feltmonkey

That was fantastic. What a test match! I feel sorry for Pakistan, who didn't deserve to lose, but Buttler and Woakes were magnificent. When you consider the situation when he came in, his form with the bat coming into the match, and the fact that he's a bowler who bats a bit, that's an amazing innings from Woakes. It was great to see him coming off the pitch unable to stop smiling.

Yeah, I expect she's furious. I love this idea of sending Broad in.

Test cricket continues to be absolutely brilliant. This is gripping stuff.

It's all about partnerships for England. If one batsman gets 80+ and we have three or four fifty partnerships, we'll win this. Easier said than done, of course.

Spin bowling is all about personality, and I don't think Dom Bess has the presence to pull it off yet. All of the good spinners have this aura about them of being one step ahead, of coming to get you out, to out-think you, to trick you into doing the wrong thing. Warne had a bully's arrogance, and gave the impression of being hell-bent on making you look stupid. Murali always seemed to be up to something, an impression not hurt by the suspicion that he was somehow cheating. Even Swann always gave the impression that he was laughing at the batsman. The best spinners get twatted for six and somehow give the impression that this was exactly what they wanted you to do, that they have you right where they want you. This is in a way at least as important as how many revs you can get on the ball, and how many variations you have. Warne only really had about three or four variations, but he constantly came up with new names for them so he could leak to the press that he had a new variation - the slider, the flipper, the zooter - they all basically did the same thing. He did this to get into the batsmen's heads. Bess is still learning his own art, he's not going to give the required impression to the batsman of being in complete control of the situation. I think these Pakistan spinners are going to have our batsmen under their spell all summer. I've been very impressed with Pakistan. They're a much better team than I gave them credit for - this is due to my own ignorance of the players they've had come through over the last couple of years. They've got a bowler who took a test hat-trick at age 16, and he's not even their most exciting talent.

The Sanchez saga is so strange, though. How do you learn lessons from that? Before he came to us he had been one of the best players in the league. He seemed enthusiastic and keen to succeed in his early games. Why did it all go so wrong? It's not like there were obvious massive potential problems with the transfer at the time. There were some small worries - he was 28, so in his peak, and could only really decline, but huge pace wasn't really part of his game. His wages were far too high, but that shouldn't mean he was doomed to fail on the pitch. If he'd scored 20 goals a season for us since he signed, no-one would mention his wages - it only becomes a massive issue in light of his failure on the pitch. There was also the issue that he wanted to play in the same position as two of our best players in Martial and Rashford. No huge red flags, though. Why did he fail on the pitch? He always looked rushed and gave the ball away a lot, but he kind of did that at Arsenal too, except there he also regularly scored spectacular goals, drove the whole team forward, and for a couple of years there got the team to the top four almost single-handedly. His high-energy style, lead more by passion than tactical intelligence was a positive rather than a negative. At United, he never seemed to be vaguely on the same wavelength as any other player. Some of the time they seemed to be looking at him and wondering what the fuck he was doing. He looked not like the world-class player he had arguably been at Arsenal, but actually a really bad player. A liability. Perhaps he was being asked to do something completely different to what he was used to? Or did it just not click, perhaps through luck and incompatibilty with other players, and maybe a decline in his own ability. I think at a certain point he lost interest, and without that passion and all-action style he was half the player. He shouldn't have failed, but I don't think I can remember another player we've signed who has failed more completely.

My Mum once said she preferred Jos Buttler to any of her own children. If ever there was a time for him to justify that, this is it.

Here's a video to savour - all our penalties this season. The first one at Norwich, and the one against Villa were never penalties, but every other one is completely nailed on. We missed loads of them before Fernandes started taking them.

You'll be level 40 in three or four hours, so the starter areas are hardly an issue. It's actually a really good time to start WoW, because it's double xp until the expansion, so you can get a character to level 120 quicker than if you start when Shadowlands is released, so when it is you can get into the content that the majority of people are playing at that time.

One more wicket and Pakistan are into the tail.

Collapse incoming!

The polystyrene pitch was 2nd Edition. I still have that pitch in my wardrobe.

All the noise over Sancho is just a bargaining tactic. They're threatening to walk away if the price doesn't get more reasonable, closer to United's valuation. I don't know why this is being interpreted as crying and moaning. I'm not saying it's a good negotiating tactic or anything - United have been terrible at this sort of thing since David Gill left the club. As @Gotters said, Dortmund are set up to create stars and sell them, so United know that there is a willingness to sell, possibly even a necessity, as we don't know how Dortmund's finances have been hit by Covid. United might be trying to to use similar tactics as they did when buying Fernandes, when they walked away for six months, and the price mysteriously came down to what they wanted to pay. This turned out to be a really clever way to nearly wreck the season and cost the club a huge number of points when you consider how good they were after signing Fernandes in January and how crap they were before. You have to consider that perhaps United might be better off walking away, making Greenwood the starter in that position (is Sancho objectively an upgrade on him? At this point, probably just about, but Greenwood will quite possibly be better in the long run) signing a back-up for a cheaper fee and spending the rest on a defensive midfielder that's a long-term replacement for Matic, and a quick centre-back to partner Maguire. I personally think none of the above will happen. Woodward will stand firm on the price the club are willing to pay, and waste the whole summer faffing around, before getting distracted by a hail-mary bid for someone completely ridiculous (like Dybala last year) running out of time to actually address the areas we need improving, and eventually signing someone overpriced in a position we don't need and recalling Smalling and pretending that's like a new signing. I wouldn't put it past the club to put in a last-minute panic bid for Sanchez.

The Sanchez transfer is finalised! I've seen suggestions on twitter that we should build a statue of Antonio Conte outside Old Trafford.

A broken machine perhaps. I was trying to finish them for the Dakkadakka deadline and at about 1am decided they needed some weathering. I eventually finished them at 3am, complete with weathering that you can barely see. The only reason I ended up painting them for the challenge was that I originally was painting some Star Wars Legion guys, but that was never going to work because I had 21 of them and I'd taken a week and only got as far as basecoating them. Stupid. Thoughts and prayers.