Yeovil Saint

While Thatcher's rightly been criticised, I wonder if some of the reluctance to investigate in the New Labour years was down to the utter failure of Sheffield City Council (Leader David Blunkett) to ensure that Hillsborough Stadium was actually safe. The Taylor report was very concerned that there had been no attempt to work out what the capacity of the individual pens should be, no way of working out if a pen was too full and that the gaps between the crush barriers was wider than allowed.

Last post - really need to get back to work but here's a section of the panel's summary.

It could have been Saints fans in Leppings Lane, Hillsborough could have easily been picked for Saints v Everton or Saints v Liverpool. And if it had been Saints fans that had died I would hope that we would have campaigned for the truth as much as the Liverpool fans did. I don't think the government would have cared, but we would have made them care.

Why would anyone mention ticketless fans, that particular slur was discounted by the interim Taylor report in 1989. While it cannot be proven that there were no ticketless fans whatsoever, the total number of Liverpool fans in Leppings Lane end at 3:06pm was a couple of hundred less than the total number of tickets sold. That's why the side pens were at most half-full.

From Cameron's statement

I'm not as generous. There is no excuse to be ignorant of the facts about Hillsborough. It's not something that just happened and reports are confusing, it happened 23 years ago and every event leading up to the disaster is well known. I know that ill-informed banter is the common currency of most messageboards, but idly apportioning blame for the deaths of 96 football supporters just like us without an understanding of the facts is out of order.

I get why Bompey dislike Saints, we're the overshadowing local neighbours, but what have Brighton done to them to be second biggest rivals?

Looking at the ref's stats to see if it's the biggest game he's been involved with (answer: 3rd, behind Hull v Brighton 11/12 and Huddersfield v Yeovil 11/12) I noticed that he's not trigger happy, in his 36 previous matches at Conference National and above he's only sent off two players before.

Two sentences and two completely idiotic statements. In which bookies were Bournemouth promotion favourites? In every market I've seen Bournemouth are behind Sheffield United, MK Dons and Swindon, in most they are also behind Preston, Doncaster and Coventry. Secondly, 13k average would put Pompey at about 2/3rd Sheffield United's gates, yet you still seem to be able to outbid them for players.

Are we allowed to recall Barnard and offer him to Colchester before they get to play Pompey on Tuesday?

Nearly, I wanted more information on Lee Barnard's missus though.

Just been confirmed by the official twitter feed He will be available to play against Pompey today :-)

You know, I almost bet on Pompey to win this morning, when Neil Allen tweeted they were 4/1 to win.

Has anyone asked on POL how they can afford the new signings? On The Pompey Chimes it's because Trevor Birch has a £4m kitty.

Yeovil's not hell, that's Chard you're thinking of. Thanks for the best wishes and I wish Coventry a swift return to the Premier League.

This may be a stupid question, but if it's not against the embargo by signing on non-contract terms why didn't Appleton do that on Monday so the trailists could play last night?

I think the bookies have got this one fairly right, Nigel Adkins being the first manager fired is about 20% in my book. Someone always goes before Christmas and I don't think that any newly appointed manager will go so quickly, likewise there's some managers that look unsackable and they have to go on a bad run before they use up their credit. So there's only a very few managers that are in the firing line and NA is one of them. My shortlist: Martin Jol, Roberto Mancini, Alan Pardew, Mark Hughes (imho the favourite to go), Adkins and BFS

It isn't regional, but is seeded and for the first time in years, we're seeded. We'll get one of the teams that finished 18th or lower in last year's Championship or we in last year's League One or League Two. There are 25 such clubs. Barnsley Bradford City Burton Albion Carlisle United Coventry City Crawley Town Doncaster Rovers Crewe Alexandra Gillingham Leyton Orient Milton Keynes Dons Morecambe Northampton Town Nottingham Forest Oxford United Peterborough United Plymouth Argyle Preston North End S****horpe United Sheffield Wednesday Stevenage Swindon Town Tranmere Rovers Walsall Yeovil Town If not Yeovil away, to make my travel easier, I quite fancy us going to Peterborough again.

I assume that UnAppy will be able to get some loans in from West Brom for the league season, as he's got till Friday afternoon to register them.

I got £50 on at 10/1, thought I was being too greedy there, but well done Wotton and the boys in green.

If I'd won the £148m I would have found some Arab to be a frontman for me and buy Pompey, then do things like change the kit from blue to red and white stripes.

http://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/LatestNews/news/Pompey-Sign-Eastwood-3593.aspx So non-contract basis means a contract that's not worth the paper it's written on, so just like a normal Pompey contract then.

or five players at £6,000/week, remember quality over quantity.

Cheers, it sounds like the sort of player they will be able to afford under Chainrai.