Fowllyd

How much involvement do you think Bruce Buck has had in Chelsea's managerial appointments, transfers etc. in the years he's been chairman there? Or Sir Chips Keswick (yes, really) at Arsenal? I suspect that Krueger's position at Saints is closer to that of Buck or Keswick than to Lowe or indeed Cortese in their times with us.

I almost misread that...

I'm sorry, but I find this rather disturbing. Would you mind awfully popping over to the Lounge and kicking lumps out of each other? Thanks.

He's the chairman, and in most businesses that wouldn't mean he's in charge of the lot. In most businesses, chairmen are non-executives who act as figureheads, chair the board (amazingly enough) and oversee the activities of the executives who actually run things. In football this is often not the case (Saints have only had one non-executive chairman that I can recall, and that was the unlamented Ken Dulieu). In Saints' case I'd expect the CEO to run the business side of things on a day-to-day basis, the Sporting Director (or whatever Reed's title is) to run the football side of things, and for them both to report to the board, which consists of them plus the other three (Liebherr, Krueger and Hofsetter). That's assuming, of course, that the last two have essentially non-exec roles, and I've seen nothing stating otherwise. If Krueger's role is as a non-executive figurehead who is looking to beef up the commercial side of things, then I wouldn't expect him to take any part in the day-to-day running of the club. I guess we've got so accustomed to all-powerful executive chairmen (Lowe and Cortese being good examples) that we automatically expect any chairman to be in the same mould.

Definitely Glasgow. He can almost construct a sentence - something that was well beyond Barry's capabilities. But the clincher is the question mark at the end of what otherwise reads as a statement.

Pochettino's younger son also appears to have an extraordinarily long left leg. His elder son, it seems, has very short legs and no feet.

But he's not demanding complete solutions; he's making the point (among others) that conspiracy theories may appear to work when you're looking back over events, but not when you try to picture them unfolding before those events. In that quest, he has questioned whether (among other things) you can really picture a collection of high-level US and Israeli apparatchiks sitting down together and hatching this plot. Can you? Also, why shouldn't someone demand complete solutions, or at least something a little more complete than anything you've offered? It's the apparent absence of such complete solutions in the official versions which you and others decry, after all.

Can't help but agree with this. CB's tone may be highly antagonistic (let's face it, it's what he does best), but he makes very valid points - not least of which is that in order to see the whole WTC attack as having been organised by elements of the US and Israeli states necessarily means accepting that people in very senior positions sat down, discussed the best way to bring about the things they desired, and came up with the airliner attacks. Pap has made no attempt to answer that point, preferring instead to accuse CB of foul play. For Pap, or anyone else for that matter, to find that "I get it, but when investigating, each attempt to disprove it led to more problems. It's common, apparently" can hardly come as a surprise. It's always difficult to disprove anything, and even more so when the thing one is trying to disprove is nebulous and not fixed. Could I, or anyone else, prove that Mossad and the CIA weren't involved in the WTC attacks? Of course not. Lack of proof that something didn't happen cannot be taken as proof that it did happen, yet in the world of the conspiracy theorist it is. In some other areas I'd agree with Pap, particularly on the geopolitical after-effects of 9/11 and that the response of the west, and the US in particular, has almost certainly made the world a less safe place and has encouraged rather than discouraged radical Islam and associated terrorism. But to take that as an indication, let alone proof, of US/Israeli state involvement in the original attacks is a flight of fancy, not of logic.

Like it or not, Barkley will be sold if there's a high enough offer. I'm sure the same will go for our star players, though the lengths of their contracts will make the price pretty damn steep (and that applies to Barkley too I believe). But do you really think that if, say, Chelsea are after Ross Barkley, they'll be saying to themselves "Hang on a second, didn't Martinez say he's not for sale at any price? And didn't he even state that it was the club, and not just him, saying this? Tell you what, let's find another player to sign."?

I'm surprised that you'd get prosecuted for that in Portsmouth, to be honest. Unless, of course, the person he's alleged to have assaulted isn't close enough family - just a cousin or something. And so, following on from Herman on the last page, I get a post on the PTS page of my birth year. Go me.

Where exactly did I make any claims? I simply said that there has been many a time that a manager has claimed that a particular player is not for sale at any price, only for said player to be sold shortly afterwards. I am correct in that statement; we've all seen it happen. And so what if Martinez used the words 'the club' - they are words and nothing more. If another club comes in with a very large offer for Barkley, and Barkley wishes to go to that club, he will be sold. It may happen, it may not - but tough-sounding words from Martinez will make no difference either way. As to bidding clubs making claims about statements being merely negotiating positions, it could just as easily be argued that 'not for sale at any price' or 'even a bid of Bale proportions won't get him' are nothing more than negotiating positions. Oh, and what exactly is the 'failed argument' that I am trying to bolster? For someone who calls himself Professor and tries to convey an air of gravitas, you don't half post some tripe.

But who then was at the controls? Somebody flew two planes into the WTC towers, knowing full well that they would die. So who was persuaded to do that? Or were those planes flown by actual terrorists, who did so not knowing that their entire plot was actually hatched, funded and controlled by the very people they were seeking to hurt?

Yes he could have, and he quite possibly did. How many times have managers said exactly that about their star players, only to be left looking foolish when said star players are sold? Plenty. Martinez wants to put off buyers, which is fair enough, but what do you think will happen if Everton receive a bid of £50M for Barkley, and he wants to go to the team making that bid? David Moyes probably said something mightily similar about Wayne Rooney ten years or so ago.

Which pretty much describes his posting style.

Brilliant from start to end, and made complete somehow by that neat Alanis M reference. Barry Sanchez - we looked upon his works, and my, how we despaired...

A fine contribution, Papster. It's hard not to feel that Mrs Barry Sanchez (if indeed there is one - you'll have a better idea than the rest of us ) is the major loser in this particular deal.

According to Weston Saint, who actually knows Adam (and knows Lallana senior well), yes.

I must have been lucky - got snipped nearly ten years ago and had no unpleasant after-effects at all. Definitely the thing to do if you're sure you don't want to have any more children.

I'm more surprised it's in the Lounge and not TMS.

Cast your mind back to January 2007. We were a Championship side, hoping for promotion, with a startlingly good young left back in our team. There was masses of speculation in the press that Gareth Bale would be off to a bigger club in that transfer window. Not a word came out of SFC to deny all this speculation; this in turn was jumped on by many posters on this forum's predecessor, as they believed it showed beyond doubt that Bale would indeed be off by the end of January. By contrast, Birmingham City's then manager, Steve Bruce, stated clearly and categorically that their central defender, Matthew Upson, was not for sale and would not be leaving the club. This certainty and determination was applauded by many S4E posters, and held up as being exactly the type of statement that SFC should make about Bale. However, Bruce's bold words did nothing to quell the media speculation regarding Upson. At the end of that January transfer window, Gareth Bale was still a Saints player. Matthew Upson had signed for West Ham. So much for words and statements.

You reckon? Doesn't matter what anybody says or even does, speculation in the media about Pochettino going to Spurs will carry on regardless. If he were to sign a five-year contract in the centre circle before the game next Sunday and wipe his arse on a Spurs shirt afterwards, there'd still be stuff in the press about how Spurs would not see this as insurmountable, that they'll get their man regardless, etc. etc. And there'd still be people on forums such as this one saying how it's just a ploy to sell season tickets, he's off anyway, repeat ad nauseam. As an example, I remember reading not long back that, in spite of Klopp having said he's really not interested in the Man Utd job, this would just mean that Man Utd would have to work harder to get him. So what could Pochettino and Saints do to quell media blather?

While there's certainly some truth in this, it strikes me that those who regularly rise to the bait posted by Glasgow, Barry and whoever else are not generally new posters. Many exasperated responses to Glasgow, for example, are from Olallana, who's been around long enough to have learnt better by now.

Why don't you try this some time and see how you get on?