The9

If they wanted to I'm sure the club could afford to buy them out for one game given the additional publicity the JPT Final got them.

Funny that, I watched the same game and saw a vastly improved performance from an increasingly competent looking player. And has it occurred to you that he might have been told to aim for Rickie at the first opportunity ? Some people on here need to learn the difference between a random hoof and a planned and directed long pass.

Disagree - he very rarely hoofs it (a lot less than Fonte especially), and when he does go long he almost always plays a judged long pass towards Lambert, and only then when other options aren't on. - his positioning was poor until he got a regular run, and has now improved. He used to drift too far from his CB partner, leaving a gaping hole down the middle, this no longer happens. - he wins a lot of headers, if not as many as Fonte, and I don't think directionally he's any worse than Jaidi, who's known for his heading ability. I don't disagree that we might want to sign another CB though, as Jaidi and Perry are both getting on, and we can afford a ready-made Championship-level player already.

I was going to say, looked like the attacker "won" it, rather than Seaborne losing it. Seaborne wasn't quite as composed on Sat as he was on Tuesday, but he's definitely benefitted from playing a few games regularly alongside Fonte and I'm no longer worried that he's a "bad signing", as I think he's looked comfortable and his decision making and positioning has tangibly improved, as you'd expect with an extended run-out alongside a consistent CB partner. He's been upgraded from "dubious" to "promising".

Hardly.

I think we'd have heard something by now if it was getting shown off that soon. I can't remember whether we've launched the home kit before the away kit or vice versa in the last few seasons - though until 2008 we had 3 of the things anyway... You can argue either way really, launching the away kit first gives it a longer sales period and makes it the main "new season" product throughout the summer break, whilst launching an away kit in July/August gives a boost to sales at the start of the season when more people are enthusiastic and more likely to buy new stuff for the new season. Same arguments for the home kit, though personally I think launching it at the end of the previous season sucks nuts and makes the kit "old" before it even gets used (nearly 3 months later). However, THIS year I'd like a new home kit asap.

Definitely did something wrong, first corner when he came on he was standing in the box doing nothing, Lambert ran to him to tell him who to mark, he sort of wandered around for a bit and then let the bloke run straight past him. Luckily the delivery wasn't up to much, but after that I kept an eye on him and mostly we seemed to be choosing not to pass to him. Wondering why he got a run out, he's been around in the reserves/youth for a while without seeming to make any impact, maybe Pardew's giving him a chance to hoist himself or prove himself. Now we're playing out the season we should see a few more of the fringe kids getting a run.

25 minutes before they got a mention on Saturday, I was quite impressed by that. And to be fair, singing the "going/gone down" song isn't getting old. Oh, and I wish all of the good, upstanding citizens of Portsmouth all the best in getting the football club they deserve. As it seems the other 199,998 already have.

You must have missed him brawling around with Kelvin to try and get the ball quickly when the indirect free-kick was given on Saturday... ...though the hair song pre-dated that from when he came on as sub.

I continue to be annoyed by the "wrong" singing of the Jose Fonte song.

Once nearly moved in next door to me, hoofed the ball at Crouch too much in preseason 2004, always injured, refused to play for us post-relegation, seems to have done well at Anderlecht, drove a yellow Hummer which wouldn't even get him halfway to London on a tank of petrol, prompted an interesting song to the tune of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and an Ajax fan at Euro 2004 said he was "clumsy" and looked mildly embarrased about him when I asked him about our new signing. These are my Jelle van Damme facts.

We know we will be getting 2 new Umbro shirts for next season, and that the replica home shirt will not have sponsors on it. The flybe deal expires and both Saints and flybe have claimed they don't want it to continue. The statement wording about the sponsor-free shirt was VERY ambiguous, but most have assumed this means the players' home shirts will be free of sponsors as well as the replicas - and as Cortese wants to increase the value of the shirt sponsorship, the team going without one altogether (inc away shirt) is a logical assumption. Judging by trends in Umbro's marketing, I'm pretty confident it's going to be branded as Tailored By Umbro and have a classic kit look to it, though judging by some of the "tailored by" efforts afforded to Linfield and Shamrock Rovers so far, they're just sticking the new Umbro badge on some of next season's designs and calling it the same style as the current England and Man City kits. There are a few striped efforts around by Umbro for next season already, all very straightforward and plain. But the sash kit, though mostly a rumour started on here from info in the official statement, does seem to fit nicely for a one-year 125th anniversary kit. The home kit 125 years ago had white shorts and red socks, that doesn't necessarily mean we will follow that either. And it also seems fairly logical that we'll have a yellow away shirt with blue shorts, as it's "traditional" for Saints (since the 70s anyway) and the last two have been navy and charcoal grey. The last yellow away kit was the all yellow of the playoff season. Hoping they make an announcement soon, expecting we'll have one out in May and one in July.

I had assumed that Robsk had solved this by shaving his hairy hobbit feet and spotting the bone poking through the surface.

With my only courier experience being as a customer, I'd suggest they would collect all three, throw them in a skip in a back room 30 miles from your house and post you a card saying they weren't able to deliver and you'd have to come and get it. And then tell you they'd sent it back to the sender if you actually turned up for it.

As an immigrant from Monmouthshire ( ) I'm both disappointed that St George's Day isn't celebrated properly in England AND that most discussions about why this is degenerate into slanging matches which blame immigrants rather than people just not being bothered to do anything TO celebrate it. I also think that St Guinness Day aside, saints' days are a bit pointless and rapidly becoming an anachronism in modern society. But don't worry, as soon as the breweries sort their act out regarding which beer/lager/brand of water should be downed copiously on April 23 to prove your Englishness it'll be worth having again.

To tell them what ? "Your problem here is that you keep having to get rid of the pitch to stage non-footballing events and the light can't get in either? My rate is five grand an hour, by the way".

Erm, Notts County ignored the League 2 salary cap, result ? Promoted and the new bloke in charge saying "wasn't me guv".

Fantastic surface and well deserved over a number of years, but was I the only one who noticed how wonky the grass-lines between Chapel and Northam were cut on Tuesday ? Usually they're well-defined edges, but these ones were meandering all over the place.

So little doubt there's already a massive thread devoted debunking and dismissing this from a statistical perspective, we actually had a higher average points return from matches either side of Cup games than in successive League games this season.

Given that he failed to spot a similar hand ball by an attacking Saints player in front of the Northam (in the Oldham box) in the first half, actually pointing to the middle of his chest when it hit nothing BUT arm, and 3 or 4 other probable handballs in the course of the match, I'm hardly surprised he didn't give it.

I think he's better than Wotton, Gillett and James in his position and we miss him when he's not there, but I don't think he's even Prem quality yet, he has the odd noticably poor game and I think a fair few other Saints players are better in their positions relative to our opponents than he is in his.

Boos from the back of the Northam at the final whistle were DEFINITELY at the team/result and annoyed the hell out of me, but were quickly replaced by the majority applauding Kelvin and the ones who hadn't left applauding the other players. There was then a quick chorus of "one Alan Pardew" after he went and had a quick pop at the ref - there was some finger jabbing that I saw - before walking off applauding the fans. Then the boos for the officials came as the ref/linesmen started to walk off the pitch and again when they got to the tunnel.

Not as depressing as NOT winning it for 2 years in a row like everyone else his age playing in this league...

I actually think James is good enough to be the fill-in player and if it hadn't been for a couple of months without a start he'd have been a lot more effective there - but if the nature of the beast is that we need someone who can come in and be effective as cover WITHOUT regular match practice, then what we need to be doing is buying someone better than Schneiderlin and Hammond so that one of *them* is the covering player. It's the only way to continually improve, and not IMPROVING the squad, just adding to it, was the reason we dropped out of the Prem in the first place so you'd hope we'd have learned that lesson.

We struggled in that match until half time, as would any team with one of their players regularly passing to the opposition like Schneiderlin was. It's not his fault, he'd been out injured, but I'm not quite sure what point you're making when you say "if he plays badly the team do poorly", but using an example in which we won the match. Obviously if we have a lot of players doing badly we'll lose - see last season - but that doesn't mean they're all potential world-beaters - which seems to be your logic.