The9

And ordered the victim to wear hot pants.

I had assumed he'd point out this sort of thing was normal in Uruguay.

Five Brighton players and one from AFC Bournemouth if Sky and the Mirror are to be believed. I'm all in favour of dawn raids, for no reason other than it's massively inconvenient for everyone involved including the Police.

God, that is a pathetic way to sell pointless crap on eBay.

I say delete the thread. I've already answered the question anyway...

Compared to when I was living away, buying away tickets is now a huge ar5e pain. In 2002 I paid for membership (not unreasonable given the demand for Prem tickets), I had equal access to away tickets to any ST holder as a result, and could order online or via telephone without paying a fee - or I could go to the home games I was attending anyway and pick up an away ticket for the next match or two on the day - but I generally didn't need to do that because they were the same price if I got them posted. The only exception to that in the first 8 years at St Mary's was the Steaua Bucharest away ticket, because they wouldn't post them out - not unreasonably given the likelihood of getting duplicates from Romania in time. Nowadays, if you're not an ST holder and you don't turn up at the ticket office on the morning tickets go on sale you only have a slim chance of getting a ticket to begin with, and you're paying a car parking fee if you happen to turn up when there's a queue. For any distant fans, even the ones with STs who can actually get a ticket in the first place, that basically doubles the cost of the ticket, due to petrol/train costs - and it's all the more annoying when you're going to be at a match the night before anyway. It's almost designed to annoy.

It's necessary in the process of looking through the "It's Alpine" filter to seek something resembling a worthwhile discussion beneath. You should be glad that at least one of us still bothers.

You really have to work hard to find a negative angle on the possibility of us signing players, but well done, there it is... Shall we all remind you of your numerous posts about us not adding to the squad often enough, or are you, as I suspect you are, more than aware that this is just another massive wind-up ? To actually answer the question in isolation : we have 2 opportunities a year to add players to the squad, in the summer and in January, so by definition there will be two periods when players come in "en masse". There is no obligation for anyone to get chucked straight into the team immediately when signed, we have already extended the integration period numerous times by signing loan-to-buys, and I fully expect Adkins to integrate the players over the course of the next few months, then do the same with our summer signings, effectively refreshing the entire starting line up over the course of 3 transfer windows without ever having to destabilise the team. In fact, the manager is doing things perfectly in terms of player integration. A more relevant question is what are we doing for the players we sign to assist them with integrating into their new surroundings, especially the likes of Tadanari Lee, who won't be used to the culture, surroundings, language, written text or anything? That's a load more work than just getting in some random europeans who need to learn a bit of English.

I'm glad I moved to Southampton, if I was still living in south Wales I'd have probably stopped bothering by now with all the additional hurdles to actually attending matches the club is gradually chucking in the way.

I'd suspect the prevalence of keepers is more to do with endless seasons fighting relegation and the lack of non-Le Tissier quality elsewhere on the pitch.

"With Manchester United, Newcastle, Fulham and Aston Villa showing an interest" is my clue here. Didn't look all that great at St Mary's, and we already have a decent right back.

Delgado had a pedigree, cost a load, was about to play in a World Cup, and should have done so much better. I honestly don't understand why anyone complains about Skacel, he was a sometime fringe Czech international coming from a poor league who nevertheless played well for Saints when he played in the attacking midfield position he was bought for, and probably exceeded expectations in the first 6 months as top assister in the division. That he didn't score 20 goals a season when injured or playing left back is surely not one of football's great mysteries. Arias, Tejera, Chala, Bleidelis, all unknown and with no expectations. Speedie and Dixon, tangibly past it, even without hindsight. David Hirst - always injured before we signed him too. Saganowski - we all know what happened there, but really, were expectations that high. Kevin Phillips scored loads of goals for Saints and as we scored more goals than half the teams in the league that season certainly wasn't in any way responsible for us going down. God only knows what the criteria was for including Kenwyne as a "failure", he was barely a footballer when we signed him and was sold for millions. Mark Hughes was evidently a bit cack compared to his peak (though I didn't personally see much of him in a Saints shirt) and Andrei Kanchelskis was appallingly anonymous having taken over the number 7, but hadn't been playing regularly at a decent level for some time. Idiakez was another injury gamble, and when do they ever work out ? I think Hughes was probably the biggest disappointment because I knew he was good and had been for some time - Delgado was just unfulfilled hope, which is just our fault for raising expectations too high.

One feature of our very early season play was the rapidity with which we moved the ball, and the tireless support play of the midfield - Cork in particular was always 10 yards away in space for anyone who was getting closed down in midfield, and when he got it he moved it on swiftly. That slowed down into September, but we still managed it in places for most home games (especially against Middlesbrough). Lallana got a foot injury and lost form, and by early December that rapidity of movement, flowing football and availability of options from all over has all but disappeared - aside from the lack of support for the man with the ball, we seemed to have lost the ability to inject a high tempo into the match (something Chaplow is excellent at) - and the drop in tempo and the predictability of our full backs almost always crossing it to Lambert made us easier to defend against, whilst retaining the handicap of pushing the full backs right up and leaving gaps. Bristol City exploited the gaps well, we lost some matches. At Brighton losing Lambert was a hammer blow because we hadn't been working out how to play without him, but against Forest we seemed to be moving the ball much better (especially Cork) and created enough even without Lambert - by playing much more like we did at the start of the season. Ironically, having lost form partially due to injuries, getting MORE injuries (and Lambert's suspension) meant we were more unpredictable, and less easy to defend against. When Lambert comes back, his enthusiasm will be tangible, and I wouldn't be surprised if Cardiff feel the backlash from his lay-off.

You might want to read the post, rather than just make assumptions. For what it's worth, I think Grant Holt has since proven that barely mobile target men who can pass the ball pretty well have a place in the upper echelons of English football, and Lambert's got such prolific supply most of the time that it doesn't matter that he has no pace. We play to his strengths most of the time. His lack of pace mattered a bit at Fratton when Lallana overhit a through ball which could have put him in, but it hasn't mattered much. He's scored a shedload of goals, and done much better than I thought. We have been overreliant on him, and I wouldn't want him to be our only option this season, never mind next. But he's done very well, unexpectedly so even considering Holt's Championship season last year. I thought Beattie was shat for all but about 6 months as well, for the record.

Little matter of popping back to Japan to sort out his personal documents and arrange shipping of his robo-dog first.

It's not like we haven't been rumoured to have been making bids on Rodriguez, Maynard and Sharp since August, is it ? Hardly a surprise that the gaps in the squad correlate with the gaps in our OCD squad numbering system (which I love, btw) - the biggest surprise so far this season is that Jos took 26 and we didn't sign a number 5. Wouldn't be surprised at all to see Lee take 19 (though more recently he's been 9 for Japan) and as Oxlade-Chamberlain left 11 vacant, Falque is likely to get that.

The Shetlands won't be part of Scotland then ?

A+ for geography "the 9".... but the climate is the south of Sweden (where most of the top teams are) ..is fairly similar to Northern Scotland. Neither state boundaries nor dissimilar climates have proven sufficient reason for Celtic and Rangers fans to stop spouting off about which other leagues they think they'd dominate.

Luton are in their second season in the Conference now, the new ground effect will have mostly disappeared from playing most of the same teams last season.

Interesting things about the FL Show I have realised from this thread. 1) They changed the format and got rid of that crappy email bit and I didn't even notice. 2) ALL of the talking bits are utterly redundant and nobody could possibly care less what any of the presenters or pundit(s) say anyway. 3) If the BBC want to cut costs, just show the bloody highlights in SD for an hour, thereby improving the show approximately 200%. 4) As I now have Virgin Media, I don't care who gets it as long as it's not JUST Sky.

Nope. And add me to the list of people annoyed at the use of "whose".

Is it possible for such a player to exist ?

Can we split this thread into "People who play Football Manager and People Who Don't Play Football Manager" please, whether you've heard of him seems to be the basis for the critique...

I'll be pronouncing it "Iago" and I'm in the UK, so not sure where you're getting your UK pronunciation information from.

Yeah, interested in playing my 5th game of the season/pre-season... scored in every one so far, bizarrely enough. You should use it as a recruitment ground for WorldNet, Stevo.