The9

The odds on the Skates getting promoted are (always) rubbish, due to a combination of their numbers, general deluded optimism and probably some kind of relationship between high levels of betting and their fan demographic. They've been favourites for the past 4 years and haven't managed to live up to the billing yet. In short, the value is in laying against them.

I'm about as convinced that Valery will be first choice left back in three years' time as I am Pied, that's not a knock on either of them, just a statement of how little we have to go on about their abilities.

Only if the fans on the board are knee-jerk tosspots who aren't looking at the bigger picture. You'd expect the criteria to be a bit more exclusive than that for a club that actually has a wealthy owner, as opposed to them being the people funding the club. For my involvement I have no idea how good he is, but the fact we've signed him on just a 2 year deal says we're not really expecting great things - though we can always offer a new deal if he does well, I guess.

McQueen has looked questionable at best at LB from what I've seen preseason - it's all well and good telling them they need to get forward, and he's very good at that as it's his much more familiar position - but when you're sprinting out of the back line to press the ball and leaving a 20 yard gap behind you like he did a couple of times against Groningen, that's beginner stuff and needs to be sorted quickly. The Targett loan is a weird one, he's already a good squad player, and we'd want him to cover Bertrand. I guess not having a 3-5-2 this season hurts his chances of starting a lot, and the club may have decided 30+ matches in the Championship is more useful to us in the longer term.

Not "pride before a fall", more "ridiculous financial waste". It's WAY too late to change the design now, they've already been selling it for two weeks. To change it now would require the club to get a massive new order of kit to be made and delivered within two weeks or they're in breach of Premier League rules, then we'd have to wait months for the new replicas to get made and sent to the club (maybe missing Xmas for most of the stock - I remember the lead times when Cortese messed adidas about with the all-red thing, and the final product wasn't even the same as the adverts - plus when he left he went in January having cancelled the adidas contract, yet Saints were unable to get replacement adidas kit by the following August despite having an existing contract, so lead times are about 6 months). Besides, I don't like it much, but the kit simply isn't anywhere near bad enough to justify any of that. Also, the mock ups weren't the design, they were faulty representations of the design. The design uses the same style as a few of last season's kits and the "yoke" was always going to be the shape and size in those. The only mistake was UA showing the red yoke on a designer's screen in the promos which meant people hoped that would be the design.

Fair point that. I didn't manage to track one down in South Wales over the weekend though...

Lol, and what, give away a few thousand white ones?

I bet on Newport to get relegated last season, they had a bloody good attempt at winning me the money, but managers 2 and 3 (at the start) did enough to get them to safety with about 8 games left, at which point they presumably told everyone they weren't getting a contract renewal, and they lost basically their last 8 matches aside from getting the one point they needed when it was getting really hairy again towards the end. For some reason they don't look like a relegation candidate this season but if they finish top half I'll be stunned, even though they seem to have recruited fairly well. As for the Skates, well, I said 3 years and they'd definitely be back in L1 so they're doing a stellar job of buggering that up beyond the realms of probability. They should, again, be the best team in the division by some distance based on turnover, they probably won't be, and we can but hope they somehow arse it up again in a comical manner, but they surely can't muck it up AGAIN?

Hm, my spideysense is tingling... I know the manager knows him, but we've just signed a player in a position where we already have two decent players, and he doesn't seem to be good enough to necessarily improve on them. Enough clips of him crossing in that video to see he is suited to the manager's style, but still, he's not going to be third choice and we don't need three right backs. He can also cover elsewhere but didn't seem to have done so recently. So who's going?

A quick check of this http://www.myfootballfacts.com/Portsmouth_Squad_Numbers.html tells me 33 is Basinas, 3 is Ricardo Rocha and 17 is John Utaka (forgot about him), so there's no doubt it's them. Wigan have clearly got Hugo Rodallega wearing 20 as well.

Did we ever get around to mentioning that Matt Tubbs has left? He scored for Forest Green against Newport on Saturday. Interesting to note that only non league's biggest budget could afford to take him on (though I'm fairly sure Eastleigh have already been burnt on that one).

Papa Bouba Diop is very obviously the number 8. Which means they can only be arguing that they're the home fans. Which is highly comical.

That was probably me, you wouldn't be saying that if you saw my knee after my last match. After my knee-knack in 2000 and playing til 2014 nevertheless my 2013 (second) surgery found Grade IV bone on bone arthritis, no smooth cartilage on the back of the knee to allow the ligaments to glide, and now it just blows up to double the size with any kind of twisting. Took a week to walk freely after a match and it just became not worth the hassle. I always thought I'd miss playing, but as I went about 10 years over my realistic cut-off point and was already far enough detached from still being good enough to actually enjoy it, I can't say I do really. Anyway, if I do make a 10th (or so) un-retirement I'll be sure to give Vancouver a go in 7 years' time when I'm eligible.

Nice to know someone's prepared to put their name to it anyway. For my part I used it at every conceivable opportunity for the following few transfer windows.

You need Urban Dictionary (where it has resided since we invented it about 10 years ago).

Nope, 1865 Club about a year ago.

I think that was the most disappointing bit for me - we'd just been to Salzburg and Rotterdam pre-season enjoying a beer with the match, and then the bloody UEFA games there's a stadium ban even for the qualifiers. No doubt they'll have forgotten that again by the time the first home group game comes around and the stewards will get it in the neck again. Mind you after the Euros I'm not going to moan about people smoking in the loos at half time as much, there was one with a sly fag on the go near us in the crowd at every Euros match despite it being just as against the law as in England and Wales.

Best get it added to the defaults then!

More cluelessness about the West Ham shirts here too: http://www.joe.co.uk/sport/heres-why-west-ham-didnt-have-sponsors-on-their-shirts-on-thursday-night/76242 FWIW there's no requirement for names on shirts for the qualifiers, because the UEFA rules don't restrict clubs to the UEFA regulations for the qualifiers (other than possibly sponsor size). Presumably that's so all the smaller sides in the early rounds don't have to fork out for new sets of kit just to play in Europe when the overheads of travelling are expensive enough. UEFA are even ok with clubs wearing national league logos on their shirts in the early rounds. You may also have noted that Saints wore striped backs against Arnhem and Midtjylland last season. We will not be permitted to do so in the group stages. Just as West Ham won't be permitted not to have shirt names if they get into the group stages. And FWIW, the reason they didn't have their names on their shirts is probably because they regard it as pre-season, and like Saints, they have a set of kit made up for pre-season without names on the back - because Premier League rules are that you don't have to announce shirt name/numbers until the start of the season and they don't want people to assume anything and get their shirts printed with something wrong.

Hence the gathering of evidence to debunk it above. Re: Carlsberg at the Euros, they were also selling the stuff outside the grounds (well, the 0.5% version of it). I remember Newcastle changed their shirt sponsor when playing Metz (I thought Metz, the article here claims Monaco, that may have been the round after) circa 1996-ish which was the first time I'd seen that - but betting and alcohol sponsorship regulations are not the same in various countries anyway. There are various examples here: http://www.truecoloursfootballkits.com/articles/an-alternative-to-alcohol

Oh and of course I'd forgotten Celtic are now sponsored by Dafabet: Here's them wearing their betting shirt advertising in Scotland in the Champions League qualifier against Lincoln Red Imps of Gibraltar. So as suspected it's not a "European rule", idiots at the Essex Chronicle... and again against Astana in Kazakhstan: FWIW I guarantee Astana will have to change their number and name colour if they get through to the group stage, UEFA won't be standing for any of that blue-on-blue nonsense.

There aren't any here, but that only means UEFA know that some countries (including France in particular) have regulations about shirt advertising they wouldn't want to breach wholesale:

It does say here that "European rules specify you can't advertise gambling companies on football shirts", but it's only the Essex Chronicle and it's not like they've checked... http://www.essexchronicle.co.uk/betway-missing-from-west-ham-shirts-against-nk-domzale/story-29562731-detail/story.html

Also, online betting seems to be a bit of a hot potato in Slovenia, which makes it all the more likely: http://www.frixo.com/sbook/regions/slovenia.asp We'll find out anyway if West Ham have their usual sponsors in the home leg.

I've just gone through the Europa League regulations (though not the specific kit regs yet) and I'm pretty sure it's due to national law: http://www.uefa.org/MultimediaFiles/Download/Regulations/uefaorg/Regulations/02/35/92/45/2359245_DOWNLOAD.pdf Article 53 Shirt sponsor 53.01 From the group stage, only the approved and used shirt sponsor may appear at the official training session and any UEFA Europa League media activities the day before the match. 53.02 From the group stage, clubs may change their shirt sponsor only once during the same UEFA season. 53.03 Starting the competition without a sponsor but subsequently using one is not considered as a change of sponsor. 53.04 A change regarding the content of the sponsor advertising is considered to be a change of sponsor, even if the sponsor remains the same. 53.05 Clubs which want to change their shirt sponsor must submit their request to the UEFA administration at least ten working days prior to the first match in which they wish to use the new sponsor (together with the items defined in Paragraph 34.04 of the UEFA Kit Regulations). 53.06 For clubs that have qualified for the knockout rounds, any sponsor change must be announced to the UEFA administration by 1 February 2017 (12.00 CET) at the latest. No change in sponsor is permitted after this time. 53.07 If the national legislation applicable at the match venue prevents a visiting club from using its approved shirt sponsor (see Paragraph 32.02 of the UEFA Kit Regulations), the club may ask UEFA to replace its sponsor with a UEFA-endorsed programme or with a charity in compliance with the UEFA requirements. Alternatively, a club may wear advertising for a product of its sponsor as long as it complies with the applicable national legislation and is approved by UEFA. Such requests must be submitted to the UEFA administration at least two days before the match in question. For the avoidance of doubt, clubs are solely responsible for complying with the applicable national legislation. http://www.uefa.org/MultimediaFiles/Download/Regulations/uefaorg/Regulations/02/35/92/45/2359245_DOWNLOAD.pdf