The9

Hardly fluffed the rebound, Almunia made a superb save.

The Skates in 2008 had... ONE example... Sulley Muntari in their squad. They bought him from in 2007 Udinese, for £7.1million. They sold him to Inter Milan a year later, right after the Cup Final, for £12.7m, making over a £5m profit. Yet despite actually making a vast sum of money on him, the first administration listed Udinese as creditors, with Portsmouth having missed scores of repayments for the player, and Udinese had to take them to arbitration to get money back http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jan/21/udinese-to-take-portsmouth-to-court. The first Creditor document lists €930k per month repayments to Udinese, and by 2010 they were already meant to be paying Udinese €290k in "late payment interest". This was their Cup Final team... GK 1 David James RB 5 Glen Johnson CB 23 Sol Campbell © CB 15 Sylvain Distin LB 7 Hermann Hreiðarsson 45+1' DM 6 Lassana Diarra 90+3' RM 17 John Utaka 69' CM 30 Pedro Mendes 78' CM 19 Niko Kranjčar 54' LM 11 Sulley Muntari CF 27 Kanu Do we think they kept up all the payments on all of those players ? Actually paid the transfer fees in full, on time ? According to the link above, not until the Premier League paid all their football debts off (£5m of them) by advancing the money due in their first parachute payment when they were already in admin. Had the Premier League not taken this action, they'd have been booted out of football even in 2010, so let's not pretend they were paying their players and could afford to do so, or they wouldn't have been missing payments over players who left them as much as 2 years previously.

Need Newcastle and Norwich to not win, and Fulham not to win by 2 more than Saints.

I don't think it has in the Premier League.

Yeah, suppose.

Just checked the Prem Handbook for tiebreakers, after goals scored : "if any 2 or more Clubs have scored the same number of points, have the same goal difference and have scored the same number of goals in League Matches in that Season they shall be deemed to occupy the same position in the table." That's unless there's something at stake, like relegation or Europe or the title, in which case there's a play-off.

Second greatest thread ever (and today), and very logically structured. Superb.

My expectations from Wigan have only changed based on the performance of Wigan or their opponents.

Sunderland will go down if Wigan beat Villa and Arsenal and Sunderland don't get anything at Spurs.

I'd like to see Villa go, to be honest. A nice, squeaky Wigan win over the Arse, and then rolling over a Benteke-less Villa last day - though I can't see Sunderland getting anything out of a trip to Spurs, so it would be them going down anyway.

You've got that wrong. Wigan can't finish on the same points as us, so only Villa's goal difference is a factor and Wigan's doesn't matter to us. And every goal Villa lose to Wigan by is one more we have to concede for them to finish above us. Using your example (with 0-6 Stoke) we still finish 9 goals better off than Villa, who go down. In fact all the thrashing by Stoke does in that case is put us below Sunderland (if they draw). We'd have to lose 16-0 to Stoke if Wigan stuck 4 on Villa to none back !

Stick 'em on ignore, or don't, and just ignore them. I got bored with wasting my time reading almost anything from either of them about 2 years ago, it's always the same stuff, and I have no idea why anyone still bites to their repetitive nonsense.

Commentator during the Spurs game mentioned he'd been up all night for the birth of his child, could be related to that ? None of our business really though.

I want Sunderland to stay up so I can go there next season, and Wigan because they've got fewer resources than Villa. In terms of the playoff winner, either Palace or Watford. Just not bloody Poyet's Brighton.

Harsh. Similar heights, very different footballing ability. i.e. Javi is the worst "footballer" I've ever seen, though to be fair, he doesn't claim to be a footballer (just an agent or similar).

I've just sodded about with the Predictor to test some GD theories and it seems to think we need to lose by 13 (or at least 12 more than Villa lose by). Dunno if it considers Goals Scored though - and also, if we're talking about losing by 13 at home, why shouldn't Fulham lose by 11 at Swansea too ?

Untrue. Saints themselves lost the first 5 and stayed up in 98/99. We are, however, the first promoted side to do that. But then I'm pretty sure we're also probably one of very few teams in Prem history to play 3 of the top 4 in their first 4 matches. EDIT : In my faffing about with the predictor someone has already pointed this out.

I said that on this thread and someone said we haven't signed it off yet... so if that's the case don't expect to see them before August!

Duplicate.

By the way, we can still come 10th if we win, West Ham lose, Fulham don't win by 2 goals more than us, and Newcastle and Norwich don't win.

This is wrong (ignoring the Sundertwice typo), Wigan's goal difference to us is irrelevant as they can't finish on the same number of points as us, it's Villa's goal difference which makes us safe (barring them losing to Wigan by 11 goals fewer than we lose to Stoke).

Not true, if we lose by 10 goals more than Villa do against Wigan we can still go down.

Either way, "Knockaert" blow for Leicester.

Nah, Kermorgant chipped a pen in a shootout and wanted hanging for it, Knockaert lamped a decent pen down the middle and Almunia dived and barely got a toe on it - the second save was the unbelievable one, I don't think he was even looking and he was sort of on one knee at the time with what seemed to be no chance of recovering in time.

Penalty was missed by Knockaert, not Nugent, FWIW. Instant Karma and all that...