The9

Squib. As in a small explosive. A damp squib is an explosive that doesn't ignite. A damp squid is one that's been out of the sea for a few hours, equally useless but not potentially as damaging, you'd think.

They appear to have started out with a verbal agreement, then once "the club" (ie Cortese) didn't pay his ambassadorial fees he realised he needed something tangible so they drew up a written agreement. The key being Benali has said he would get a minimum of £1k a month from that whether he was required or not and also that the club actually prevented him fulfilling them (which is irrelevant anyway if he had a fixed guaranteed payment even if he didn't do anything). "In January 2010, it is said that a new agreement was reached, in writing, where Saints would pay £5,000 per month in rent, freeing Mr Cortese from his personal obligation of £1,000. Mr Benali alleges that, in June 2010, the club was again in breach of the lease, paying only £1,000." From what little legalese I know, I'd be inclined to think Franny knows he's got little chance of getting the money back from the verbal agreement, and only a half-reasonable chance of getting anything from the subsequent written deal, so he has trumped up the reparations costs in order to recoup what he feels he's owed.

I'm sure people tending to damage at million pound mansions are more than keen to ramp up their prices - but overall, yes it sounds rather high. Then again I wouldn't be surprised if Benali is trying to get all he can back via whatever means necessary for the thousands he's also alleging they didn't pay him for the various other things listed.

No need to wonder, Cortese's already clearly adopted that throughout, by twice making agreements regarding Ambassador fees and then reneging on them. Allegedly.

More specifically : "It is claimed that damage was also caused to the kitchen hob, that the club neglected to have the windows cleaned, that they had failed to pay the TV licence fee and charges for Sky television for the month of June 2010, that the swimming pool was not cleaned as agreed and that the garden was not kept up to condition. The claim says that the cost of making good dilapidations to the house came to £33,346, while the cost of making good damage to personal property (“chattels”) was £3,163.98" It's an interesting estimate, that's for sure.

"Mr Benali alleges... the property was not kept up to standard, requiring repairs running into tens of thousands of pounds."

If you ignore Sheffield Wednesday.

I'm still amused that someone's just completely fabricated "Plymouth knocked us out of the cup so that's why Lowe appointed him". We didn't even play Plymouth between 1977 and 2005, which was after we'd been relegated, and our only ever cup match against them was in 1967... which we won.

Good to have it in one place, and possibly a little more detail than elsewhere, but I'm pretty sure this was already in the public domain. Cortese's dig at Benali's court action against the club recently was utterly transparent and ill-advised, given that it made people who weren't already interested seek out information on what was going on, and the reality of it can only reflect poorly on him personally for sounding like he trashed the place, whether that was the case or not.

Chrome on mine will stream sound but never brings the video, weirdly. Not too bothered about it, I've only watched 5 Saints matches on a stream on my laptop all season.

You have the throwing arm of an 8 year old girl.

Indeed. Forget Google Chrome (laptop or mobile) as it doesn't support Flash either, Opera/Firefox on mobile are both fine and IE also works on my laptop. The sods have started running a banner over the "full screen" icon recently though. Anyone would think they want the ad clicks or something. I just try lots of the links until I get one with the [ ] unobstructed.

Other than it not supporting flash ?

v Arsenal : P Jones, P Telfer, P Williams, M Svensson, W Bridge, F Fernandes (C Baird, 26), D Prutton, A Svensson (M Oakley, 54), D Higginbotham, J Tessem, K Davies (J Beattie, 75) Previous Saturday : A Niemi, P Telfer, M Svensson, P Williams (D Higginbotham, 76), W Bridge, F Fernandes , A Svensson (J Tessem, 76), M Oakley, C Marsden (D Prutton, 67), B Ormerod , J Beattie Looks like we rested the front 2, Niemi, Oakley and Marsden, but we weren't THAT much weaker...

Well, the thing that jumps out at me is that we have NEVER finished with a positive goal difference in a Premier League season.

Beat me to it re: Oldham. I think that's more to do with the uselessness of Fila/Carbrini as shirt suppliers than their finances though. Worth remembering that Saints inexplicably wore plain red socks with a white hoop as part of their supposedly "all charcoal grey" away kit from Christmas 2008 through administration - probably a combination of running out of cash and Umbro running out of stock too...

I can vouch for the Royal Oak, watched us at Fulham in there - I'm going to the match on Sunday though, so there's no chance of a glass-throwing battle breaking out if you happen to hear me mention that Lambert needs to close down more.

You can't beat facts. I was surprised at what you'd said so I did the crazy thing and actually looked it up.

Shaw's attacking play impressed me long before his defending did.

He did at least until Pardew took over, but that was mainly because he wasn't there long enough to ruin it (as we saw at the start of the season, you can have an unrepresentative run of 10-ish games), and of course Pardew and Adkins both have better records due to us playing in lower leagues with significantly more resources than our rivals. Hopefully it'll be an asterisk we can put next to Pochettino's record too.

We were 5 points off 4th on 20th April 2004. With FIVE matches to go. But we were still 9th at the time... http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/premier-league/2003-2004/table/2004-04-20 Given that we were ACTUALLY 4th at Xmas 2003/4 which is when it's believed the news Strachan was leaving broke to the players (hence the demolition away to Fulham on Boxing Day) that's not all that great : http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/premier-league/2003-2004/table/2003-12-22 We were 12th and 9 points off 4th when Sturrock actually took over on 4th March 2004 though : http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/premier-league/2003-2004/table/2004-03-03

I've just chucked all the data we have into a spreadsheet to try and give a rating for how likely it is that players will leave in the summer. Factors included are : Appearances(Subs), Contract Remaining, Transfer Interest, Loaned, U21, Over 30. Here's the table with the lowest scores the least likely to stay (the scores don't mean much other than to rank players and it's not linear so you shouldn't interpret it as someone being, say "five times more likely to leave" or anything) - it's indicative so shouldn't be taken as precise in every case, for instance Forecast is by far the most likely to leave in practice, but because some of the loanees whose contracts are expiring must have some interest from other clubs they're ranked more likely to leave : I think maybe what's needed is a "Saints desire to keep" column too, that might move Reeves and definitely Isgrove away from the danger zone and also Shaw (who is the most desired in terms of Transfer Interest) Seaborne 12 Hoskins 12 Dickson 12 Reeves 13 Forecast 15 Butterfield 16 Chaplow 17 Richardson 19 Chambers 19 Moore 19 Sinclair 19 Robinson 19 Isgrove 19 Hammond 25 Boruc 26 Shaw 28 Lee 32 Barnard 32 De Ridder 33 Puncheon 34 Forte 40 Martin 40 Sharp 40 Lallana 49 Stephens 49 Cropper 49 Gape 49 Seager 49 Lambert 52 K Davis 54 Schneiderlin 54 Guly 56 Ramirez 60 Cork 78 Yoshida 84 Mayuka 86 Fox 88 Hooiveld 90 Fonte 97 Rodriguez 103 Forren 107 Clyne 111 Gazzaniga 118 S Davis 123 Ward-Prowse 145

For clarity, our current "wiki" squad includes (with League appearances) : 22 "first teamers" (inc Forren) plus Stephens, Chaplow, Chambers, Cropper, Butterfield, Moore, Sinclair, Gape, Robinson and Isgrove who have 3 league sub appearances between them - you can write off any over 21s in that lot. Mayuka also has only 1 start and is on dodgy ground regarding his usefulness. There are 10 others out on loan, of which only maybe Reeves and Hoskins are likely to have a future, and Forte and Martin aren't even listed. So that's... 22 first teamers, 8 borderline case u-21s, 4 senior pros not in the main squad, 8 loanees who are unlikely to be first teamers again, and 2 more (Reeves and Hoskins) who might be. Plenty of room for more than 10 to go without even impacting on the first team squad. This is without considering contracts - as a few of the kids aren't going anywhere. 1 GK Kelvin Davis 8 2 DF Nathaniel Clyne 23 3 DF Maya Yoshida 22(1) 4 MF Morgan Schneiderlin 25 5 DF Jos Hooiveld 12(2) 6 DF José Fonte 20 7 FW Rickie Lambert 23(3) 8 MF Steven Davis 13(9) 9 FW Jay Rodriguez 14(9) 10 MF Gastón Ramírez 15(3) 12 GK Paulo Gazzaniga 9 13 DF Danny Fox 10(4) 15 DF Vegard Forren 0 16 MF James Ward-Prowse 4(6) 18 MF Jack Cork 16 20 MF Adam Lallana 16(3) 21 MF Guilherme do Prado 7(7) 22 DF Frazer Richardson 2(3) 23 DF Luke Shaw 14(2) 24 FW Emmanuel Mayuka 1(6) 26 DF Jack Stephens 0 27 MF Richard Chaplow 0(3) 28 MF Calum Chambers 0 30 GK Cody Cropper 0 31 GK Artur Boruc 9 32 DF Danny Butterfield 0 34 MF Corby Moore 0 36 FW Jake Sinclair 0 37 MF Dominic Gape 0 38 MF Andy Robinson 0 39 MF Lloyd Isgrove 0 42 MF Jason Puncheon 23 xx FW Jonathan Forte 0 xx DF Aaron Martin 0 Players with appearances currently out on loan 11 FW Billy Sharp 14 MF Dean Hammond 19 FW Tadanari Lee 25 DF Danny Seaborne 29 MF Ben Reeves 33 MF Steve De Ridder 35 FW Sam Hoskins EDIT : Players without appearances this season out on loan : Add Dickson, Barnard and Forecast to the list...

I'll post, for the nine millionth time, that Hoddle bailed on us when we still had to face almost all of the top half and had already played all but a couple of the bottom half - it was not dissimilar to this season's fixtures but in reverse. And Ipswich finished FIFTH that season.

Not really, they currently have 40-ish professionals, almost all of them on "Prem new signing wages" as opposed to "first pro contract" wages which we'll have for 4 or 5 of ours, plus the 10-ish U-21 ex-Academy players on short term contracts to get us up to the same sort of numbers QPR have of first teamers. We all saw what signing lots of mediocre players does in 2005, we'd be signing players intended to improve the team, not just broaden the squad. Plus we'd be shedding a load of players who are nowhere near the Prem matchday squad anyway and are only still here because they signed contracts in League One, and presumably replacing them with Prem-quality players. QPR have just piled bottom-half Prem players on top of other bottom-half Prem players.