The9

Julie, Gully, Goolie, who cares ? Abel Xavier was "Abbul Zavvy-yay" for about 3 years for Middlesbrough and then when he signed for Liverpool became "Ay-bull Ecks-saviour" because someone actually asked him how to say his name. When he went to Everton they went back to the original pronunciation, weirdly. When Jose Fonte can't even be bothered to tell people which of Josay, Joe-suh and Hosay and Font or Fontay is right, and will happily accept all combinations, I think you just have to accept that no-one is bothered. And this is coming from me, the King of Bothered about this kind of crap. As for Tony Gubba's "Mik-aye-ell Laudrup" at the 1986 World Cup... no Tony, it's pronounced "Michael".

There's no news, and given that Saints' OS basically says "he's got all the clearance, wants to sign and has gone home to get his stuff" why would anyone be bothered about it ? We don't have a match for 7 days and he can't sign for anyone else as Saints will be his employers and we're the only ones who have a work permit.

I'm pretty sure a shedload of Saints fans took the daytrip up there when we were in Bucharest. Not me though, I preferred to wander around the sodden streets of the City looking for a pub. For 5 days.

No, I have corners on my hair. Nowadays.

Ok, well picking Man C and Man U as my "Rangers and Celtic", that allows Liverpool and Everton to coexist in the radius, and the likes of Bolton, Blackburn, Stoke, Wigan, (not even Prem) Leeds within 40 miles all always topping 15,000 crowds in the league, and Wolves, Villa, Newcastle, Sunderland almost certainly within a similar radius to the SPL's clubs (thanks to ICT and Aberdeen)... and as we know, Man U will pick up a few fans all over the place so there's a similarity there. So it IS a fair comparison, and it shows that English club attendances are a lot more evenly spread in a similar area (though the issue then is probably more about population density anyway).

An interesting theory, which becomes completely irrelevant the second we hit the Premier League. As far as "what's a BIG fee" I'd say outspending our club record would definitely cover it.

Paul Williams did a hell of a job considering... though I suspect passing off Telfer as a success story might be a little too much for most on here... How about James Beattie, did anyone expect anything from him when we signed him ?

Crew on East Street for me, about £13 for a perfectly decent cut and they always do as I ask regarding the balding corner bits.

It certainly didn't seem to be too difficult 30 years ago.

Because a club attempting to establish themselves in the Premier League has never signed an Asian player just to shift shirts to their merch-heavy consumer society...

"Following this successful appeal, Lee will now finalise his entry clearance papers from the British Embassy and head back to England as soon as possible in order to sign his contract with the Club." is about as close as you can get without him actually having signed.

We're probably in with as good a chance of being in the Prem in 6 months' time as 3 of them, you have to wonder why anyone would sign for Blackburn at the moment, for instance. Plus there's the potential benefit of getting 6 months' experience with your teammates in advance of moving up so you don't have to adapt to new surroundings, teammates AND the top level all at the same time... Also, I don't think money is a limit in any way for Saints at the moment, we can find it if we want to. Choosing to operate sensible business practices doesn't mean investments with a decent chance of paying off can't happen, and getting to the Prem is the ultimate payoff at the moment.

There is not a lot about this out there, unsurprisingly. Worth noting that the Skates Academy played against Norwich in Bognor just before Christmas, if you were all planning on jumping the fence up near Trojans to get into Wellington (assuming they won't let you through the pavillion). I played at Welly for 3 years at Uni, about 10 years before they swapped Welly with some land in Wide Lane to develop the Sports Centre there. It was where I developed my habit of missing important penalties, and once scored a goal with a pelvic thrust.

Did someone just say our style of play didn't involve a lot of crosses into the box ? Someone should tell Richardson and Fox, they're obviously doing it wrong. Richardson has 7 assists and Fox 5 - and they're just the ones which have been converted into goals.

I've decided what we need is a Lee Chung Song. 이충성

I laughed at the use of "elite Premier academy scouts", we're in that group.

Surely it doesn't need explaining but Pompey are mainly up sh1t creek because they splurged millions they didn't have on player wages and transfer fees based on attendances of no more than 21,000. They even needed the Prem parachute money up front before relegation to pay football creditors such as Udinese, who they hadn't paid for Muntari, or they'd have been kicked out of the league. They spent LOTS more than they could possibly earn with their poxy fanbase - that doesn't mean the amount they could make wasn't significant, they just spent a hell of a lot more than that. It's utterly irrelevant to a debate about how much being in the Prem is worth anyway. Also contrary to some implications on this thread, the parachute payments have nothing to do with how long you've been in the Prem - they are a set amount, and the only fluctuations come when relegated teams get re-promoted whilst still receiving parachute money, thus removing the requirement to pay them the parachute payment.

If Hooper puts together a 14 year Premier League career like Delap has, he should be very proud.

Dunno if this has been posted anywhere else in this 30-page behemoth, but my money's on him wearing our vacant number 19 shirt, as it was his squad number in the 2011 Asian Cup. Especially as he's a striker, and Nigel has that squad number thing going on...

I said even before our form dropped off that I expect, based on previous Transfer Window activity, that Adkins will sign 3 or 4 players to improve the team (not just the squad) - including Hooiveld - and I see no reason to change that opinion yet.

The long and short of it is that statistically when Saints were last in the Prem a survey identified that we had the oldest fan base. There are also statistics which prove that Internet access decreases significantly with age, so there is a huge older majority out there with a wealth of football-supporting experience who are hugely under-represented on online Forums generally and this one in particular. So if you want the impressions of younger web-savvy Saints supporting people, here we are - the problem is that there's a much higher likelihood that they're knee-jerk, attention-seeking, poorly spelling, no context or frame of reference, inexperienced mongtards. But not everyone is, you're just more likely to find them here than by picking a random St Mary's attendee.

Nani, Nathan Dyer, Routledge, Pennant, Adam Johnson - all wide men finding success with their current clubs.

I thought it was the worst new stadium I've been to in ages. The Ricoh is better, and the Ricoh is gash. Convenient for the train, as long as you don't mind walking to the other end of the ground uphill and then back against half the people in the ground walking to their cars, and with ridiculously small stands on 3 sides that make it look worse than Withdean in places. The one stand was just silly, and the stuff they were banging on about on the BBC regarding making it "special" for away fans turned out to be a red light shining on the underside of the concourse roof and an overhead projector showing washed out slides of about 8 current players on infinite loop. They did, apparently, have Forty-Niner for sale, but the queues were so long and it was so packed it was pointless trying to buy one anyway. As for the "comfy" seats, no better than MK's ground, and used for an equal period of precisely 15 minutes at half time. Cardiff City Stadium absolutely kicks its arse, and I hate Cardiff City. Fortunately Brighton itself is full o'pubs and it's difficult to have a genuinely bad day out there even with unwarranted 3-0 red card debacles.

As I've said on here before, the difference is that all the "elite" clubs will be able to cherrypick and stockpile ALL the best talent (rather than just the kids near their location(s), before eventually releasing the ones they can't possibly see any future for, safe in the knowledge that any kids they miss out on can still be snapped up for a pittance as soon as they show any talent - as opposed to now, when smaller clubs can still get better players with potential to their academies and sell them on to fund the investment. Even without the changes in the tribunal arrangements which now favour the big clubs, the shift from relatively fair "local" recruitment rules to ones which allow a top academy to grab kids from anywhere is bad for competition.

Um, that's not the case, our academy is much more highly rated than theirs and it's not purely league status which defines a team's category (and therefore what they can do). In fact we're in the very top category, and would have been even if we didn't go up last season.