The9

I doubt it, not convinced Beattie has had the work ethic Strachan wants since he went to Everton (and arguably for at least 6 months befoer that).

It is if the club is waiting for confirmation that the fax has been received in order to be allowed to play a player. They even shifted the Transfer Window to 5pm on Sept 1 "in August" because Aug 31 was a Bank Holiday and there wouldn't be anyone around to process transfers, no sign of them moving it this time as there are 30 days for transfers left afterwards.

Um, you missed the memo from every World Cup in the last 26 years having the host (or one of the co-hosts) in Group A Position 1 then ? That was known 3 years ago when they published the match schedule.

I wish they'd get around to sticking Connolly in the bloody game, even though I pretty much only play Be A Pro using my Virtual Pro (who now actually looks like me) and the first squad update anyway. In other stuff, how do you unlock your Gameface in the Virtual Pro display ? I'm still a black silhouette in Season mode (e.g. at the end of game appraisal screen) even though I've d/led my face and it uses it on my Pro in matches and on the Xbox Live username graphic ?

What, not even the stuff that quotes legal documents online as citations ?

And they'd all be wrong. Plus loads of them would tell you Jordan is a good role model, and probably half of them can't spell you're. And one would be a Skate.

That would take some kind of planning and forethought, this is the FA we're talking about...

I'd quite like us to sign Alex Pearce (back) from Reading, assuming they're as skint as it sounds like they are. He seems to be one of their few performers and he looked decent for us. Trotman had a couple of decent games but started to look dodgy and Jaidi is leagues ahead of him. I don't think we should even extend the loan unless we completely fail to get another CB in permanently. I'd also sign Antonio on a permanent, and start trying to recruit some of the players from the Swiss U-17 World Champions who aren't already with big clubs. And a striker to give Lambert a break and provide a target when he's not there / annoyingly out on the wing crossing it.

All he said was "I'd rather be playing Hereford than Norwich". I'm sure there's a slightly tricky probability discussion to be had here, but I'm not providing it. For once.

We'll have players returning from loan though.

Unless you are under the age of 16, you just have not being paying attention, as even the argument that "Boxing Day = Dec 26" within that Wiki article states that In the countries that observe this holiday, 26 December is commonly referred to both as Boxing Day and as St. Stephen's Day, no matter what day of the week it occurs.[3] However, in some countries, holidays falling on Saturday or Sunday are observed on the next weekday. Boxing Day cannot be on a Sunday, that day being the officially recognised day of worship, so traditionally it was the next working day of the week following Christmas Day, (i.e. any day from Monday to Saturday). In recent times this tradition has been either forgotten or ignored. Most people consider 26 December to be Boxing Day even when it falls on a Sunday. The last year 26 December was called Christmas Sunday in the United Kingdom and Canada was 1993. The next time the date fell on a Sunday (1999), it was known as Boxing Day. Seeing as the Queen has the power to decide, she's the one that gives out the boxes AND she's a stickler for tradition, I would suggest that we go with the traditional definition, not the "dumbed down" one. Cos apart from anything, next year when Dec 26 falls on the Sunday it CANNOT be Boxing Day.

To be fair they won 5-1 away on the weekend didn't they ? I looked at their team last night and that lot should be in the top 2 at worst. Might be that Strachan hasn't had the chance to run them knackered yet, or if he has they're too tired to play !

By the time we play Luton we may have other players in the squad to consider as the transfer window will be open.

You'd have to beat both of them to get to the Final... and I'd rather be playing the better side in a one-off game than a two-legged one.

Hey, Welly has a LOT of showers. At least in 1994 when I last played there there were shower rooms for every two changing rooms, and they were quite clean too. Bloody small and much worse than the ones the Uni moved to at Wide Lane, but that's progress... for everyone except Portsmouth FC anyway...

Well that's added a new facet to the "Boxing Day" debate, they seem to think it's NOVEMBER 26th ?!!?!

I would assume none of the games, or they wouldn't be missing ?

And I meant to type "Frank Worthington Football Genius" on the other thread, but it's out there now.

I like this bit : Meanwhile, back with Fahim, “As a chairman and shareholder, I want to know who is (Al-Faraj) and what plans he has for the club. I have never even met him.” You might imagine Fahim would have done all that stuff before selling him 90% of the club, but never mind.

Finding the option to search on "facial hair" on the home page extremely amusing.

Football 1981 for me... my grandad found a load of boxes of unsold stickers in his shop's storeroom a few years later and I got the lot, found the album in a cupboard at my nan's and it took me about 4 hours to open all the packs in order to get that last one or two... I had about 3 albums' worth of doublers by then too.

Can't disagree with the first bit - other than that the craze lasted for getting on for about 10 years and basically included any teams who couldn't play football, which was most of them. Thinking about it, the pitches can't have helped the passing as they were still pretty poor back then. Even that passing Saints side still played a very high tempo "balls into space behind the full-backs" game (usually with Dennis hurtling in), whilst most other sides were just "helping it on to the big man". Most of the teams of the day would be happy to whack it into space out wide and swing it in the area, and Liverpool were no different, though they tended to cross low for Rush. Like Saints, they also had the ability to pass down the middle, which a lot of other sides didn't. Someone else mentioned that Liverpool and Forest were the kings of possession. I have strong memories of a lot of Liverpool's possession being of the nature of Hansen to Grobbelaar to Hansen to Grobbelaar...

Well, okay, it was a better pass than I remember, and he did have a look - but it still wasn't anything special until the overhead kick. I think I was thinking of a different over the shoulder pass. I also noted the nice long distance shot at about 1:17 of that video that came from 2 25 yard headers without the ball bouncing which supports my hoofball era theory nicely...

No, I'm serious, it was a no-look thwack [edit: it wasn't ] into the general vicinity of an overlapping full back who he knew would probably be there, the kind of pass about half of any given parks team could perform, and the sort of general long pass and high-speed endeavouring that still worked at the time when conceding possession didn't matter as the other team would give it back a few moments later anyway. The only skill in that was in not booting it off the pitch. As a generalisation, the hoofing era ended circa 1990, except for Wimbledon. Partially linked to England playing a more passing game at international level after getting embarrassed by Ireland being better at hoofball than them in Euro88 - and more importantly the change in the backpass rule which meant fewer keeper-based launches to base a gameplan around. THIS is a Frank Worthington "pass" worth appreciating :

Let's look at the facts. 1) they have no money 2) they have to pay out lots of money I say "yes, soon" unless they find someone to solve 1).