The9

Oh noes, IRL convo outed. The shame... -1 etc. And his name isn't Steve either.

My original Matty was kidnapped when I was working in a sports warehouse in the mid-90s (we sold Corinthian figures as well as kit), and day by day my work colleagues took great pleasure posting what were purported to be parts of his anatomy back to me in the internal mail as I refused to pay their ransom. It was only when I noticed a bit of blue shirt on what they claimed was his hand that I rumbled that my Matty was in fact ok, and they had been sacrificing an Everton no-mark figure instead, probably Dave Watson or Anders Limpar or someone of that ilk. The kidnappers foiled, Matty was soon returned, and following a lengthy tenure on my PC monitor in a subsequent job he has now retired to a carrier bag in my garage.

Oh, well in that case we're talking about different incidents !

For the second time, it was a (rubbish) cross. It was meant to be a chipped through ball to (I think) Foxy, who was going through the massive gap in the centre of their defence.

Funny, I was always singing "gets the ball, takes the p1ss", and "Fratton Park is falling down". Oh and "sing when you're winning". All this time I've been singing grammatically correct versions, how very stupid of me.

Ooh, hang on, I've just remembered Mellis' disguised through ball in the first half, that was awesome. Now if we can get him to run around all game and chase the ball, we'll have something. Trouble is at Chelsea no-one's going to slice the ball into the crowd if you pressurise them, so no-one bothers - it's a bit of an adjustment to realise that the Swindon keeper's going to hack it off the pitch if you chase him (not that Mellis should have been the one doing that though).

Having played alongside (and against) Darren Campbell a couple of times when he was working in South Wales, just after he left Weymouth FC. I can assure you that Newport and District parks league is his footballing standard (well, it was from 1995-97). He can cross, but every second touch was a tackle - not easy controlling the ball at that pace. And he's not got enough stamina to repeat his sprints for 90 minutes either.

It's not just pace, it's being in motion all the time, we look slow because we've got a standing start whilst the opposition is already moving. Oh, and everything that goes through Lallana comes with a 20 second late delivery time. I've never seen a player who is more interested in dropping a shoulder or doing a trick than actually progressing the play before (well, ok, maybe Fabrice), but there he is. Ball comes to feet, his slow trot sucks all of the momentum out of the move, defence has 10 men back, we give the ball away... and repeat.

Blimey, that's just desperate. We managed two slices miles off target and a crappy chip in the entire match from open play. We were TERRIBLE. the only bright spot for me was that some of the worst culprits were exposed - that's the last time I give Lancashire the benefit of the doubt, anyway. I can only hope Pardew's upbeat media proclamations are vastly different to what he's telling the team about yesterday's performance.

Thomson is one of the fastest players I've seen. And for those drooling over Macnamee, consider he was facing Lloyd James starting at Right Back for the first time since last season, and the defensive midfield support for him was... well... non-existent. The problem is motivation and effort. It might be possible to get the current crop to realise it, but it might just require a clear out. Swindon ran everywhere and closed everything down. We stood around and waited for everyone else to make a move. Bad teams react, good teams anticipate.

I do not, due to Shark Jumpery circa 2005, and unsubscribing circa 3 weeks ago.

Agreed. Now Anthony Poolis, there's an offensive midfielder.

League One has a "top" ? :confused:

Yep. But at least the highlights of FL matches from L1 and L2 are on their website at midnight the next day, and they've got the late night FL programme on Saturday (and the red button for 12 hours), not the early morning one ITV had.

I'm not sure it is on Sky. Sky have only got Ireland v Macedonia U-21s listed on that Friday night, and I think the game was only moved due to police advice. I do know from the various info on the BBC website that Southend is one of the sides in the midst of the most convoluted police "pairings" for fixtures stretching from London right out to East Anglia (i.e. if Arsenal are home, Spurs are away, so West Ham are home, Southend are away, which means Colchester are home and Ipswich are away etc), so it might be that they put it on Friday just so they could have enough police presence.

I think this thread should be left open, just to see how many people find out about Paul Lambert after they've posted a half-baked response... ...personally I'm bricking it that Pardew's going to jump ship...

Crosses, surely ? He did it at least twice. Then again he set up Lambert's first against Northampton in the same situation...

Erm, actually, 1998-2002 was a time of massively overinflated transfer fees. As for Cardiff's current "flying high in the Championship", I doubt it has much to do with them signing two players 8 years ago who have both long left the club. @Greenridge, yes, Blackburn were, but Fulham were in the third tier.

Online reservations are currently, erm, not online... so they're doing something.

I posted this about a fortnight ago (on the Jason Euell thread, as there's also an article by him in there), and even then the season predictions were clearly at least a month out of date, they probably wrote all that in April.

Obviously the charge for my services to the offeree is around the same amount. It's not like you were convinced yourself, is it ? Plus MLT matchworns must be worth plenty anyway.

Not much point one player chasing the ball on his own, is there ?

Ridiculous slating of Thomson who was the only player in the second half that did anything commendable after we scored.

Actually Thomson had his best game for Saints by some distance and gave us everything, kept the ball well and looked like a threat, and Mellis showed the kind of energy we were missing all game when he got the chance (which wasn't often as we never really had the ball in their half). James and Schneidelin were anonymous and Wotton and Lallana weren't much better - even the corner we scored from was a rubbish floating theing that Lambert did brilliantly well to get power into.

The best bit of this on Saturday was the point when I (in the Northam) started yelling obscenities at the ref about the penalty - and when my girlfriend pointed at the small child in the row in front, I merely pointed at the Family Enclosure. Hah, guilt-free sweariness, surely the point of Family Enclosures ?