St Landrew

I don't really care what F1 cars look like, as long as they still look like cars, and not just vehicles that happen to have a wheel in each corner, and one for steering with. If they manage to tweak the rules enough so that the driver becomes much more the factor behind whether a car wins or finishes elsewhere, rather than just a mere component, then they will have taken a huge step in the right direction, as far as I'm concerned.

Serious subject treated in a TMS way. Forum change.

Another apparently - Schue is said to be very fast on the Desmosedici Ducati Superbike. Now Ducati DO have links with Ferrari, and Troy Bayliss has just retired as World Superbike Champion for Ducati. How about that for a rumour..?

I know Michael Schumacher is a pretty capable racing rider, but apparently, Honda are willing to offer him a World Superbike bike for a season. How's that for it's not what you know, but who you know..?

My ISP is Europacom.net. Locally based the other side of the road from The Concorde Club. Utterly reliable service.

I think that's enough nominations, as practically every goalkeeper besides Jim Montgomery [remember him..?] from the 60's to present day, has been mentioned. The nominations now close, and the voting thread will shortly begin, after I've totted up the top nominees.

The top 5 nominees, based on favourable mentions by posters, are: Peter Shilton [1982-1987] 242 appearances. Antti Niemi [2002-2006] 106 appearances. Tim Flowers [1986-1993] 251 appearances. Eric Martin [1967-1975] 289 appearances. Ian Turner [1974-1978] 107 appearances. There is no need to comment. Just vote.

Just to explain: I know Doug Ellis has plenty of money. Doug Ellis was a hated chairman at Villa. Rupert has no personal fortune large enough to control SFC on his own. Rupert is a hated chairman of SH PLC. Therefore my description that Rupert is a Doug Ellis figure, but with no money. And nobody is offering to buy Rupert out because he isn't looking to sell at anything other than a major gain.

Had Whisky Galore [1949] going on in the background yesterday. I was half-watching it, but it was no good. I had to put down what I was working on and watch it properly. Superb films demand our proper attention.

The Life & Death Of Peter Sellers [2004]. For me an uneven film which seemed to have difficulty getting across the troubled soul that was Sellers, yet remain light and shallow, which was also Sellers. In fact, Peter Sellers was such a non-personality in himself that he often wondered what he himself was about. This element, the film did get across, and did also hint at Sellars possessive mother, and how Sellers felt her betrayal towards his father. If you expect laughs, they're very few and far between. Geoffrey Rush does do pretty fine job of immitating Sellers, though his Bluebottle and Major Bloodnock voices were far from the real thing. Odd film, but worth the watch.

In answer to the opening post, I never discuss one word commands. Put some bloody effort in. To answer the second post, I found Sanatarium Marmite vomit inducing, and had to wait 2 months before the biggest pot of proper Marmite I'd ever seen arrived from the UK. My sanity and vomit were saved.

You could organise this into a series of threads whereby people nominate their entrants to a poll, and then we let the poll run for the next few days. Just a thought. Shilton for me, without a doubt. For those that think I might not rate Niemi though, here would be my top 5 in descending order: Shilton Niemi Turner Flowers Martin

It was Smart Antivirus 2009. I got it pretty much beaten, although I couldn't solve the go.google redirection on Google searches. Notably, only IE7 was affected - the Windows edition of Safari being immune; that'll please Essruu..! So that meant, for a couple of reasons, I have done two complete and new installations on my PCs in the last week [the other was for a defective WD system HDD], and one on a relative's. Consequently, they are all humming along nicely now. Every cloud..!

And everything that this club is actually very good at - the academy.

There appears to be a lot of sense in what you say. Rupert says that it will be a long hard struggle to turn the club around, and it won't happen overnight. That is perfectly true, if you happen to be looking at SFC from the Rupert Lowe point of view, and what is best for the club from his perspective. His perspective being that he leads the club to better times and profits from that, whether the fans want him or not; whether they turn up to support the club on matchdays, or not. Rupert cannot see that the struggle could be made much easier if he was no longer involved, and that his percentage be bought out at the earliest opportunity that is both favourable to the club and him. I'm sure that if he announced that he was actively pursuing enthusiastic investors to buy his share out, so that the club could once again become united, the morale around Southampton would leap three-fold. But through his own personal fog, he cannot see that, from the perspective of the vast majority of supporters, he is not wanted. He's a Doug Ellis with no money. I pity the bloke for being so blinkered.

My, my, you lot have been productive. Sorry I haven't been back to comment. I got called out to a last minute sail. I should apologise to Scummer for cutting him down like that. I'm afraid I'd had some really bad news regarding Give It To Ron, and I was in an appalling mood. Thank goodness for the sail; it worked wonders. So sorry Scummer..! As to Rossi being the favourite motorsport's person in Europe, and Worldwide, I have seen stats myself that this is true. But these things are so ephemeral, that it is entirely possible it has changed. It has been the case though, and fairly recently. However, all that is purely academic. The truth is, is that the bloke is a real champion who, isn't boring, doesn't have a chip on his shoulder, isn't universally bad mannered or humoured, doesn't sulk, whine or moan, is almost certainly the greatest of all time [the GOAT] in motorcycle racing [with apologies to to Giacomo Agostini], and is probably one of the few sportsmen/entertainers where the reputation does not exceed the evidence. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other sportsman who has those qualities. If he was driving an F1 vehicle, he'd be even bigger, as F1 is obviously followed more because people drive cars more than ride bikes. But to be top, or in the top three, is astonishing, for a bloke who races bikes, because half the people who watch and support him would fall off as soon as the stabilisers were removed. Anyway, on and upward to the next season, where instead of the abject failure of SFC, I have my favourite motorsport covered with no adverts, and another that I still want to love, despite all its failings, being given the same treatment.

Just an academic point, but one I think is slightly interesting. Back in 1991, while I was living in NZ, a few NZ friends were chatting to me about how broken down the UK economy was [it was during the last recession], and that NZ was the place to be, as the economy there was forever booming. I reminded them that, as a relatively small country economically, it wouldn't be long before their economy dived into recession too. They laughed, saying that their economy was quite large and very stable. So I did some digging on sizes of national economies. At the time, the UK economy was the 5th or 6th largest in the world [i believe we're back to being about the 4th biggest now, but I could be wrong]. I looked at the UK economy and found that the entire NZ economy fitted neatly in the gap between the UK in recession and in boom time. And they did fall into recession a few months afterwards anyway.

That's true, but store managers have a habit of looking at the 12 month warranty expiry date and thinking that's it, all I have to do is wait this little customer tirade out. And often that attitude works.

It's not up for discussion Scummer. It's a fact.

There was nothing supposed about it. Hoddle's academy players did play our academy players. We won.

Sadly, we are desperate for his quality. It's all we can afford.

IMO, Saints are 3-4 players short of quality. We don't have an affordable quality striker who can regularly score goals given the right service, or a decent partner for him. McGoldrick will be a fine player in time, but it'll take a couple of seasons. The defence needs to be more solid, and our only defender of real quality is handicapped by injury. Tbh, in general the midfield are fine. What I don't like to see is an already shaky squad of players are going to be thinned out even more come January.

Even before the gossip rumour, I had it on reasonable authority that both Surman and Lallana are to be sold come January, for as much money as possible. Great isn't it..? We are not a selling club. We will not do a Leeds. You never want the bank to be controlling your footballing decisions. Now where have I heard those statements before..?

I agree. Not because of anyone's ability to manage the squad, or the club, but because there isn't an alternative. As I've said before, the bridges have been burned. I'm pretty sure Jan Poortvliet is a really decent coach, but all he has is inexperienced youngsters at his disposal, who have hardly had a look in before, a few dispirited old pros that no other club wants, and a handicapped hero in Svensson. I honestly don't see anyone else doing better. This is as good as it gets, unless a major takeover is in the offing, and there isn't one. Get used to it.

I might be being a bit picky here, but when I last looked we weren't in the bottom 3. Here's a link to check the table: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_1/table/default.stm