Ken Tone

Of course you don't need one massive immobile defender .. I didn't say you did... but you do need at least one who is tall enough to cope with the average opposing team's strikers. The ideal is two tall and mobile defenders. Failing that, one big and one small generally works better than 2 small.

That would be a logical conclusion, but actually if you look at the UK as an example , although English is of course the dominant language, the Welsh and the Scots have gone to great lengths in recent years to keep their own languages, and indeed the Welsh effectively force many of their children to speak Welsh in school and use it in official situations. Welsh is probably spoken more widely now than it was a generation or two ago. There seems to be a level at which the state or the nation or whatever the group is , becomes too big for many people and they want to sub-divide and keep a separate identity. Look at all the supposedly 'Irish' Americans ...many times as many as there are Irish in Ireland. See also how passionately French Canadians stay 'French' So personally I don't think there will ever be a common language, and even if we approached one there'd be local dialects and accents that made it different in reality. Apparently Geordies speak English for example, but ....

I still think he is class. The problem on Saturday is that he was drawn out of position covering for his full backs

Surely the only sensible answer is that we can all have a fixed term of retirement, say 10 years? You can retire when you like, but after the 10 years, euthanasia. Society would welcome some early retirers, because their organs would still be worth re-using after their 10 years are up. Or maybe we just stop funding the NHS completely and raise the death rate to the level of our third world competitors? The trouble with these politicians is they chicken out of the logical extension of their ideas!

I think it could indeed be a problem. UK degree + pgce is pretty well accepted in most countries but GTP is a bit more dodgy. Fine for the UK itself. The rationale, whether ones agrees or not , is that a B.Ed or pgce has academic rigour in pedagogy but that GTP is just 'learning by sitting next to Nellie'. That is a bit unfair IMO, because some GTPs can be excellent and some pgces can be pretty rubbish, but it is the perception nonetheless. You might want to explore the option of an open university pgce whilst working full-time or almost full-time instead of the GTP as such, especially if you have good degree. But I'd check with the Canadian embassy first.

So did Jason Dodd, but neither of them are permanent left backs.

Cranie is another Chris Baird type player. He wants to play centre back and indeed plays well there, but is too short unless he pays covering for a hulking great brute alongside him, and is not quite as fast as you'd want a top level right back to be ideally. Definitely good enough for the championship but not much use to Saints IMO because he'd be competing to play in Fonte's place, not to play with Fonte, and he wouldn't want to come here as a RB. Personally I always thought that Matt Mills was the more promising of the two when they were breaking through into our first team as youngsters.

Oh, well if you were serious, then if it's for a good job or something don't think twice... go. Salford Quays etc and roundabout are now gentrified areas with loads of flats and restaurants near the city centre, and there are many decent suburbs further out. Plus the public transport system isn't too bad, with the new tram. Basically it's a big city with all that entails, good and bad. Good nightlife, shops, arts and culture, etc but also some rough areas. Avoid Moss Side and much of Salford especially Weaste, but that'll be obvious from the relative property prices, for sale or rent. Places like Chorlton, say, give you a bit of both worlds, an inner suburb so easy travel to the centre, but also out of the problems that any city centre can have. Tone down the (to them cockney) accent, don't act all southern and superior or ask where all the slag heaps are, sound impressed now and then, and you'll be fine. The cliches about northern people being friendly, especially as neighbours, have some basis in truth in my experience.

Turkish this thread has lost you the last shreds of credibility you had, and btw the word you want is 'lightning', not 'lightening'. Unless you were referring to some new sort of diet?

How about Rob Hulse as competition/cover for Rickie? 31 going on 32 so obviously not one for the future, but a proven goalscorer at this level and more of a target man than the other forwards we have. Just left out of QPR's 25 now they're rich again. Stop gap, until we move onto the next level in every sense. Not sure of his wages but doubt he is on a fortune.

Lived on the outskirts for 7 years and have relatives living there now. Perfectly decent city, with good bits and bad bits like all cities. Have you taken against it for some reason? I'd certainly rate it higher than say Leeds.

Bet you can't prove it! More seriously, and weirdly, the smileys don't show up for me on the main screen , but do in this quote box.

Genuine question because I rarely buy tickets for home league games being a ST-holder.... are there usually many pairs of seats for sale in the 'expensive blocks' of the the kingsland for any game? So manyof the people who sit round me are also ST-holders that you'd never get a pair of seats 'casual' near us. I suspect the Kingsland has the highest number of ST seats sold.

Lol It makes me smile every time someone writes 'compliment' on here when they mean 'complement'. I have this mental image of us buying a new striker whose only job is to stand there saying things like, "Oh, good shot Rickie!" or "I say! Jolly good try, David old chap!" But then, I'm easily amused.

Well technically it is an emergency loan, but as others have said that's just a name and as you imply there is no restriction or need to prove you have an emergency. My understanding is that the main real difference between a standard loan and an emergency one is that a standard one can be for up to 120 odd days and and emergency only up to 90 odd days. So sign a loan player in the main transfer window, and the loan can be up to January window. Sign one in the emergency loan window and you have to do some careful counting.

And of course it doesn't even cost as little as £4.2 million a year to have Barton. That's just his wage. By the time the employer has paid insurance, pension(?) and other 'on costs' and expenses etc it probably costs the club more like £5 million plus. Obscene, isn't it?

Apparently E'to is on £350,000 a week in Russia, or rather around £18 million a year, and only pays 15% income tax! Footballers now really live in a different world to the rest of us. It must actually be quite difficult to spend £18 million year. How many houses and yachts etc can one person enjoy?

With the current astonomical wages being quoted for some 'top' footballers, it strikes me how odd it is that the media still always say £x per week, not £y per year. I realise that football has working class origins where weekly wages were the norm but nowadays it is multi-national, multi-million pound, business. And even in tradtionally working class jobs, more are now paid monthly rather than weekly. Do players really still get paid weekly? It seems highly unlikely. I can think of no other area of such high finance where weekly wages would be quoted. We rightly find it horrific to hear that the boss of such and such a bank earns say a million a year. No one says he gets about £20k a week. For me the weekly wage just helps cover up the absurdity of football finance. What sounds worse to you, Barton on £80k a week, or Barton on some £4.2 million per year?

I'd have thought that the fact he spelled 'vomitory' incorrectly actually indicated he didn't look it up. It's a standard word in crowd control and emergency exit routes from large buildings that he will use regularly. More significantly I thought the expanation he gave was well-reasoned and sensible, even if IMO they did get it wrong on this occasion. I'm old enough to rember the routine corralling of away fans to and from grounds, never mind inside, and frquent OTT use of force, police horses etc ... it caused trouble.

Agree, except I recall someone posting that they'd spoken to Hooiveld and he himself said he was a couple of weeks away from full fitness. So if it is a choice between a fully fit but right-footed Martin and an 80% fit but left-footed Hooiveld ....hmmm. Not sure.

Not quite the next Rio IMO, but I do think he will develop into a good player at championship and maybe premier level, and am sorry we lost him. Hope the tribunal feels the same!

Yes, a 'night on the beers', if indeed he was drinking which we don't know, only 8 days before a game will affect his performance. Has the fact that clubs employ an army of nutritionists, physios, etc, passed you by? They do so because fitness, health, nutrition, sleep patterns, all matter. Presumably you think players needn't even bother training till a day or two before a game? Why do we even bother with a pre-season programme I wonder? That's weeks before a game.

Well quite, and first thoughts are that I'm sure we all wish Dan a speedy recovery. And even if he was behaving as badly as another poster suggests, he should still be able to be out and about without being hassled, let alone attacked. Having said all that, it still amazes me that any professional footballer is out on the razzle late at night during the season. I know it is 8 days till our next game, but does anyone think a top track and field athlete would be out in a night club after 2am when in training, even if their next race was 8 days away? Pro footballers are supposed to be athletes at peak of fitness, watching their scientifically planned diet, sleeping, resting, training, etc appropriately. I know a top distance runner for example, who is now planning her training,and meals and even sleep times, virtually to the minute for the next year or so, as she prepares for the Olympics. Living a quieter life than maybe most young men of that age, with that much money, would choose, is a price footballers should pay in return for all that income. Fans have a right to expect them to be at fit as they can be. They can go on the razzle when they retire on more money than most of us can even dream of.

If the signing for QPR didn't go through Puncheon really is in a mess. Surely we wouldn't loan him to another championship club, and he won't agree to go to L1, so where could he go?

Given his wife's family still live down here and he has young children I imagine you're right, he may well be down here a lot in the near future and it would indeed make sense for him to train at Saints. So if he then proves he has some fitness and some desire to play, why shouldn't he earn a short term contract? The main question would be how much, or rather how little, he'd accept in wages.... or will he seek yet another big pay day with someone like Leicester or West Ham. Here he'd be useful back up for Rickie, but I doubt he'd be first choice nowadays, so his wages would reflect that .. and that may be hard for him to accept.