The9

I didn't have a bad word to say about Lambert til we got to the Prem.

There wouldn't be a problem as he'd get a green light and they don't check those at all. The system actually locks disabled/enabler pairs out if they don't go through together as well...

Why would a ST holder not know where the toilets are in a ground they go to for every match ?

Not sure how you read that and work out that "hand to ball arguments are irrelevant", the whole basis of the judgement is whether the player has deliberately tried to block the ball, if they haven't (and their hand is it a "natural" position) then it's the very definition of "ball to hand".

Yes, but fortunately it's mostly fans who don't go to games via tv subscriptions in other countries.

Schneiderlin, has developed a ton of Prem quality, is the key to our recent results and more importantly is going to be around at this level a lot longer than Lambert - so let's hope we can keep him.

That would make you a bit of a bellend then. At the moment he's doing alright with our pressing, I still keep thinking he's going to get injured with all this additional effort though.

Soccerbase says "4/3/04", so I think in this case I must have read his departure date as his arrival - have already been discussing matches from early/mid 2004 as part of his reign so just a maths fail I think ! http://www.soccerbase.com/managers/manager.sd?manager_id=1545

Blame Soccerbase ! I wasn't sure about it either, in an era when clubs wanted Cup games scaled back, having second replays for League cup games does seem a bit bonkers and incongruous. Though we did beat Peterboro over 2 legs and take 2 matches to beat Oxford and Lincoln prior to the Stockport tie. Extremely suspiciously though there is absolutely no team or match info for the Jan 7 "match", so it does appear to be a red herring.

Didn't do him a lot of good that season either.

0-1, but other than that, yes. He's at Accrington now, via Port Vale.

Or, as I've said numerous times, you might want to look at how knackered the 7 outfielders he DIDN'T replace were, and realise that we were going to cave in whether he made the changes or not, and what he did do was bring on our best 3 players on the bench as the subs. Not much he could do about the back 4 hoofing the ball at Mayuka for 15 minutes.

He was one of our best players at Everton and at Arsenal.

Who was signed the same day we appointed Sturrock, which suggests he didn't sign him. And we know very well Crouch was a Lowe signing, 11 days before Sturrock was appointed. Yahia and Jakobssen were Sturrock signings, he put Folly in the team and sold Fitz Hall to Palace (which basically relegated us as he scored against us in the penultimate match of the season and those extra 2 points would have kept us up). This was the side that got rolled over at Villa, anyway : A Niemi, J Dodd, C Lundekvam, D Higginbotham, G Le Saux, F Fernandes, D Prutton, Y Folly (A Svensson, 45), M Nilsson (R Delap, 45), K Phillips, B Ormerod (P Crouch, 68 ) At least he replaced the right players...

So we drew 0-0, then 2-2, and then lost 2-1, but there was no away goals rule and they decided to have a replay ? Or, seeing as we appear to have played them 3 times, was it a second replay ? 1996/1997 ENGLISH LEAGUE CUP We 29Jan 1997 Southampton 1 - 2 Stockport ENGLISH LEAGUE CUP We 22Jan 1997 Stockport 2 - 2 Southampton ENGLISH LEAGUE CUP Tu 07Jan 1997 Stockport 0 - 0 Southampton

There wasn't any bloody contract, that's precisely the problem. Also, the dispute about the £500s is not in any way to do with whether Benali is worth £500 an appearance, even Cortese appears to have paid him every time he did it (except possibly in Dec 09), what he also did was ensure he didn't get more than £1000 a month due to those appearances by preventing Benali accessing the stadium.

It was in a second replay of a one off knockout match in the 96/97 League Cup I believe. http://www.soccerbase.com/teams/team.sd?team_id=2473&team2_id=2471&teamTabs=h2h

Actually, this would probably have impressed anyone : FOOTBALL LEAGUE DIV 2 Sa 11Oct 2003 Plymouth 6 - 0 Tranmere FOOTBALL LEAGUE TROP Tu 14Oct 2003 Plymouth 4 - 0 Bristol C FOOTBALL LEAGUE DIV 2 Sa 18Oct 2003 Port Vale 1 - 5 Plymouth FOOTBALL LEAGUE DIV 2 We 22Oct 2003 Sheff Wed 1 - 3 Plymouth Though it was a few months before we even knew Strachan was leaving and Lowe was probably in Bucharest for some of that...

So "that it's basically just deploying a defensive midfielder and the fact we already have two of those" then, along with some general ignorance about what Schneiderlin does and how well he does it. Ok, thanks for the context. Though if he's going to spend all match pressing opposing centre backs maybe we DO need a front sweeper.

You'll probably be able to see as much as those of us at the match - without looking at the tv.

Big ups the Justice, yes.

Oscar Pistorius ? Allegedly.

Sven has the best garden in football. He's always on gardening leave.

We'd get murdered down the right. Also, can't Prutton and Quashie play in front of the back 4 so we can play 4-2-3-1 or are you planning on getting sacked for being free-thinking and tactically adept ? That's adept, not inept. To be fair to Torres, he did score one of the funniest goals in football history when he counterattacked the 10 Barca players in Chelsea's penalty area.

Which teams did you think were involved, and which chairman and manager then ? Did this even happen in football ? I shall be unimpressed if you misremembered a couple of gallahs on Neighbours in the 1980s acting out a similar experience about a local high school Aussie Rules game. Or if it's a plotline from Bedknobs and Broomsticks... Fair play for apologising, not necessary though.