The9

Yes, "more advanced". Yaaaaaaaaawn. I've had a look for myself, and it seems it is possible to get all of the images you want into your X360 Option File via a combination of USB Memory stick and Option File editing PC software. So a massive great big faff then. On the bright side, I have all the hardware and software needed already. On the down side, I no longer have the time nor the inclination to bother updating everything, even using existing OFs made by other people (I have an absolute need for everything to be 100% perfect and other people NEVER meet my standards on this kind of thing) so I probably just won't bother buying it.

To be fair you can be both controversial and a character without getting infractions. It's when you're a tedious one-trick troll who incites abuse and then hides you're going to have problems.

If Puncheon did everything half a second quicker he'd be our best player by miles. It's his second-guessing himself when he passes that is the frustrating part of his game.

Having said that, bags me Chief Exec, kit researcher and editor designer. I always end up managing Robsk's daft ideas anyway... *cough*FC Santos*cough*.

But is it the case on the Xbox360 as well ? I know it is on PS3, but that was the case 2 years ago, and Microsoft refused to allow a split option file or image copying so you couldn't get images into the game or import parts of Option Files. Also, because practically all the PES community has PS3s (I gave up waiting in 2006 and got my 360 instead) there's no-one hacking the Option Files to create 3rd Party importing/unencrypting apps like there used to be.

Game, obviously. It's not like we're lacking in investment or programming skills or need to pay bills and stuff in the meantime... Oh wait.

I think it's weird that people are still trying to make one a "game" and the other a "simulation" - they're both simulations, but the main problem with PES the last couple of years is it simulates a version of football where individual players can dribble 50 yards with the ball unchallenged, which is unrealistic. The current demo doesn't seem to stop that. I like the new defending though. I think. I'm not really all that bothered with the hoo-hah over animations other than to illustrate smooth transition between directional changes and no jerkiness, but PES has adopted FIFA's old problem of sliding players since the Next-Gen move, and FIFA has shed a lot of its previous problems with floating balls and ridiculous physics to be more realistic in movements, even if the players mostly look like cartoons. PES WOULD be the superior individual match product if they could sort the AI and the glitching, because the player models are so much more realistic - but until that happens, FIFA still has more teams, more leagues, more online options, a better interface and interactive experience, and gameplay which holds together enough to stop it being utterly frustrating - even if the ball does still float around a bit. I really want to see the PES players, stadia and attention to kit detail with FIFA-style presentation and unlimited editing options.

That kind of flexibility wasn't on the X360 version until 2009 - and that's assuming it's happened since, but unless Microsoft have suddenly become enlightened and allowed partial Option File copying and the sort of image and sound importing you get on the PS3 version, then the PS3 version is still going to blow the 360 one out of the water for the editing options. Unless I know for certain that all of the editing options are in the 360 version I'm almost certainly not going to buy it. Wasted enough money on 360 versions of PES only to find them stupidly locked-down by Microsoft's paranoia about Achievements and file sharing already. And as far as "download someone's update and port it across", well yeah, I was one of the ones creating chunks of the updates for PES/WE PS2 OFs back in 2003.

The existence of "Premier League Stars" and FIFA 2000 through to 2007 suggests that is very much not the case.

I've owned iterations of Super Mario Kart on Super Nintendo, N64, GBA and Gamecube, some of which are the same circuits, if not the same actual game overall. plus Football Manager (2006ish) on PSP and PC PES6 on PS2 and Xbox360 (as well as WE10 also on PS2 which was basically the same game in Japanese). Sensible Soccer 95/96 on Amiga, Sega Megadrive and Xbox360 Live Arcade. Supersprint on Amiga and Xbox360 Live Arcade Lemmings on Amiga and PSX Paperboy on Spectrum, Amiga and Xbox360 Live Arcade. Syndicate on Amiga and Sega Megadrive. Super Mario World on Super Nintendo and GBA. There are more, I had about 45 SNES games and 25 Megadrive ones at the same time, some would have been the same game albeit not at the same time, I just can't think of them. Wish I could add Football Manager on Spectrum and C64 to the list as I played both regularly, but the C64 version was at my mate's...

Quite like the PES2011 demo, not sure about the AI and haven't sussed the defending yet, but the players are SO much more realistic looking than FIFA's. I won't be buying either in a great rush though.

Which relegation ?

The back of the Northam has always been full of thick nobheads, and the few who weren't tend to move after a season or two of being surrounded by them. I know I did... and about 10 other people I know. It's the whole "back seat of the bus" mentality, used to have about 3 people per seat up there in the Prem days too.

Just do the top button and home button reboot as suggested above, it needs a kick up the jacksie from time to time and when it restarts it'll be fine.

You can hit a shoulder button or similar and prompt the play out on the pitch as well, to keep things interesting. I've spent about 15 minutes on the FIFA 11 Demo so far, 5 of which was arsing about as goalie having a good laugh.

I'd be more inclined to think "try and libel me on my own site and I'll ban you" was probably nearer the truth.

Thank fck for that, maybe then people would get back to coding stuff that actually had gameplay and something resembling innovation instead of being endless rehashes of the same 4 or 5 genres. The means to distribute them without a massive outlay on cases and a copy run now exists, after all.

I think you're missing the point - we don't have the players to do that, we score almost all of our goals by getting the ball wide and then turning defences. This season we've sodded about with it for so long before doing that that we're crossing to organised defences, and they are dealing with that easily. Ideally we'd be attacking from wide AND through the middle, but it wasn't a problem last season when we weren't going through the middle much either, but were attacking quickly and efficiently rather than slowly building up.

Well for a start there are half as many players on court as there are on a pitch, so that reduces the amount of processing required exponentially, allowing for lots more faffing with the crowd - also the arenas are generally smaller, so there's less crowd as well. I'd rather a good game than a realistic crowd.

I've been thinking about this and mostly because I know that Waigo and Antonio barely started 25 league games between them, I'm wondering if it might be someone else we let go in the summer that is the key - you hear a lot about characters keeping the changing room buoyant and needing the right balance, maybe the likes of Wayne Thomas were responsible for much of the drive and motivation, or Lloyd James (I know, I know...) could have helped keep the senior pros grounded - one thing that is true, none of the currently fit players except Kelvin were even here in July 2009, how can they know how it felt to be a Saints player then, or be motivated by leaving that behind us ? Or it could just be that we now have too many money chasers ? Not sure I'm right, but something has gone wrong behind the scenes, these players are better than the results they're getting, even without Barnard and Lallana.

Well, we managed it in reverse.

My mistake, SINCE the sacking we have been pointless.

Freak in the sense that we beat them by the exact same 4-goal margin as last season..?

Pardew probably hasn't said anything because like a lot of managers nowadays he had a non-disclosure agreement in his contract. Speculation, but he may or may not have a large sum of cash dependent on his silence - (either already received as part of his pay, or a settlement, or potentially liable for him to pay the club if he breaks it). From the knee-jerkery of Cortese on some issues so far (photo ban didn't seem well thought out, removal of instalments seems just to be punishment for defaulters even though a repeat could have been easily averted) I'm just inclined to believe his impatience got the better of him. I certainly think if anyone had been asked at the start of the season "would you swap Alan Pardew for Nigel Adkins" the vast majority would say "no". And most would have still said that 3 league matches in.

Sturrock mutually agreed to leaving the club, as I'm sure you are aware.