CB Fry

No sh it sherlock. Thanks for that oh everso wise one. I and every contributor to this forum breathing air is aware of that. That's why i responded to your patronising as hell comment about man city earlier. Christ.

Last time i looked all the richest clubs are battling for the CL places and all the poorest are battling to stay in the prem. So obviously nothing to do with money at all then. No sir.

Ohh, get her. It's like Bernstein and Woodward on the case. Bitter pedantic internet dweeb versus experienced, knowledgable paid Journalist writing a nice opinion piece about why our city should host world cup matches. And completely factually correct as far as I can see as our pet truth-warrior has yet to find anything that is actually wrong with it. One lives a simulated life pretending he knows about footballers for a living for some computer game. One talks to footballers, managers, chairman for real, every day, living it. I know whose side I'm on. Great article Danny. Spot on and thanks for banging the drum. But too late I fear....?

Get over yourself. The article you've linked to is an opinion/comment piece about why (in that reporters opinion) we should get involved in the World Cup. It's not "news". We all know SMS can be expanded, which is the point he makes. He could have done it without the link to Wikipedia but no harm in it being there. I don't see anyone claiming that article is an in-depth history of St Mary's Stadium. Are you challenging the central fact that SMS can be expanded? The up-arse pompousity on this forum beggars belief sometimes.

So what? We're running at three points per game if you just count the last game we played, or 1.44 if you count the last three. Unless you know better than me, the points for all clubs are counted for the entire season starting in August, not from when our manager says "the team is ready now" sometime in early October. I think we can make the playoffs , but the fact is we are running at 1.44 for the season so far (including our recent run) so to get to 1.9 is a big ask. Our awful start is a massive burden, and is the reason we are still further away from the play offs now than we were before a single ball was kicked in the summer. So in terms of making the play offs we still haven't made any incremental progress. Until we get the gap down to nine points between us and sixth, then we are really on our way. Three wins out of three coming up might do it.

Tommy Forecast this is your moment.

And we're currently running at 1.44 per game so far, which is an indication of the size of the job and how our poor start has really hamstrung us. Nailed on top-two form for the rest of the season. It's possible but it is not easy!

Nine points in the run up to the Norwich and Leeds games would be handy.

Anyone else experiencing problems with SaintsPlayer tonight? Getting error message #2 on both the laptops in my house. I'm guessing error message #2 is "SaintsPlayer is a sack of shi t e". PS - the fact I have missed a goal makes me ****ed off/delighted in equal measure.

"Central South" is not a region, Pompey weren't in a one horse race. It was Pompey/Bristol/Plymouth. So there was "more than one bid" but the region was the "South West".

Yes, you're right. No Saints fan has ever had a single bad word to say about Harry Redknapp, Chris Nicholl or Gordon Strachan on their tenures at Southampton. Not one word of criticism from any Saints fan, ever. What a total spanner you are.

Who's talking about Pearson apart from you, you sad obsessed idiot.

Why would it be unlikely? He's been working in this country in a similar capacity over the last few years including a Pompey and at one of the biggest clubs in the land, and in his last employment he managed said club to the Champion's League final. Refusing a work permit on Grant's CV (on paper, not saying I'd want him at Saints particularly) would be the unlikely scenario in my book.

Didn't they get into the play offs in their first season from a 15 point deficit? (PS. I know the answer, and it's yes they did.)

He managed Hearts for twelve whole games, so there is absolutely no way anyone can judge whether he was a success there or not. A glorified caretaker manager tenure that the Burley worshippers rave on and on about like he won the frigging Uefa Cup there.

Surely it's Naaaarch? We'll bounce back, but no clean sheet. Win 3-2, with the scoreline flattering them.

Nigel Worthington had more of a turd and has delivered comparative success. Mcleish and Smith had the same turd and did infinitely better. Burley has frankly lost it. Did well at Derby but was a dreadful, shameful disaster for us and the Jocks. No doubt we'll be flooded by the loons on this forum who fete Georgie as some miracle worker achieving unbelievable results against all the odds . As if £12m to spunk up the wall on any players you like and the regime with the biggest non-Swiss feelgood factor ever seen at SMS is "all the odds".....

I'm not defending SaintRichmond who is the biggest spanner on the forum by a country mile - I'm only surprised he didn't manage to blame Lowe for yesterday such are his scattergun garbage rants - but Pardew has spoken about aiming for the play offs this season. At no point has Pardew said he just wants to consolidate this season. I can't remember what Cortese has said, but Pards is definitely still up for top six. He aint no George Burley aiming as low as humanly possible and then make out he is a managerial mastermind by achieving it.

No it isn't. There is absolutely zero chance of us being relegated. Zero chance. It's whether or not we make the play offs, and to be honest it's a long old slog but still possible.

Nah. It's not happening today boys.

Pretty sure that come 2013 the digital switchover will be complete, or near as dammit, so there is no issue whatsoever with access to channels and the BBC or C4 could show it on one of their platforms, to everyone. And, more importantly, Sky could show it, for free. And I disagree with your last line - back in 2005 it was a new experience for a hell of a lot of people. In 2009 it was an experience for a handful of people who already liked cricket. Most people didn't have the opportunity to say "I saw it all four years ago, I won't bother" - there was no option to watch it, so the casual fans just got on with their lives and left the 2009 Ashes to the ever diminishing pool of cricket fans. Who needs new supporters taking an interest, eh?

This is just a figment of people's imagination. Much like the countless weeks of people saying we were definitely definitely definitely going to get more than ten points deducted. Definitely. And we didn't. The ten point penalty was correct and deserved.

Yawn. No response whatsoever on the sensible points made I see, just the usual grandstanding. But there are lots of rules that you could say is "physically impossible" to implement correctly unless you want 10 refs all sat round the perimeter like tennis umpires, or every whistle blown (or not blown) is discussed and counter discussed by video refs. Offside is a judgment call made to the best of a linesman's ability, much like all of us make judgment calls in life about things all the time. And life aint perfect, so yearning for every single decision made by a football official to be scientifically perfect is building a ladder to the moon. Pointless. Who wants scientifically perfect football matches? Not me.

Dopey idea. The off-side rule is the whole point of football. You have to get through the opposition team to score a goal by passing or dribbing through their last line of defence. Not booting the ball to someone already the other side of their last line of defence. If you remove the offside rule then the whole game becomes some kind of kicking competition with five attackers in the box with "quarterbacks" booting the ball in and goal hangers looking for scraps. How can someone who is a bloody football historian not understand that. Maybe you need to find an aussie rules team to support.

Correct. Correct.