Chez

The Pier bleeds money, but is not a vote winner, the skates bleed money, but saving them will win votes. Mind you don't get squashed

not sure how, but Pekhart is probably above League 1 level and Jospeh Mills

No idea about the Premiership, but I think in the FL and the FA Cup a percentage of the ticket money goes into a big pot for redistribution. Not sure why the tickets aren't therefore 99p and the booking fee £35. Booking fees **** customers off. Why do it when you can just add a little to the overall ticket price and fans will swallow them without comment? Can someone tell me why Tesco etc. don't add a fee for the services of their till operators? Roughly £33k made from ST booking fees, but there is a massive £142,500 to be made from booking fees when selling the remaining 5000 seats in each Prem game (if its £1.50 per ticket rather than transaction).

I agree about the wage, you're also right about his first touch, but I don't agree that he doesn't work in a team playing possession football. Fundamental to a passing game is movement off the ball and he moves more off the ball than any other Saints player. When Lallana was out he was outstanding and we missed his drive, movement, and just as importantly closing down of opposition when we lost the ball. That said, I agree with game time comment. Might be a mistake though to think we will pas teams to death like we did in the first half of the season. We might need a `headless chicken' as some describe his ilk to give us some penetration. There weren't many complaining about his first touch when he smashed one past Man U not so long ago.

Actually IMO he did eventually recover his fitness after his injury and was for example absolutely outstanding in the Palace away game.

shush now, you're not allowed to moan about high prices or booking fees on this website, if either are a problem I think the normal advice given is to go to less games or quit your job and get one where you earn more.

talk of war and that image of the land makes me think of the Versailles Treaty, the Polish corridor, Rhineland, Alsace and Lorraine. The Football League's restrictions might represent the military restrictions imposed on Germany. Not sure which of the owners takes the mantel of Wilhelm II, nor when reparations will ever start.

does taking their TV/laptop/phone away work as an ultimate punishment?

it seems to be coming down every week as the players give up what they are owed.

I very much liked you Cleverly post. Intriguing comparison and one that I had to think twice about. out of interest how highly do you rate Cleverly? I saw him in the England U21 game at SMS and he was the best player on the park. Not seen much else of him if I'm honest. Wanted to know how high a bar you are actually setting. Not saying I agree with you, but bigging up our own players is not a crime. Many have been heckled for doing the same with the likes of Morgan, Bale and Jones.

If Arsenal are sniffing around already then there is not much point in trying to hide them. if they are good enough play them. Not playing them if they are the best in the position at the time is madness. By the way if a 17 year old English player shines in the prem, then £5m ain't going to be enough to prize them away.

I saw Reeves in the midweek cup game, Preston I think, at SMS and I thought he was absolutely outstanding. He ran the game whilst on the pitch, offering a great touch, vision, confidence on the ball, and a lovely range of passing. That's the only time I've seen him I think, a few minutes here and there apart, but I was very impressed and surprised he hadn't been raved about more on here. Maybe I saw the best of him. Hope not as he looked very much how Prowse looked on Saturday. You're right about the friendlies, but better to look good than bad in them.

I'll tell you what, how good would it be for us to start with the likes of maybe Prowse (assuming Adkins hasn't had his hand forced), Shaw or Reeves. They all look fantastic talents. Whether they are quite ready I am not sure, but the fact that Adkins thought they were good enough right now to mix with the best could only suggest that we have some potential England talents on our books. As an aside I thought Morgan looked outstanding again and he'll do well this season. The step up won't catch him out.

http://www.football-league.co.uk/footballleaguenews/20120712/league-board-makes-membership-offer-to-portsmouth_2293334_2847729

The Theo to SAINTS story was perhaps supplied by Arsenal in an attempt to offload their player

Newcastle certainly knew how to sign um, how about Hugo Viana? Sol Cambell at Notts County? From my limited viewings of Spanish football, Kaka to Real hasn't exactly been great either has it for £56m?

What you are describing is the time trial. This is the road race and it's a much longer and much more tactical event where wind resistance is everything. By staying in the slip stream you use a fraction of the energy of the guy at the front. Who would want to be out the front busting a gut all day for everyone else to take advantage? In essence riders break away from the pack then the peleton takes it in turns to be the guy at the front trying to catch the breakaway. The trouble was because we have CAV, team GB were the only ones in the peleton to try and work down the breakaway. Germany and one or two other teams had great sprinters too so they should have helped, but they didn't, so they gave their team mates no chance to win. What the road race offers is a chance for different types of riders to win, break away specialists, sprinters, and all in between. I have to say I enjoyed it almost as much as I do the TDF, just a pity we couldn't bring the breakaway back and get cav into position.

Personally I was hoping for lots of the first half (style, surprises and unauthodox imagery) and a lot less of the second half (predictable music and crap dancers/costumes). I think the whole thing was miles better than my worst thoughts, but not not as tight as Boyle's wonderful films like Sunshine. I expected something, whatever it was to be extremely polished. Boyle should have controlled the cameras as well as creation. The BBC did him no favours. In fact they ruined it in places. The Beijing opening ceremony was far more predictable, in content, but it was visually stunning and certainly not boring. Contrary to vftt point above, some of us didn't cream up over it simply because it had flaws, nothing to do with political stance.

I'm surprised so many people loved it so much. I know expectations were low, but for such a prestigious event I thought it looked cobbled together in places. The transitions between parts were clumsy at best, lots of long pauses and considering Boyle is a film director you'd think he would have worked closely with the BBC to get the right camera angles to show the best elements in the right way. Some shots chosen were terrible, revealing the absolute worst parts of the performance such as bored out of time dancers and uncomfortable shuffling to dismantle the early set. Why did the we need to see the flag carriers from above opening lids to slot flags in on the hill? Lots of small things like that just take a little of the shine off. That said I loved the grassy scene at the start. It looked fantastic. The industrial revolution forging of the rings was brilliant, great idea, excellently done. The transition between greenery to industrial just looked like a huge mess of people moving stuff though. This went on for ages and was visually poor. This was the time for a video interlude. I thought more could have been made of honouring our armed services. Bond and the queen was inspired and Bean for a minute or two was funny. I'd of liked to have seen more of that, humour not Bean. As proud I am of our national health service I just thought visually it looked strange. I love Abide with me, it brought tear to my eye at the cup final, but it failed miserably to stir me this time for some reason. The event nosedived badly after that, especially the music/dancing section, which was just a complete mess of bad dancing and poor costumes. Our TV and film culture is also certainly something to be proud of, but I'm not sure that was shown well all. The tinniest clips of shows hardly anyone knows didn't show us in a great light. Great exports like Monty Python??? The text messaging story was totally lost on me as was the lost phone love story. Again terrible editing caused this. The lighting of the torch was a great idea, and even going for future blood was OK, if slightly disappointing, but again it was shot badly by the BBC and the link between the gold medal winners and their nominated youngsters didn't show up well. Was Daley Thompson's face even shown? Did McCartney **** up his song? It seemed to overlap itself with a recording. **** poor. Also towards the end I felt that perhaps the whole thing could have started to move into the world of sport. We showed some excellent things about our country, but in the end its a sporting event and it just seemed to jump from a theatre production about the UK one minute to the athletes walking out the next. How about showing some of our sporting history. We invented some of the worlds greatest sports FFS. One last gripe. Why on earth did we have to suffer several U2 songs as the athletes came out? Were there not enough British tunes to pick from? I also thought it was a shame we couldn't hear the crowd applauding the athletes from all the countries or did no one bother? It went on far too long and the speeches killed the atmosphere. Apart from that I enjoyed it tremendously! Did anyone else watch it on HD? The `commentary' from Colin Jackson was quite simply unbelievable. Think Alan Partridge, but with less to say and doing so with less thought. Colin Jackson describing Industrial revolution "Of course lots of people got very rich and lots of people worked very hard" "there's Afghanistan. I guess they are just happy to be here" "the M25, which is the main ring road that goes round the city if London" "the colours of red, white and blue in the crowd...they are very significant" "the sound of the those drums signifies drummers".

wish Fox had Harding's nastiness and willingness to do everything in his power to prevent the winger going past him, outpaced or otherwise. Also wish Fox could pass it 5 yards down the line to Lallana then overlap as Harding used to do.

on the other hand he can try to kick the **** out of the **** every single day of training.

perfect player for Forest. Give it a few months and they'll be singing the old Des Walker ditty to his name. Brilliant player for us, did a fantastic job. He'll be great for Forest. I wish him all the best. Onwards and upwards for us though.

no booking fee for online purchases doesn't.

decent system, glad money spent on shirts etc. doesn't go towards loyalty. Will previous history be used at all?

I'll take that each way me thinks.