The9

Usually by implementing policies at the expense of the fans or decent customer service, which seems to be a strange thing for a fan/customer to be supportive of.

It sort of implies that our Chairman is somewhat difficult to please, which is slightly relevant, if completely bloody obvious. That in itself has both good and bad sides.

A perfectly competent League One sideways passer. Why anyone who has ever actually played professional football would even consider going there is beyond me. I am yet hopeful that the club outbidding Doncaster for Gillet's services isn't the Skates, and he's just using them for a bit of training before he signs for someone else.

We don't need another one of those.

Especially the opening day of our relegation season at Villa, when he was taken off at half time along with Mikael Nilsson.

18th August would be panic time for me, assuming Kelv doesn't get injured first. I seriously doubt Nige will get anywhere near that time though.

They must have a hell of a baggage allowance on the plane to get those "Saints" banners which have been hung around the perimeter on board.

As we're discussing semantics, the Laws of the Game no longer refer to "foul and abusive" language, they refer to "using offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures". So you can be as foul as you like, as long as it's not offensive, insulting or abusive. That implies to me that general swearing is fine - provided that it's not directed at someone.

Not all of them, just the ones who are suddenly desperate to have any Saints match in their life now we're back in the Prem, who didn't give a toss for most of the previous 7 years. There were plenty of them around on Saturday too.

I was quite happy to miss games which didn't mean anything at home last season as well - notably the whole of our Carling Cup run. If it comes down to watching our reserves in the Cup or a non-competitive home match against watching a competitive away match, as I'm already going to all 19 home league games, I'll take the competitive away match option every time.

PLENTY of people will have bought the 3 matches for £47 deal already, and a lot of the plastic walk-up fans won't even notice it's on tv. But yeah, it'll stop a few who do know from going... including me. Glad I can save a few more quid for Prem away games. Virgin Media planner only currently goes up to 6am that morning so I'll have to wait til tomorrow to set it to record.

To be honest having seen him, he was at fault for the goal as the only place it was ever going was through his legs and I called it before Gervinho even cut inside (though it was lamped straight at him with a lot of power) but he didn't do much else wrong, kicking was competent, one slip with no-one around and found a teammate with most passes. I still think he's almost certainly crap, but you couldn't really tell that from yesterday. Lots of people just letting their jealousy and his apparent attitude cloud their judgement, I think.

There are degrees of rule breaking, they have not broken the CVA rule by the letter of the law, only the spirit, so the punishment is there to indicate that both are worthy of sanctions, not that they are the same offences.

Actually I don't believe it either, just wanted to see if anyone did think it despite the discussion about not needing registration etc above. Also kinda highlighting that we have a lot of speculation based on nothing. No takers was almost pleasing!

Anyone else think this translates as "not sure we can sort the registration issues out yet (international clearance specifically) and reluctant to mention that it might be an issue" ?

I can't imagine that we'd loan out Aaron Martin without being 100% confident of signing at least one CB.

We don't have gelling problems any more because we don't generally try and stick 5 new players into a team at the same time (at least we haven't since Pardew started a new back 4 with Fonte and Harding's debuts in a league below the one they'd been playing in). Teams who do that WILL have problems gelling.

What's that got to do with anything ? Mateja Kezman was top scorer in 4 national top divisions across Europe before he signed for Chelsea in the Prem, and he scored a whole 4 goals in a team that won the title. Success in stepping up from L1 to Championship is hardly an indicator of future success, you only have to look at the proportion of lower league players getting a crack at the Prem compared to imports to see the standard is much higher. There's no guarantee of success from previously scoring in TOP divisions, never mind the league placed immediately below the Prem in a meritocracy. I am relatively concerned that we haven't got many players who know the problems we're going to face and more importantly, the solutions to those problems. Trying to work it out on the pitch as you're getting taken apart is not the best way to get results. That said, having a bunch of promising players with little fear, a strong mentality and a considerable future upside is a good thing - we just need a couple more like Steven Davis to give us an anchor and a little guidance. Hooiveld and Fonte have experience, but not Prem experience. Kelvin had an horrendous time in the Prem last time, and Chaplow's experience was only a season or two after Saints themselves were last up there. Fox and Cork both played with relegated Burnley. Even the manager hasn't been up there before - though at least Dodd is still around. It's not exactly a wealth of knowledge to call upon.

I hate them both equally, they are both flawed and hint at cultural or societal failings which annoy me.

It definitely doesn't count, no. He left Saints before we played in the Championship.

Jake Thomson. Thought he was going to be the new Walcott. Wasn't.

Why would it be ? Div 1 would be the highest division they could be placed in with the SPL refusing to admit them and acknowledging the OldCo's previous SPL season, and Div 3 would be treating them like a new club. Div 2 would be arbitrary and make no sense from either position.

Just looked it up, Rotherham got the same -17 at the same time : "Ahead of the 2008–09 season the team [AFCB]'s future in the Football League was put into doubt when the league threatened to block Bournemouth's participation in League Two, due to problems with the team's continuing administration and change in ownership. It ordered both Bournemouth and Rotherham United to demonstrate that they could fulfil all of their fixtures and find a way out of administration,[9] eventually allowing the club to compete but with a 17 point penalty for failing to follow the Football League insolvency rules and the new company would have to pay unsecured creditors the amount offered at the time of the original C.V.A. (around 10 pence in the pound) within 2 years" http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/aug/06/rotherham.bournemouth as well... So, you're right that the default is -15 (see above). But the Skates have a CVA so haven't been punished for not having a CVA, they've been punished for not adhering to the previous CVA. That's not the same as exiting without a CVA so the punishment is different. You could argue it's lenient, but they have not yet had any other possible penalties for anything else which usually come on exiting CVA/getting the golden share. The FL has at no point said "that's all", just "that's it for now". The "past admins" weren't taken into account because they were in the Prem for the 2010 one.

The statutory penalty is -10 (EDIT : make that -15 as stated, looked it up). Leeds got nailed for trying to get around the deduction altogether by going into admin when they were already relegated to take the points hit when it didn't matter, before they brought in the deadline for applying it in the following season. Ken Bates' Leeds shenanigans were actually responsible for a lot of the existing rules. Bournemouth and Luton got additional penalties for multiple admins in a short timescale and irregular payments (which is another one the Skates might yet have to consider).

I'm pretty sure there won't be a "Club 24", the timescales (and the fact the fixtures are already out) means the FL will have 23 teams in L1 if the Skates are liquidated.