CB Fry

I marked him down because we're not safe from relegation yet and we need five or six more wins before I can relax and look at me aren't I just hilarious.

Taking the pi ss out of you making out that the British public will now think everyone had a lovely time during the First World War because of one two minute advertisement is the only enjoyment I get in my miserable bed-sit bound lonely life.

In this example, the integrity and as you say personality of this site would be compromised to an extent that it would almost certainly be abandoned by its audience. "The Man" would only take control of this site to monetise it, and closing down discussion to that extent would have the opposite impact. I know you are making a wider point but I think it still stands. Comment threads on newspaper websites is a click driver far more than it is some platform for free speech. It's Internet landfill. As others have said the decisions to not open threads are going to largely be economic/technical/legal rather than a way to stop free speech.

I hope we don't play them for a decade. They need it - right now, they really need it - and we don't. Fu ck em.

He's got that annoying Dave Jones-ism of saying "This/The Football Club" over and again. Apart from that, hilarious. Please don't let it stop.

Made me laugh anyway.

I hope a mod locks this thread.

I haven't poured scorn on a small part of your argument. I've poured scorn on all of it.

He'd be brilliant these days - he'd be fitter because he'd be doing the regimes that the squad do now. It's always silly to transplant footballers from one era into another. Just different worlds. Nice read, thanks for the link OP.

SOG's contributions bear re-reading. Pure comedy gold complaining that a two minute supermarket advertisement doesn't go into significant detail about the slaughter and suffering of the full four years of the first world war. Basically if the ad had shown soldiers climbing out of the trenches and being shot, that would have been better. I don't particularly like the ad, but mainly because I think strategically they have made an poor call. This is a gigantic Christmas for the big four supermarkets, and instead of talking about their own point of difference or what they are really about versus Aldi/Lidl, Sainsbury's have decided to do a John Lewis vanity ad. Not sure it is going to pay off for them. The complaints are just pointless noise. Corporation uses heartwarming historical event to sell stuff shocker.

Ban this filth.

Not sure anyone has said he hasn't.

Personally I'd agree with them. The big battle for the campaigners is to get Evans cast out of Sheffield United. Evans and the PFA know this too, SUFC is the only club the PFA can apply some pressure to in order to get him re-signed. That's his best immediate hope. Once he's on the open market, he's at the mercy of clubs with no obligation to him at all, and like you say the bandwagon will roll on. Eventually he'll get a game somewhere but this will be probably be a long and difficult process for him. If nothing else he might learn a bit of contrition through it.

Going by this thread, the average Saints fan is very likely to notice the contradiction between a right-leaning political standpoint and reading the Guardian.

By some distance the funniest thing you have ever posted on this forum.

On the patron front, they've still got Sean Bean on board plus a couple of other people no one has heard of. Have we got that many patrons?

He's a bit broader than that in his explanation, he is clear in his support for what Jessica Ennis and the others have done. I think his point is sound: Evans really shouldn't expect to just ease back in to exactly the job he had before he went to prison. I know the "he's done his time" gang will hate this idea but there are very few professions where an ex con (of any crime, not just rape) simply strolls back into their old job, picks up a pen/scalpel/hod and carries on like nothing ever happened. Surely a "new start" somewhere else is a perfectly acceptable part of the rebuilding/rehabilitation process. Can't see anything wrong with that at all.

We've got Radhi Jaidi on that job anyway. Or is that East Africa?

That's true of gardening leave in almost all industries in fairness.

Definitely be at least three months. I'm on three month notice right now, and my sphere of influence/risk around my role does not quite stretch to the acquisition of multi million pound footballers. (Obviously I'm a pretty big old cog in my current company. That toner doesn't replace itself, you know.) I would think it could even be six months, he might not get going until next summer.

Completely. We would be a nightmare club to try and buy from in January, especially as any player Lovren-ing for a move out is going to look like a monumental c8nt. We're probably safe. Just them journalists to worry about, really.

Not impossible. A "double bubble" signing for some clubs - strengthening them, weakening us. Clyne, J-Rod probably the likeliest candidates.

The destabilising impact if this story alone is probably going to be worth ten or eleven league points, a real hammer blow to our Champions League challenge. So, money well spent by whichever club it is paying journalists to make up stories about us, which is definitely happening and no mistake.

Pretty obvious this thread would end up here, really.

Packed international football schedule + no serious competition to his place = greatest England striker ever.