The9

Funnily enough I thought the early clips showed a decided tendency to go to ground a little too easily, but you can't really tell with this kind of thing.

Who are this "Bolonga" you keep referring to ?

4) and 6), seeing as it was pretty much expected the day the fixtures came out.

I know for a fact that some companies have WoFroHo policies that prevent participation in childcare (due to the distracting nature of it), as apparently my aunt drafted M&S' policy on it. This is not the same aunt as the one who went to school with Tony Pulis, for those who saw that on the Stoke thread in general sports. Nor is it the one who's a brain surgeon, or the OBE. So you might want to watch out for that.

When GLC release a song in tribute to you, you know(s) you're pretty low on society's scale. Stoke fans are just following his lead. On an unrelated note, he was in my aunt's class in school.

It's a yellow card, every single time. Apart from against us apparently, when Webb booked Nasri but not Tevez.

7pm on 31st August to be accurate (BST), 4 hours before the English window closes, so at least we won't be hanging about until midnight waiting for him.

You massive loser.

Looking at the stats : Fox's passing percentage was the lowest of all Saints players He also had more touches of the ball than any other Saints player. From perception : City attacked down that wing, targeting through balls in behind Fox, which occasionally led to Rodriguez tracking Zabaleta into the box. Which he did pretty well... for a striker.

What the commentators say and what's actually happening are not always the same thing. It is easy to say "Lambert changed the game". It takes a little more analysis to see that Adkins changed the instructions to the midfield to adopt a higher risk strategy (more players forward, more crosses ?) after Lambert got on the pitch. He might yet be the problem if we don't create any chances without committing 5 players to support him. 0-1 in an hour BR and then 2-2 in 30 mins AR tells it's own story. I think the key might actually be how we played between conceding the goal and before Lambert came on, to see if we went higher risk from 40-55 mins (inc 4 mins of Aguero injury time) - though arguably Adkins could have persisted with the low-risk strategy even at 0-1 knowing he was planning on changing strategy with the introduction of Lambert and that the plan wouldn't work without him, just like keeping a lid on City for 55 minutes might not have worked with him. To be honest I think he's a decent player to a point, and if he gets 15 League goals this season he'll prove he's a decent Prem player - even if 14 are tap-ins off his backside. I do think you massively overrate him on a Prem scale, and also how a lot of other people perceive his success so far though. There doesn't seem to be any reasoning that he hasn't (yet) done it at the top level. But that's your opinion, and that's fine.

Just watching City v Saints, 44 mins 10 seconds, we have 10 men behind the ball. Guly sprints from up front and closes down Yaya Toure ten yards inside our half, then closes down David Silva, then Jack Rodwell who gets the ball next, who passes to Nasri (marked by Puncheon), who plays it back 10 yards to Lescott (inside his own half). Guly heads for Lescott then chases after the pass to Kompany, who plays it back across the halfway line into Silva wide right. At this point we have Rodriguez and Lallana fronting up Silva and Guly finally stops chasing, some 20 seconds later and involving 3 sprints. After 40 minutes of play. But no, he's LAZY.

Are they ? I haven't seen that advertised anywhere ! Hmm, may have to walk to the shops for the bus instead of getting picked up outside the house then... Aha : http://www.bluestarbus.co.uk/football.php May have to walk to get within the M27 then.

That begs the question of whether Lambert was left out in order to provide a lift when we went behind, or if Adkins just thought leaving him out was the best way to minimise going behind in the first place. Bit of both I'd say. The stats have nothing to do with me saying I think Lambert will start on Saturday, I can assure you of that. Even the Prem stats seem remarkably subjective considering, I've just watched the 30 seconds after City opened the scoring, and whaddayouknow, hoof out of defence by Hooiveld, Guly wins the header and flicks it on, Puncheon doesn't read it and it goes off the pitch. Apparently according to the Prem's statkeepers, this doesn't count as Guly winning a header. According to some on here, Guly didn't win any headers either.

That'll be them covering their backsides firstly due to the traffic jams when town snarls to a halt due to them not even giving bus discount (never mind the free bus tickets we had from 2001-5) any more, and secondly when their new ticketing system fails. "We missed the whole first half because all the turnstiles crashed" "We told you to get there early"

Balding (a tiny bit) Middle Aged (is 39 middle aged ?) Shirter (and proud of it, I even borrowed one last weekend) Comics (no) Star Wars (is for kids, never even seen most of them) Sings songs on own (no, and I hate it when people do that alone - but I think 7 people is enough of a group to get a song started). Expecting everyone else to join in (nah). So between 1-3 out of 8. Poor profiling.

Yeah really. Every single one of the 7 people in the car I was in went to Man City in order to make sure they got a ticket for Arsenal. We went to the match because we had tickets, but it wasn't out of the question that if we hadn't found a cheap and convenient way to go we'd have sold the tickets on. That was what everyone to our right was singing at the same time. I'm not that bothered about going to the Emirates or I'd have already been in the last 6 or so years it's been open, I went to Highbury for non-Saints games on a few separate occasions. I am however VERY keen to see Saints at the Emirates for the first time. And I'll be getting in for £25.50, which is a bargain anyway. Note to self : Must remember that for some people going to every match in the first month of the season (and yes I'm now going to Stevenage as well) isn't sufficient proof of Saints fandom.

I don't think there's anything wrong with this particular bit of the system, and they probably don't still have last year's figures after the pre-season data cleansing. They also went to great lengths to link one customer number, one ticket for Man City these are the first ones I've heard of not able to do what they should be able to.

Everyone I know only bought City tickets to get priority for Arsenal. There's no way I'd have gone to a ground I'd been to before with it live on the box otherwise. But we also actually went. We even sang "we're only here for the Arsenal" when they started singing "you're only here for the City" after they announced the attendance. That confused a few of them...

Tuesday.

So far this appears to be zero, as far as reports on here have gone. Plenty of other ticket complaints though. Might have been more than 400 empty seats at City too, but I'm sure it can be confirmed somewhere.

Ah but Delgado was decent though happened to be mostly injured for us, Chala and Bleidelis were both hand-holders for their respective star buddies. Arias fits the category though, but Van Damme was too northern European to qualify. There must be a rulebook for this somewhere.

I would imagine being on the other side of the world from all but a few people who can converse with him and being injured has been pretty crappy for him so far.

I'd take Forlan even now, though I doubt he'd have much sell on value. Not sure how him and Ramirez would fit though... Also, didn't we manage it for 27 years (minus about 15 for being in FL Div 1) without doing that before ? Or does Delgado count ?

It's not even that Wigan is a traditional rugby league town, they've only been in the Football League for 35 years, that means they don't have generations on generations of dads and lads going to matches as a basis for their support and probably wouldn't have even if they didn't have rugby to go to. In 1995 Wigan Athletic had the lowest attendance of the 92 clubs of 1,748. That's a pretty low hardcore to be building from, even if all those people brought 2 kids (U-17 ) they'd only be getting around 5,000. They have no choice but to aggressively market the club.

Yeah, but all of the others have top-flight experience and most are internationals for top-rated countries, so they've got a chance. You'll note this was part of my extended list of acceptable purchases.