TopGun

The photographer will take loads of shots and hand them over to the Saints PR guy (Jordan Sibley??) who will select what to use. I have a load of fantastic originals from the early to mid 80s that were taken by the guy who did the stuff then on behalf of the Echo... Keegan, Worthington, Moran etc. All unused professional shots that nobody else has :-)

Spot on. Riise would be a waste of money.

A girl I know ****ged Jason Orange who, I think, is in some band called That Take.

I think this is also likely to be the case. I far rather the Cortese policy of keeping everything confidential and under wraps than that of Pompey who seem to be publicising every player they are interested in.

One of mine does revolting cheese farts.

Can't agree. Whoever was in the managerial hotseat had a no win position. Lowe and Wilde etc infighting with neither having a pot to **** in to support the club and relying on dwindling share price equity that they just about controlled was the downfall.

Agreed. Needy attention seeking.

So PFC are now planning to spend £1.5m on Whittingham and £750K on Varney. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/13942222.stm How does this stack against CVA payments?

Saints are about 5/1 for any form of promotion next season. http://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/championship/promotion I think those are quite generous odds. I am going to bet £20 and drink 6 less pints of beer between now and May 2012. Then I might go mad on promotion day with £100 to spend on loads of jelly beans You can also get a generous 5/1 on Pompey being relegated (9 players ATM, the new owners looking dodgy) - but I'm unsure about that one, because what would happen to the bet if they possibly ceased to trade or got points deducted for whatever complicated financial or legal reason that might yet occur... Any good punters or lawyers offering free opinions on either Saints or Pompey bets?

I think WG means that people use phone boxes to report crime anonymously.

This thread brings back memories of that mad feller who was going to take Saints over, bring David Beckham in and increase the capacity to 55,000. What was his name again - the photocopier salesman?

Half-time entertainment perhaps?

About a year ago I woke up unexpectedly at about 2am and I could hear noises but it was quite a windy night and I initially put it down to the wind causing sounds in the chimneys or through another upstairs open window. I got up after a minute or so and put my bedroom light on and then the landing light on and peered down the stairs to see the front door was gently flapping ajar. I still thought that I had just not shut the door properly earlier and the wind had opened it and went downstairs to shut the front door. I went back to the kitchen to discover that door also wide open. I guess the intruder had left after I put the lights on upstairs. I shut the back door and locked it, not being brave enough to risk a clout over the head or worse by going into the garden and called the police. They arrived, had a look about and said there was nothing much they could do. Forensics were sent the next day with no result. I now have a bamboo cane under the bed though as well as extra door locks that I use! I had left the front door on the latch only and the bloke had got in with a credit card or similar by sliding the Yale open.

I'm glad that not all Pompey fans are as sensible as Mack. It would be far less entertaining overall. At least we can smile as most of the blue few march towards a legal train wreck oblivious to it all :-)

I think the most controversial thing about Tony Martin's actions was that he shot the intruder in the back as he was trying to make a run for it in his house. The Salford episode isn't clear yet.

I met the farmer Tony Martin recently who killed an intruder with a shotgun about 10 years ago. He's a bit of an oddball and started the conversation with a "Do you know who I am?" sentence. He sticks by his actions though.

Totally agree.

The Daily Mail would call for a flogging - and rightly so!

And it's a one in a lifetime event to savour on the day for spectators. Atmosphere, history, photographs, etc. I was involved in the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games and the whole thing was brilliant for two weeks. The Olympics is 10x the size!

Does the defendant listing below Storrie and Mandaric that is left blank refer to Redknapp?

Good article unusually in the Telegraph which focuses on options - written by Centrica CEO which is why it makes more sense than the energy & environment journalists on that paper who have to toe the editorial line. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/utilities/8592681/We-have-a-year-to-make-a-low-carbon-future-happen.html

As some of you know, energy is the area I work in but these days I can't really be bothered responding to the omniscience of Dune on climate change. The long and the short of it is that whether you subscribe to man made climate change or not, fossil fuels are increasingly finite and getting more expensive all the time to use for energy generation. Over dependent use on fossil fuels also has the potential to cause the UK energy supply problems because we have to import the coal or gas. All will cause energy bills to rise for a householder on an ongoing and exponential basis. It's unarguable. The new nuke proposal is on tenterhooks and not just because of Fukushima fears. The costs to build new nukes are immense and there is no answer yet to dispose of the waste. It currently gets transported to Sellafield where it is building up in "temporary" stores. Nukes also take 10 years to build after getting planning permission which takes years in itself. Additionally, two of the companies who have outline permission to build new nukes in the UK at designated sites like Hinckley Point are German (RWE and Eon) and have just been shafted in a business sense by the German decision to abandon nuclear power so will be struggling to gain R&D and construction finance as their debt leverage will now be far worse with sound bets removed. It is noteworthy that the media Dune calls on incessantly (Telegraph, Express and Mail) to justify his stance to continually rail against wind energy development have also recently gone loopy about rising energy bills - which are ultimately caused by global fossil fuel market speculation that will only get worse and has no benefits for UK consumers in the future. The reactionary media, led by non-scientists and non-economically qualified "journalists" such as Christopher Booker in the Telegraph, contradicts itself ever more to sell newspapers and pander to people like Dune. The only answer to the UK's upcoming energy security and price problems are to widen the generating portfolio - that means far better planning to have a mixed baseload of coal (preferably with carbon capture and storage), gas and nuke power generation which is supplanted whenever the wind, tide or waves do the right things. That means creating an energy generation portfolio that is about 1.5x as much as we use at any one peak time to cover the bases. The upside is that if the government bites the bullet to do that properly, there will be thousands of skilled jobs created in the energy construction, generation and transmission sectors that can also be exported to other countries subsequently. Equally, when the UK has too much energy generation we can sell that to other less windy and tidal European countries in the future. The UK has the natural resources for an ongoing win-win situation. It's expensive and long term thinking but far better than the bodged theories spouted by the Express and Mail and reiterated continuously by the likes of Dune. It's an argument of national and profitable self-sufficiency that people need to understand. Topgun - Energy Expert!

I have a certain admiration for Steve Cotterill. He's not a bad manager by any means and most others in his position would have disappeared off to another club months ago. They'd be in worse trouble without his loyalty, however misplaced it might be.

As much as I dislike the Chelsea regime and the way that Abramovitch's cash has distorted football in so many ways, I have to admire the sentiments of their new manager Andre Villas-Boas in the BBC link below. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/13879605.stm He says: "I don't see the game as a one-man show, I see the game as the getting together of collective ideas and good players. "The most important thing is to motivate the players to get their ambitions right, to reflect again on what the club has achieved in the last six years and we need to keep this route to success. "We are a technical staff that focuses a lot on unlocking potential and that incentivises a lot of freedom of choice because in the end, when the players are on the pitch, they face different situations that they have to solve without the help of their manager. "This is the kind of stimulus that we want the players to have, responsibility and making decisions, because in the end the game is decided by them on the pitch. "It is a clashing together of two good organisations and in the end it is the relationship between all of our players that can lead us to success, and that is what I want to work on." I guess Chelsea are hoping that a young manager such as V-B can emulate Pep at Barca rather than doing the failed merry-go-round of old school managers previously employed at Chelsea (with the exception of Mourhino, where other issues clearly also exist) and other big clubs. A breath of fresh air for the Premiership IMO - should make it more exciting at least to see if it works out. From a Saints perspective, I suspect Cortese would agree with the Chelsea decision. What are poster's thoughts? (Mods, I put this in the lounge as it is a topic that is of wide interest but move to General Sports if you prefer)

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/pompey/pompey-past/great-matches/ticket_sales_down_despite_amazing_show_of_commitment_1_2794408 Looks like they are going to get 8,000 season ticket sales... fantastic and unique supporter base indeed.