The9

Why tell them anything if it helps them ? Hell, I run a Sunday League side which puts match reports on the internet and I won't even allow us to describe which side we put our penalties in the reports just in case. There's nothing wrong with being professional. Any advantage.

So you're telling me there are more than 3 teams in League One that have a better midfield than that "second string" option ? I think it's at least arguable based on what I've seen at St Mary's so far this season. Brighton were decent, Bournemouth's side were anonymous both times with the exception of Pugh, Huddersfield's usually decent side got slaughtered again, Peterborough don't appear to bother with midfield, even when Swindon stuffed us early on they had already been beaten by everyone else. Who else is there ? Notts County's midfield was utter guff going forward - though their 10 defenders did quite well. Dickson, Guly and Schneiderlin are all regular starters already and would walk into the midfield of practically EVERY other team in this League. Gobern wouldn't, and didn't at MK last season, but he's still improving, whilst Butterfield has Premier League experience, and is also adequate (fourth choice) cover for a right midfield slot having played there before. But it's not like most teams in League One aren't mixing, matching and making do on a weekly basis. And let's not forget, this is only as back up to Lallana, Chamberlain, Chaplow and Hammond.

I'm pretty sure there's a setting to "delete messages from server" somewhere in there - but whenever I've used it it has the side-effect of the server redelivering a load of read e-mails which have been dormant for some time (there must be a time-stamp setting on the freeserve/wanadoo/orange server config) to my browser. So instead of deleting mails from server to prevent double-deleting, it actually means I end up having to double-delete absoutely LOADS of stuff I already deleted off the browser before.

And even then, apparently, it's 4 from Dickson, Guly, Schneiderlin, Butterfield and Gobern, which is about as good as 90% of this division have starting. Not bad for a side that would have lost an entire midfield.

We were top of the Prem for about 3 minutes when 2-0 up against Derby at Pride Park in 2000 after 22 minutes of the first game of the season - but I don't think we've managed to be top of a league whilst I've been supporting Saints, which is since 1991. We MAY have topped the CCC when 1-0 up against QPR after Jermaine Wright scored too, but I'm not convinced on that one.

I'm sure we could find a some posts where he said we might cease to exist as well. I'd rather have not had to run the risk of that gamble.

Fail, that's Football Manager 2 which was too much faffing for my liking. THIS is C64 Football Manager (and I had the Spectrum version anyway).

8th Feb to 24th March according to Wikipedia though the reference linked doesn't actually mention those dates. 8th Feb would be right as the loan window doesn't open until a week after the Transfer Window closes. March 24th also seems to be in line with the old end-of-season transfer deadline, which was the 3rd week of March. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_window#cite_note-19

In which case I hear the latest in coaching technology is a cardboard sign with "SHOOT" written on it.

You've done a good job capturing your passion (to slightly nutty levels, actually ), I just don't get the logic of "spending my money in the pub instead means I won't care about the result".

Actually Olympique Marseille are still recognised as the winners of the 1992/3 European Cup / Champions League, they just happened to be stripped of their French championship the same season (and relegated) due to bribing Valenciennes for the match the week before the CL Final, and then prevented from defending the trophy. But I'm all in favour of stripping Cheats FC of anything they've won, never mind the fluke Cup Final.

Actually they've already voted on their 2011/12 kit - reverting back to their (cough) claret and blue stripes over the white with diagonal they've got this season : http://www.footballshirtculture.com/11/12-kits/crystal-palace-2011-2012-nike-shirt-vote.html ...along with the Brazil away they made popular with their fans in 1990.

I'm a bit worried as well, I really like the unique sash and having been all for a "one-season" kit I think we should now have at least one "sash" kit a season, even if it's a yellow/blue or black/red away kit.

No-one's mentioned the various statements along the lines of "we're here as a football team to play a game of football on the football pitch in the football stadium".

Not sure what evidence you're looking at.

Which is not to be compared to the European Cup in any way shape or form - though of course he's won that twice with Man U as well. As for the main argument, Ferguson HAS been successful at small low-resourced clubs, and the argument that he couldn't make a small club win the Premier League or whatever is ridiculous, because nobody can nowadays - you need billions just to get into the top 4. But at a time when you could get success with a regional club compared to relative financial giants with huge fanbases who monopolised the League, he did.

I've listened to enough Saints matches on the radio to know I know stuff all about the match compared to people who went and that everything that happens goes through a commentator's filter before it gets to me. I've also seen enough ill-informed comment on here from people who've only listened to matches I've been to, to be able to deduce that it is very difficult to analyse things like individual performances (or fan response to incidents) with any degree of confidence. I'd say to people they can by all means pontificate from afar about Cortese's policies, or Adkins' interviews, when all of the information is in front of them and an informed opinion is possible. However, there is little chance that the radio will have conveyed the tactical nuances of something like Puncheon's notable improvement on Saturday, and therefore the likelihood of him staying, or starting a league match, or even whether we need a new central / left midfielder. Even the fact that the crowd was unexpectedly (I'd say) behind him wouldn't have come across on the radio - and all of those factors go into analysis of a player's happiness in a squad, with knock on effects on the transfer policy and any squad changes.

Errrr yais... now let's see the stats for top 3 League 1 sides at home against top 3 Premier League teams in the past 20 years, which may be in some way relevant.

If you just assess the question on the merits of the thread title, yes this squad is good enough for promotion. We already have more cover of a high calibre for this division than anyone else. The only issue is what happens when those players are unavailable, off-form or suspended. And even considering all of THAT we are still better placed than anyone else in the division - at the moment I'm glad there's a fixture backlog because we're better placed than our rivals to deal with it. Though that doesn't mean there won't be games when we're compromised because of it. We could of course sign a few more players to guard against absolutely every eventuality, but even Jose Mourinho seemed happy with a squad of about 23 first team squad members who could rotate in with no adverse issues at Chelsea, and we're only a few shy of that already.

Only because you've already got it. Damn, someone else beat me to it. The "joke", not teh Aids.

No, it's a load of guff unless he thinks we're going to have 5000 empty seats in addition to the segregation. Away teams are entitled to up to 15% of the capacity (for the FA Cup), but that has to be delivered with consideration of the amount of segregation required and the layout of the ground. Cheats FC had a lesser allocation last season (3200?) than Man U did in 2009 (I think that was 3800) presumably on police advice because they insisted the netting between fans took up a larger area. Man U have definitely had the largest away following at St Mary's due to segregation and the different rules for Cup and League matches. As a Block 41er in the Northam I have netting about 5 seats to my left, for Cheats probably 10-12 seats into Block 42 was covered in netting, for Man U it was only about 3 seats wide. Presumably the same happens on the Itchen/Northam corner on the other side of the away fans, and there are about 38-40 rows (Northam goes from A-Z and then AA to about NN I think), so that would account for the 600 extra seats. Interestingly if there was a replay we'd be entitled to somewhere in the vicinity of 11000 tickets. And FWIW I think we'll see £35 tickets for this one, the people trying to make any link between ticketing for this and Shrewsbury are mentalists, and it's a bloody boring draw getting that lot again.

I used to phone my mate, tell him to load Football Manager on his C64, get on my bike, ride the 2 miles to his house and still get there before it had finished loading.

Well, the fact you don't think we're going to win any titles on the way back to the Prem isn't exactly a sign of confidence...

Yeah, I didn't see it until after I'd replied, and decided to leave it because my last bit doesn't really make sense without it.

Useless thread...