live action remakes along with the damage they’ve done to the theme parks.

Another is the impending Disney-fication of football, the game will be further adapted along the lines to appeal to American audiences, expect hydration breaks to comeback in some form, more ads, halftime shows, clubs selling more slop (the United pitch block being an example of what’s to come) and so forth in the future. All this while the price of football becomes even more unaffordable for the average Joe in the UK to not just attend games but actually watch it on TV in general as the broadcasters and dozen streaming services split the games between them.

Ok this is a bit of a random subject but thinking about for a while how it’s very clear he’s had a hair transplant over the summer. Noticing a lot of pink areas where new grafts have been placed. My question is what was he doing with his hair the past few years, hearing all this talk that it was a hair piece, hair fibres maybe, is there a definite answer on what it was.

Curious since my club play them next on what to expect on Sunday. Seen them play once against Chelsea and thought they looked half decent at times, just the highlights in the other games. Got their first point last weekend in a difficult away game at Anfield.

I initially tipped them to be fighting relegation this season but still staying up, so can anyone that watches them regularly can give more insight in how they’ve played this season and how the rest of it is likely to unfold, are the results likely to start coming fairly soon. Got a pretty good squad with plenty of quality no doubt.

So, I originally posted about this a few months ago but deleted the post, but decided to bring back my current issue into the public domain as I could really use help on what to do. I’ve been pretty much going round in circles through service after service trying to fix things.

So the background is that I was due to take up a place at a university in England last year but had the defer for one year due to not being able to get SAAS in on time as I picked the course up through clearing.

I ended up here due to lack of opportunities in education and jobs in Scotland for my practice (graphic design). Only one BA course left in Glasgow that I didn’t get in, lots of job applications and sent a cold email to every single studio in the city and surrounding area to no avail. It’s very hard to get anywhere in this line of work if you don’t have connections.

Fast forward to just before the summer of this year, SAAS rejected my tuition coverage for the first year of the course (the other two are fine). I couldn’t qualify for a hardship fund through the university, they advised me to appeal to SAAS which I did, it wasn’t successful, the reason for being ineligible is because I was previously at a university doing an equivalent year in Scotland, I dropped out in part to not being able to settle but largely it was down to mental health reasons, I had a lot going on in the background and my life at the university only made things worse. Just after I left in 2020 the pandemic and lockdowns hit, my life massively derailed for the next few years, I spent 6 years on medication, did plenty of therapy and was just in a bad place overall that I won’t go further on.

In my appeal as advised by the university I included my backstory on why I didn’t finish the year back then, could provide evidence from my GP but it didn’t work as you can only get the decision reversed if you’re going back to the same university to study which I don’t believe is fair. I’ve went through different services since then to flag it up, I put in a report to the SPSO who are looking into it, I gave my story to my local and regional MSP’s who have helped, my case has been forwarded to the Scottish government including the education minister.

The only way I would’ve made this year work at the university is that my plan was to try and get the student loan of £10,400 paid in full, put the £9800 aside into a savings account that I would use to pay my tuition instalments as they require five monthly instalments of just under £2000 to partake in the course while I would’ve committed to a minimum of 20 hours working part time to support myself financially. It fell through because SAAS rejected it.

So as of now I’ve had to give up my place at the university to potentially come back next year, the amount of hoops you have to jump through to get a degree when coming from a working class background is frankly ridiculous in my opinion. I really like the university and from attending the open day in March I felt even more of a desire to pursue an education there.

I’ve taken a back up option by enrolling on a degree course (3rd year) at a university in Scotland, its design related but it’s not graphic design which I want to have a career in, so not fully sure if doing this course for 2 years would still qualify me for graphic design jobs in the future. I did try before the summer in asking if I could skip a year at the university as the other two like mentioned are eligible to have tuition covered by submitting my qualifications, personal statement and portfolio but the tutor didn’t feel I was at the right stage for level 5 of the course which I understand. I’ve managed to get in contact with him this week regarding my situation and he’s given more feedback on what my portfolio was missing and how the jump into year 2 might not be suitable. So I’ll take that advice on board, see what I can do to develop within my current course and outside of it within my freelance business that I’m looking to get off the ground. Assess the options whether to try for year 2 or hope that my situation with SAAS reaches an outcome for them reversing their policies to get year 1 eligible for tuition.

This summer has really impacted me a lot, it’s been very tough and emotionally draining, so by putting my story out there I hope that anyone can offer up advice. Thank you.

Nothing against him being a fan of the club but don’t believe he should ever be a referee for Manchester United games given the rivalry between both clubs, like the 1996 title race and feel that he’s been worse since we won the 2023 league cup against his club when being involved in our games. I know a number of Liverpool fans I’ve come across have felt this as well when having him on their games. Can we just get someone more impartial for our games, like how about a ref from down south that supports Palace or Fulham

🇫🇷 Paul Pogba
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Jadon Sancho
🇪🇸 Dani Carvajal
🇪🇸 Sergio Ramos
🇫🇷 Karim Benzema
🇦🇹 David Alaba
🇧🇷 Philippe Coutinho
🇨🇮 Yves Bissouma
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Raheem Sterling
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Jamie Vardy
🇩🇿 Riyad Mahrez
🇺🇦 Oleksandr Zinchenko
🇨🇮 Wilfried Zaha
🇭🇷 Marcelo Brozović
🇵🇹 Renato Sanches

Any of them worth going for?

Feel like both those clubs will be fighting relegation this season and haven’t strengthen enough, in fact will actually be weaker than compared to last season.

Sure a lot of people have already written off Coventry, that leaves two spots for relegation and seeing how Ipswich and Hull have performed so far along with the amount of money they’ve spent to bring in new players it looks like they have a great chance of staying up.

Looking around the table, it’s hard to pick out any other two teams that could go down, I’m sure Coventry will come good fairly soon as well, so won’t be too harsh on them as they’re still in with a shout of surviving.

But yeah Everton and Palace, two clubs that look like they could be left behind.

Probably a few others I’ve forgotten that want out of their clubs, some very vocal about wanting out. Going to be very awkward now that they’ll have to either reintegrate into the team or train on their own. Alvarez at Atletico another example. Turkey and Saudi windows are still open but can’t see any of those players going there.

£7.5m when he had two years left on his contract at Villa has to be a huge bargain for a World Cup winning goalkeeper. He’s 34 this month but that’s still a good age for a keeper, so no issue there.

He’s definitely strengthened Chelsea’s chances of winning the premier league this season as he’ll win them a lot of points. Still in his prime, I know people often talk about Messi in the Argentina team, and before this summer, Di Maria as well was one of the most important players but got to be said that Emi Martinez really has been the difference maker in helping the national team win trophies, penalty shootouts, big saves etc. In the World Cup final, unfortunate for the Torres goal but he kept Argentina in that game making save after save with Spain dominating which can’t be forgotten, on another day Emi would’ve won them the trophy. Probably one of the best goalkeeping performances you’ll see, if Argentina won, he’d have easily been the man of the match.

I visited a university 7 years ago (UCF) and was just blown away by the amount of stuff there, a huge stadium for the football team, an indoor stadium for basketball, a small stadium for baseball, another pitch for track and I guess other team sports. There was luxury apartments, fast food establishments like chick-fil-a, subway, Dunkin’ donuts etc along with some other stores. Nice little nature trails to go for walks as well. I seen some news today that a university in Alabama is building a golf course.

I mean it’s nothing like how universities are in the UK which are usually about 3-5 buildings either around the centre of town or just on the outskirts. I understand why tuition is so expensive in America, is there any real benefit in having all this stuff?

Won them a trophy and didn’t deserve to lose his job, only stopped trying in the league because Spurs were out of the race for the title and champions league places plus had no threat of being relegated. Risked it all to win them their first trophy since the days of MySpace. Sacking him was harsh.

Look at how bad things have been since then, 3 mangers, lots of money spent and they’ve just been getting worse. Bring back Ange who is a serial winner.

Definition of too good for the championship, too crap for the premier league. Basically what Cameron Jerome was as a player.

So, a new documentary about the man is out on Amazon, I’m not going to watch and you shouldn’t either. Just felt like bringing up this discussion on how unique it is for a footballer to be so hated by every club he’s played for.

I’m writing this in relation to Manchester City recently unveiling a kit that was part created by AI. I’ve noticed for a while now that football is completely selling out to the AI companies. Many people like myself as a graphic designer amongst many others in this field, not to mention others like animators, artists, 3D developers, data analysts, writers, journalists and so forth are falling victim to difficulty in getting our careers off the ground, maybe silly but I did expect better from football.

Clubs are now using AI to create their social media graphics, influential football accounts such as Fabrizio Romano is using it instead of hiring a graphic designer. ITV spent the entire world cup promoting Gemini, Gary Neville and the overlap have been accepting money from Microsoft to promote their AI software, wonder how Gary would feel if AI replaced the entire overlap show or sky sports punditry?

This is a big issue that I hope more people take notice of, especially if you yourself dream of working in football and have a particular skillset that will be affected by these changes.

Been an incredible summer for them with a lot of great investment, add in De Zerbi’s high intensity attacking football and they’ll no doubt cause a lot of problems for teams this season. Not to mention they’re not in Europe and will be fresh every weekend

Genuinely forgot how bad their coverage really was until tonight, crap intro song, tons of ad breaks, cringey banter between the pundits with barely any interesting analysis, constantly promoting slop like Fanalysis and the fact that they have Peter Drury as their main commentator.